Archive for the 'Books' Category

The Color of Law

Published
by
Mike
on November 28, 2006
in Books, Salt and Light and justice
. 26 Comments

After ten years in a large Dallas law firm and after making partner, Mark Gimenez has moved with his family outside Ft. Worth to write.

But after eleven years in a large Dallas law firm and after making partner, A. Scott Fenney had no such plans. His future was money. Green, it turns out, is The Color of Law.

Fenney, a former star running back at SMU who married Miss SMU, has been on the fast track with a Dallas firm. But after he gives a rousing speech to colleagues about the nobility of law, invoking the memories of his mother reading to him about Atticus Finch (a speech which he later admits he didn’t believe), a federal judge appoints him to represent a black prostitute from East Dallas who is being charged with murder.

And, we learn, the man she supposedly murdered after he picked her up on Harry Hines Boulevard is the son of a powerful, wealthy Texas senator with aspirations for the White House.

Representing her holds the potential for career suicide since the powerful senator will do anything to keep the name of his son from being raked through the mud — which would be required since the son had a history of slapping around prostitutes and dates.

He comes to a critical fork in the road: will he continue with the dream life in “the Bubble” of Highland Park, or will he provide the counsel for this young mother?

As the Texas Monthly said, The Color of Law is “an unbeatable legal thriller with a lot of heart.”

It would be a great novel for a group of university students to work through along with To Kill a Mockingbird, which it continually refers back to. (Fair, warning, however: If Grisham is PG and Turow is R, Gimenez’s first novel is maybe a PG-13. Or, say, PG-16.)

I won’t be surprised if sometime I find out that “Mark Gimenez” is a pen name for Larry James. For through the events of the story, Gimenez forces us to think about the gap between a place like Highland Park and a place like East Dallas. How could two places be so close and so far?

I liked knowing the city where the action is set. I’ve driven down those roads (Lover’s Lane, Mockingbird, Preston Road, etc.) and seen those shopping centers.

But at the same time, there is discomfort. Here are some passages:

“A concrete-and-steel landscape as far as the eye can see, all the way to the brown haze of pollution that perpetually rings the city above the loop, treeless and barren, the city’s master plan obvious — to pave over every square inch of green . . . . Which might explain Dallas’s ranking as the ugliest major city in America. Other than women, Dallas has no natural beauty whatsoever. No ocean or lake or water of any kind except the Trinity River running west of downtown, used for decades as a natural sewage system and today as a big drainage ditch. No Central Park, no Rocky Mountains, and no Miami Beach. No wonderful weather. Nothing other great cities have. All Dallas has is a white X on Elm Street marking the exact spot where an American president was killed. But then, you don’t live in Dallas for any of that; you live in Dallas to make a lot of money fast.”

“Grammar skills notwithstanding, she was a fine example of what Texas men most want — a gorgeous Texas girl. Texas myths were many, but one was no myth: the most gorgeous girls in the world were found in Texas. Dallas, Texas. Girls like her, they graduate from high school or maybe junior college, and from small towns all across Texas they had straight to Dallas like moths to light. They come for the jobs, they come for the nightlife, they come for the single men making lots of money, the kind of money that buys big homes and fancy cars and fashionable clothes and glittery jewelry guaranteed to bring a smile to any Texas girl’s face. Girl wants to marry a refinery worker and live in a double-wide, she moves to Houston; girl wants to marry money and live in a mansion, she moves to Dallas.”

