This book looks interesting. Just read an interview with the authors in which they say the following:

“For some years now, the church in North America has been terribly confused on this issue of relevancy. We thought that relevancy meant being like the surrounding culture, having a style and an outreach that would be very familiar and comfortable to those outside the church. The pursuit of relevancy sought to reduce the barriers that would keep people from coming to church. In many ways, we have been successful in this, and ironically, this is part of what has plunged us into our current state of irrelevancy… We are in grave danger of being simply ignored.”

“Increased attendance, when it is a byproduct of an authentic work of God, is a wonderful thing to be desired and celebrated. But it is an unhelpful and inappropriate thing to have as a goal.” Faithfulness to the pursuit of developing an authentic expression of a transformed and redemptive community should be our goal.”

Order your copy here (Amazon.com|.ca)

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Find out by downloading The Millennials — the first major investigative work on America’s largest generation from a Christian perspective — forFREE now through June 20, 2011 at any of the following e-tailers:

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There is a review of Tim Challies’s new book “The Next Story” over at my other blog. Here’s an excerpt:

Like many of us who are not true digital natives, Challies is a fully assimilated digital immigrant struggling to manage the limitless opportunities this new digital world provides.

I have read a lot about technology and social media. From Neil Postman to, more recently, Nicholas Carr to Marshall McLuhan’s seminal works, I’ve read a lot.

I have also been a user of social media for close to 20 years, stretching back to the early 90s and that wonderful forerunner of the Internet known as the BBS. I even do some consulting and speaking on the topics of technology and social media.

I mention all of this to make a point: I have read a lot about technology and have long embraced the technologies that Tim Challies writes about in “The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion” and I still learned a lot from this book.

_____________________

Read the rest here.

The “other blog” that features only my longer pieces of writing, some of which have been published in print and others that are waiting to be published. The post frequency is about once a week. So, if that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for…

Go and take a look at the new site here.
You can subscribe by email by clicking here.
You can subscribe by RSS by clicking here.
The Facebook group for the new blog is here.

Enjoy!

“Do you own technology or does technology own you?”

I’m really looking forward to reading the new book (The Next Story) by my friend Tim Challies. Below is a trailer produced by his publisher for the book. It is available for pre-order through Amazon.com and Westminster.

Look for an interview with Tim here at The Ascent to Truth in the next month or so.

(watch)

I picked up this old BSG paperback and gave it a read over Christmas weekend. I enjoyed it more than I expected to. I watched the first season of the new BSG but never really got into it. This book is making me reconsider.

From Wikipedia on the premise of BSG:

…in a distant part of our galaxy, a human civilization lives on a group of planets known as the Twelve Colonies, to which they have migrated from their ancestral homeworld of Kobol. The Twelve Colonies have warred for decades with a cybernetic race known as the Cylons, whose goal is the extermination of the human race.

The Cylon Empire offers peace to the humans, which proves a ruse. With the aid of a human traitor named Baltar, the Cylons carry out a massive attack on the home planets of the Twelve Colonies and on the Colonial Fleet of starships that protect them. These attacks devastate the Colonial Fleet, lay waste to the Colonies, and destroy their populations.

Scattered survivors flee into outer space aboard available spaceships. Of the entire Colonial battle fleet, only the Battlestar Galactica, a gigantic battleship and spacecraft carrier (analogous to an aircraft carrier), appears to have survived the Cylon conflagration…

Under the leadership of Commander Adama, the Galactica and the pilots of “Viper” fighters lead a fugitive fleet of survivors in search of the fabled thirteenth colony known as Earth.

Along with some very conventional plot lines and stereotypical “written for the screen” scenes, there are some rich sections and interesting turns. In an early section, the Cylons are offering peace and Commander Adama is skeptical: “Men fought wars, cheered the coming of peace, then always seemed to locate another war to keep the peace from becoming too comforting.”

Short sections labeled “From the Adama Journals” are interspersed between straightforward plot narrative sections. These journal excerpts provide the richest writing in the book, but they are few – too few in my opinion. Here is one example:

“My father told me as a sort of valedictory when he handed me command of the Galactica that the best advice he could give me was that, when everything appeared to be in place and everything was placid, it was time to consider what was absent.

The questioning of the apparent reality, and the ability to add the absent to the visible, was a prime requisite for any commander. I didn’t think much of the advice at the time. Later, when I had to study a star map and plot out dangers before sending in attack craft, I knew exactly what the old man meant.

When I dealt with apparently docile friendly creatures, I learned it was imperative to listen for what was not being said. At the time when peace was a most tempting reality, it was necessary for me to question the absence of the most important parties to the agreement.

