Attacking Justice in the Name of Justice

I was listening to one of John Piper’s biographical talks from the pastors’ conference that his ministry has put on for years and was struck by the way Piper described one of the most harmful means of attacking someone who is pursuing a cause that another dislikes. He describes it more fully in an aside in the actual audio [around the 44 minute point in the audio], but you can get the gist of it from the published text of the lecture.

Piper writes:

Probably the severest criticism he ever received was from a slavery-defending adversary named William Cobett, in August of 1823, who turned Wilberforce's commitment to abolition into a moral liability by claiming that Wilberforce pretended to care for slaves from Africa but cared nothing about the "wage slaves" – the wretched poor of England.

He then goes on to quote at length from the speech of William Cobett:

You seem to have a great affection for the fat and lazy and laughing and singing and dancing Negroes. . . . [But] Never have you done one single act in favor of the laborers of this country [a statement Cobett knew to be false]. . . . You make your appeal in Picadilly, London, amongst those who are wallowing in luxuries, proceeding from the labor of the people. You should have gone to the gravel-pits, and made your appeal to the wretched creatures with bits of sacks around their shoulders, and with hay-bands round their legs; you should have gone to the roadside, and made your appeal to the emaciated, half-dead things who are there cracking stones to make the roads as level as a die for the tax eaters to ride on. What an insult it is, and what an unfeeling, what a cold-blooded hypocrite must he be that can send it forth; what an insult to call upon people under the name of free British laborers; to appeal to them in behalf of Black slaves, when these free British laborers; these poor, mocked, degraded wretches, would be happy to lick the dishes and bowls, out of which the Black slaves have breakfasted, dined, or supped.

Of course, anyone who knows anything about Wilberforce knows that Cobett’s accusations are false. Wilberforce was a member of the Clapham Saints, who were known for their pro-social efforts throughout Britain. They supported protections for laborers, animal welfare, literacy programs for the poor, and many other forms of justice. Their most contentious work, however, was for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade, so it is this against which much of the criticism was leveraged.

 There is no question that Wilberforce was more invested in the abolition of the slave trade than in other causes. One person absolutely cannot be equally concerned with all forms of injustice. Those that try to be equally vocal about all injustice end up doing little to actually improve conditions. However, to be focused primarily on correcting one form of injustice leaves one open to all sorts of attacks, like the one that Cobett wages.

Do you care about the environment? Why do you not care equally for those dying without the gospel?

Do you care about racial reconciliation? Why have you not ended poverty in your own town?

Do you care about unjust economic systems? Why do you not care about those caught in unjust criminal justice system?

These are all a form of the tu quoque fallacy. When we read these sorts of pairings in typed letters, they look ridiculous. Where does the presumption come from that simply because good environmental stewardship is a concern that there is not also a deep love for the lost a desire to see people saved? It is possible that there is a lack on the one hand because of an overwhelming concern on the other. However, it is just as possible that someone sees certain ways in which they can uniquely contribute to the good of the world, while still supporting, caring about, and engaging in other goods.

 If you focus on everything, you can accomplish very little in this life. But if you focus on any sort of contentious action, then you will be open to being maligned in this way.

 Sometimes these criticisms land very strongly in the public mind, because it is readily apparent that the victim has not done everything he could have done for the cause in question. Therefore, the accusation is partially true—true in the sense that another concern may have been chief in the benefactor’s mind and efforts.

 These sorts of criticisms can also devastate those on the receiving end, because it undermines all of the good they intend to do. The reason why this sort of criticism is used is that it can dishearten those engaged in an effort for justice in a contentious sphere. If we are willing to listen, it can be devastating to see our hard work undermined by such half-truths. We ought not to let it be so.

 This talk was presented in February of 2002. It was a conference that had for a good portion of its meat a focus on racial reconciliation. Part of Piper’s emphasis was for pastors to continue in that work despite attacks of this sort.

 Several decades later, I can see this form of criticism being levied against men like Piper, Keller, and others. They have worked to create a sense of desire for justice in the world. And yet, they are often criticized for not caring enough about some other concern. The “Just Preach the Gospel” crowd does this an awful lot to men who have invested their lives into preaching the gospel and helping to show the gospel’s implications to the Christian life.

 The secular “Social Justice” crowd does this when we favor some causes—often those that align with a Christian view of the social order—but ignore or work contrary to them in others. It is impossible to post a pro-life argument in favor of ending elective abortion without hearing someone argue that real pro-life energy should include greater government control of the economy, the end of capital punishment, or whatever the other cause is. Most of the time it isn’t really that the person cares so much about the other thing, they just want to silence arguments against killing children in the womb.

 The secret to resisting the power of this form of criticism is to recognize that it is often levied as a means to guard some form of deep, self-interested sin. Cobett owned something like 1,300 slaves, so he was deeply interested in ending Wilberforce’s efficacy. When we hear criticisms like this levied against people, we should ask ourselves what self-interested sins are the critics seeking cover for as they publicly attack those pursuing justice in the world.