“Developed in 1906 on thirteen hundred acres of high land above downtown Dallas, Highland Park today is a sanctuary of elegant homes, landscaped lawns, and broad avenues canopied by towering oak trees. On its wide sidewalks European nannies and Mexican maids can be seen pushing the heirs of the great Texas fortunes in strollers while their fathers — billionaires and millionaires and the lawyers who tend to them — work in the downtown skyscrapers and their mothers play tennis at the country club and shop at Anne Fontaine, Luca Luca, and Botega Veneta in the Highland Park Village shopping center, its Spanish Mediterranean architecture and quaint stucco buildings with terra-cotta roofs and decorative wrought iron harking back to a distant time and place when great wealth was reserved for people of a certain class, not just anyone who could dunk a basketball. Visitors from California say the town reminds them of Beverly Hills, and with good reason: the same architect who designed Beverly Hills designed Highland Park. Only difference is, the founders of Beverly Hills did not file deed restrictions that legally limited home ownership in their new town to white people only; the founders of Highland Park did. Almost a hundred years later, the Town of Highland Park is a two-square-mile island entirely surrounded by the 384-square-mile City of Dallas. It’s an island of white in an ocean of color: Dallas, a city of 1.2 million residents, is now only 39 percent white; while Highland Park, a town of 8,850 residents, remains 98 percent white, with not a single home owned by a black person. It’s an island of wealth — on any given day over a hundred homes in Highland Park will be listed for sale at prices exceeding $1 million. It’s an island immune from the crime and social ills that affect Dallas — Highland Park kids call their hometown “the Bubble,” happy to be insulated from the outside world that beckons at the town boundary — albeit an island without a river or stream or even a moat to keep the outside world out, only the highest home prices in Texas, a well-armed police force, and a long-standing reputation that if you’re black or brown and don’t live there, you’d damn well better be passing through.”

“Thirty-six years Scott Fenney had lived in Dallas and not once had he driven into South Dallas. White people drove south of downtown three times each year and only for events held within the gated Fair Park grounds — the State Fair, the Oklahoma-Texas football game, and the Cotton Bowl game — being careful to stay on the interstate, to take the Fair Park exit, and to drive directly through the park gates without detour or delay. White people never drove into South Dallas, into the neighborhoods and mean streets of South Dallas, into the other Dallas of crime and crack cocaine, prostitution and poverty, drive-by shootings and gangbangers, into black Dallas . . . .”

When he continues to represent the woman on trial, his senior partner says to him:

“When I graduated from law school, Scotty, a wise older lawyer gave me some good advice. He said, ‘Dan, every new lawyer must make a fundamental choice from which every other decision in his professional life will flow. And that choice is simple: Do you want to do good or do well? Do you want to make money or make the world a better place? Do you want to drive a Cadillac or a Chevrolet? Do you want to send your kids to private schools or public schools? Do you want to be a rich lawyer or a poor lawyer?’ He said, ‘Dan, if you want to do good, go work for legal aid and help the little people fighting their landlords and the utility companies and the police and feel good about it. But don’t have regrets twenty years later when your classmates are living in nice homes and driving new cars and taking vacations in Europe. And you have to tell your kids they can’t go to an Ivy League school because you did good.’”

Well, I have so many other passages marked. It is about Dallas, but it far transcends one city. It’s about lawyers, but it moves far beyond that.

It’s about justice, isolation, racism, materialism, law, service, courage, character, and beauty. (”Rebecca Fenney was still remarkably beautiful, still the most beautiful woman in Highland Park, still able to compete with a twenty-two-year old for her lawyer. But the day would come for her, she knew; and with each passing day, Rebecca Fenney was a day older and a day less beautiful.”)

It’s about Atticus Finch. Even before he was Gregory Peck.

At a critical moment when Fenney is explaining to his senior partner that without good representation his client would unfairly be put to death in Texas, the older man got a puzzled look and replied, “And how does that affect your life?” For anyone who’s read the gospels, they know how important that question is.

It’s a question that hits him hard in the nose when his former secretary doesn’t seem too torn up by his leaving. She says:

“For eleven years I’ve fetched your dry cleaning and coffee, run your personal errands, paid your personal bills, shopped for gifts for your wife and child and clients, lied to clients for you . . . Did you care about me? About my life? You never once asked about my life. Do you know I have a handicapped child and that’s the only reason I’ve put up with you for all these years? Because I needed the money? You didn’t know and you didn’t care. Did you care when Mr. Walker got fired? No. Like every other lawyer here, you care only about yourself.”

The ending is not as strong as the rest, I thought, but, heh–it’s a first novel. And quite a good one at that. I look forward to more novels from Gimenez.