I can’t even look at a painting without wondering what the artist eliminated from the original landscape or model. It seems that, except at that rare point when an act or set of events reaches a definite conclusion. I’m always at odds with what I see, with the apparent reality, and am nervously looking for something to fill in the parts I can’t see yet.”

From another section, some ruminations on the idea of paradise:

“I used to imagine paradise when I was a kid. While I don’t remember very many details of my image of the place, I know there were lots of toy airplanes and most everything was blue. My more adult visions of paradise put me in the center with all I wished for available on call…

Our paradises tend to be solipsistic dreams in which there is either more of everything we think we love and need, or we are awarded gifts of all that’s usually denied us. Seems to me he point is that, in all our paradises, we don;t pay heed to the slaves who are the rest of the population in our imaginary lands.

A paradise, which should suggest expansion of human potential, is usually at reduction, generally to the state of inertia. People lounge in paradise a lot more than they do in life, or even want to do…

We humans have an unfortunate tendency to welcome traps if we can find some way to call them paradises… And we can be content if we don’t have to think of the slaves or the inertia, so long as there are plenty of toy airplanes and everything is blue.”

BSG was a good read and a nice diversion that turned out to have some value. Read it if you like science fiction or interplanetary politics.

I have a review copy of this book coming in the mail. Can’t wait to dig in!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KCply-HqWM&feature=player_embedded

An interview with author Eric Metaxas:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GHHg0QsclA&feature=related

I’m going to put a few quotes here this week from Mark Steyn’s book “America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It”.  Amazon’s product description reads as follows:

“In this, his first major book, Mark Steyn–probably the most widely read, and wittiest, columnist in the English-speaking world–takes on the great poison of the twenty-first century: the anti-Americanism that fuels both Old Europe and radical Islam. America, Steyn argues, will have to stand alone. The world will be divided between America and the rest; and for our sake America had better win.”

In case you didn’t know, I am Canadian. Many Canadians are quite anti-American. I am not. I have a cousin, who used to be Canadian and is now a US citizen, that now hates Canada. This is a tad irritating and tends to drive even MORE people to hate America which, unfortunately, is the goal of some Americans. I’m not sure where the lack of mutual respect is greater – there or here.

Anyway, here’s the first quote from the book. Feel free to discuss. I am pulling interesting quotes, not necessarily ones I’m supporting, although there is much truth to this one:

“All dominant powers are hated – Britain was, and Rome – but they’re usually hated for the right reasons. The fanatical Muslims despise America because it’s all lap-dancing and gay porn; the secular Europeans despise America because it’s all born-again Christians hung up on abortion; the anti-Semites despise America because it’s controlled by Jews.

Too Jewish, too Christian, too godless, America is George Orwell’s Room 101: whatever your bugbear you will find it therein; whatever you’re against, America is a prime example of it.”

If you don’t get the “George Orwell’s Room 101″ reference, read this.

I’ve written about my dad before and someday, when it’s time to write my memoirs, there will be a lot more. Here’s the 4th of 5 of my favorite things about my dad.

My dad taught me that it was normal to have 1000 books and be reading all the time. I still think it’s normal.

I grew up around books. Books in the bathroom, books in the kitchen, books in the living room – floor to ceiling shelves of books.

Dad and I treat each other’s libraries as our own. We buy each other books, lend each other books, and generally don’t worry too much about returning them on time – if ever. After all, someday all of his books will be mine – unless I die first I guess. (If that sounds morbid or insensitive to you, you should know that it doesn’t to either of us, although our wives are not big fans of that conversation.)

There are some books I don’t like – I call these “anti-books” and I wrote about them earlier this year in a post called “Naysaying and the Naysaying Naysayers Who Naysay“.

To answer the question I get every time people see my library: no, I haven’t read every book in my library in its entirety. I have read parts of every one and I’ve read many all the way through.

I think of books as knowledge containers to which I add value by reading, noting, highlighting, underlining, and dog-earing. A book is not a conquest or a to-do item. Some books aren’t worth reading all the way through but have a few excellent chapters.

Dad and I made a pact a couple of years ago to preach each other’s funerals. It didn’t dawn on us until later that day that only one of us will be able to do it.

I do love books, and I mention them often.. like here and here.

Other posts in this series:
1 – The Value of Acting Like a Child
2 – Do-it-yourself-edness Is Next to Godliness
3 – Pick Up Your Things or Have Them Destroyed – Your Choice!

I don’t mind naysaying; in fact, on occasion, I engage in it. There is certainly plenty of it going on and in this series of three posts I want to (1) examine how it works, (2) make some observations about  the “anti-book”, and then (3) offer some principles or rules of engagement for dealing with books and authors that fall into banned or naysay status.