Doors in the Walls of the World - A Review

At some stage in their career, if they are any good, an author gets to the point where their work will be enough of a commercial success that they gain freedom from publishers to write books that a less well-known author would not be able to get in print. Peter Kreeft hit that status quite a while ago and the freedom he has found to experiment and explore is a wonderful thing. Whenever Kreeft publishes a book, buy it and read it.

Doors in the Walls of the World: Signs of Transcendence in the Human Story is the sort of volume that probably wouldn’t have gotten off the ground if Kreeft were less well-known, but it is just the sort of book that many people need at just this moment. This is a book that is much needed in this age of scientism and materialism. It is, fundamentally, an apologetic for a supernatural understanding of this world.

The introduction begins by considering several kinds of wonder. Wonder may be found in surprise. It may be found in intellectual exploration and curiosity. Wonder also results in awe. It is this third form of wonder that is the main grist of this book. This is a book about finding something beyond the world as we see it. It is about finding a door in the wall of the world, as the title indicates. This world is the material reality that we sense—the cave in Plato’s myth—and the doors in the cave wall are gateways to the supernatural reality that lies beyond.

Kreeft proceeds to show that life, in many ways, is a story. There is a Storyteller beyond the story. There is plot, setting, characters, theme, and style. These are, in plain English, history, physical science, psychology, religion and philosophy, and art. All of these are doors in the walls of the world, through which we can pass to wonder at the supernatural. They are clues to help us understand the transcendent.

Each of the chapters is a brief discussion on one of the five elements of story. Kreeft uses fictionalized illustrations, literary examples, and plain prose writing to make his case. His case is that there is something beyond the world that we can see and we would be foolish to think that the shadows on the cave walls are all there is.

Doors in the Walls of the World is the sort of book that does not dazzle with its purple prose or overwhelm with a logical argument. It is like a short film that carries a powerful message that is vitally important and, perhaps, couldn’t be told in another way. This is the sort of volume that should be read quickly, and maybe repeatedly, to be digested in wonder of the goodness of the hope it points toward. It’s a rest stop that refreshes with a surprising garden in the middle of a journey. This book is a testament to wonder and deserves to be read for those of us in a dry and weary cave who could use a little magic, mystery, and joy.

Doors in the Walls of the World: Signs of Transcendence in the Human Story

By Kreeft, Peter

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Knowledge and Christian Belief - A Review

Is being a Christian at all intellectually defensible?

To many Christians, this seems like an obvious answer. Especially those who have been taught to begin debates with an assertion, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”

That quote, which opens Psalm 14, is no doubt true. However, it is not helpful and often falls short of the mark. First, fool is a moral category in Scripture, not “doofus” or “idiot” as we might think in our own culture. Second, the logic doesn’t flow the way the Christian would like. A fool may say there is no God, but it does not follow that someone who says there is no God is a fool. At least, it does not follow by that statement alone.

Setting that digression aside, it is more apt to this discussion to note that there are many atheists and agnostics that would argue that it is foolish to believe in God, or at least to have any confidence that there is a God. Some have gone as far as to say that it is morally repugnant to believe in God. The arguments along those lines generally flow from the problem of evil, which was really aptly stated by Epicurus and oft repeated since then: If there is a God in the world and there is evil in the world, then that God must be evil, since an omniscient, omnipotent God (the sort of God that matters) would stop evil. It’s been a knotty problem for generations of Christian philosophers.

Unfortunately, some Christians do a pretty poor job of dealing with the problem of evil, especially those Christians equipped with a semester of philosophy.

Alvin Plantinga remains one of the foremost Christian philosophers. He was a winsome and potent advocate for orthodox Christianity and his arguments take on all challengers. His book, Knowledge and Christian Belief is an example of the quality of work he does and he makes his arguments accessible to well read individuals, who may not have extensive backgrounds in philosophy.

Plantinga’s style of argument is to take the strongest objections to his position, state them as strongly as possible, and then topple them like a house of cards.

This may sound like an exaggeration, but his succinct volume takes on some of the most significant defeaters to the Christian faith and demonstrates pretty clearly that not only is faith in Christ possible, it’s a good explanation for the world as it is.

One of the surprising ways that Plantinga makes this argument is to take on the challenge that Christians cannot have warranted belief for God. He states the objection about as well as it can be and then shows why the strength of those objections depends on the assumption the Christianity is false. In fact, if one does not make that assumption, then the better conclusion (especially given the sense of transcendence) is that Christianity is, more probably than not, true. (Absolute certainty in this logical sense is not the primary goal or a likely outcome of this sort of argument.)

At the end of the volume, Plantinga takes on the major challenges of historical biblical criticism, pluralism, and evil. The chapter on historical biblical criticism is worth the cost of the book, as Plantinga shows that neither of the two main approaches to historical biblical criticism offer much of a challenge to traditional Christianity, because the assumptions that underly the methodology are fundamentally foreign to the system it is challenging, and thus incapable of actually undermining the faith it intends to undermine. Plantinga concludes, “The traditional Christian can rest easy with the claims of HBC [Historical Biblical Criticism]; she need feel no obligation, intellectual or otherwise, to modify her belief in the light of its claims and alleged results.” (106)

The argumentation leading to that conclusion is tight. It is not the sort of gun-slinging, sloppy  argumentation that sometimes occurs on YouTube. Despite the fact that Knowledge and Christian Belief is a somewhat simplified version of a more academic work, the argument still requires great care in reading to follow it accurately. But the end result is an encouragement to believe Christianity as it has been passed on, without modification, and without a sense of intellectual inferiority.

