The semester, that is. All that remains to be ruthlessly destroyed in a staccato burst of academic firepower are three final exams next week. This semester has not been overly kind to me, and I will show no mercy.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
It Is Finished - Almost
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
The Sparrow – Mary Doria Russell (Review), A-
Flash Review: Even in Space, God’s Sovereignty is Two-Edged
Genre: Science fiction with strong theological themes
Grade: A-
“In this world you will have tribulations,” said Jesus. Emilio Sandoz, the central figure in Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow, would expand Christ’s statement to include other planets. In a story with vivid alien landscapes and humorous characterization, Russell’s dark central theme stands out in stark relief: Loving God wholeheartedly does not make you immune to suffering—quite the opposite.
Russell uses her first novel to explore a theme that has plagued every human since Adam. If God is all-powerful and good, why do bad things happen? More to the point, Why do they happen to me? The Sparrow adds more weight to the question (if that’s possible) by creating a Job-like dimension, that is: Why does God seemingly destroy those who have “screwed up their courage to the sticking point,” as it were, and trusted him without reservation?
Russell brings this motif to life by convincingly describing experiences that most people, if they have attempted to know God at all, will readily (perhaps with a startled sense of recognition) grasp:
“Things kept happening, just like God was really there, making it all happen. And I heard myself saying Deus vult…but it still seemed like some kind of huge joke. And then one night, I just let myself consider the possibility that this is what it seems to be. That something extraordinary is happening. That God has something in mind for me. Besides sewer lines, I mean…”
“You know what’s the most terrifying thing about admitting that you’re in love?” she asked him. “You are just naked. You put yourself in harm’s way and lay down all your defenses. No clothes, no weapons. Nowhere to hide. Completely vulnerable. The only thing that makes it tolerable is to believe the other person loves you back and that you can truth him not to hurt you.”
He looked at her, astounded. “Yes. Exactly. That’s how it feels, when I let myself believe. Like I am falling in love and like I am naked before God. And it is terrifying… But it is starting to feel like I am being rude and ungrateful… To keep on doubting. That God loves me. Personally… Does that sound arrogant? Or just crazy? To think that God loves me.”
The Sparrow portrays Emilio Sandoz’s attempt to take God at his word and rest in the full implications of sovereignty: That a painful, repressed life has been molded according to God’s hidden purpose; that God’s love is strong, and can be trusted; that God will not betray us if we love him in return.
But what happens to such questions when faith is shaken, demolished? If not a sparrow can fall without God’s permission, why do good people drop like flies? Why does God shatter us in return for our trust? Is the universe a tragedy, a comedy, or a farce?
Mary Doria Russell engagingly gives these queries human form. It’s a tribute to her writing ability that her the central theme of her futuristic novel is not carried by the elements of space travel and aliens, much less hijacked by them. The dialogue is occasionally unbelievable, erring on the side of levity (thus the A-), but as Russell’s first novel, The Sparrow succeeds memorably, infusing science fiction with strongly-felt theology.
** Readers should be aware that The Sparrow contains strong sexual themes; they are not explicit or subversive; they are, however, integral to the plot. And in case you're wondering, this one is on the Master Book List.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Urban Christianity - Urban Missions
Jesus in the City
Part of me would like to pack up and leave for Northern Colorado, or even Wyoming, which my friend Matt says is a backward state even though he grew up there. Part of me really would. But I seem destined to live in the city and look for God’s glory seeping through cracks in graffitied walls, reflected in a mosaic of broken glass—and really, life is like this anyway. I guess in a way, the agrarian dream of rolling hills and a happy blue creek in every backyard died with Eden. Instead, we have to look more closely for God’s handprints at the scene of this crime, the Fall.
God doesn’t walk with us in the cool of the evening anymore, or maybe he does—but you have to pick out his voice from the hum and drone of traffic and the loud voices of people leaving the bars. God still speaks, but in our current world, his voice comes through over the static. We are surprised by shards of vision, sharp pieces of awe and wonder that break the surface of our souls when we least expect it.
Jesus lives in the cities these days, where life is complicated, and all the sweetness you could ever hope for in life is mixed together with pain. Beautiful artwork emerges slowly, quietly in this urban wreckage, but Christ is here, so we know that in the end the debris will fade away, the rubble of lives will be cleared off. People will be put back together. I don’t know just when this will take place but I’d like to be here to see it happen.
Monday, December 04, 2006
Is Mark Driscoll Emerging Church?