Part 1 : How It Works

Naysaying is not inherently bad, but second-hand naysaying is. This unique breed of herd mentality causes those who engage in it to buy into the following line of reasoning when asked about certain books: “Someone I trust has read this and they say it’s bad so I don’t need to waste my time reading it. I can say it’s bad with confidence. I can even quote the bad parts of it in order to deter others from reading it.”

An entire culture has grown around this mentality with it’s own industry of blogs and books and speakers.

Here’s how it works:

1. Send a Scout

One or more trusted scouts read the source material. These are sometimes seen as heroically risking their sanity and spiritual well-being in the process. They return as heralds to report their findings. If as expected in the view of the scouts, the book contains some error, then everyone else is warned not to read it – which may indeed, it must be said, be very good advice.

This has some authority when the scout is a rank-and-file blogger or Pastor, but near absolute authority when he is one of the mini-popes of today’s evangelical culture.

Caveat: Scouts are important. You can’t read every book that’s published and sometimes must rely on reviews to shorten your stack of “must read” books. (Caveat 2: Some of today’s mini-popes achieve that status despite their efforts against it.)

2. Inform the Shepherds

These mini-popes are usually more than willing to take up the task, claiming to be “protecting the flock” or doing the hard work of discernment. They may in fact be doing this, but too often it is an effort to create a system of reliance in which they acquire more power and influence from Pastors and other church leaders who are increasingly willing to forsake their own study and thinking; they make disciples, but whether these disciples are their own or belong to Jesus is sometimes in dispute.

Caveat: Informing other shepherds is necessary. Being a Pastor can be a solitary experience, but surely in some way we are in this together and should assist each other in avoiding error whenever possible.

3. Inform the Flock

Usually the scout will publish his findings on a blog and that writing is passed around among the second-hand naysayers as damning proof against an author they themselves have never read.  It is also passed around as a sort of gospel tract, ensuring the recipient that reading the scout’s report will correct their misguided theology. A chorus of condemnation soon follows comprised mostly of people who haven’t read the book but want to appear as if they have.

Caveat: Informing the flock is also necessary, but I do question how much influence a remote shepherd should have over a local flock. Rather than co-opting the criticisms as your own, at least point people toward the review of the trusted scout, if not to the source material itself.

4. Publish a Book

In the next step of naysaying evolution a book  appears (like this one for example) – a scrapbook of sorts – that claims to be authoritative on all matters relating to the one(s) who have been issued “nay” status. I call this the “anti” book. This book is seen as “the One Book to rule them all” and is used to surgically dissect current candidates for heresy.

The problem is, the book contains only the most inflammatory quotes from the other books and arranges them in such a way that all context is lost.

Caveat: Keep the book to yourself. It’s a cheap way of profiting off the work of others and is, in too many cases, outright deception.

Implications

I’m not buying into this practice. If you’re going to tell me about the content of a book and then tell me not to read it, two things will happen: (1) I will ask you if you have read the work itself. If you haven’t, come back and talk to me once you have. If you have read it, and you’ve given trustworthy advice in the past, I might just not bother reading the book.  However, even if that is the case, (2) I will not affirm or pass along your observations until/unless I have read the book for myself. I may point others to your review but I will not co-opt your objections.

Fair enough?

Granted, this is difficult to do. It is also hazardous if you are determined to continue as a member in good standing of a second-hand naysayers club. The moment you begin to read source materials instead relying solely on the scout’s report your friends begin to murmur, wondering why the word of the trusted scout is good enough for them but not for you.

You may hear whispers in the foyer at church: “Does he doubt his faith? Why is he playing with fire? Is he still a Christian?”

This is uncomfortable enough, but when you return from the source material reading excursion and draw attention to numerous good points in the source material that the scout neglected to mention… well, it’s enough to get a man’s soul prayed for quite earnestly.

Tomorrow: (click here to read)—> Dealing With the “Anti-Book”

After watching Collision, I suspected that I might have found a new hero in Douglas Wilson, and indeed I have. Solid, opinionated, clever, and  intelligent, Wilson’s online writings are the ones I least frequently skip.

For example, here are 7 tips he recently offered other writers about reading. I’m sure that he would agree with me though that there is a danger of “Intellectual Obesity.”

Below are the highlights. Stroll on over to Blog & Mablog to read more.

1. The first thing is that writers should in fact be voracious readers.
We live in a narcisstic age, which means that many want to have the praise that comes from having written, without the antecedent labor of actually writing, or the antecedent labor before that of having read anything.

