Review: Is there such a thing as a distinctive male spirituality?

What does it take to be a real man in today’s world?

Even as I read over that question, I am struck by how corny it sounds. At the same time it does sum up a life struggle for most men that is further complicated by all sorts of mixed messages and very little positive guidance. Many men grow up in between two messages, especially in the church. One message emphasises masculinity as a nail-chewing, dog-eat-dog, ‘bi-winner’ kind of existence and the other offers feminine strengths as an ideal (especially spiritually) without any real thought given to male distinctiveness.

What I like about Richard Rohr’s book ‘From Wild Man to Wise Man: Reflections on Male Spirituality’ is that it steers a fine line between these messages, and in fact, between all extremes, offering instead a sensitive, intelligent and deeply spiritual alternative. Rohr rejects the ‘real men eat bullets for breakfast’ approach that is seen in John Eldridge’s ‘Wild at Heart,’ but at the same time also discounts those who offer a unisex worldview where all gender distinctions are socially and artificially created. Instead Rohr, who is a Franciscan priest, emphasises that distinctions are important as long as they are not used in a one-size-fits-all kind of way. Rohr sees these distinctions as being essential to healthy, functioning identity, and argues that life should be a journey of progressively learning from each other across the genders. In other words, men should learn a great deal from women and embrace the best of this learning in a way that remains true to their core masculinity and individual personality.

Rohr says that men traditionally tend to struggle with spirituality, because it entails recognising our vulnerability before a wild and powerful God. The Christ pattern of death (and failure) before rising to new life is not a preferred male pattern and involves actively turning our backs upon a worldview that promotes non-stop achievement, esteem and status. Rohr also points out how the lack of initiation rights (mainly in Western culture) marking the journey from boyhood into manhood is hurting our society. Rohr laments this and argues strongly for a process where boys are guided by older, wiser male mentors through defining moments of decision. Rohr argues this process will develop the inner being and identity of the boys in a way that will promote better decision making in later years. As Rohr writes: "The very word initiation reveals the necessary bias. The concern was about getting the beginning right, and then life and eternity would take care of themselves. We have been preoccupied with getting the end right, for some reason."

Rohr sees this type of guidance as taking young men through the natural ascent of their lives, the time of youthful male energy and idealism where growth happens. If men are guided properly through the ascent of their lives, they will be prepared for the inevitable descent (the language here has more to do with being than doing) where midlife takes men through the winding paths of suffering and the recognition of their own powerlessness. This is the stage where bitterness and regret can cause men to either shut down or run away. Rohr points that we have too many men around who have not aged well and who damage those around them because of it. There are many limping along in life with ‘Father wounds’ - people who are left with huge holes in their core identities and a subsequent weakened ability to maturely relate to others. However, if there has been guidance and mentorship provided in the Initiation and Ascent phases, then Descent can be successfully negotiated resulting in men becoming wise, spiritual grandfathers who will in turn guide others through the three-fold process.

Rohr does at times use the kind of pop-psychology language that has always put me off male spirituality by talking of wild men, kings, wise men, dragons and heroes but on reflection the journey he describes through these labels does make sense. Also his use of Eastern religious terminology may make some uncomfortable, although his teaching is undeniably Christ-focused and marked by a profound understanding of Scripture. Rohr negotiates the incredibly complex subject of gender with both intelligence and compassion resulting in one of the best books on a distinctly male spirituality I have encountered. In fact, both men and women would benefit from reading this book because of the understanding it gives in matters like personal identity and how this relates to relationships, spirituality and our overall life journey.

Meet Bishop N.T Wright. A man who talks sense about the 'end times'

There has been a lot of fuss made about the End Times lately. Rob Bell's book 'Love Wins' got the ball rolling with his controversial take on heaven, hell and eternal judgement. Then it was the turn of Harold Camping, an evangelical preacher who predicted the end of the world down to the exact date and time. Camping made headlines not only because of his complex Bible 'maths,' but also because many of his followers spent their life savings in anticipation of being 'raptured' before they needed it. So I decided it was high time we heard from someone who talks sense around the Bible's message on the End Times. Hence, I pulled out, dusted off and rewrote a previous book review on N.T. Wright's 'Surprised by Hope.' Wright is respected around the globe as one of today’s foremost Biblical scholars, but is also highly popular amongst many of the more 'grey-cell challenged' church-going crowd such as myself because of his compelling writing style and no-nonsense common sense.

