Book Review: Knowing Jesus through the Old Testament

One of the most common laments of your average Bible reader is how much they struggle with the Old Testament. Whether it is because of the violence, or the strange, almost other-worldly customs, or even just the endless lists and genealogies, the Old Testament is at best ignored by many Christians, and at worst viewed with a great deal of suspicion and anxiety.

Christopher Wright does not agree with this viewpoint at all. In fact, he believes that the Old Testament is an incredibly valuable spiritual resource for Christ-followers because it was so essential to the formation of Jesus’ identity and mission. Wright is convinced that Jesus’ own story is rooted in the story of Israel, and that understanding the story of Israel will broaden and deepen our understanding of Christ.

Wright is an acclaimed Old Testament scholar, but wears his scholar’s mantle lightly and instead writes with a good communicator’s instinct for the lack of awareness and appreciation that the average person might have in regards to a subject he is so utterly proficient in. Wright is obviously passionate about the Old Testament and the importance of studying it, but he is equally passionate about convincing his audience to agree with him on this. The result is a book that is designed to draw the average reader past the misconceptions and prejudices, and into the incredibly absorbing world of the Old Testament.

Rather than tackling the Old Testament en masse, Wright takes 5 chapters to relate Jesus to the following five themes – story, promise, identity, mission and values. Each chapter is fascinating, and will give you plenty to think about as you learn more about just how much the Old Testament can increase our appreciation of the Jesus story. In his own words, Wright sees the Old Testament as telling “the story which Jesus completes”.

My favourite part about this book is how it does succeed in deconstructing various misconceptions and prejudices about the Old Testament, and also how it lays down solid foundations for the reader in instilling excitement and lending new appreciation to the very scriptures, which shaped so much of Jesus himself. This book comes highly recommended and is well worth reading, especially if you are one of those who find the Old Testament scary, off-putting or obsolete. Read this book and I am sure that Wright will convince you otherwise.

Book Review: UnChristian - What a new generation really thinks about Christianity ... and why it matters

The president of The Barna Group, David Kinnaman, has written this controversial but immensely popular book that took American Christianity by storm. Kinnaman has focussed his research on two different generations – the Mosaics (born between 1984 and 2002) and the Busters (born between 1965 and 1983). He then deals with how Christians are generally perceived by these generations, the groups of people they should be serving and evangelising. The result is ‘UnChristian: What a new generation really thinks about Christianity ... and why it matters.”

Although this study focuses mainly on how Americans view American Christians, its findings are very applicable to all countries that have been affected by Western Christianity. This is because large sections of today’s population in the Western world, ages 16 to 29, view Christianity as "antihomosexual," "judgmental," "hypocritical," "too involved in politics," "sheltered," and "insensitive to others.” And Kinnaman doesn’t just make these statements up, because they are all derived from verifiable data compiled by The Barna Group over an extensive period. Essentially, we are told, there are huge sections of people – a majority, in fact – who find Christians unpleasant company for a variety of reasons. That would explain those glares around the staff coffee machine that you were wondering about.

This shouldn’t be surprising since the anti-Christian voice has been pretty loud in the media lately. For example, recently there was a lot of fuss made because Anne Rice (the Vampire author) decided to give up on Christianity as a direct result of Christians and the constant prejudice she was encountering in them. There is a world-wise malaise with Christianity propped up by mistakes which are made by a minority of us: like hateful, anti-gay statements; or the priest abuse cases; or the in-authenticity of some of our prosperity gospel preachers; or the fact that many Christians don’t live what they preach.

Kinnaman takes a blow-by-blow look at the descriptors, analyzes the stats, and makes suggestions for corrective action that are largely helpful, if not earth-shatteringly so. He investigates each critique in its own chapter, such as ‘Hypocritical,’ ‘Antihomosexual,’ ‘Sheltered,’ ‘Too Political,’ ‘Judgemental’ and ‘Get Saved!’ (which looks at unauthentic and fly-by-the-seat evangelism that fails to express any route to spiritual depth or indeed any real concern for the evangelical ‘targets’).