2. Read widely.
Reading shapes your voice, and if you want a wide, experienced voice, you have to get out more.

3. Read like a reader, and not like someone cramming for a test.
If you try to wring every book out like it was a washcloth full of information, all you will do is slow yourself down to a useless pace. Go for total tonnage, and read like someone who will forget most of it.

4. Read like a lover of books, and not like someone who wants to be seen as knowledgable, or well-read, or scholarly.
Read because you want to, not because you need to. Actually, you need to as well, but you need to want to. You also need to want to need to, but I am rapidly getting out of my depth.

5. Pace yourself in your reading.
A little bit every day really adds up. If you only read during sporadic reading jags, the fits and starts will not get you anywhere close to the amount of reading you will need to do.

6. As a general pattern, read quality, and go slumming occasionally to remind yourself why quality matters, and what quality is.

7. Read boring books on writing mechanics.
Read grammars, dictionaries, writers’ memoirs, books of proverbs, books of cliches, books on how to write dialogue, books on how not to write dialogue (“I dropped my toothpaste!” he said crestfallenly.), and books about finding good agents and how to blow away the readers of query letters. Writing is a vocation, and there is a body of professional literature out there — which is uneven in quality, just like every other kind of book. Read a lot of it anyway.

(Yes, Kevin Abell, this is aimed at you)

I bought a big nerdy present for myself for my birthday yesterday: I ordered this book by James Davison Hunter: To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World.

Are you nerdy enough to read it together with me and discuss it chapter by chapter? If so, order it at Amazon or CBD.

I ordered it after reading this interview and the following endorsements by Charles Taylor and Tim Keller:

“How should Christians act in the world? The dominant answer in America today seems to be: through politics. But the major model of Christian political action, visible most obviously but not exclusively in the Christian Right, has been a politics fuelled by resentment and a sense of victimization, actuated by a strong will to power, and a propensity to demonize its opponents.

This politics is a capitulation to the worst elements of the contemporary culture it claims to be redeeming. Hunter offers an acute end penetrating analysis of this paradoxical and distressing phenomenon, and carefully charts an alternative course for contemporary Christians, a form of ‘faithful presence’ within culture and society. The book is brimful of insightful challenges to our conventional understanding of things, and of inspiring suggestions for a new departure.”

– Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age

“No writer or thinker has taught me as much as James Hunter has about this all-important and complex subject of how culture is changed.”

–Tim Keller, author of The Reason For God

Publisher’s description of the book:

The call to make the world a better place is inherent in the Christian belief and practice. But why have efforts to change the world by Christians so often failed or gone tragically awry? And how might Christians in the 21st century live in ways that have integrity with their traditions and are more truly transformative?

In To Change the World, James Davison Hunter offers persuasive–and provocative–answers to these questions. Hunter begins with a penetrating appraisal of the most popular models of world-changing among Christians today, highlighting the ways they are inherently flawed and therefore incapable of generating the change to which they aspire.

Because change implies power, all Christian eventually embrace strategies of political engagement. Hunter offers a trenchant critique of the political theologies of the Christian Right and Left and the Neo-Anabaptists, taking on many respected leaders, from Charles Colson to Jim Wallis and Stanley Hauerwas.

Hunter argues that all too often these political theologies worsen the very problems they are designed to solve. What is really needed is a different paradigm of Christian engagement with the world, one that Hunter calls “faithful presence” – an ideal of Christian practice that is not only individual but institutional; a model that plays out not only in all relationships but in our work and all spheres of social life. He offers real-life examples, large and small, of what can be accomplished through the practice of “faithful presence.”

Such practices will be more fruitful, Hunter argues, more exemplary, and more deeply transfiguring than any more overtly ambitious attempts can ever be. Written with keen insight, deep faith, and profound historical grasp, To Change the World will forever change the way Christians view and talk about their role in the modern world.

Interested in reading it together and discussing it online? Order it at Amazon or CBD.

I’ve never been much interested in Al Mohler. I’ve tried reading him before and listened to his radio program for a while and wasn’t really impressed with either one. There’s something about most Southern Baptists that strikes me as somehow foreign – like they’re a sub-culture in America. I guess they are…

So it was a bit of a surprise to find myself quite interested in Mohler’s chapter in Sex and the Supremacy of Christ called “Homosexual Marriage as a Challenge to the Church: Biblical and Cultural Reflections.” In that chapter he says this:

“As Christians, we are charged with the difficult task of compassionate truth-telling… Compassionate truth-telling requires the church to speak from its deepest convictions while demonstrating the love of Christ – speaking truth that will be heard as a hard message while demonstrating the love of Christ through the very act of telling the truth.

