Category: Bible

Preparing for Palm Sunday – House of Prayer

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Matthew 21:12-17
12 Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said to them, ” ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”
14 The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. 15 But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant.

The Temple was the center of worship for the Jews. But in the OT we are reminded over and over again (see Isaiah 58:3-8 and Isaiah 1:13-17) that true worship is more than fasting and sacrifices – it is also about helping those in need, treating people fairly, and welcoming all. So after “triumphally” entering Jerusalem and reminding people that the Messiah comes to serve and welcome all nations, Jesus proceeds to the Temple. But as he enters the temple he sees systems set in place for aiding in sacrifices that apparently were taking advantage of the poor – overcharging them, cheating them on exchange. I’m sure as the scattered Jews trickled in for Passover some saw them as easy targets to be exploited – all in the name of worship. This did not go over well with Jesus. He comes in, turns over the tables, and says that stuff about how this should be a house of prayer but it has turned into a den of thieves. Those are strong words in themselves, but once again we need to look at the remez Jesus was implying with those phrases (connoting fuller scripture passages than just what is quoted). Each of those phrases is a quote from the OT prophets speaking directly to how believers should treat others. Today I’ll look at the first, tomorrow the second.

Consider Isaiah 56:1-8 –
1 This is what the LORD says:
“Maintain justice
and do what is right,
for my salvation is close at hand
and my righteousness will soon be revealed.
2 Blessed are those who do this—
who hold it fast,
those who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it,
and keep their hands from doing any evil.”
3 Let no foreigners who have bound themselves to the LORD say,
“The LORD will surely exclude me from his people.”
And let no eunuch complain,
“I am only a dry tree.”
4 For this is what the LORD says:
“To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
who choose what pleases me
and hold fast to my covenant—
5 to them I will give within my temple and its walls
a memorial and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that will endure forever.
6 And foreigners who bind themselves to the LORD
to minister to him,
to love the name of the LORD,
and to be his servants,
all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it
and who hold fast to my covenant—
7 these I will bring to my holy mountain
and give them joy in my house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house will be called
a house of prayer for all nations.”
8 The Sovereign LORD declares—
he who gathers the exiles of Israel:
“I will gather still others to them
besides those already gathered.”

The house of prayer passage is one of inclusions – of welcoming the nations. Not just the scattered Jews, but all nations. This is an echo of what we were reminded of earlier in the “king on the donkey” passages. The Messiah extends his grace to all – tearing down barriers of nationality, race, gender, sexuality and ability symbolically in the rending of the curtain in the Temple and literally in the tangible acts of his kingdom. In his indignation, Jesus affirms this idea that the place of worship be a “house of prayer” that welcomes even those society typical rejects (like the foreigner and the eunuch). Those who seek to worship should not be excluded on any account.

But in truth it was more common for exclusions to be upheld. Jesus saw the discrimination against poor and foreign Jews and showed his displeasure. But others were regularly not allowed to fully worship in the temple either. Only Jewish men were allowed inside the Temple proper – women, children, and gentiles were only allowed in the outer courts, and eunuch’s were not even allowed to step foot on temple grounds (Deuteronomy 23:1). But Jesus welcomes even the most despised into the Temple – giving them a special place. A practice which his disciples followed.

Take for instance Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8). Philip was all about breaking those barriers and welcoming all – his four single daughters all prophesied (i.e. spoke the word of the Lord, i.e. preached – Acts 21:8-9). He encountered the eunuch on the road as the eunuch was leaving Jerusalem. The eunuch had attempted to come and worship and study at the Temple, but (most likely) had been barred from entry because of his sexual status. He wanted to understand the scriptures, but having been rejected by established religion cynically replies, “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” Philip immediately joins him, discusses theology with him, and welcomes him into the way of Christ through baptism on the spot. Philip understood Jesus’ Palm Sunday rant – that all should be welcome into the Lord’s house of prayer and he wasn’t afraid to live that out.

So I wonder – do we display the same outrage on Palm Sunday when we see churches excluding those Jesus said should not only be included, but given a special place?