In these chapters, Kinnaman tries to outline a plan for better interaction between Christ-followers and non-Christians, and he probably nails it best in his chapter on how the world defines the church as “sheltered” when he explains that “outsiders” need to see that Christians can get involved with them in the world, while at the same time maintaining a “balance” between “proximity and purity.”

Kinnaman quotes Mike Metzger of the Clapham Institute:
“Being salt and light demands two things: we practice purity in the midst of a fallen world and yet we live in proximity to this fallen world. If you don’t hold up both truths in tension, you invariably become useless and separated from the world God loves. For example, if you only practice purity apart from proximity to the culture, you inevitably become pietistic, separatist, and conceited. If you live in close proximity to the culture without also living in a holy manner, you become indistinguishable from fallen culture and useless in God’s kingdom.”

As you can see though, Kinnaman has not really given a clear answer, rather he just restates the same problem in another way. This in essence sums up the weakness of his book in that he does an excellent job of analysing and explaining and using the data to effectively challenge Christians, but struggles to come up with compelling answers to the questions posed. Kinnaman's clearest vision is for the church to fix its "image problem" via real, personal change – in other words to focus on journeys of greater depth. However, even in this Kinnaman fails to clarify how the church as an institution can take this journey. Or at least if he did, it wasn’t clear to me.

I would still recommend ‘UnChristian’ highly. It is a valuable diagnostic tool for the Church, and its ‘American’ focussed lessons can easily be applied to South African contexts with a bit of creative thought. If you are wondering how the ‘non-Jesus’ people in society might perceive you, then this is definitely the book to read. At the very least, reading it might help instil a greater humility within Christianity at large, and also develop greater urgency that we take seriously the need to engage more deeply with the people who live among us and who have differing faith or value systems.

Book Review: An Altar in the World - A Geography of Faith

Barbara Brown Taylor calls this book a “field guide” to spiritual practices and as such encourages her readers not to read it from cover to back, but rather to pick out and read the chapters most relevant to their lives. This actually works because Taylor examines everyday practices such as walking, working and nature, and so you tend to find there are parts of the book that are always relevant to where ever you happen to be. Taylor sees ‘mundane’ practices as means of revealing small windows into heaven and sensing God’s presence. Each chapter takes simple customs, like encountering people, getting lost and daily chores, and provides an alternate view to these routine happenings.

Taylor writes beautifully and reading her is something like an orchestral experience of the mind and soul. The mastery of her prose is enough to curl your toes in sheer delight, like seeing drizzled honey and melted butter soak into warm, freshly baked bread. She tells the most exquisite stories that leave you feeling a little breathless afterward, as if you had actually shared the whole giddy experience with her.

Each chapter is a series of reflections on the different practices of the engaged spiritual life. The 12 different chapters cover subjects as diverse as "The Practice of Paying Attention," about reverence, "The Practice of Wearing Skin," which addresses incarnation, and "The Practice of Paying Attention to God," which focuses on prayer. My favourite, however, is her chapter on "The Practice of Encountering Others." The following quote from this chapter will explain exactly why it spoke to me so powerfully:

“What we have most in common is not religion but humanity. I learned this from my religion, which also teaches us that encountering another human being is as close to God as I may ever get -- in the eye-to-eye thing, the person-to-person thing -- which is where God's Beloved has promised to show up. Paradoxically, the point is not to see him. The point is to see the person standing right in front of me, who has no substitute, who can never be replaced, whose heart holds things for which there is no language, whose life is an unsolved mystery. The moment I turn that person into a character in my own story, the encounter is over. I have stopped being a human being and have become a fiction writer instead.”

I thoroughly enjoy the writings of Barbara Brown Taylor, but she may not be everyone’s cup of tea. For example, some of her thoughts on ‘God as a lover’ may leave you blushing although she does follow in the footsteps of some of the ancient Christian mystics here. Also, while she roots her teachings in Christianity she does draw upon the wisdom and spiritual practices of other religions. What must be remembered is that she is not advocating the doctrines of these religions but merely encouraging us to learn from their spiritual disciplines.