Compassionate truth-telling means, not only the accurate presentation of biblical truth, but the prayerful and urgent hope that the individuals to whom we speak will be transformed by that truth and respond to the grace of God in Jesus Christ.”

- Albert Mohler in Sex and the Supremacy of Christ (p. 108)

I feel the same way about Russel Moore. To look at him and listen to him all I hear is suit-and-tie Southern Baptist, but when I read some of the things he writes (like “Jesus Has AIDS” for example), my mind’s eye sees a more radical man.

Lesson learned: Don’t judge a book by its cover; don’t judge a man by his suit.

I didn’t pay more than $5 for any of these.

COMMENTARY
Philip Edgcumbe Hughes – A Commentary on Hebrews
I always take a chance on commentaries. Turned out to be a good bargain at $3.99 according to bestcommentaries.com

JOURNALS / MEMOIRS / BIOGRAPHY
Henri J.M. Nouwen – Sabbatical Journey

Randy Pausch – The Last Lecture

Lauren St. John – Hardcore Troubadour: The Life and Near Death of Steve Earle
This is the one I’m most motivated to read at the moment. Unfortunately it’s also the thickest at 400 pages. I love music bio, especially of artists I’ve been influenced by, and Earle is certainly one of those.

Andre Dubus – Meditations From a Movable Chair

Matthew Paul Turner – Churched: One Kid’s Journey toward God Despite a Holy Mess
I love reading memoirs. This looks like a decent one and draws comparisons to Anne Lamott, but after reading the first bit of it it seems to try a bit too hard.

CHURCH / JESUS
Mark Galli – Jesus Mean and Wild

Henri J.M. Nouwen – The Wounded Healer

Dino Rizzo – Servolution: Starting a Church Revolution Through Serving
Certainly the worst book title of the bunch but looked good enough to take a chance on anyway.

Max MacLean – Unleashing the Word: Rediscovering the Public Reading of Scripture
I’m looking forward to giving this book and DVD set to my Saturday night service team

Scot McKnight – The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible
I already have this and I reviewed it, but the review copy got pretty marked up and it gets lent out quite a bit. So I thought having a fresh first ed. Hardback for $5 was a pretty good idea

Scot McKnight – Fasting

Francis Chan – Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit
Runner Up: Best Cover Art

OTHER
De Graaf, Wann, and Naylor – Affluenza

Philip Yancey – A Skeptic’s Guide to Faith

Skye Jethani – The Divine Commodity: Discovering Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity
Winner: Best Cover Art

I also picked up one ESV New Testament and one NLT “New Believer’s Bible”. I do this as often as I see them so I have some on hand when I need to give one away.

A pattern is emerging: every time I read a book by Rob Bell I’m reminded of other books that tackle the same subject matter but in a more complete and engrossing way.

Bell’s latest is no different. Drops Like Stars is an art book about suffering and creativity that leaves you wishing he’d say more about each subject – that he’d use some of that white space to say something. Yes, I understand the white space is a statement in itself…

But Drops Like Stars takes Bell’s proclivity for white space to a new level. He has finally reached the tipping point and released a book with more white space than print space. The next book might be a collection of completely blank pages. He could be the John Cage of the book world…

Bell’s weakness (which masquerades as strength) is that he says things and presents himself in a way that communicates depth while saying and writing things that aren’t actually that deep. This seems impressive at first but eventually becomes a bit tedious. And it may work in person, as a performance (no negative connotation intended) but on the page it just comes off as shallow – or worse, as false depth.

The book is visually beautiful and this is par for the course with Bell. You can read this book in about 30 minutes, but if you have 30 minutes to invest in a book about art, pick up Madeleine l’Engle’s Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art and read the first few chapters.  Bell’s book might act as a good trailer for Walking on Water, but standing alone it has very little to say.

I never read other reviews of books I intend to review until I’ve written my own, but I always read a few after I’m done to see if other reviewers saw the book the same way.

From Publisher’s Weekly:

“While Bell’s books Velvet Elvis and Sex God received generally strong reviews, this effort to understand the relationship between suffering and creativity feels superficial and overly self-conscious.”

“Bell’s spare prose lacks original insights into age-old theodicy questions. Although the design and layout are first-rate, $35 is a lot of money for a 160-page book that is mostly white space.”

Customer reviews at Amazon:

“…you’d think, with the size and price, you’re going to get a lot of Rob Bell goodness…think again, the pages are so large but the words are only printed in the middle – thus wasting entire forests of paper.

Which is ironic seeing as Bell’s last book was all about how we abuse this planet and need to take care of God’s creation.”