In “Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church,” Wright puts together an impactful and far-reaching work that should be read by every Christian old enough to pick up a book. “Surprised by Hope” addresses what Wright calls the two-sided coin of Christian hope. The first hope is what we can expect as Christ-followers before our bodily death, while the second kind of hope addresses what happens after we die. With this in mind, Wright unpacks what the Bible really has to say about topics like the Rapture, heaven and hell. He exposes as false many of the popularist Christian versions of the afterlife such as that heaven will be a time of disembodied, eternal bliss spent amongst the clouds and angels of heaven, or that Rapture is being swept away from the earth just as it explodes into a fiery ball. Wright shows how this type of thinking has more in common with Greek philosophy than Scriptural teaching because it regards physicality and the material aspects of life as inferior and separate from the spiritual - a worldview that is not present in the Bible. Wright depicts in detail how the New Testament vision includes the redemption of not only our physical bodies but also of all Creation itself.

As Wright himself says, “This book addresses two questions…First, what is the ultimate Christian hope? Second, what hope is there for change, rescue, transformation, new possibilities within the world in the present? And the main answer can be put like this. As long as we see ‘Christian hope’ in terms of ‘going to heaven,’ of a ’salvation’ which is essentially away from this world, the two questions are bound to appear unrelated…But if the ‘Christian hope’ is for God’s new creation, for ‘new heavens and new earth’ – and of that hope has already come to life in Jesus of Nazareth – then there is every reason to join the two questions together. And if that is so, we find that answering the one is also answering the other.”

Wright spends the second half of the book practically illustrating how this kind of hope will dramatically impact the mission of the Church. Here he focuses a lot on the Kingdom and the Church as he fleshes out his earlier theological points concerning Christian hope. I cannot recommend this book more highly, don't be frightened away because it may seem a little heavy, because it is worth any effort you make in reading it. It certainly would not be a case of hyperbole to say the Church NEEDS its Christians to be reading this exact kind of book. The last few week's have provided plenty of evidence of that.

Review: Is Phillip Yancey's 'What Good is God?' any good?

Perhaps it is his background as a journalist, but Phillip Yancey seems to write his best material when he focuses on an overarching central question. Off the top of my head I can list some of my favourites as ‘Where is God When it Hurts?’, ‘What’s So Amazing About Grace?’, and ‘Prayer: Does it Make Any Difference?‘ Faith has never come easily for Yancey, meaning his own struggles lend qualities of authentic humility and compassion to his undoubted investigative skills and lucid writing style. This is why I was thrilled to see Yancey’s latest book entitled as a question - ‘What Good is God? In Search of a Faith That Matters’ - and true to form, this book stands as yet another wise and thoughtful offering to people of faith everywhere.

Although Yancey stuck with a tried and trusted technique in writing around a central question, he has structured this book in a refreshingly different way, especially if you found his previous works heavy going. Yancey takes his readers on a journey around the world as he visits ten distinct groups of broken people to determine if the faith he writes about holds up in the light of their experience. Yancey breaks his book up into ten sections of two chapters each, the first chapter in each section lending some background to the situation, and the second containing the notes of the talk he was delivering within that particular context. For example, he visits groups as diverse as underground Christians in China, students recovering from the Virginia Tech massacre, recovering alcoholics in Chicago and South Africans still struggling with the after-effects of apartheid.

Yancey’s strength is that he never presumes to give a definitive answer to moments of suffering, but instead courageously explores the situation as much as possible, viewing it from different angles and then interpreting it through the lens of his own faith. This is why Yancey can keep pointing to God’s graceful presence in situations of pain; it is why he can honestly encourage sufferers to find comfort in God; and it is why he can authentically exhort the Virginia students with a passage from Romans: "Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good." Yancey holds firm to his belief that God’s light can illuminate even humanity’s darkest moments, but never does so in a presumptuous or arrogant manner. Yancey also turns to the writings of C.S. Lewis as he explores the interrelationship between God’s eternal plans for ultimate redemption and the more immediate ‘now’ moments of redemption. Yancey emphasises that so much of God’s plan is in our own hands, as ‘dispensers of grace,’ reaching out to all those in dark places.

‘What Good is God?’ is a profound and beautiful journey through some of life’s darker moments to show that faith does make a difference, even when tested to the utmost.

Review: More evidence why one does not skim Peterson, but one ponders Peterson

‘Practice Resurrection: A Conversation in Growing Up in Christ’ is the final book in a five set series by Eugene Peterson on spiritual formation. Peterson is a prolific author, perhaps best known for his Message paraphrase, yet has stated this particular series is intended to be seen as the climax of the over 50 years he has spent as a pastor and teacher. In the previous four books, Peterson looked at themes like worship, Bible reading, preaching and praying, but this final effort could be summarised in one simple phrase: Grow up!

