Review of "Love Does" by Bob Goff (Thomas Nelson Press)

Let’s start with that full disclosure thing: Bob Goff is a friend, now a Facebook friend but back in college a face to face friend. We worked in Young Life together, both went to San Diego State (he was a couple of years ahead of me) and went to church together. So one of the reasons I enjoyed this book was as an opportunity to hang out (in a literary way) with an old friend. ************** But for you it might be a chance to make a new friend. Bob has a fun, joyful and infectious personality which comes through in this book. Bob is big in the book on the concept of whimsy, finding delight in life in unexpected places. I remember one time we were taking a group of kids to Young Life camp. He and his friend Doug decided we needed to stand out from other clubs at camp, so they went to an army surplus store and bought dozens of bomb flash glasses, which they renamed as “John Lennon Memorial Spectacles”. So the kids from Mira Mesa were instant celebrities at Forest Home Camp. *************** That story doesn’t appear in the book, because Bob’s life is full amazing stories, often involving silliness with a purpose. He tells about getting into law school by camping outside the office of the Dean and telling him everyday, “It’s in your power to let me in, just tell me to buy the books!” He tells about the time his kids suggested writing world leaders to invite them for an overnight; and letters were answered. He writes about sailing with friends from San Diego to Hawaii without any truly experienced sailors. *************** Bob’s greatest adventure in life is following Jesus in the adventure of love. As you might guess, the title of the book is related to the words of James 1:22, “Be doers of the world, not many hearers.” In recent years, Bob has used his legal training to work for justice in the third world, freeing children from brothels in India, freeing children from prisons in Uganda. The stories of these adventures are truly inspiring. *************** But I did find myself arguing with Bob a few times, just as we disagreed at times back in college. In one section of the book (chapter 29), he compares studying the Bible to stalking. He writes “most of the things we studied at the Bible study were true and all, but honestly, it just made me feel like a stalker. Like a creepy guy memorizing facts and information about somebody I barely knew.” He writes about starting a group to do “Bible doing” rather than “Bible study”. *************** I wonder if Bob, who now teaches law school, ever said to a class, “Don’t bother studying the law, just go out and do the law.” Should Bible colleges and seminaries be closed, because “Bible study” isn’t a worthwhile pursuit? Studying and practicing the Word are two vital sides of the same coin, and sadly, Bob denigrates one to exult the other in this passage. *************** In the same chapter, Bob writes about a couple of hot button issues: “One of the ways I make things matter to me is to move from merely learning about something to finding a way to engage it on my own terms. For example, if someone asks what I think about capital punishment, instead of reciting the party line and parroting someone else’s thought, I think of a teenager named Kevin in a prison in Uganda who had been accused of a capital crime. It the topic is same-sex attraction, I think of a dear friend of mine who is gay… It’s not about being politically correct; it’s about being actually correct.” *************** Sorry, Bob, that doesn’t really strike me as thinking things through. I remember early in his law school days Bob telling me about something he loved about the court system was seeking truth by two different sides and duking it out (I can see Bob slamming his knuckles together to illustrate the point.) ************** So taking the two topics he mentioned here, what if someone wrote, “When I think of capital punishment, I think of a teenager named Rudy whose father was a prison guard who was killed by a prisoner with a life sentence. When I think of same-sex attraction, I think of a friend of mine whose husband who abandoned her and her two children to live with his homosexual lover.” ************** There are reasons why these difficult issues are matters of study and argument, and people of intelligence and good will come to different conclusions. There are also reasons to turn to the collective wisdom of the past in both Scripture and the law. It is important to consider our feelings and personal experience, but if they become our primary basis of making judgments, we’re likely to be carried by every passing current and fad. ************** But don’t let these complaints dissuade the purchase of this book. In fact, you should buy it even if you don’t plan to read it because Bob is giving any of his profits to Restore International’s Leadership Academy in Gulu, Uganda. God continues to do great work through my friend, Bob Goff, and he wrote this book to remind you that God wants to do amazing things and show His love through you.