Reading it makes me very thankful for those who are working to bridge the gap between haves and have nots, and it makes me grateful for those lawyers I know who still understand that the color of law is not green. They are, indeed, salt and light in the world.

Why More Is Less #3

Published
by
Mike
on November 21, 2006
in Books and Megan
. 24 Comments

What is it that makes us happy? That’s one of the fundamental questions Barry Schwartz pursues in The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.

Despite what many assume, it doesn’t appear to be money. Studies show that there is greater happiness in wealthy countries than in poor countries. But, “once a society’s level of per capita wealth crosses a threshold from poverty to adequate subsistence, further increases in national wealth have almost no effect on happiness. You find as many happy people in Poland as in Japan, for example, even though the average Japanese is almost ten times richer than the average Pole. And Poles are much happier than Hungarians (and Icelandics much happier than Americans) despite similar levels of wealth.”

Well, what about close relationships? It is true that people who have close marriages and/or close friendships are happier. But Schwartz suggests this may be a chicken-and-egg conundrum. Which comes first: happiness or relationships?

“Miserable people are surely less likely than happy people to have close friends, devoted family, and enduring marriages. So it is at least possible that happiness comes first and close relations come second.”

So much of happiness comes down to decisions we make to be contented. The problem with a maximizing approach to life (see the last two posts) is that we’re never quite satisfied. They could have chosen (a car . . . a spouse . . . a church) better, perhaps, so they’re always looking over their shoulders and living in regret.

So, “What to Do About Choice?” he asks in the final chapter. Schwartz offers 11 suggestions, of which I’m passing on just four.

1. Choose when to choose.

With an overabundance of options surrounding us with almost everything, we have to decide how many options we’re going to consider and how much time we’re going to expend.

“Restricting yourself in this way may seem both difficult and arbitrary, but actually, this is the kind of discipline we exercise in other aspects of life. You may have a rule of thumb never to have more than two glasses of wine at a sitting. The alcohol tastes good and it makes you feel good and the opportunity for another drink is right at your elbow, yet you stop. And for most people, it isn’t that hard to stop.”

2. Satisfice more and maximize less.

“Learning to accept ‘good enough’ will simplify decision making and increase satisfaction. Though satisficers may often do less well than maximizers according to certain objective standards, nonetheless, by settling for ‘good enough’ even when the ‘best’ could be just around the corner, satisficers will usually feel better about the decisions they make. . . . Becoming a conscious, intentional satisficer makes comparison with how other people are doing less important. It makes regret less likely. In the complex, choice-saturated world we live in, it makes peace of mind possible.”

3. Make your decisions nonreversible.

When a decision we make is final, our mind moves toward ownership of the choice. Schwartz points out that this is clearer with the big decisions, and there’s a lot of street wisdom in these words about marriage:

“A friend once told me how his minister had shocked the congregation with a sermon on marriage in which he said flatly that, yes, the grass is always greener. What he meant was that, inevitably, you will encounter people who are younger, better looking, funnier, smarter, or seemingly more understanding and empathetic than your wife or husband. But finding a life partner is not a matter of comparison shopping and ‘trading up.’ The only way to find happiness and stability in the presence of seemingly attractive and tempting options is to say, ‘I’m simply not going there. I’ve made my decision about a life partner, so this person’s empathy or that person’s looks really have nothing to do with me. I’m not in the market — end of story.’ Agonizing over whether your love is ‘the real thing’ or your sexual relationship above or below par, and wondering whether you could have done better is a prescription for misery. Knowing that you’ve made a choice that you will not reverse allows you to pour your energy into improving the relationship that you have rather than constantly second-guessing it.”

4. Practice an “attitude of gratitude.”

“We can vastly improve our subjective experience by consciously striving to be grateful more often for what is good about a choice or an experience, and to be disappointed less by what is bad about it.”

He suggests putting a notepad by your bed and every day, either when you wake up or just before you fall asleep, jotting down five things from that day (or the day before) for which you’re grateful. Most of the time those things will be small, but the practice will help nurture a spirit of joy, contentment, and gratitude rather than one of disappointment, regret, and dissatisfaction.

And with that — Happy Thanksgiving!