There is no compromise intellectually in being a Christian, as Plantinga shows.

If there was a way to dial this down just a little more, this would be an amazing book to put into the hands of a high school senior, ready to head out in the world. As it is, a careful parent or friend with a little rereading could work through this slowly and patiently with a teen and give them a gift of confidence. Even if one cannot articulate everything that Plantinga argues, it is reassuring to know that the argument can be made.

Knowledge and Christian Belief is a short book, but it is a good one, especially for those seeking greater confidence in the basic truthfulness of Christianity. Alvin Plantinga makes a convincing case that one stands on solid ground when one holds to the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

Knowledge and Christian Belief

By Plantinga, Alvin

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The God of the Garden - A Review

Although I lived in the same house for my entire childhood, I have since moved many times. First, off to college. Then to different duty stations up and down the East Coast while I was in the United States Navy. When I got out, I went to seminary, stayed for a while, then bounced to a couple of other jobs. There has been a lot of moving in that time, as my patient wife reminds me.

There were good reasons for every move, but the constant bouncing from place to place leaves a mark on the psyche, especially for the kids who have lived in either three or four states. Some of the places we have lived we knew were temporary. When we were newly married, living in an apartment on the Thames River in Connecticut, we knew that that was not a final destination because my boat was going to move to the West Coast in a couple of years. Besides, neither of us had any roots in Connecticut.

It is that rootlessness that characterizes much of modern society. Ben Sasse’s book, Them, addresses that concept, especially as it impacts the way we think about economics and politics. It’s a feature of much of our culture. Most of us do not expect to live in one place for very long––people move about 11 times in their lifetime on average. Many of those moves are in town––from one apartment to another. However, many of those involve significant disruptions of life.

Andrew Peterson’s recent book, The God of the Garden, is about moving. Or, more accurately, it’s about a sense of place and investment in permanence despite moving. It’s also about trees, because they are the sort of permaculture that remains long after moving trucks have come and gone. It’s also about beauty, hope, and a desire to see creation flourish.

For those unfamiliar, Andrew Peterson is best known as a singer/song writer who lives in Nashville, TN. He’s well beyond the stage of waiting tables at Olive Garden to afford rent between gigs, and has become a favorite among a subset of Christians who are generally reformed and committedly orthodox. His Behold the Lamb of God album is also a recurring tour that celebrates the incarnation of Christ every year around advent, and which captures the essence of biblical theology well. It’s a CD that my family listens to frequently from November through January. He’s also recorded various other albums, which all carry a sense of longing for the resurrection and a hope in the present situation, with Peterson pouring out his heart through his fingers and with his somewhat reedy voice. While recording those albums, Peterson also managed to write and publish a quatrain of children’s fantasy novels that point readers (kids and adults) to some big ideas while telling a good story and celebrating the wonder and beauty of the world. His first non-fiction book, Adorning the Dark, is a somewhat autobiographical book, which talks about seeking to create a God-honoring beauty in the midst of a dark and crooked world.

The God of the Garden shares some similarities with his previous book, Adorning the Dark. There is a heavy autobiographical feel to the volume, with Peterson relating in more detail some of the stories that inspired some of his songs. So, for those of us who have sung along with Peterson about being buried beneath the rows of corn in the land of Lincoln where he was born, we now get some more information about what was happening during that time.

In this book, Peterson focuses on trees as the semi-permanent form of agriculture that indicates a sense of personal rootedness. So, we hear a story about a couple of maples in Illinois. The story is kind of about Maples, but it’s really about family routines and a way of living that lasted for a little while. To some degree that way of life continues to exist because the celebrated maples are still there as markers of the past. He talks about the various trees he has planted on his own homeplace—combination forest and English garden—that includes markers for his children. This is a book about place, people, and putting down roots. There is also a chapter reflecting on the likely changes in his neighborhood. Changes that are more likely to commercialize than harmonize with the beauty and wonder. It is with longing for a retention of beauty that Peterson lays out a vision of flourishing and hope for the future.

Those that are fans of Peterson will be delighted by this book. There are many phrases and ideas in his other work that come to life through this volume. But it isn’t necessary to already like Peterson’s work to appreciate the volume. Folks who understand what Sensucht is, who are votaries of the blue flower, or who understand what it means to be a bearer of the sacred flame will find much that resonates in The God of the Garden. For folks that are looking for a reason why a call to better environmental stewardship and putting down roots resonates, this book helps tie a lot of those things together, too.

This is a good read. The prose is clear and simple. The stories are engaging. One need not have a deep and abiding interest in any of the things I’ve listed above to enjoy the book. This book is a quick read that would be enjoyable for someone simply looking for a little patch of beauty on a plane flight or at the end of a long day.