New Dynamic in the Conversation: "I'm More Emerging Than You Are"
When Mark DeVine picked up the current authoritative volume on Emerging Church, as endorsed by Scot McKnight, he was in for a surprise:
The first cold water to hit my face was the contention that Mars Hill Church, pastored by Mark Driscoll, does not meet the criteria for authentic emerging communities (Gibbs/Bolger identify 3 core patterns and 6 optional patterns). Gibbs and Bolger recognize Mars Hill as a Gen-X church, aimed at a cultural and demographic slice of a given community. Mars Hill, like its “conservative Baptist, seeker, new-paradigm, purpose-driven predecessors; only the surface techniques changed(p. 30)”- they remain essentially modern.
This is puzzling, because...
If Mars Hill in Seattle, Redeemer Presbyterian in NYC, and The Journey in St. Louis are being found relevant by hundreds and thousands of urban twenty-somethings today; that’s Generation Y and younger, nicht wahr? And what does that say about the emerging assessment of what is relevant and what is not? Like Bultmann and especially Paul Tillich, once you set yourself up as the prophetic perceivers of current and future felt-relevance, don’t the numbers matter then? What is wrong with these Gen-Y’s who we are told (unlike the Gen-Xers) are thoroughly postmodern. Why can’t they see that Mars Hill, Redeemer, and The Journey are irrelevant to them! Frustrating.
I haven't read Emerging Churches by Gibbs and Bolger, but the prospect of setting up parameters around "emerging church" proper seems like a problematic one, given the movement's porous nature. Also, as DeVine points out: When "relevance" is your justification for existence, assigning outsider status to guys like Mark Driscoll and Tim Keller is an unusual call.
C.S. Lewis on Unnecessary Gifts
As Christmas draws closer, C.S. Lewis reminds me of the beauty of unasked-for and "unnecessary" presents:
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather, it is one of those things that gives value to survival.
In case you're wondering, coffee, books and basketball also fall in this category.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
The Gospel Is a True Myth
And The Apostle Paul Knew It
Paul says that he was, up close and personal, pretty unremarkable—the kind of guy you walk by in the grocery store and half-turn, assuming he is an employee because of his servile manner (2 Cor. 10:1). We, of course, have our doubts. Probably he was just being modest? This is Paul we’re talking about. I mean PAUL THE APOSTLE.
Everyone knows that Paul took the gospel to most of the known world, following Christ’s death. If anything, he should have his own action figures, not these self-derisive turns of phrase. Or at least these are the kind of things you assume, until you read 1 Corinthians closely. In chapter 2, Paul speaks with almost painful candor:
And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God (emphasis mine—Paul didn’t add those italics). –1 Corinthians 2:1-5
Wait, Paul. You’re saying you didn’t use your oratory skills to make the Corinthians hang on your every word? You didn’t make their hearts drop like roller coasters with your dramatic pauses? You didn’t jingle-jangle their spines like wind-chimes in a stiff sea breeze? I’ll bet your ratings suffered. Still, you must have had your reasons…
And sure enough, when I read this passage more slowly, a surprising dynamic begins to appear. Paul talks as if his shaky speeches were, in fact, a gift to the Corinthians—a safeguard against them taking away the wrong thing from his preaching: a taste of Greco-Roman speechifying glam instead of the soul-stopping truth of the gospel.
Earlier in 1 Corinthians, Paul spells out the paradoxical logic of his approach even more clearly:
For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. - 1 Corinthians 1:17-18
He is saying, in effect, that in Corinth, there was a very real danger of drowning the foolish-but-true “myth” of Christ in distracting eloquence. Paul is saying that the gospel is a bluntly powerful story—one that does not lend itself well to copious amounts of decoration. What matters is the shape of this true story, not the bows and wrapping paper.
What Paul says about his own presentation of the gospel reminds me of what C.S. Lewis says about George MacDonald's writing.
The texture of his writing as a whole is undistinguished, at times fumbling… What he does best is fantasy—fantasy that hovers between the allegorical and the mythopoeic. And this, in my opinion, he does better than any man… If the story is anywhere embodied in words, that is almost an accident. What really delights and nourishes me is a particular pattern of events, which would equally delight and nourish if it had reached me by some medium which involved no words at all… And I find this to be true of all such stories… In myth the imagined events are the body and something inexpressible is the soul. – C.S. Lewis, Introduction to George MacDonald’s Phantastes
I’ve read MacDonald’s books, and they lack the fluency of expression that makes a story spread like wildfire, climbing bestseller lists, appearing in movie theaters. MacDonald’s books have never been “popular”—but the mythical beauty of his characters run deep and I’ve found them very, very hard to forget. The gospel, I think, is just this kind of a story—with the central qualification that it is true.