- - - -

I hope you saw these words yesterday from my buddy Richard B., who is a researching fanatic. (He’s also a rock star on the ACU campus — with the huge Walling lecture hall filling up for his classes.)

Two summers ago I worked with some students on research in this area. We expanded Schwartz’s maximizing and satisficing into the “religious marketplace” (e.g., people who try to look for the “best” church, or “best” worship, or “best” preaching). Our results mirrored Schwartz: These people were much less satisfied with church and tended to switch churches more often. By contrast, “religious satisficers” just picked a church, settled in, and went to work. And were much happier.

- - - -

An example of why I try not to miss what David Brooks writes.

“I have a rule, which has never failed me, that when a writer uses quotations from Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and the Left Behind series to capture the religious and political currents in modern America, then I know I can put that piece of writing down because the author either doesn’t know what he is talking about or is arguing in bad faith.”

- - - -

Today makes twelve years. My, how quickly they’ve flown. We still miss her.

Why More Is Less #2

Published
by
Mike
on November 20, 2006
in Books
. 17 Comments

The question of contentment, Schwartz says, boils down to whether you are a maximizer or a satisficer.

A maximizer needs for every decision or every purchase to be the very best that could possibly be made. It “creates a daunting task, which becomes all the more daunting as the number of options increases.” After making a selection, a maximizer can easily be plagued by doubts about whether or not the very best thing was purchased.

The satisficer is someone who settles for something that works — something that is good enough — without fretting over whether or not there is something better. “A satisficer has criteria and standards. She searches until she finds an item that meets those standards, and at that point, she stops. As soon as she finds a sweater that meets her standard of fit, quality, and price in the very first store she enters, she buys it — end of story. She is not concerned about better sweaters or better bargains just around the corner.”

Even though there are certain areas where making the very best choice is needed, someone who fits Schwartz’s definition of a maximizer is likely in for a life with lots of dissatisfaction.

So, how do you know which you are? He suggests a quick test. You write a number from 1 (completely disagree) to 7 (completely agree) for each of his questions.

1. When I’m faced with a choice, I try to imagine what all the other possibilities are, even ones that aren’t present at the moment.

2. No matter how satisfied I am with my job, it’s only right for me to be on the lookout for better opportunities.

3. When I am in the car listening to the radio, I often check other stations to see if something better is playing, even if I am relatively satisfied with what I’m listening to.

4. When I watch TV, I channel surf, often scanning through the available options even while attempting to watch one program.

5. I treat relationships like clothing: I expect to try a lot on before finding the perfect fit.

6. I often find it difficult to shop for a gift for a friend.

7. Renting videos is really difficult. I’m always struggling to pick the best one.

8. When shopping, I have a hard time finding clothing that I really love.

9. I’m a big fan of lists that attempt to rank things (the best movies, the best singers, the best athletes, the best novels, etc.).

10. I find that writing is very difficult, even if it’s just writing a letter to a friend, because it’s so hard to word things just right. I often do several drafts of even simple things.

11. No matter what I do, I have the highest standards for myself.

12. I never settle for second best.

13. I often fantasize about living in ways that are quite different from my actual life.

Schwartz found that maximizers take longer to compare and decide on most purchases, they tend to look over their shoulders at what others are deciding, and they are much more likely to later regret what they did.

He and his fellow researches also have found that maximizers “experienced less satisfaction with life, were less happy, were less optimistic, and were more depressed than people with low maximization scores. In fact, people with extreme maximization scores — scores of 65 or more out of 91 — had depression scores that placed them in the borderline clinical depression range.”

And that’s why this is so important.

One student can hardly enjoy his education. He agonized about which school to go to, concerned to get in the very best one possible to up his chances for later getting into the very best law school. After deciding late in the game, he insisted on the very best classes with the very best teachers. Now he worries that he made the wrong decision — about which school and about one or two of his classes.

Another student, sitting right next to him, is having a blast. He, too, had high standards for his education. But once his decision was made, he went with it. He’s glad to be where he is and knows he’s preparing for the future.