The God of the Garden: Thoughts on Creation, Culture, and the Kingdom

By Peterson, Andrew

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How to Think Like Shakespeare - A Review

The list of books I have purchased because of Ken Myers and his Mars Hill Audio Journal continues to grow. Though subscriptions to the journal run about $30, regular listeners are likely to find the actual cost of the journal and the free, weekly Friday Features much greater because Myers has the gift of bibliography. He also brings such interesting people in for interviews or reads such enthralling essays that curious minds will find it difficult not to want to follow where he leads. For those without robust university libraries nearby, the cost of following those intellectual breadcrumbs can rise as online orders and regular deliveries from the postman serve to dish up fuel for the mind.

One recent book that I purchased because of Ken Myers is How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education. The author, Scott Newstok is a professor of English at Rhodes College. He has previously published on both Shakespeare and renaissance education. In this volume, published with Princeton University Press, Newstok brings those ideas together.

How to Think Like Shakespeare sounds like a “how to” manual. Thankfully, it is not, though that might annoy some who pick up the volume thinking it will provide “10 easy steps to better writing” or whatever.

In an interview with Myers, Newstok related that one of the driving forces behind his writing the book was a rejection of the education-industrial complex. His daughter, enrolled in a public school, came home muttering about “assessment,” which is code for “high stakes testing to justify money spent on novel methods with unproven results which may not have a valid goal in mind.” The problem with assessment is that it pushes toward educating in measurable information without necessarily considering whether the end goal is right and proper. What could have turned into a manifesto is framed much more positively, though, as Newstok provides a framework for considerations for the Renaissance Mind.

The purpose of this book is to help reframe the goal of education around more human considerations. Newstok writes:

My conviction is that education must be about thinking––not training a set of specific skills. . . . Education isn’t merely accumulating data; machines can memorize far more, and far less fallibly, than humans.

The best way to learn about thinking is not to hire a neuroscientist to measure the electrical activity in the brain, but to watch how others have thought before. Since we do not have a time machine to travel back to meet Shakespeare or other thinkers who lived before our technology-saturated age, we must consider what they have written and follow the trails they have followed.

How to Think About Shakespeare takes an intriguing approach. In a world that prizes originality, the book is comprised largely of quotes and tight allusions. Newstok is fastidious in his annotation, so this is no plagiarist’s volume. However, what is illustrated is the great degree that we are dependent upon those that have come before us. In many cases, they have already thought better with clearer language about the things that we consider imponderable.

The book has fourteen chapters, which all deal with particular issues relevant to human thinking and our contemporary culture. For example, Newstok begins with “Of Thinking,” which is appropriate considering the title of the volume. The upshot being that the lament “why can’t people think” is not a new problem driven by smart phones (though perhaps accelerated), but one that spans the intellectual history of the world. The conclusion we might draw from that is that it may be better to see how the problem has been overcome in the past and model our solutions off of that, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. Newstok then moves on to discuss ends, craft, fit, place, attention, and more. All the topics serve to outline aspects of human thought in a humane world. Each of the chapters is brief—usually about a dozen pages, which keeps the pace quick while providing some material for future consideration.

How to Think Like Shakespeare is not so much earthshattering as paradigm disrupting. It’s hard to define, really, but this is book that caused me to think and is still nagging at me to continue thinking. Mostly, it’s driving me to continue to explore what it means to be human and to think as a human in a computerized world. Newstok’s brief chapters highlight the ways that we have been habituated to a technological society. He doesn’t provide a lot of clear answers, but he raises some of the more significant questions that we should be asking and which humanity has previously asked. This is the sort of book that I read and have dipped into several times as I’ve mulled its contents since then. The book is one that that will stick with you at the edge of your mind and encourage dabbling.

How to Think like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education (Skills for Scholars)

By Newstok, Scott

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From Plato to Christ - A Review

In the final pages of The Chronicles of Narnia in the grand eschatological conclusion to The Last Battle we find Professor Digory Kirke explaining the wonder that is before the faithful Narnians, muttering to himself impatiently as he tries to explain what is happening to the English children: “It’s all in Plato, all in Plato: bless me, what do they teach them at these schools!”

That is a comment that went largely over my head when first I read of Narnia. All I knew of ancient Greek philosophy in my school days came from the brief summaries of their lives in history textbooks, which might tell me something like, “Plato was the student of Socrates. He wrote much of the canon of Western philosophy.” Additional contributions came from sources like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which made a joke of pronouncing the names and generally reinforced the plausibility of ignorance. What did they teach in these schools, indeed!

Entirely missing from the accounts of any of the classical philosophers was the content of their teaching. That level of ignorance was only reinforced in college, where I earned a degree and became a Really Smart Person without ever encountering more than a passing familiarity with some of the philosopher that have largely shaped the contours of Western thought and civilization.

Then the classical education revival became more prominent, I had kids, we decided to homeschool, and I started to read C. S. Lewis more broadly. I came to understand that in order to understand where we are culturally and where we might want to go, it is necessary to understand how we got here. That includes both through the influence of Christianity and other sources. Moreover, how can I provide the sort of education to my children I wish I had had when I’m too busy to master all the information myself? I need an entry point to help bring things together.