Paul knew this, and therefore he would not adorn the gospel with cavalier rhetoric. He saw what we often miss—that the gospel of Christ is not dignified or improved by Hollywood production values or consumerist packaging. Words, of course, are necessary. But at heart, the gospel’s power does not lie in the words used to convey it, but in the startling shape of the story itself.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
What Hath Blogging to do with Seminary? (& Active Learning)
At Sacred Journey, the question is posed: "What do you think is the proper posture for a student in seminary: passive receptor or interactive learner?" The author (whose name I didn't see on the post, perhaps because his seminary has owned up to "monitoring student blogs") elaborates:
During my time at Westminster Theological Seminary i have been presented with two different models of the ideal seminary student, each presented by different professors at the same institution. Some professors have encouraged me to think and interact creatively and critically with the material they are teaching. My challenges and questions are taken seriously, and I am not only permitted but often encouraged to pursue new ideas generated from lectures and reading, even if eventually they sometimes lead nowhere. Such journeys are seen as important components of my learning.
Other professors have stated or implied that my chief role as a seminary student is to be a passive receptor, diligently soaking in the knowledge receptus of my seminary’s tradition. One professor in particular explicilty stated that seminary was most definitely not a time to pursue any creative or critical thinking, rather it is a time to soak in as much as possible from one’s learned professors. Indeed, when one has the opportunity to learn from teachers of the caliber of those we have here at Westminster, the call to “shut up and take notes” can seem like a wise course! But does it promote learning?
Upon reading this article, I resisted the temptation to click away in frustrated silence. Instead, I left a comment:
I think that the degree to which I’ve enjoyed & benefited from seminary has been largely due to professors who are comfortable with a give-and-take dynamic, and invite students to do further learning on their own. The degree to which seminary makes me want to mutter silent oaths has to do with with professors who think that learning means stamping an imprint of their own ministry preferences onto quiescent minds...
Anyone else want to weigh in on the question of active vs. passive learning modes? Seems like blogs are square in the middle of the question, if you're a person who prefers to "learn" without putting your brain on pause. I wonder if anyone monitors student blogs at my seminary...
Friday, December 01, 2006
Urban Winter in Kansas City (Weekend Photo)
Yesterday Kansas City got deluged by a three-phase storm: Rain, followed by sleet, followed by snow. Once the snow started falling, it became a beautifully overcast day, and in the late afternoon, I walked two blocks through huge, swirling flakes to grab a package from our apartment office, soaking in (literally) every minute of the trip.
Lindsay, Aidan and I spent the evening inside with hot drinks, candles, games and music, the storm just inches away outside our brick walls. The snow kept on coming down as darkness fell.
As a result, school was canceled today, which meant I stayed home and worked on my term paper, a research piece on Urban Missions. Better conditions for such claustrophobic activity can hardly be imagined; I discovered that my friend Andrew is similarly engaged.
If anyone else is slaving away over a final essay, give a shout-out so we can all empathize. I'm just grateful for the snow here in KC - gives me a good reason to sit around, writing, inside. As of this post, I'm about 33% finished... I'm hoping for more snow.
The Apostle Paul Pays a Visit
Showcasing a really admirable imagination, Paul Helm posted this surprisingly touching account of A Christmas Visitor.
Resisting the temptation to pick up the camcorder, Angela brought extra things for the table, and we settled him down there. Though it wasn't easy, because we discovered that he limped rather badly. He was also reluctant to let go of the scrolls, but we were eventually able to persuade him. He muttered his appreciation, and was about to say something else, but when he saw and smelled the food his appetite seemed to get the better of him. We tried the 'business as usual' ploy, as if Apostles were regular visitors to our home. Our visitor had to eat slowly because of some missing front teeth. The gaps gave him a rather comic appearance. Alice looked him over and began to giggle. He loved the turkey, though the knife and fork were difficult. He kept peering at how we were managing the food. Angela quietly passed him a spoon. Wine? The plum pudding was a bit rich for him, I think. Cheese and biscuits (with olives) were a great success. More? Why not! (I was relieved that that stuff I remembered about him knowing how to be abased and how to abound seemed to be true to life.)
I love it when theology is presented creatively, and Paul has always been a hero.
New Book Search Engine: BooksPrice.com
I recently came across a newly-designed book search engine, Booksprice.com, and thought it was worth mentioning for several features I found useful:
- A real cross-site search function: When you search for a title, Booksprice.com pulls up not only the typical monster book sellers (Amazon, Half.com, etc.), but many of the smaller book sites as well. Contrary to what you would expect, the mom & pop sellers sometimes have the lowest price.
- Speed: I think the site navigation could be simplified slightly, but you don't spend any time cooling your heels while you wait for results.
- Interface: While it's not essential for a shopping site to be good-looking, this one is. Maybe because I only buy good-looking books, this seems somehow fitting.
- Downsides? The only thing that comes to mind is the absence of a way to find a particular book edition when you search. If you want, say, the '90 version of P.D. James' A Taste for Death as opposed to the glossy new one, you'd have to dig around at the specific sites that Booksprice.com links to.
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