One investor aches every time she reads an article about some Vanguard fund that is outperforming her mutual stocks. She keeps hearing about people whose money is doubling quicker than hers. So she drives her investment person crazy, constantly changing investment strategies — perhaps not even realizing the fees involved every time she changes.

Another investor has her funds in the same place, but she doesn’t obsess about it. She thoroughly investigated, having decided on certain standards and a certain strategy, and then went with it. Now, even though she continues to pay attention, she doesn’t obsess. She enjoys watching the money grow.

A maximizer is often wondering if there isn’t a better gift, a better church, a better doctor, a better vitamin, a better health club, a better cable option . . . . It isn’t just about high standards; it’s about a sense of discontentment (fueled, perhaps by concern for social status and the explosion of options).

“For a maximizer, the overload of choice . . . is a nightmare. But for a satisficer, it does not have to be such a burden. In fact, the more options there are, the more likely it is that the satisficer will find one that meets his or her standards. Adding options doesn’t necessarily add much work for the satisficer, because the satisficer feels no compulsion to check out all the possibilities before deciding.”

Tomorrow: happiness, contentment, and relationships.

Why More Is Less

Published
by
Mike
on November 17, 2006
in Books
. 35 Comments

Barry Schwartz went to The Gap for a pair of jeans. He admits that, since he wears them until they completely fall apart, he hadn’t shopped for jeans for a long time.

He gave his size to the salesperson, 32-28, thinking that this would pretty much take care of it. But then a dizzying list of choices came: button-fly or zipper-fly? faded or nonfaded? stonewashed, acid-washed, or distressed? regular fit, relaxed fit, or easy fit? and, of course, what brand?

In his excellent book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less he says:

“The jeans I chose turned out just fine, but it occurred to me that day that buying a pair of pants should not be a daylong project. By creating all these options, the store undoubtedly had done a favor for customers with varied tastes and body types. However, by vastly expanding the range of choices, they had also created a new problem that needed to be solved. Before these options were available, a buyer like myself had to settle for an imperfect fit, but at least purchasing jeans was a five-minute affair. Now it was a complex decision in which I was forced to invest time, energy, and no small amount of self-doubt, anxiety, and dread.

“Buying jeans is a trivial matter, but it suggests a much larger theme . . . which is this: When people have no choice, life is almost unbearable. As the number of available choices increases, as it has in our consumer culture, the autonomy, control, and liberation this variety brings are powerful and positive. But as the number of choices keeps growing negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear. As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates.”

Anyone who’s traveled much appreciates our local supermarkets. But are there times that you are worn out by the choices? Have you ever gotten lost in the pain relief section? How many kinds of ibuprofen can there be? And do you really want ibuprofen or Tylenol or aspirin or . . . ? How about toothpaste: Crest or Colgate or AquaMan (or whatever it is)? whitening or nonwhitening? mint or fresh mint?

How about shopping for computers, printers, DVD players, cell phones? To say nothing of local telephone plans, long distance plans, electric company, wireless connectivity . . . . Is it any wonder that two decades after the fall of Ma Bell, 60% of the market is still ruled by AT&T, and half those customers just settle for the basic rates on the basic plans?

What church are you going to attend? Which service will you be at? Where are you going for your vacation? Who do you want to perform your colonoscopy now that you’re 50 (just to pull one out of the air)?

Schwartz points out some of the factors that impact the choices we make.

One example is anchoring. When we walk into a store, we tend to compare the prices, not realizing how much the stores have used anchoring to steer our purchases. If you see an $80 shirt in a store where most shirts are $40, it seems extravagant. But what if right next to it are a few shirts for $120? Then it begins to seem more reasonable.

He tells of one catalogue company that sells kitchen equipment which offered an automatic bread maker for $279. Few sold. Then they added a super-delux automatic bread maker for $429. Sales of the $279 one soared. With the super-delux model as the anchor, the other looked like a reasonable bargain.

We’re also impacted, often unknowingly, by framing. Do you buy the yogurt that is 5% fat or the one that is 95% fat free? Go for the fat free one — even though 95% fat free means it does have 5% fat. It just sounds more healthy.