Frankly, Taylor lost me a little when she wandered too far down anyone path - I preferred it when she kept it simple and revealed concrete ways to discover the sacred in the small things we do and see. Something as ordinary as hanging clothes on a clothesline becomes an act of devotion if we pay attention to what we are doing and take time to attend to the sights, smells, and sounds around us. In this way Taylor encourages us to question conventional distinctions between the sacred and the secular, and to learn that no physical act is too earthbound or too humble to become a signpost to God. As we incorporate these practices into our daily lives, we begin to discover altars everywhere we go, in nearly everything we do.

Book Review: Getting Involved with God - Rediscovering the Old Testament

This has to be one of the best books I have read over the last year, and it certainly managed to stir within me a deeper appreciation for the Old Testament. Author Ellen Davis is the associate professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Duke Divinity School in the United States, and this book is based on a variety of her sermons and lectures given over a period of fourteen years.

I know what you are thinking – if it is written by an OT professor then surely it is at best dry and dusty, and at worst overly complex and out-of-touch. While Davis’ book certainly is marked by quality scholarship, it is at the same time highly accessible to the general reader. Each chapter is a fairly short spiritual reflection on an OT story or passage, which actually lends itself very well to some form of small group study.

In a nutshell, Davis seeks to reveal the story of God’s quest to have a relationship with humankind as captured in the Old Testament (the Hebrew Scriptures). She engages the average person of faith as she challenges common misconceptions about the Old Testament and tackles some of its tougher passages such as the Binding of Isaac and the cursing Psalms.

Davis’ strength is her ability to creatively describe ways in which the Old Testament, even with its more difficult and confusing texts can speak directly and relevantly to contemporary issues such as meaningful work, sexual expression, unconstrained consumerism, and ecology. The only weakness I picked up is that Davis sometimes seems to stop short of fully engaging the extreme ethical difficulties raised by some of these texts. For example, as much as I thoroughly enjoyed the chapter on the Binding of Isaac, I found her explanation for this story, as the urgency of God to be assured of Abraham’s love, did not adequately deal with my concerns over a God who would ask for the death of a child in order to soothe his own anxiety. I felt Davis took me on a journey that she didn’t quite complete.

Ellen Davis isn’t very well known beyond students of her particular field, which is a real pity because she writes powerfully and I guarantee that reading her would be extremely helpful in terms of your own spiritual formation. This book is highly recommended.

Book Review: God on Mute

Who would have thought that a book with a core theme of God’s silence during suffering would have made me laugh so much? Pete Greig, co-founder of the 24-7 prayer movement, has tackled this immensely complex and emotive subject and produced a wonderful book that manages to confront some of life’s biggest questions head on, but does so with typically dry British wit. In his own words, Greig wanted to write a book about suffering that wasn’t a terribly complicated theological tomb, or a collection of pithy sayings and unhelpful easy answers. Instead he wanted to write an “honest, practical book” that could fit on someone’s bedside table in between a “Reader’s Digest and a cappuccino”.

Greig succeeds in this probably because ‘God on Mute’ arises out of personal experience thus making it part theology and part biography. Greig shares the terrible moment when his wife Samie was first diagnosed with a brain tumour “the size of an orange.” Although the tumour was successfully removed, Samie continues to suffer severe epileptic seizures that drastically affect her quality of life. Every night she goes to bed, Samie is not sure whether she will wake up in a hospital the next day, she still cannot drive, is continually exhausted and has lost much of her independence

Greig reveals that as the leader of an international prayer group, this experience left him feeling both helpless and useless because so many of his prayers for healing and help seemingly went unanswered. He writes with searing honesty about this period of his life: “I was scared that Samie might die if I didn't pray enough, or if I didn't have enough faith, or if I didn't fast enough, or if I didn't bind some disembodied principality, or if I didn't repent of some root sin . . . I prayed at best like a child and at worst like a charlatan looking for snake oil.”