A Review of Jonah Goldberg's "The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas"

Yes, this is a book about politics; but one of the things I found most interesting was what the book had to say about religion. Goldberg describes himself as a secular Jew but he does a much better job of defending the church and Christianity (past and present) than many Christians (even many in the clergy.) The basic idea of the book is that many people substitute clichés they’ve heard for any real thinking on a variety of important issues: bumper sticker thinking. Goldberg elaborates in this paragraph from the chapter ‘Spiritual but Not Religious’: “YOUR KARMA RAN OVER MY DOGMA. You’ve no doubt seen the bumper sticker. The pun is easy to get, but the underlying point is more elusive. Most of the time, like so many bumper stickers, it’s more a smug declaration of superiority whose appeal derives more from the appearance of cleverness rather than the reality of insight.” In this chapter, he points out that many in our culture have accepted a cliché that Eastern thought is more spiritual and less dogmatic. Goldberg responds that Buddhism is every bit as doctrinaire as Christianity or Judaism and in his book that’s not a bad thing. We all follow doctrines, creeds and systems of belief and that’s a good thing. There is wealth in collected wisdom in religious and political orthodoxies. We are more likely to get into trouble when we think we are pioneers finding our own pragmatic and individual truth, because we blindly fall into sloppy thought and practices. I greatly appreciated his take on other religious clichés beyond, ‘I’m not religious; I’m a spiritual,’ such as ‘Science vs. Religion’. This is the idea that religion had opposed and feared scientific thought through the centuries. The key example that is always brought up is the story of Galileo. Galileo didn’t oppose religion, he wrote books of theology. He may have spent 3 days in jail, but who clamored for the Church to silence and punish the man were not clergy by “jealous, lesser, scientific colleagues.” Goldberg deals with other supposed crimes of the church. He points out that the Crusades were not the first stirrings of imperialism but rather a defense response to the military conquests of Islam. He responds to Daniel Browns claim in “The Da Vinci Code” that millions were killed by the church in witch hunts with facts that show that thousands were killed (still a horrible thing) and usually by secular authorities, not the church. Yes, there were injustices committed by the various Inquisitions formed by the church through the years, but they were much more thoughtful then the secular courts of the time. Yes, the Spanish Inquisition did use torture, but in two percent of the cases. The Church has through the centuries acted contrary to the teachings of Christ, but it has confessed as such. But the leaders of the French Revolution acted true to their secular beliefs and killed more people during the few years of The Terror than were killed in 300 years of the Inquisition. Some in the church did act in barbaric ways in a barbaric age, but Goldberg argues that the church was not an anchor holding back the progress of Western Civilization but rather a sail. Of course, the bulk of the book is devoted to politics, but even then theological ideas are important. The clichés that “Nothing was every solved by violence” and “Peace, Love and Understanding” have been presented as Christian ideas, but if they are presented apart from the Christian idea of human sinfulness, Goldberg clearly shows they lead to folly. Goldberg presents serious issues, but illustrations from “Animal House”, “30 Rock” and “Monty Python” keep a lighter tone and easy page turning. This book probably won’t be used as a college text as Goldberg’s previous work, “Liberal Fascism”, has been. But it’s still insightful and a little more fun.

About Lauren F. Winner's book, "Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis"