“Even with relatively unimportant decisions, mistakes can take a toll. When you put a lot of time and effort into choosing a restaurant or a place to go on vacation or a new item of clothing, you want that effort to be rewarded with a satisfying result. As options increase, the effort involved in making decisions increases, so mistakes hurt even more. Thus the growth of options and opportunities for choice has three, related, unfortunate effects. It means that decisions require more effort. It makes mistakes more likely. It makes the psychological consequences of mistakes more severe.”

Next I’ll come to the big payoff of the book: the difference between a maximizer and a satisficer. There are some important things there about contentment, about joy, and even about marriage.

N. T. Wright on the Church

Published
by
Mike
on October 18, 2006
in Books and Church
. 32 Comments

“I use the word ‘church’ here with a somewhat heavy heart. I know that for many of my readers that very word will carry the overtones of large, dark buildings, pompous religious pronouncements, false solemnity, and rank hypocrisy. But there is no easy alternative. I, too, feel the weight of that negative image. I battle with it professionally all the time.

“But there is another side to it, a side which shows all the signs of the wind and fire, of the bird brooding over the waters and bringing new life. For many, ‘church’ means just the opposite of that negative image. It’s a place of welcome and laughter, of healing and hope, of friends and family and justice and new life. It’s where the homeless drop in for a bowl of soup and the elderly stop by for a chat. It’s where one group is working to help drug addicts and another is campaigning for global justice. It’s where you’ll find people learning to pray, coming to faith, struggling with temptation, finding new purpose, and getting in touch with a new power to carry that purpose out. It’s where people bring their own small faith and discover, in getting together with others to worship the one true God, that the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. No church is like this all the time. But a remarkable number of churches are partly like that for quite a lot of time.”

from Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense.

That’s the irony, isn’t it? We all have our frustrations with the church. Most have been burned at one time or another by someone acting unchristianly “in the name of Christ.” We’ve hated the shallowness, the meanness, the legalism, the disappointments.

And yet . . . the church is also a force of great transformation. It’s a place where the greatest story of life is faithfully proclaimed and lived. It’s where grace and forgiveness can be learned. It’s a place with hope amid death, joy amid defeat, and meaning amid confusion. It’s the older men and women we’ve known who exude compassion; it’s the young women and men with dreams of justice and mercy; it’s the children learning to sing “Our God Is an Awesome God.”

Published
by
Mike
on September 23, 2006
in Books and General
. 13 Comments

From Walter Brueggemann’s The Bible Makes Sense:

“We live in a society where we nearly have forgotten what humanness is about. And that is why the Bible must be taken seriously. It preserves for us alternative images of humanness. It holds for us promises of a new age coming upon us. It bestows upon us, by the rule of God, power to become whom we are destined to be. We are offered ‘power to become children of God’ (John 1:12) so that we may leave off being either slaves or orphans and we may stop building institutions to contain either slaves or orphans.

“The Bible holds for us an invitation to another humanness. We need not be triumphalist. We need not always be securing ourselves at the expense of others. We need not regard ourselves as the last defense of what is right. It is enough that this notion of humanness in the image of God finds joy in caring, life in dying, strength in meekness. That is not commonly believed among us, even by those who use such words. But these affirmations have resilience and credibility among those who are not prepared to settle for current one-dimensional self-understanding. That is the issue around which our work must cluster. To that issue the Bible has a singular pertinence.

“In the poor man Jesus of Nazareth, we have a new sense of our humanness. In his community we have a fresh discernment of being a distinct people in the history of the world, a people that lives always between the cost of Good Friday and the joy of Easter Sunday. The Bible insists upon our facing that call.”

Community and Mission

Published
by
Mike
on September 22, 2006
in Books, Salt and Light, missional and politics
. 61 Comments

“I have come to realize that aiming for community is a bit like aiming for happiness. It’s not a goal in itself. we find happiness as an incidental by-product of pursuing love, justice, hospitality, and generosity. When you aim for happiness, you are bound to miss it. Likewise with community. It’s not our goal. It emerges as a by-product of pursuing something else. Those who love community destroy it, but those who love people build community.” - Michael Frost, Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture

I agree — sort of. The community is drawn together in authentic love and honesty when they, together, pursue the mission of God. It’s like the community that formed in The Wizard of Oz or the Lord of the Rings trilogy: unlikely people are brought together by engaging in a mission larger than themselves.