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Preparing for Palm Sunday – The Entry

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Matthew 21: 1-11
1 As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.”
4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:
5 “Say to Daughter Zion,
‘See, your king comes to you,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’ ” [a]
6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. 8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,
“Hosanna [b] to the Son of David!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” [c]
“Hosanna [d] in the highest heaven!”
10 When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?”
11 The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”

Sometimes in the waving of branches and the shouts of praise we forget that there is a political significance of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. He entered in a way that directly evoked and in a sense mocked the entry of Pilate and his soldiers into Jerusalem around that same time. Jesus was coming to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. During any of these large Jewish holidays when in essence the nations (some estimate 200,000 scattered Jews would return) would be gathering in the city to remember (at Passover at least) the time when they were released from oppression from an empire, the Romans would put on a show of their strength. This involved a military procession into the city culminating at the Palace. The message it sent was – we are in charge, we have the power, acknowledge us as leaders and don’t try anything stupid. It was all about might and power and oppression and exclusion of the other.

Jesus on the other hand entered Jerusalem humbly on a borrowed donkey as the Bible says according to prophecy and this image/reminder caused the people to worship and celebrate. This situation would have reminded the people of the words of the prophet Zechariah. –

See, your king comes to you,
righteous and having salvation,
lowly and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

And indeed as Luke’s gospel tells us, the people were calling Jesus King as he rode in – much to the chagrin of the Pharisees who were well aware of the political fallout that could cause at a time when the Romans were extra alert. But in reading this passage, we need to remember that in Jewish teaching there’s a thing called a remez, which is device that when a person quotes or evokes the first part of a verse, what they really want is for their hearers to remember the second part of the verse, or the next verse. So to get Jesus’ point for riding in on a donkey we can’t just look at Zechariah 9:9 about the donkey, we have to keep reading. Verse 10 says:

I will take away the chariots from Ephraim (another way of saying “the Jews”)
and the warhorses from Jerusalem,
and the battle bow will be broken.
He will proclaim peace to the nations.
His rule will extend from sea to sea
and from the River to the ends of the earth.

What we begin to see is that Jesus is about something bigger than the Roman oppression, bigger than being referred to as King, and perhaps much bigger than an impromptu worship service. It is about the nations, about his rule extending to the ends of the earth. It’s a lot bigger than the systems and assumptions of the day. Following him involves including and welcoming the nations. Palm Sunday starts with a fun moment of worship, but quickly expands to address larger issues and, as we shall see, more holistic worship. To see more of that though we need to look at what Jesus does next. (to be continued tomorrow)

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The God Who Sees: International Women’s Day Synchroblog

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Shortly after I took a position as Children’s Ministry Director at a small Baptist church, I sat down with the kids under my care and asked them what questions they would like to ask God. One girl, one of the oldest in the class who had grown up in churches and private Christian schools, told me that she would ask God why he hates girls. I asked her why she thought that and she replied that since there were no women in the Bible and since Jesus only choose male disciples, God must hate girls. To a fifth grader at least that’s the way things appeared.

I was shocked to hear her assumption. Here was a girl immersed in the church who had never been exposed to the stories of the women of the Bible. She had never been told of the mothers of the faith or the women leaders in the early church. The stories of women faithfully choosing to serve and follow God no matter the consequences were not part of her heritage. She didn’t see herself reflected in the Bible, and so her only assumption was that God had rejected her entire gender. My heart broke for her (and as children’s director, I did my best to tell the stories of biblical women).

Unfortunately though, ignoring the women of the Bible is far too common in many churches. When their stories aren’t told regularly, the church forgets about them and starts to assume that our faith has roots solely in the deeds of men. While of course those men’s stories are to be valued and explored, the Bible is rich with examples of women of faith as well. Though the church fails to heed their stories, God remembers who they were and how they served him. He is in truth the God who sees.