In some ways, I don’t relate very well at all with Lauren Winner. The book is about her struggles with her faith being riddled with doubt (or, more positively, she says, her doubt riddled with faith.) I haven’t had those deep struggles in my Christian walk. A key contributing factor to her spiritual struggles was her recent divorce. I certainly don’t relate well to her there, because my wife is wonderful and , in general, my marriage has been and continues to be easy. ....................................................................................... But I still hope that some of the things I learned from this book will help be to help others with doubt and spiritual alienation. And she makes many points and asides that I find very helpful now to my life and ministry. Here are a few of the bits and pieces I most appreciated:..................................................... She quotes a friend who says, “Busy is the new sloth”. I love that! So many of us don’t think of ourselves as lazy because are days are so full. But that busyness keeps us from attending to the really important things just as surely as laziness. (Full disclosure – I have been accused of slothfulness.)................................... She quotes a friend who uses the term, “dislocated exegesis”. It’s the practice of reading Scripture in places that bring unexpected insights. She gives the example of reading the teachings of Jesus about money at a bank. I’ve done this type of thing before. When a youth pastor at Concord Bible Church, we did the life of Christ in San Francisco (reading about Satan tempting Jesus as Coit Tower, calling the disciples at Fisherman’s Wharf, feeding the 5000 while handing out sandwiches to the homeless, etc.) and this inspired me to do this more............................................... She writes about how the literary scholar Patricia Meyer Spacks finds no reference to the word “bored” before the 19th century, arguing that boredom is a modern creation. This insight speaks volumes about our (my) self-centeredness. I liked a reference to ethicist Samuel Wells who notes the distinction between stories about heroes and stories about saints. In a story about a hero, if the hero fails, all is lost. If a saint fails, all may still be well because the story is really about God................................................................................. And there is a beautiful image as she watches others take communion. She sees a husband and wife together. Because of dietary issues, there is a man who can’t take the bread and wine. So the wife takes communion for herself, and then again for her husband. A marvelous picture....................................................................... Winner has praising quotes on the cover from writers I admire. I was glad I could agree with them wholeheartedly.

Fishing...Faith...Same Thing

The best thing about the film, “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen”, is the imagery found in the title. The audacious idea of bringing a fishing industry to the desert evokes glorious ideas of rebirth and resurrection. But unfortunately, the soaring nature of this central theme is dragged down by dull, loathsome Hollywood clichés. Certainly, the film has an interesting pedigree. Directed by Lasse Hallstrom (who made one of the greatest of all coming of age films, “My Life as a Dog”) and screenplay by Simon Beaufoy (who brings the work of a novelist to the screen as he did with “Slumdog Millionaire”) gave reason for hope. Ewan McGregor plays Dr. Alfred Jones. (Sidenote – I kept being distracted when people called him Dr. Jones which made me think of another famous movie scientist. Between this and playing Obi-Wan in the prequels, is he trying to redo all of George Lucas’ classic characters? Howard the Duck can’t be far behind. End sidenote.) Dr. Jones is an ichthyologist / British government drone challenged to help a sheik bring salmon to Yemen. Emily Blunt plays Harriet, a western representative for the sheik who must persuade Jones that the project is not a boondoggle or a joke but a viable possibility. Pressure is also supplied by Kristen Scott Thomas who plays the Prime Minister’s Press Secretary desperately seeking a positive story from the Middle East. Thomas as the foul mouthed, devious political schemer provides some of the film’s funniest moments, especially in her texting conversations with the Prime Minister, but at times her moments come across as “In the Loop” lite. Another fine moment in the film comes when Jones meets with the sheik who ask if Jones is religious. Jones insists he just believes in facts and figures…He’s a scientist! But the sheik counters that Jones is a fisherman and by definition that means he is a man of faith. Why else would he spend hundreds of hours waist deep in water with no assured outcome. There are several interesting conversations about religion. Alfred and Harriet both admit they don’t know anyone who goes to church, Alfred saying he uses Sundays to go to Target. (This is a little puzzling as before we saw Alfred with his wife practicing in a musical quartet in a church. Whatever.) But as I mentioned before, tiresome clichés emerge and to discuss them I must stoop to spoilers. Though is it a spoiler to say that even though Jones is a married man and Harriet is in an affair with a soldier in Afghanistan, that the two will fall and love? For a while I thought that the message of the importance of patience and faith and fishing would be applied to the marriage of Dr. Jones. But no, because I more important rule is that in a Hollywood film the two names at the top of the bill, the pretty people, must come together. “Casablanca” is still fresh because lead characters doing what is right rather than what feels good is a rarity in films. There also is lazy characterization in the film. When Blunt’s boyfriend becomes inconvenient to the plot, he is shown to be a raciest, as all soldiers seem to be in Hollywood. And the sheik, we are assured, is different, a visionary who believes in peace, romance and fishing. There is talk of the cliché of “the magic negro”, an African American figure who is there to supple wisdom to the white hero. Amr Waked seems to be playing the Arab version of this role (as he did in “Syriana”). All the other Arabs seem shady and are probably all terrorists. And the final annoying cliché, was the talk of “faith”. In films, it is important to have faith, it doesn’t matter what you put your faith in. So it’s good for Alfred to put faith in something new and different like a fish hatchery in the desert and a romantic fling, but nothing so drab as an established marriage. But it does, of course, matter what you put your faith in. The film has people who engage in terrorism and they certainly have faith, placed in a wrong and evil place. Paul in I Corinthians 15 argues that if Christians put their faith in the resurrection and it proves untrue, then Christians are fools. So faith in fishing in the Yemen, in peace and prosperity in the Middle East needs to be more than just a pretty thought one believes in, it must be possible. I wish those ideas would have been even more central in the film than another tired boy meets girl story. (The film is rated PG-13 for brief violence and strong language.)