From Plato to Christ: How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith is a resource that can stand in the gap for many parents who, like me, did not receive a classical education and lack time to cram it all in to teach our children. In this volume Louis Markos highlights significant points of contact between Christianity and Plato’s philosophy. He shows why some Christians theologians have been enamored of Plato and will describe themselves as platonic. He also shows some ways that some theologians may have less helpfully appropriated portions of Plato’s philosophy.

Markos is a classicist who teaches at Houston Baptist University. He has written extensively on the truthfulness of Christianity, ancient Greek and Roman cultures, various works of the Inklings, and certainly more. In other words, he’s just the sort of individual to teach contemporary Christians without a background in ancient philosophy about the relationship between philosophy and Christianity.

The first half of From Plato to Christ is a summary of the teaching of Plato’s philosophy. The work Markos does in the first six chapters is not exhaustive, but it lays the groundwork for the points of contact he will highlight with Christian theologians later in the work. This section of the book is enough to inspire greater interest for those unfamiliar with Plato and help draw some themes together for those, like me, who are somewhere at a midpoint on our journey to understanding philosophy.

The second half of the volume looks back through the Christian tradition at ways Plato and the platonic tradition have influenced Christian thinking. This is the section that will serve as a litmus test for how one perceives the relationship between Christ and culture and the way that a reader views common grace. For some, the influence of Plato on Christian thinking is a pollution of the pure source. For others, the influence of Plato on Christian thinking is a powerful aid to Scripture. The portrait Markos provides is something of both, which makes this volume balanced and helpful.

On the one hand, it is sometimes astonishing how much of what Plato and other ancient philosophers accomplished apart from direct special revelation. There are points at which they reasoned out the right ordering of the universe without a word from God. On the other hand, Markos makes it clear where Plato and his intellectual descendants clearly missed the mark. For example, Plato is one of the ancient philosophers who viewed women as deformed men—lesser creatures—which did negatively influence the Christian tradition. These pagan philosophers must not be taken without parsing their words carefully, as Markos regularly reminds readers.

To my mind, Markos ends up too positive toward Plato. At several points he describes him as inspired—not in the same sense as Scripture, but more than simply artistically. I’m not sure that is necessary. However, Markos is fair in pointing out the failings of the Platonic tradition where it has corrupted Christian theology. If nothing else, this book has the potential to help contemporary readers sift through the Western Christian theological tradition more carefully, becoming aware of the sources and ideas that were influencing them. Markos provides a helpful tool that can be used with Scripture to parse through the Christian tradition and ask whether a particular conclusion is indeed biblical or if it relies on conceptions from another source.

Most significantly, Markos can help the contemporary reader make sense of the platonic tradition and be better equipped to appreciate the goodness of it. This is a book that is engaging to read, but also useful. While it does not replace the reading of the original sources, Markos provides a commentary that can help readers understand the original sources better. This is the sort of instruction that a parent seeking to guide their children in a classical education—which they likely lacked themselves—will find invaluable.

From Plato to Christ: How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith

By Markos, Louis

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NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

You Are Not Your Own - A Review

Sometimes the world is too much for us. Especially when we believe that we are our own people, destined to make our way in the world alone. Perhaps we are stardust, but as the dust of celestial bodies we have a lot to live up to. The pressure to become something and to be someone can eat our souls and sap our energy. It is this feeling that has caused many adults to burnout only a decade or so into their adulthood.

But what if we do not actually belong to ourselves?

What if we are not our own, but we belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to a faithful savior, Jesus Christ? What if he has fully paid for all our sins with his precious blood?

In fact, he has, which is what the Heidelberg Catechism reminds us of in Question 1. It is also what Alan Noble has sought to remind the world of in his latest book, You are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World.

This is Noble’s second book. His previous volume, Disruptive Witness, is a call to resist the consumeristic pressures of the world and, as Christians, to live redemptively in such a way as to witness to the goodness of God and disrupt the common pattern of the world. For those wondering how to live differently in a world that won’t leave us alone, that book is a great place to start.

But even being a disruptive witness can be exhausting if we see our identity as wrapped up in that effort. If we feel we must earn favor with God by seeking to live just right in this world and make something of ourselves for Jesus, that too will wear us down and leave us bent, bleary eyed, and hopeless. We can never be enough.

One of the first things that Noble does in this book is to establish the fact that the world is not made for humans. This is why we are so uncomfortable. It’s not that we are failures, it’s that society is structured in a way that fights against human flourishing. Everything in the world tells us that we are atomized individuals, adrift in a sea of stars. We are the captains of our souls. But, as Noble points out, we are actually more like animals in the zoo. No matter how hard the zookeepers and veterinarians try, they can never truly mimic the jungle for the tiger or the savannah for the lion. The zoo is made for the humans, not for the animals.