Using a chapter-by-chapter analysis of the book of Ephesians as his foundation, Peterson challenges the church to remember that growing to maturity in Christ is what we are all called to, and argues that our over-dependence on strategies, goals and other means of measuring ‘growth’ are intrinsically unhealthy. Growth, insists the Professor emeritus at Vancouver’s Regent College, is not really something we can micro-manage, plan or control but instead should be lived out of the resurrected life that was first in Jesus, and which is now made available to us all. Peterson argues that the church, with all its dependence on marketing, management and growth in numbers, is actually very immature about HOW it wants to grow up. Peterson says that this depersonalises God and also settles our visions of growth into arithmetic rather than biology. We miss the point of growth, which according to Scriptural books like Ephesians, is far more rooted in passivity and interdependence than we would care to admit. Interestingly enough, Peterson is one of the few significant contemporary church leaders calling the church to do less not more. Peterson says that in order to practice resurrection life, we need to ‘acquire passivity,’ to center and submit our lives to those conditions in which growth can most effectively occur: “quiet, obscure, patient, not subject to human control and management.”

Peterson’s main bugbear is that the church should be the primary place of this type of growth, were people can practice authentic resurrection life, but instead it is too often concerned with matters that God is not concerned with at all. Here Peterson draws on all his wisdom and considerable scholarship to remind us how the Ephesians church lived, filled as it was with the broken, corrupt and scandalous, and yet, nevertheless, it also provided God-shaped holes in life where people could draw aside to be formed and matured, and to 'practice resurrection' in Christ.

Reading a Peterson book is much like having a cup of coffee with that wiser and more compassionate mentor we all wish we had. Perhaps my imagination takes it too far, but sitting down with one of his books, I sometimes feel as if Peterson is sitting across the table from me, his eyes piercing all too easily through my pretense and immaturity, challenging me to be more. He speaks that directly into my soul. It is like he loves the church too much not to utter the truths we don’t want to hear. Yet, at the same time, you can also sense a warm, crinkly and weathered smile shining through his words, encouraging and uplifting in a ‘you-are-loved-and-believed-in’ kind of way.

The simple truth is I have yet to read a Peterson book not worth my time. Of course that does not mean I agree with absolutely everything he has ever written, but rather that almost everything he says is worth thinking a little more about. Don’t buy this book intending a quick read-through, because as Scott McKnight correctly says, one does not skim Peterson, one ponders Peterson.

Book Review: Prayer: Does it make any difference?

This is perhaps Philip Yancey’s best book since the acclaimed ‘What’s So Amazing About Grace?’ and ‘The Jesus I Never Knew.’ Once again, Yancey tackles a subject that is at the very heartbeat of the Christian faith – prayer.

In theory, prayer is vital to every God-follower, an opportunity to connect in an intimate way with God, but in practice many find prayer to be confusing, difficult and more than a little frustrating. In ‘Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?,’ Yancey tackles both the theory and practice of prayer in a way that only he can. He views the topic through an investigative journalist’s eyes, as he probes and challenges it, but he also wrestles with the topic as a believer who himself has faced many dry, difficult moments of prayers seemingly disappearing into thin air.

Yancey explores such questions as: •Is God listening? •Why should God care about me? •If God knows everything, what’s the point of prayer? •Why do answers to prayer seem so inconsistent and capricious? •Why does God seem sometimes close and sometimes far away? •How can I make prayer more satisfying?

All of these are very real human questions, and Yancey is courageous enough to voice them when many of us have been too afraid to speak them out loud. The result is a book that anyone and everyone who is keen to learn more about the theory AND the practice of prayer should definitely read. This book is quite an emotional read at times because Yancey so skilfully draws in personal stories and testimonies regarding the highs and lows of ordinary people’s prayer lives, and the disappointments that seem to occur for some in this regard (including his own). Yancey writes from his heart, both thoughtfully and candidly, and his gift with words means that he can shift his readers' perspective just enough to gain new insights. At the very least, Yancey manages to get his readers to think more carefully and comprehensively around deep and difficult subjects like this.

While Yancey does not even begin to pretend to have answers for all our questions regarding prayer, he does continually point back to the single most importance aspect of prayer which is our relationship with God. “I have found that the most important purpose of prayer may be to let ourselves be loved by God,” says Yancey. I could not miss the strong chord of yearning contained within Yancey’s more personal reflections, and ultimately this in itself is a reminder that prayer is a doorway which contains some of our deepest hopes and dreams.