However, it is exactly this kind of honesty that makes the rest of what Greig has to say so compelling. Anyone who has ever struggled with feelings of suffering and unanswered prayer will relate to his words. The best part of the book in my opinion is that Greig follows the structure of the Easter story, which is perhaps the single most powerful Biblical precedent for our own experiences of suffering and silence. Greig follows Jesus’ own journey through the Easter weekend from his heart wrenching experiences in Gethsemane (Oh God, please take this cup of suffering away from me), to the loneliness of the cross on Good Friday (My God, why have you forsaken me…), to the deafening silence that followed his death on Easter Saturday.

Through a combination of being courageous enough to speak out his own worst fears, and layering this into the raw honesty of the Easter story, Greig allows his readers space enough to face their own most uncomfortable questions about God. Greig never succumbs to the temptation of flippant answers, instead he provides the space and honesty required to respectfully discuss and own life’s toughest questions and therein to find our own meaning and hope. As Greig himself said in a recent interview: “I’d like God on Mute to contribute to the shaping of a culture of greater honesty in the church, whereby we can publicly echo the laments of the psalms, the despair of men like Job and even the doubts of the first disciples, without condemnation.”

Greig is a wonderful story teller and deftly weaves all sorts of anecdotes into his overall narrative, all the while managing to make comments that are guaranteed to have you smiling which is vital when dealing with such a heavy topic. Ultimately, we learn that silence doesn’t have to be terrifying and faith destroying, instead it is actually an opportunity to draw even more closely to God as we honestly and courageously journey more deeply into life’s complex yet immensely enriching realities. For as we do that we shall find that God is with us in ways that are beyond easy explanations. Greig himself sums this up the best as he writes, “Our desire is always to be airlifted out of the theater of war. But more often than not, instead of airlifting us to safety, God parachutes down to join us.”

Book Review: The Ten Commandments - Laws of the Heart

I wish more people read books by Joan Chittister. In my opinion, Joan is one of the wisest Christian authors currently plying their trade, and I don’t think I have ever read a book by her that has not left me feeling somehow richer for the experience.

In this book, Chittister tackles the rather complex subject of the Ten Commandments but does so in a way that is tremendously life-giving. She certainly enabled me to see and understand the Ten Commandments in a way that I had never before. Throughout this relatively short book (around 150 pages), Chittister continually returns to the issue of what the Ten Commandments are and are not; for example, that they are about "praise, human responsibility, justice, creation, the value of life, the nature of relationships, honesty, veracity, desire, and simplicity of life."

Ultimately, the Ten Commandments are not so much about restrictions; as they are an “adventure in human growth.” This is why Chittister believes we should not be so much convicted by them as we should be transformed by them. Her subtitle for this book is “laws of the heart,” and she manages to find a tremendously helpful spiritual practice for each of the ten: reflection, respect, remembrance, caring, life, commitment, sharing, speech, self-control, and assurance.

Chittister looks at each of the commandments in three parts: firstly, an investigation of the historical understanding; secondly, the situations to which the commandment applies today; and finally she also includes reflection statements for personal consideration as we try to live out our own “adventures in human growth.”

Typically, Chittister includes some wonderful stories that grip your attention, and also plenty of memorable quotations that stick and resonate with both your mind and spirit in a wonderful way. I particularly enjoyed her chapter on not taking the name of God in vain, for here Chittister reminds us that this Commandment is by no means about simple swearing, but rather about the human tendency to take God’s name and blithely attach it to our own viewpoints and opinions. She challenges the church deeply on this issue; that we far too easily and carelessly use God’s name to back up personal viewpoints that are often only used to exclude and hurt other human beings.

Chittister writes: "When we use the name of God to demean or diminish any other human being, it is not they whose merits we measure. It is ourselves. And in public. How embarrassing."