The name “the God who sees” (El Roi) was a name given to God by Hagar. An Egyptian slave, cast out by Sarah and Abraham into the desert, she epitomized rejection. But God noticed her plight and came to her aid. In thanksgiving she reaches into her pagan background and ascribes a name to this God who saw her struggles. God accepts this name just as he accepted the rejected and dejected Hagar. Her story is woven into our story of faith

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Book Review – Eve’s Bible

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I tried to like this book, I really did. But some things are just a little too over the top. The idea of Eve’s Bible by Sarah S. Forth sounded good – an examination of women in the Old Testament that would help women as we encounter scripture. I’m all for digging deep and focusing on these often forgotten women (like in the upcoming synchroblog), but Eve’s Bible doesn’t exactly serve to help women encounter the Bible so much as tell us that we’re stupid if we don’t despise the Bible for how it depicts women.

It took me nearly a month to sludge through the book. This is in part due to my limited reading time these days, but also because of how poorly it was written. The author alternates between academic prose, bitch fests, nonsensical charts and oddly placed series of leading questions. I guess I should have been wary of an author who felt the need to place “Ph.D.” after her name on the cover like she was trying to prove that she had something intelligent to say. But let’s just say I had a hard time following her train of thought. I liked her overviews of biblical women and their historical settings, but was kept guessing as to whether she would provide commentary on the stories, suggest alternative interpretations, or simply ask me as a reader how the story made me feel.

But what bothered me the most with the book was the overall negative perspective it took. Across the board the worst possible motives are assigned to God, biblical men, and the compilers of scripture. Even passages I’ve always read as celebrating women were reinterpreted to demonstrate how oppressed they were. The test for an unfaithful wife (Numbers 5) is presented as simply a way to control women, not a representation of God’s protection of women. Granted a lot of this is the difference between reading the bible through evangelical eyes which can see no ill and critical eyes which can see no good. I can see the truth in some of the criticisms – of course Ruth is caught in a system that values the continuation of the male line and so must compromise herself to survive – but it’s a one-sided presentation with no redemptive balance. I kept looking for a thread that turned the book into an actual guide and not just a condemnation, but I could find one. Can the author really call this a woman’s guide to the Bible if she constantly is saying that we need to completely rewrite the stories of biblical women, or cover the parts we don’t like with post-it notes, or that “girls are better off reading Judy Blume than relying on the Bible for guidance” (p.61)?

I have to admit though that I appreciated the brief overview of textual criticism, the exploration of how biblical women sought justice, and the discussion on the gender of God but they all seems like moot points when the author repeatedly insists that none of it matters because none of it happened anyway. While I am no literalist, I get equally annoyed by the assumption that “if it is in the bible then therefore it must be historically untrue.” For example Huldah. The author of course assumes that she was a fabrication added to the story at a later date to give it credence. She asserts that because of the oppressive nature of Israelite religion, Huldah could obviously not be a prophet but as a women must have simply been a priestess of Asherah. I find it amusing that the extreme liberal interpretations of scripture come to the same conclusions as the most conservative ones – women aren’t permitted to serve God so therefore we must reinterpret and rewrite scriptures that depict them serving. Change YHWH to Asherah or Junia to Junius because of preconceived notions that women are scum – it doesn’t matter if you’re liberal or conservative the effect is the same.  The book should have more truthfully been subtitled – “reasons for women to abandon the Bible.”

So Eve’s Bible was an educational but not exactly enjoyable read. I’m still waiting to find a good middle of the road/third way book on women in the Bible.

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Choosing Between Truths

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I care about truth. Twist the epistemological argument every which way and slander postmoderns as you will, but pursuing truth does matter to me. But in the myriad of options for interpreting the Bible, sometimes it is hard to claim one truth over another. It is difficult to know which truth I want to cling to – which holds the most meaning for me.

Before you get too weirded out let me explain why this is currently bugging me. I was considering the story of Josiah rediscovering the book of the law as recorded in 2 Kings 22. Not exactly a story I grew up hearing often (no animals so therefore not an appropriate children’s Bible story apparently). But one that resonates with powerful meaning – depending on how you choose to interpret it.

The few times I heard this story mentioned in the literalist/inerrantist churches I attended, the truth in the story rested on it being historically factual. As in everything in it actually happened exactly as written in scripture. The King miraculously found the lost books of the law, was convicted by the nation’s lack of regard for God, and turned Judah back to worship of the one God. The moral of the story being to always immerse oneself in scriptures lest one fall away from true worship. Josiah was a great hero of the faith, and we too should be sure to never forget our daily quiet time of reading the Bible.