And yet . . . true community is itself the goal. Or at least a taste of the goal. God is seeking to bring all things together again — think “new creation” and “reconciliation” — and that means that community will break out.

But this community can be spoiled if it turns in on itself, forgetting that the work of God continues.

- - - -

CBS hoped there would be Katie Couric fans who would follow her to CBS. Diane and I have done just that. From Brokaw to Couric. Last night we got to see Jim Wallis talk about how many evangelicals are taking seriously the challenge to be “completely pro-life” (to quote Ron Sider). He kept resisting efforts to pin him as a person on the right or left, insisting that it isn’t about being a Republican or a Democrat but about being a Christ-follower who goes deeper in the call of the kingdom. When he said he thought he was something of a moderate, Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, said that the only thing in the middle of the road is dead cats and smelly skunks. That added so much to the segment.

- - - -

Sorry I haven’t been very involved in comments the last few days. Just haven’t had time to keep up. Thanks for the discussions, though. Page loads have bumped up a bit the last couple weeks. Don’t know what that means in terms of actual people — but thanks.

Welcoming the Artists

Published
by
Mike
on September 12, 2006
in Books and General
. 29 Comments

Our discussion from a couple days ago reminded me of this wonderful passage in Darryl Tippens’s Pilgrim Heart: The Way of Jesus in Everyday Life:

“The church has not always been kind to its artists. Maturing in communities that ignore or even reject their gifts, some artists, musicians, writers, and actors become discouraged and drift away. Sad to say, sometimes they find a kinder welcome in the world than they do in the church, and the church is the poorer for it. Yet in many ways artists model what it means to have a pilgrim hearat. They explore the truth through the medium in which they work. They revere the mystery of creation; they work humbly with their materials, embodying the ‘restless ache for something beyond,’ as Lewis called it. Along with the poet Czeslaw Milosz, they say: ‘In this world there is too much ugliness and horror. So there must be, somewhere, goodness and truth. And that means somewhere God must be.’ These artists not only inform our minds, they nurture our hearts, for art is more than cognition. It is divine truth recollected in color, shape, and sound. Their art, potentially, at least, becomes a path to a better world. . . .

“Emil Brunner’s reminder is important: ‘From time immemorial the relation between art and religion has been friendly rather than hostile. . . .’ The church and the arts are so deeply connected that ‘we simply cannot imagine Western Art apart from Christianity.’ ‘The sense of beauty . . . remains rooted in the heart of man as a powerful incentive,’ observed Weil. Indeed, pilgrim hearts have always understood that creation and creativity are earthly signs ever gesturing towards the Creator. Thankfully, the necessary relationship between artists and the church is undergoing a revival in our day. Artists are being invited to portray the faith of the believers, to paint the scenes, compose the songs, write the plays, and tell the stories that will shape the imaginations and the lives of the next generation.

“All who love Scripture should note the obvious: The Bible itself is a majestic work of art. Otherwise, why are the book of Job, the Psalms, and the parables of Jesus rendered in such artful form? God seems forever committed to beauty. Otherwise, the glories of heaven make no sense at all. . . . Indeed, as John’s Revelation makes clear, our eternal dwelling place is characterized by extraordinary beauty: fabulous architecture, poetry, music, song, and liturgy. Despisers of the arts will find heaven a rather odd place to spend eternity. The God who created the world in all its splendor, who placed the sensuous Song of Solomon within the canon of Scripture, and who promises a glorious new heaven and a dazzling new earth, must love beauty. Could it be that life on this earth is but a reflection of, and a preparation for, the superior, lasting beauty of the world to come?”

Maybe this is so important to me because I’ve been blessed to minister to so many artists. Perhaps it’s because most of the art students have me for Bible in the fall of their freshman year. Or could it also be that my own faith has been encouraged again and again by faith-building, thought-provoking, courage-inspiring works of theater, writing, music, painting, sculpture, etc.?