I have mentioned only one, but I guarantee you that Chittister’s three pronged treatment of each Commandment will bring fresh life to your own faith. Too often, Christians allow the Ten Commandments to fade into relative spiritual obscurity in their personal journeys because they are not too sure exactly what to do with them, other than to do their best to keep them. This book forges a way forward in this regard, reminding us to keep the Commandments not just as rules in a book, but rather as “laws of the heart” that will breathe life, growth, hope and compassion into the way we view ourselves and others. With this in mind, the book concludes with Chittister's assessment of the Two Great Commandments of Love. Here she makes a powerful case for measuring our spiritual development in terms of these laws of the heart.

I heartily recommend this book. In fact, I finished it with a deep sigh of satisfaction on a plane in between Cape Town and Durban, and then promptly left it behind. So if you ever happen to find my copy floating around an airport somewhere, please call me with it (after you have read it of course!)

The Ten Commandments - Laws of the Heart is written by Joan Chittister and published by Orbis Books.

Book Review: The Hour That Changes Everything - How worship forms us into the people God wants us to be

John van der Laar has over three decades of experience in leading worship and uses every moment of this vast experience to craft together a book which really should be required reading, not only for all pastors and worship leaders, but for every Christ follower who seeks to engage in worship more fully and open-heartedly.

John challenges two popular misinterpretations of worship: Firstly, the consumerist version which sees worship as a time to ‘fill me up,’ and secondly our common failure to grasp hold of the truth that acts of corporate worship should fundamentally change who we are as individuals. In other words, our acts of worship should result in us becoming more like the people God originally created us to be, centring our selves upon what matters to God most in terms of mission, compassion and justice. As John says the way we worship should define the way we live, and that the result of the act of worship should be “that we find ourselves automatically living in a Cross-carrying, Christ-following, contributing and compassionate way, because we have encountered the crucified, selfless, eternally-loving Christ in our worship, and we are becoming a little more like this Jesus each day.”

John continually highlights the primacy of the Church’s worship service as being the “fountainhead” from which this kind of life and ministry can flow, and states that “the worship service is at the very heart of the Church’s mission, identity and work of spiritual formation.” All of this explains the title of the book – “The HOUR that changes everything” – in that our times of corporate worship should intrinsically transform us as faithful Christ-followers, and through us the world should be changed for the better.

As a structural framework for this book, John uses William Temple’s famous quote: “To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.” John convincingly argues that these words can be used as a very helpful pathway between the Scriptures and Christian thinking regarding worship. After initially explaining what is meant by the word ‘worship’ and how exactly worship should change who we are and how we live, John then structures the rest of the book around the five particular statements in Temple’s quote. Chapters Three to Seven look at topics such as: “Becoming Holy,” “Becoming True,” “Becoming Beautiful,” “Becoming Loving,” and “Becoming Purposeful.” Space precludes me from going into too much detail, but these five chapters are truly excellent with each offering a great deal to think about. Personally, I felt most challenged by the chapters on ‘Truth’ and ‘Beauty’ and recommend carefully reading (and re-reading!) what John has to say here.

Since John is so concerned with the act of corporate worship being an intrinsic part of transforming worshippers into faithful Christ-followers, he devotes the entire second half of his book to assisting this process. In fact, the author makes the point that the main content of the book should be seen as a “catalyst” for the second half, which is comprised of a set of invaluable resources. Here John provides daily devotional guides, small group notes and Sunday service resources all set over a 50 day journey that are all specifically designed to aid and assist in the corporate act of worship. This is a highly effective tool that promotes the book’s central message because in wrestling with this content together, a faith community can share in the journey of more fully understanding what it means to worship God corporately, and thus also more faithfully embodying that worship in terms of living live as God designed us to.

So read this book, but even better read this book alongside others – with your church or small group. John’s book is a tool that enables us to go more deeply in understanding worship, but I suspect that journey of depth will become even more meaningful if it is done alongside others.

You can order a copy of this book from John’s website at http://sacredise.com

Note that there is a discount on bulk orders.