AWAKE

Going by Psalm 127:2 (“God gives sleep to those He loves”) it’s hard to tell if God loves Michael Britten, the lead character of NBC’s new fantasy procedural “Awake”, a lot or not at all.

Jason Isaacs (best known to American audiences as Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films) plays a detective who survives a fatal car accident with his family and finds himself in two worlds. In one world his wife, Hannah (played by Laura Allen) died in the accident and his son, Rex (played by Dylan Minnette) survived. In the other world his son died and his wife survived. He commutes from one world to the other every time he goes to “sleep”.

Of course, it’s a challenge for Britten to remember which world he is in at any give time. So he wears a green rubber band around his wrist in one world, a red rubber band in the other. In one world he keeps his police partner (played by Steve Harris) and in another world he is assigned a new partner (played by Wilmer Valderrama) who seems to have been assigned to monitor Britten’s mental stability.

In both world, there is a growing suspicion that the traffic accident was not really an accident, but instead a part of a sinister conspiracy.

While every week Britten deals with two police cases (one in each world, usually related), the central mystery of the show (the “mythology” as current TV jargon goes) is which of the worlds is real and which is a dream? Or are both real? Or is Britten completely bonkers?

Not surprisingly, Britten is required to seek mental help in both worlds. In one he sees a psychiatrist played by BD Wong (“Law and Order: SVU”) who insists that Britten is creating a fantasy world for himself in which he can avoid dealing with the death of his son’s death and that the fantasy is dangerous and unhealthy.

In the other world, his psychiatrist played by Cherry Jones (“24) thinks Britten’s subconscious has constructed a fantasy in which his wife is alive, but can provide clues for dealing with the “real world”. She encourages him to explore his “dreams” but doesn’t believe they are real.

Britten is unwilling to give up either world, which would mean losing his wife or son. He finds that as he works as a detective, he finds clues in one world that help him to solve a case in the other. And he finds clues in his personal life in one world that help him deal with problems in his personal life in the other world.

Though there is a danger the links between cases in the two worlds might be at times contrived, the writing and acting in the series seems strong enough so far to carry off an admittedly challenging premise. Perhaps after two of NBC’s recent shots at quirky procedurals starring Brits (after “Journeyman” with a time-traveling Kevin McKidd and “Life” with millionaire Buddist Damian Lewis), the third will prove a charm.

As Christians, we too live in two worlds. We are a part of not only the physical world but also the world of the spirit. Ephesians 6:12 says that we deal not only with flesh and blood but spiritual forces. And like the hero of “Awake”, we are often told the other world is an illusion.