Putt-Putt Christians

Published
by
Mike
on September 8, 2006
in Books, faith and spiritual formation
. 44 Comments

From Dallas Willard’s The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship:

“For at least several decades the churches of the Western world have not made discipleship a condition of being a Christian. One is not required to be, or to intend to be, a disciple in order to become a Christian, and one may remain a Christian without any signs of progress toward or in discipleship. Contemporary American churches in particular do not require following Christ in his example, spirit, and teachings as a condition of membership — either of entering into or continuing in fellowship of a denominationn or local church. I would be glad to learn of any exception to this claim, but it would only serve to highlight its general validity and make the general rule more glaring. So far as the visible Christian institutions of our day are concerned, discipleship clearly is optional.”

Cornelius Plantinga has an insightful piece in the latest CT entitled “Dr. Willard’s Diagnosis: Why We Need to Really Die Before We Can Really Live.” It’s about Dallas Willard’s “mighty project” to encourage the church to take transformation seriously, to read the Sermon on the Mount as the way he really expects us to live (modern circumstances not withstanding).

Plantinga writes:

“According to Willard, the problem is that a lot of us nod amiably at these instructions for a big Christian life in God’s kingdom. Then we ignore them . . . .

“Dr. Willard’s diagnosis: A lot of us are doing Christianity at a putt-putt level. We want to be forgiven without following Jesus.

“We’re afraid to follow Jesus, because then we’d have to die and rise with him. . . . The truth is, we’re mildly attracted to his virtues, but we’re strongly attracted to our vices. We wouldn’t like to lose them because they please us, and the prospect of a significant life with Jesus doesn’t so much. Do we expect a new Christian life will just happen without our having to make inconvenient changes in how we live Monday to Sunday? If so, we are like people who want to be solvent and who also max out their credit cards. Or people who want to be sexually pure and who also bookmark porn sites. Or people who want to speak Japanese without all the tiresome study that’s normally required. . . .

“Willard shows us how to get this life — eloquently and enduringly. He tells us that learning to enjoy God forever and to particiipate in his big project is entirely like learning competitive baseball or the violin or Italian. God has put joy inside sports, music-making, and cross-cultural conversation, but the only way to get joy out of them is to work at them. You’ve got to listen to your teacher, imitate him or her, and then practice a lot. The disciple is not greater than his master. If Jesus needed to learn obedience, so will Jesus’ disciples. We will need to train our brain, heart, hand, eye, and tongue to get us in shape for robust Christian living. Eyebrows, too, when they still have a haughty spirit. Fortunately, says Willard, the essential disciplines for Jesus’ disciples have been taught and learned for centuries, including by our Lord himself.”

Published
by
Mike
on September 5, 2006
in Books and General
. 14 Comments

The surprise isn’t so much that Steve Irwin died — jabbed by a stingray — but that he evaded death so many times before. The thrill-seeker seemed to walk as close to the edge as possible: handling poisonous snakes, tackling crocodiles, etc. He was quite an entertainer.

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More from Mark Buchanan’s The Rest of God : Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath:

“One of the largest obstacles to true Sabbath-keeping is leisure. It is what cultural historian Witold Rybczynski calls ‘waiting for the weekend,’ where we see work as only an extended interlude between our real lives. Leisure is what Sabbath becomes when we no longer know how to sanctify time. Leisure is Sabbath bereft of the sacred. It is a vacation — literally, a vacating, an evacuation. As Rybczynski sees it, leisure has become despotic in our age, enslaving us and exhausting us, demanding from us more than it gives.

“We all know how unsatisfying mere leisure can be. We’ve all known what it’s like to return to the classroom or the workplace after a time spent in revelry or retreat, in high jinks or hibernation: typically, we go back weary and depressed, like jailbirds caught. The time away from work wasn’t time sanctified so much as time stolen, time when we escaped for a short-lived escapade.”

Isn’t the discovery of true Sabbath — genuine, restorative rest — one of our great challenges? Buchanan is right: everyone can just “live for the weekend.” But what does it mean to sanctify time in a way that brings joy, calmness, and levity?