As a result of the inhumanity of the world we seek various ways to cope. For some it is illegal drugs or excessive alcohol. For others the solution is sought in online relationships, video games, or prescription anti-depressants. An increasing number of people seek fulfillment in sexual fantasies made possible in every variety through free, always accessible pornography. Many of these forms of self-medication are not wrong in and of themselves—though some of them clearly are—but they all tend to either treat the symptom without seeking a cure or simply make the problem worse.

However, Noble reminds the reader that we are not our own and that we belong to Christ. This is our only comfort in life and death. These are theological truths that are robustly biblical, but also tested by time. They come from an era before our own, with different trials and temptations, to bear witness to the goodness of Christ in all situations.

The book does not resolve with easy solutions. The last chapter opens up with what seems a somewhat dire statement, “Life is hard and death is terrifying.” Thanks. I think.

But Noble continues to trudge toward a better solution, “The only people who don’t recognize the need for comfort as we go through life and face death are those who have so effectively numbed themselves that they no longer recognize their numbness as a form of comfort.” So it is a good thing that the sense of alienation and longing remains with us. We are not yet beyond hope.

And then the book moves to close by assuring readers that there is no simple solution that will make everything better. There is no secret key that will unlock a human shaped culture within the alienation of modernity. Rather, there is hope to be found in Christ: “Only in Christ can we find a belonging without violence or abuse, a belonging that grounds and fulfills our personhood rather than effacing it. . . . We find comfort in belonging to Christ because Christ is the only one we can belong to without harm or loss of our humanity.” That is a powerful answer.

You are Not Your Own is an example of the sort of synthetic work that needs to continue to be done. As Noble readily admits, there is nothing novel in what he writes. But he does not need to be novel. He simply needs to convey an intelligible message to those who need to hear it and be shaped by it. And he does that.

I read this book in one sitting on a plane. It washed over me like a flood of assurance and comfort. I belong to Christ. My feelings of failure and inadequacy belong to the world and not to me. Noble is right about his diagnosis of the problem and right about the solution. We need to find our belonging in Christ—the creator of everything—in this inhuman world.

This is a book I would recommend for people of every age, but especially for those about to be sent out into the world. Noble teaches undergraduates, so it has the marks of many conversations had behind an office door, with students who came for help with an essay, but needed assistance in putting life together. Would that many more young Christians would discover the central message of this volume before heading out into the world, making shipwreck of their health, their life, and perhaps their faith in attempt to become someone, do something, and belong to themselves in an inhuman world.

You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World

By Noble, Alan

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NOTE: I was given a free copy of this volume, in part because I provided feedback on an earlier draft of the volume. However, a positive review was not guaranteed.

The Glory Now Revealed - A Review

There remains, for some, a powerful argument that looking forward to heaven will inevitably lead to a diminished effectiveness in this life. Some critics fear a Christian can be so heavenly minded they are no earthly good. However, C. S. Lewis argues exactly the opposite in Mere Christianity:

“Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christian who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’; aim at earth and you will get neither.”

And yet, we think of heaven so little because we talk about it so little. One reason that we talk about heaven so little is because we have such a poor conception of it. On the one hand, there are gnostic errors that present heaven as a place where we will exist in a disembodied state playing harps while sitting on clouds. On another hand, more robust, more biblical understandings, present a vision of Christians in real, physical bodies but simply engaged in a perpetual worship service, perhaps repeating the verse of one of those 90’s praise choruses that seemed to go on forever. It would be enough to be in the presence of God in a redeemed body singing “I Can Sing of Your Love Forever” on repeat. But what if heaven is actually even better than that?

Andy Davis’ book, The Glory Now Revealed: What We’ll Discover About God in Heaven, explores the data of Scripture to gain a better vision of what the future holds for those who are in Christ. Davis states his purpose for the book clearly: “It is my deepest desire that this journey will energize your heart as never before to yearn for heaven, to store up treasure in heaven, and to rescue as many people as possible to join you in heaven.”

The Glory Now Revealed is a very accessible book, written with a preacher’s heart and gift for turning a phrase. The book consists of fifteen relatively short chapters. Davis begins by laying out his vision of an eternal existence in the presence of God where we remember the events of this life and continue to learn more about the glory of God through the lives of other. He then works through Scripture to prove his case, first showing that heavenly memories of our earthly lives will exist, then that our redeemed, transformed bodies and minds will delight in learning of God’s eternal glory forever. The book explores the idea of how knowledge will be communicated, the wonder of heavenly rewards, the nature of human history in comparison with the eternity before us, a sample of some “great figures” in Church History we will learn more of, as well as a discussion of some of those “unknown” people whose stories will illuminate God’s glory in eternity. Davis discusses how we will understand the spiritual dimension of our present lives in that future state, and a fuller knowledge of what God was doing in the daily grind of our earthly existence. Drawing toward the end, the book shifts to discussions of how memories of our sin, our sufferings, the lost ones we will not see, and the evils that have existed throughout history will all contribute to the growth in our delight in God’s goodness in heaven. The book concludes with an exhortation to seek heavenly glory through faithful works in this life.