Materialists tell us that only the physical world exists. The New Atheists tell us that belief in the soul, a life beyond this one, in God is not just foolish, but dangerous. All that exists is flesh and bone, molecules and atoms.

The Gnostics opposed by the early church fathers as well as a variety of religious believers of the present, from Hindus to Christian scientists teach that the physical world is an illusion, only the spiritual is real. Therefore, actions of this world are of no real consequence.

But Christians must live in both worlds. The physical world, created by God, is real and our choices here matter. But the spiritual world is also real. We must live in both worlds, with choices we make in each dimension impacting our life in the other. Remaining awake to both worlds provides meaning, truth and fulfillment in both of our very real worlds.

(“Awake” plays on Thursday nights on NBC, 10 PM ET/9 PM CT. Older episodes are available on Hulu.)

"The Grey": Fear and Faith in the Twilight

I hope this doesn’t come as too big of a shock to you: but you’re dying. Oh, it probably will take years and I certainly hope for most of us we’re talking a multitude of decades. But I can only think of two people who avoided death (they’re in the Bible and their names start with ‘E’, you can look it up) and the odds are against us joining that exclusive club.

The Grey is a film about a group of men that are facing death, likely to be sooner rather than later. A group of roughneck oil men survive a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness but death in the form of starvation, exposure, wolf attack (you read that right) or a number of other unexpected and unpleasant possibilities seems imminent. (There’s a reason the phrase “Feel Good Movie of the Year” doesn’t appear on the film’s lobby posters.)

When we first meet the character played by Liam Neeson, Ottway, he is contemplating suicide for reasons that are not initially revealed. But instead he boards the doomed flight and soon finds himself fighting for his life.

In these dire circumstances, the men must deal with the essential choices of fear and faith. One character in the film, Diaz (Frank Grillo), claims to have neither faith nor fear. Ottman calls him a fool for not being afraid in such a time, arguing it is idiocy to be fearless. Another character, Talget (Dermot Mulroney) calls him a fool for not having faith in God and a life to come.

So is fear or fearlessness foolish? (Sorry about the excessive alliteration.) Ottman makes a very persuasive argument that fear is the most rational response to certain situations. But toward the end of the film, Ottman receives powerful arguments against fear from a couple of unexpected sources. The film seems to argue that fear is understandable, perhaps even unavoidable, (director Joe Carnahan certainly give the audience some scares), but something that must be overcome.

For Christians, Scripture also seems to provide a schizophrenic view of fear. Proverbs 9:10 says that “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Jesus argues (in Luke 12:5) for the good sense in fearing God. But note that it’s just the beginning. The most common command in Scripture, spoken by angels and Jesus Himself is, “Don’t be afraid.” I John 4:18 says that “Love drives out fear.”

The Bible seems to say that fear can be a good start for assessing our situation without God’s love and forgiveness. But it has no place in our lives once we have placed our faith in God’s goodness. But many of the characters in “The Grey” don’t believe in God, let alone a God of Mercy. They’ve lived brutal lives and are facing the possibility of a brutal death. Where is God in that?

In fact, one of the characters calls out to God to show Himself (in a scene reminiscent of the cries of Job in Scripture, just much more profanity filled) and God seems to be silent.

But is God ever fully silent?

In Romans 1:20, the apostle Paul argues, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

The film doesn’t scrimp on showing the brutality of our fallen world. But we also see much of the beauty of God’s creation, not just in the majestic landscapes of the Alaskan wilderness, but also in acts of kindness and bravery from the most unlikely of human sources. Faith in God is essential to live. But it is even, perhaps, more essential for death.


(2012’s “The Grey” is quite justifiably rated R for brutal violence and language, but not for the occasionally awkward computer generated wolf images. Don’t miss the film’s final image which appears after the end credits.)

"Thief in the Night" Article at Christianity Today

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/movies/commentaries/2012/originalleftbehind.html