I stand with the crowd on this one.

In my quest to immerse myself in the life and teachings of Christ I intend to read and watch a few works that don’t synchronize with the Gospel accounts.

One such work is The Gospel According to the Son by Norman Mailer. As you can guess from the title, this is a fictional first-person account of Jesus’ own life. The Jesus who narrates this account is attempting to correct falsehoods, exaggerations, and half-truths included in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in order to enlarge their own folds.

After such a start, there is not much to be said for the rest of the book. The Jesus offered in Mailer’s narrative is a doubting, sinning, slightly above-average human with some suspicion that he might be divine. The Jesus offered us here is in many ways the opposite of the one presented in the synoptic Gospels; he has traces of the divine but is mostly human.

God is pictured as limited in His love, and if superior to Satan at all, only in that he is slightly more cunning.

The book was a bit if a labor to finish. It is certainly undeserving of the accolades included on its cover: “A staggering work”, Bold… daring”, “A triumph”.

It is none of the above – not in craft or literary quality. It is rather some parts of the Gospel texts interspersed with Mailer’s conjecture about what happened before and after.

And I suppose that not really unique; we all do this to an extent. What we fill in with conjecture merely betrays our biases.

Reading “A Million Miles…” is like talking to an old friend, one you used to love and spend a lot of time with but for whatever reason haven’t seen for a long time. This friend used to captivate you and you would enjoy being in their presence so much you wondered if you were smothering them (sometimes you probably were). But in the years between then and now you’ve forgotten just how warm and exciting being with them was.

When I sat down to read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life I had fond memories of Donald Miller’s surprise best-seller from a few years ago, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality (see my blog posts about it here). By the time I was 20 pages in, I remembered BLJ as that old friend, one that I forgotten I loved so much. One that made me laugh out loud in public places, despite my best efforts to appear completely sane. One that had changed my life in a few ways.

Review continued below…

And it makes sense that I was so reminded of BLJ because “A Million Miles…” is mostly about BLJ. It’s about the book, and how Miller’s life was changed by the success of the book and how – which is most exciting for an artist – his life was positively affected by his own art.

The best thing about this book and BLJ is that they throw you into a torrent of self-reflection with the strangest of motivation. There are no commands here, no guilt trips, just Don Miller taking a brutally honest look at his own life and writing about it. And somehow this inspires us to do the same. We see the character making progress, we see his life improving as he very intentionally crafts his own story and we know that this is also possible for us.

“Perhaps one of the reasons I’ve avoided having a clear ambition is that the second you stand up and point toward a horizon, you realize how much there is to lose.” – Donald Miller

Searching For God Knows What

Memoirs are such fun to read, and when Miller is writing in memoir mode he is among the greats. When not in memoir mode, however, he can come across as simply another disgruntled Evangelical, as was clearly evident in Searching for God Knows What (blog post here).

In truth, the same theology runs through all of his writing, but in the form of a memoir it seems less agitating. Much like any other friend who has theology I disagree with, in conversational form it is so much more tolerable – actually, it’s enjoyable. It’s like we’re sitting in a room together discussing our differences, each willing to hear the other, each convincing the other on some points, and being convinced on others.

I was pleased to read on p222 Don say “I didn’t say these things, and I’m glad I didn’t, because those are the things people who have never been married say.” Another issue with “Searching For God…” was that he kept saying unwise things that were exactly what only an unmarried non-parent would say. In the margins of my copy of that book I wrote things like “Hey Don, get back to me once you have children and let me know if you still think this is true…”.

A Million Miles…

I digress… “A Million Miles…” is not just an entertaining read, it calls you to a brutal honestly about your life. In the language of the book itself, it calls you to write and then live a better story with your life, while acknowledging that there is a Writer above you also writing your story:

“So as I was writing my novel, and as my characters did what they wanted, I became more and more aware that somebody was writing me. So I started listening to the Voice, or rather, I started calling it the Voice and admitting there was a Writer. I admitted something other than me was showing a better way. And when I did this, I realized the Voice, the Writer who was not me, was trying to make a better story, a more meaningful series of experiences I could live through.” – Donald Miller

Fellow writers/authors will love this book because so much of it is about the process of writing. Others may find his analogies of God as a writer/literary being a bit of a stretch. They are a bit of a stretch, but often, as in this case, the stretch makes the art more powerful.

If you enjoy Miller’s writing and would like to read more in the same vein, his writing is reminiscent of authors like Anne Lamott (read: “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith“) and Madeleine L’Engle (read: “Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage” or “The Irrational Season“) in all the best ways.