Davis is thoroughly saturated with Scripture, so it comes as no surprise to find the web of interlacing references throughout the volume. Most of the extrabiblical citations are illustrative. This is not a history of the theology of heaven, so there is only a moderate interaction with theological accounts of heaven from Church History, but that is consistent with Davis’ intent. He is trying to present a vision––shaped and filled by Scripture––of what heaven is. The hope is that vision will inspire the reader to yearn more fully for heaven and lean into it by pursuing righteousness in this life.

If asked where to learn about heaven, this is the resource I will point people toward. It is clear, simple, and Christ-honoring. More importantly, the book minimizes speculation by focusing on what can be understood from Scripture plainly read. This is the sort of book that draws the reader’s mind beyond the pages themselves to the hope that the author is pointing toward. It is a hopeful book, which offers a healthy dose of encouragement in a world that seems to be bent on wearing us down and keeping our minds of the life to come. The Glory Now Revealed is the sort of book that helps us become more like Christ by imagining more vividly what our future life in the presence of the visible Christ will be like in heaven.

Glory Now Revealed

By Davis

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NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

Exalting Jesus in Isaiah - A Review

As we recently celebrated the 500th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation, we have also been celebrating the recovery of the authority of Scripture within Christianity. Technology and scholastic influences combined to create a cocktail of circumstances that enabled the spread of Scripture in common languages and an eruption of preaching of the Word of God in the church. To read the history of the early Reformation is to read a love story of Christ’s bride for the Bible.

That fervent affection for Scripture is alive and well in our day, particularly among those who practice expositional preaching. The Christ-Centered Exposition Series of commentaries from Holman Reference is both the product of and a contributor to the renaissance of expositional preaching. The series also encourages the conviction that all of Scripture tells about Christ: He is anticipated in the Old Testament and more clearly revealed in the New Testament. The whole Bible is a story of redemption, with Christ as the central hero.

The latest volume in this series – Exalting Jesus in Isaiah – is by Andrew M. Davis, pastor of First Baptist Church of Durham, NC. Davis is well-known for his love of Scripture, most clearly demonstrated by his faithful practice of memorizing whole books of the Bible. He has even previously memorized the entire book of Isaiah, which is the subject of this volume. Davis has also recently completed the arduous task of preaching through Isaiah in his local church; those sermons help give shape to this volume.

All of the volumes in this series of commentaries are intended to be preaching commentaries. That is, the authors emphasize the sorts of information that are most helpful to the pastor as he is shaping his sermons. For example, instead of a lengthy introduction about the various theories of scribal interjections and textual composition of Isaiah, Davis jumps right into illustrations, background, and textual outlines that are helpful for giving a congregation a sense of the main point of the text.

Davis wrote this book in approximately sixty short, easy to manage chapters. Each chapter is designed to cover a passage of Scripture that is about the right length for a sermon. Within each chapter, Davis highlights a key verse, provides a textual outline, and then offers commentary according to that outline. This makes it an invaluable resource for someone preparing a series of sequential expository sermons or those preaching a stand-alone sermon from the book of Isaiah. The chapters are self-contained, making it useful for a consecutive preaching through the book or occasional sermons on a particular text.

Although this volume is closely connected to Davis’ own preaching of the book of Isaiah, it is not a collection of his sermons. Davis habitually manuscripts his sermons, and the page total would be much greater had he simply compiled those manuscripts into a single volume. Instead, the reader is given the gift of a distillation of Davis’ careful study of Scripture, with insightful examples and illustrations scattered liberally throughout.

The greatest strength of this volume are the intertextual connections that Davis makes as he outlines the contents of Isaiah. Since he has memorized so much Scripture, his mind is alive with allusions and cross-references in and to books through the entire canon. For example, in his commentary on Isaiah 6, Davis explains how Christians can know that Isaiah’s vision of the glory of God in the throne room of heaven is, in fact, a vision of Christ himself. John 12:41 makes this plain. Other commentaries may make the connection, but Davis shows how that revelation fits into the exegetical flow of a sermon on the passage.

Davis also provides a number of helpful illustrations throughout the volume, which are insightful for sermon preparation, and also reflect Davis’ unique personality. Readers are offered references to Luther, Calvin, Bunyan, and even poets like Robert Frost to illuminate points. Davis, a former engineer, even uses the recycling of metal from the World Trade Center into the keel of an amphibious transport ship, the USS New York, to illustrate how redemption can come through destruction to introduce Isaiah 3-4. Or, perhaps more characteristically, Davis cites a report on port activity to make a connection between the vanity of seeking economic domination and God’s judgement, which helps bring Isaiah 23 into focus for the modern reader. These detailed, fact-based illustrations are useful resources for sermon preparation.

This entire series of commentaries is an excellent tool for pastors. The structure of these volumes makes them easy to use as a reference during sermon preparation. The tone of the volumes is formal, but not stuffy, which makes them accessible to pastors with a wide range of academic preparation. The content has been adequately resourced to be reliable, but does not fall into the trap that some academic commentaries do of engaging with every divergent perspective to the detriment of clarity and flow. These volumes are preaching commentaries as they are meant to be: tools to assist the people on the front lines of exposition as they seek to rightly divide the word of truth.