If you have ever struggled with prayer or just want to learn more about the subject, then you will benefit greatly from reading this book.

Essential Christian Books to Read

Last year, popular pastor and writer, Eugene Cho, made a list of ten books that he would recommend all Christians should read. Cho feels that these books have impacted Christianity immensely and proved extremely helpful to their readers over the years.

The list is compiled in no particular order.

• Testament of Hope – Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton
• Celebration of Discipleship – Richard Foster
• Mere Christianity – C. S. Lewis
• Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger – Ron Sider
• Wounded Healer or Return of the Prodigal Son – Henri Nouwen
• Dogmatics – Karl Barth [yes, all 13 volumes]
• The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society – Leslie Newbiggen
• The Cost of Discipleship – Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• The Politics of Jesus – John Howard Yoder

Cho then went on to list another ten books that narrowly missed his initial cut.

• Knowing God – J.I. Packer
• Theology of Hope – Jurgen Moltmann
• Old Testament Theology – Gerhard von Rad
• The Moral Vision of the New Testament – Richard B. Hays
• A Theology of Liberation – Gustavo Gutierrez
• Irresistable Revolution – Shane Claiborne
• Transforming Missions – David Bosch
• The Jesus I Never Knew or What’s so Amazing About Grace – Phillip Yancey
• Christ and Culture – H. Richard Niebuhr
• Moral Man & Immoral Society – Reinhold Neibuhr

Finally, Cho also compiled a list of 'honourable mentions'.

• The Hiding Place [Corrie ten Boom]
• Confession [Augustine]
• Summa Theologica [Aquinas]
• The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind [Mark Noll]
• Let Justice Roll Down [John Perkins]
• The Prophetic Imagination [Walter Brueggemann]
• Any one of Francis Shaeffer’s trilogy
• Lord of the Rings Trilogy [Tolkien]
• Surprised by Hope [N.T. Wright]
• Silence [Shusaku Endo]
• Traveling Mercies [Anne Lamott]
• The Brothers Karamazov [Dostoyevsky]
• Life Together [Bonhoeffer]

You can read Eugene’s blogs on http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/

(Please note that you cannot click on that link here, you will need to cut and paste it into your browser).

Book Review: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Every writer dreams of uncovering a true story that has not yet been heard, and that is sure to touch something deeply in others. Rebecca Skloot spent a decade researching just such a story in the life of Henrietta Lacks - a poor,black woman from America who died an agonising death from cancer, and yet who lives on perpetually through the cells taken from her to be used in groundbreaking medical research.

‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ is an award winning book that while written by an agnostic, nevertheless speaks powerfully to people of faith, since it deals with issues that Christians should be very aware of such as medical ethics, human dignity and societal justice. In a nutshell, the book is about the famed HeLa cell line - tissue samples taken without permission in 1951 from a dying, poor black woman that were found to uniquely replicate themselves out of her body, and as such have been used to make quite extraordinary breakthroughs in different areas of medicine including polio vaccines, cancer research, gene mapping and cloning.

Alternating between the scientific history of the HeLa cells (taken from Henrietta Lacks hence the ‘HeLa’ pseudonym), and the personal story of the Lacks family (most particularly Henrietta’s five children) who suffered in dire poverty while their mother’s cells were used to help others. In this regard the book challenges the justice of a system that allows human cells, no matter how unique, to be taken from out of a woman’s cervix without consent or knowledge and then profited from while her loved ones suffer through the most dreadful poverty. The point being made that as remarkable as Henrietta’s cells are, and as many lives as have been saved and as much good as has been done with them, this still would never have happened to a wealthy, white man. It is not possible to divorce her treatment from either her race or her gender, and yet at the same time, it is impossible to shake off what amazing medical breakthroughs have been made off the back of this deceit.

While ‘Henrietta Lacks’ is a touching story, it is made all the more compelling because of the gritty reality of the human drama it portrays. However, perhaps the most important part of this book is the systems of injustice it challenges, and the tragic irony that lies behind this injustice: That is how the very essence of one human being, her DNA can be taken without permission, and while it was used to do good it also was used selfishly to enrich whole corporations, all the while her children - also possessing her passed-on DNA - lived in terrible hardship. In this sense, this book is more than just a touching story, it is the first step of taking a wrong and making it right, of creating awareness and challenging the arrogance of medical practices, that while being incredibly valuable, clearly neglected the intrinsic dignity and rights of human individuals. We are human not just because of our cellular structure, but because we are connected to each other by something that transcends even our DNA. The ‘Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ is an excellent study of what it means to be fully human and as such is warmly recommended to all.