One other byproduct of reading Miller’s work: it inspires me to write, which is why this review is getting so long! Well, I reviewed BLJ in six lengthy posts, so one post for this book is actually pretty short.

***SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW IF YOU INTEND TO READ THE BOOK***

I have been a fan of Douglas Coupland’s books for a long time. The first one I read was “Girlfriend in a Coma”. In that book, I learned about and began to love the Couplandisms that define his novels.

Then there was a period of 5 or so years where I read none of his books. Having read two in the last 6 months, I am left to wonder if the quality of his writing has taken a turn for the worse or whether I’ve simply grown out of a phase. I will probably need to re-read “Girlfriend in a Coma” to figure this out.

The main weakness evident in The Gum Thief is that all of the characters seem to be too much like the author himself. Coupland’s insights about the modern age are indeed witty and interesting, but they seem to surface on the lips of all his characters.

In The Gum Thief, this could be passed off as a weakness of the Roger, the narrator and amateur writer we later find out has written the book. But if you’ve read more of Coupland’s work you’ll see that those similarities originate with the author who is pulling the strings of the amateur writer who narrates much of the book.

Five minutes later: after reading a review of “The Gum Thief” in the NYT. I am pleased to see that reviewer detected the same thing:

“While ‘The Gum Thief’ aims for a polyphonic effect, its characters often sound disconcertingly similar. The prose and arch banter of ‘Glove Pond’ are distinct, but outside it the characters’ voices and preoccupations tend to blur. ‘I woke up every morning with my stomach clenching. Why? Because I felt like a useless member of society, and I could feel the ghosts of the people who built the Brady Bunch suburb surrounding me.’ That’s Bethany’s mother, DeeDee, writing, but her tone of hip, cosmic weariness… could belong to virtually anyone in these pages.”

As always,  there are a number of quotable sections in the book:

Upon first meeting the woman who would become his wife (and later ex wife) Roger says:

“She was the same age as me, but without the mileage. She looked like Jane, from the Dick and Jane books, grown up, apple-cheeked, healthy and itching to correct my grammar.”

Bethany describing her family:

“Imagine a group of people even more annoying than mimes, with the added bonus of loud, grating speech and no sense of manners or propriety. That would be us.”

There are some musings about body-snatcher movies and the realities of DNA on pages 230-232 that are worth reading but are too lengthy to quote.

Structure

This is a book within a book… within a book. It is revealed on the final pages that the only purely flesh and blood character in the book is Roger, the main narrative voice of the story. But even then we’re not told how much he is fictionalizing himself within his own novel.

We’re led to believe we’re reading a series of letters written between Roger, his co-worker, her mother, Roger’s ex-wife, and a few other characters. In reality, the whole thing is a fictional narrative  written by one person (Roger), who is imagining what all the others might say. The only person who is not speaking from within the fictional narrative is Roger’s writing instructor, for whose class Roger has produced the fictional exchange you’ve just read.

Confused? Surprisingly enough, it doesn’t seem that confusing when you’re reading the book and to be honest I wasn’t very impressed with it while I was reading. But now, thinking about it and trying to articulate the intricacies of the plot, I’m finding great value in its ingenuity.

Two More Layers

Within the story in which Roger has cast himself, he is writing a novel that his other fictional characters are reading; within this novel, two other authors exist who are also writing novels, both of whom are mining the details of their lives for fictional material. So Roger is mining his own life for fiction while Roger’s fictional characters are mining Roger’s fictional life for their own fiction.

Again, this seems more confusing now than it did when I was reading.

Conclusion

“The Gum Thief” is an interesting tale, but in the end not compelling enough for me to recommend that you read the book yourself. The fascinating parts of the book are realized after having finished it, in discovering that things were not as they appeared to be. After this is revealed, the words, actions, and longings of the characters in the book take on greater significance.

This started out as a very poor review, but I now think the book a little bit brilliant. And that’s me saying that, not the fictional narrator from whose perspective I wrote the beginning of the review.

Thank you TheResurgence.com for publishing this list of books by C. S. Lewis. Lewis has long been a cornerstone author for me. :

Fiction

• The Chronicles of Narnia
• Out of the Silent Planet (Space Trilogy Book One)
• Perelandra (Space Trilogy Book Two)
• That Hideous Strength (Space Trilogy, Book Three)
• The Dark Tower and Other Stories
• Boxen: Childhood Chronicles Before Narnia with W.H. Lewis.
• The Screwtape Letters: How a Senior Devil Instructs a Junior Devil in the Art of Temptation
• Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold
• Pilgrim’s Regress
• The Great Divorce

Poetry

• Narrative Poems
• Poems
• Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics

Non-fiction

Theology

• The Abolition of Man
• The Four Loves
• God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics
• A Grief Observed
• Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
• Mere Christianity
• Miracles
• The Problem of Pain
• Reflections on the Psalms
• The Weight of Glory
• What Christians Believe

Scholarly

• The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition
• The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature
• An Experiment in Criticism
• On Stories, and Other Essays on Literature
• The Personal Heresy with E.M.W. Tillyard
• A Preface To Paradise Lost
• Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature
• Studies in Words

Personal

• Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
• All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C.S. Lewis, 1922-1927
• Letters to an American Lady
• The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy
• Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis (Box Set)

Anthologies

• The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics
• A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from his Classic Works
• C.S. Lewis: Readings for Meditation and Reflection
• The Inspirational Writings of C.S. Lewis
• Christian Reflections
• Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories

Let’s review:

In Part 1 Naysaying and the Naysaying Naysayers Who Naysay we looked at the practice of naysaying and second-hand naysaying and examined how it works

In Part 2 The “Anti-Book” we looked at the “anti-book”, which is a scrapbook of sorts that claims to be authoritative on all matters relating to the one(s) who have been issued “nay” status.

In Part 3 I offer the following advice for dealing with widely naysayed materials:

1. Go ahead: read the scout’s report

If it’s a report from a scout you trust, by all means take his advice. A trusted scout is one whose reviews you usually agree with after having read the same books yourself. You may both be completely out to lunch of course, but at least you know you think the same way and will probably process future books in a similar way.

2. Seek balance

Read at least one positive review of the naysayed book, especially if you can find one from an unexpected source. An unexpected source is someone who usually falls in line with the naysay posse but occasionally breaks away.

3. Don’t pretend

Go ahead and warn others off of reading the book if you’ve chosen not to read it based on a trusted scout’s report. But make sure you point them to a review by someone who’s actually read the book – DO NOT TALK ABOUT THE BOOK AS IF YOU’VE READ IT YOURSELF. This is dishonest and misleading.

4. Obey the rules of context

You may quote passages from the book if you have at least read the entire chapter from which the quote is taken.

5. Never, never, never publish an anti-book

If you have that much time on your hands, spend it telling people what you’re for, not what you’re against.

6. Don’t be a sycophant

No one, regardless of his status among those you trust, is infallible. Absolute trust in any man leads very quickly to cultish devotion. And that goes for Piperettes* as much as McLarenites**.

* A Piperette is someone who puts more faith in John Piper than in Jesus Christ

** A McLarenite is someone who puts more faith in Brian McLaren than in Jesus Christ

In yesterday’s post I focused on the common practice of second-hand naysaying. I also mentioned something that serves as a the naysayer’s source book: the “anti-book”. This book (an example here) is a scrapbook of sorts that claims to be authoritative on all matters relating to the one(s) who have been issued “nay” status. It is seen as “the One Book to rule them all” and is used to surgically dissect current candidates for heresy.

Part 2 : Dealing with the “Anti-Book”

Here’s a rule of thumb when encountering such a book: if you haven’t heard of or read anything by half of the authors you’re reading about, STOP READING, PUT DOWN THE BOOK, and most certainly do not distribute the book to others with an encouragement to read it.

Reading this type of book can lead to the type of heresy hunting that causes us to reject biblical ideas because those we accuse of being heretics have adopted them. For an (unfortunately real-life) example: Rick Warren uses the word “reconciliation”, therefore reconciliation is part of the heretic agenda, and therefore we shouldn’t speak of it.

Some folks are so naively over-protective of their doctrine that they occasionally reject what they actually believe because it is taught by one they consider a heretic. This is usually evidence that the person is spending more time reading anti-books than the Good Book they claim to be protecting.

You Can’t Quote That…

Another attack mode is source assassination. In this practice, the truthfulness of a quote is judged not on its own merit, but on its source. This is done in an effort to expose the sin of association. Regardless of the length or content of the quote – it could be the most biblical statement this side of scripture – if the messenger is on the naysay list, the quote is rejected outright and you get closer to making the naysay list yourself.

The general idea here is to make you mindful of whom you quote, regardless of the content of the quote. You may get away with the quote if you leave it unattributed, but attributed to a certain name, it will be rejected simply on the basis of its source.

I once sent a very conservative friend a great quote about the mission of the church, which he wholeheartedly endorsed and agreed with. He was not pleased to learn shortly thereafter that the words were actually uttered by the newly minted Pope Benedict XVI.

As I remember it, he accused me of trickery, and I confess that he was half right.

Tomorrow: (click here to read)—>Rules of Engagement – what should you do with naysayed materials?