NOTE: This post was previously published at B&H Academic Blog, which has since been archived due to a change in communication strategy.

Recovering the Lost Art of Reading - A Review

Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book is a classic introduction to the art of reading. It’s a favorite among homeschoolers and careful thinkers who have wanted to learn how to wrestle with ideas critically and thoroughly. Decades after the first edition was published, there is still a lot to commend it to readers. There is still much to be commended.

But I now have a new top book to recommend for those seeking to learn how to read better and to teach others to read better.

Leland Ryken and Glenda Faye Mathes teamed up to write Recovering the Lost Art of Reading to provide both encouragement and instruction in the practice of consuming literature in various genres.

The book begins with an explanation of the problem. Fewer people are reading books and they tend to read them carelessly. It’s not that fewer people are reading, because the flood of short internet articles ensure that people are taking in information and ideas through words. At the same time, the careful perusal of literature and well-written nonfiction in longform is an artform that fewer seem to be mastering.

Anecdotally, I have met more and more teens who have never read a single book in full, and I have had adults brag they haven’t cracked open a volume in a decade. Meanwhile, total sales of books are up, but I have to wonder what part the frequent sales on ebooks and the habits of prolific readers have to do with that trend. There is evidence that reading on screens is less effective than reading actual books.

The chief problem with a reduced rate of reading good books well is that books that have stood the connect us to our shared human heritage. In many cases these volumes are being ignored because of cultural concerns or because reading them is simply hard work.

 When the culture loses touch with the artifacts of its past we lose voices that can keep us from making old mistakes again, voices that call us to a deeper sense of beauty, and voices that connect us to minds from the past. As Alan Jacobs notes in his book, Breaking Bread with the Dead, when people stop reading “classics” (for whatever reason) we could be dragged back toward the past we long to avoid.

Recovering the Lost Art of Reading helps to remedy the lack of reading by providing accessible instruction about how to read well. So, the second (and far longer) part of the volume offers something of a primer on reading. It begins with a discussion of literature, its significance, and its benefits. Next, introduction to various genres with helpful instructions for reading each type of material well. After these helpful chapters on theory, Mathes and Ryken shift gears in Part Three to a mix of practical instruction and exhortation on recovering the art of reading, where they connect reading to the true, the good, and the beautiful. The pursuit of these is foundational to a well-lived life and a Christian life that seeks to recognize God at work in the world across cultures.

One of the notable features about the book is that there is a focus on a particularly Christian approach to reading. So, their chapter on the Bible as literature describes the process of reading Scripture for its beauty, form, and creativity as something that is spiritually significant. Similarly, the persistent concern for the moral exercise of reading is not primarily about academic virtue, but about putting on the mind of Christ by encountering truth, goodness, and beauty in transcultural forms.

The self-description of the book is apt. The authors write, “[This is] a guidebook by two season and enthusiastic reading travelers, who show all readers . . . how to discover more delight in the reading journey.” This is not an academic volume, though it has academic value. It is not a prescriptive “how to” like Adler’s book. It is filled with instruction, but it is not purely didactic. It’s the sort of book that can be read piecemeal as someone tries to grow in the art of reading. It’s also the sort of book that can be used as a textbook in a high school or introductory college literature class. It would also be useful as a companion to a reading group. Most significantly, it’s a book that will help its reader grow in their love of the better things in life.

The unfortunate reality is that those that really need to read this volume—the truly reluctant readers—are unlikely to pick it up. But the casual reader can benefit and the seasoned reader can deepen their love for the practice. With so many distractions, in the form of funny internet videos and short blog articles, this book may not win as many as it should. However, the audience that it does reach will be improved and deepened in their understanding of literature, their love of reading, and their love of God.

As someone who loves reading, I found this book refreshing. Instead of providing rigid rules about book lists, types of reading, etc., we get a volume about taking delight in reading and growing through the process.

The self-description of the book is apt. The authors write, “[This is] a guidebook by two season and enthusiastic reading travelers, who show all readers . . . how to discover more delight in the reading journey.” This is not an academic volume, though it has academic value. It is not a prescriptive “how to” like Adler’s book. It is filled with instruction, but it is not purely didactic. It’s the sort of book that can be read piecemeal as someone tries to grow in the art of reading. It’s also the sort of book that can be used as a textbook in a high school or introductory college literature class. It would also be useful as a companion to a reading group. Most significantly, it’s a book that will help its reader grow in their love of the better things in life.

The unfortunate reality is that those that really need to read this volume—the truly reluctant readers—are unlikely to pick it up. But the casual reader can benefit and the seasoned reader can deepen their love for the practice. With so many distractions, in the form of funny internet videos and short blog articles, this book may not win as many as it should. However, the audience that it does reach will be improved and deepened in their understanding of literature, their love of reading, and their love of God.

As someone who loves reading, I found this book refreshing. Instead of providing rigid rules about book lists, types of reading, etc., we get a volume about taking delight in reading and growing through the process.

Recovering the Lost Art of Reading: A Quest for the True, the Good, and the Beautiful

By Ryken, Leland, Mathes, Glenda

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