Then there’s the source criticism interpretation. Scholars suggest that Shaphan and Hilkiah, representatives of two powerful families in Judah at the time, actually forged the supposed long lost document. Their agenda was to reform the religious practices of Judah, centralize the worship in Jerusalem as a way of unifying the Judean and Israelite people in the wake of the destruction of the Northern Kingdom by the Assyrians a century prior, and also to limit the power of the king by making him subject to the Deuteronomic Law. The truth lies in the representation of the communal religious story, as well as in a historical accounting that meshes with other historical knowledge of that period. It makes sense – helping to explain the difference between the Levitical and Deuteronmic law as well as the strong emphasis on social justice in Deuteronomy. There is not so much a moral of the story here as a solving a puzzle feeling.

Finally (for my purposes at least) there is the feminist interpretation. Instead of dwelling on the power plays of influential families in Judah, or on the heroic acts of a King, this interpretation focuses on Huldah. A lost gem of scripture she was the prophetess who interpreted the books of law to Josiah and delivered the word of the Lord to him. Amongst all in Judah, she was the only one faithful enough to the mandates of God to continue in the study of and devotion to scripture. And she’s a woman. Take that all you complementarians – here’s the prime example of women in the Bible not only preaching and teaching men (the King and high Priest at that!), but doing so in a major way. She’s more than a hero, she’s a symbol of hope for all us women seeking to break free of the church’s silencing and oppression of our sex. Historically true because it has to be in order for the precedent setting to work. But also true in the message of hope it conveys to women.

This is where gets messy. I see the truth in all three interpretations (and I am sure more exist as well). I don’t automatically assume that the Bible just couldn’t be actually representing historical facts. But neither do I dogmatically insist that such is always the case. The story is true whether that truth rests in its historicity or in its power as a cultural narrative. I wouldn’t really care except that I want to claim Huldah’s story and point to her as an historical precedent for women’s leadership in the church. I don’t want her to just be a manipulated (or manipulative) pawn in some ancient power play – I want her to be genuine. I want this interpretation to work.

And so I wrestle with truths. Amongst equally valid options do I simply choose the story that makes the most sense in my worldview? Or do I sacrifice resonating meaning for scholarship or theological camps?

Truth in the end is all about choice.

But more importantly – faith.

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Framing History

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As a follow up to recent posts about a priori assumptions and the like, I wanted to add some rambling thoughts (emphasis on rambling) about framing stories and history. So while I get annoyed by assumptions when they are used to exclude possibilities, they do serve a purpose in providing us with a lens through which we understand history. We need such lenses as we look back and try to understand the past – in fact those lenses are unavoidable. We create frame stories in order to tell the story of history – they give us frames of reference, help us make sense of the world, allow us to create meaning out of history, and help us tell better stories.

So for example in high school I took a class called World Area Topics in which we studied the rise and fall of dictators through history. That was the framework within which we approached world history. In college I had a class called Revolutionary Europe – basically European history through the lens of acts of violence and sex scandals (fun stuff). Similarly an overview of American History textbooks from the past 100 years will demonstrate the evolving nature of frame stories. From morality based (Washington and the cherry tree), to imperialist (go Manifest Destiny), to anti-communist (we have always been a Christian nation…) the way history is taught reveals the assumptions and lenses of the storyteller. These framestories aren’t wrong or bad (usually), they just are. The issues arise when one or the other is assumed to be the only valid or true way of telling the story.

The stakes of course get higher when the frame stories of the Bible and church history are revealed (or attempted to be revealed). I’ve been taught church history though the lens of missions, evangelicalism, and as church vs. empire. Each hold truth, but not the sum of the truth. So the other night Mike and I got into a um, argument, about the centrality and importance of the framestory of the Jewish canon (so if you ever wonder what married nerds argue about…). It of course brought up more questions than answers. As I see it, those that developed the biblical canon did so because they desired to promote a certain framestory. The selection of books, the editing of sources, the very understanding of history all came from a certain perspective and were meant to convey particular meaning at the time. This is the Bible we have today – in accepting it as such are we in fact accepting the primacy of the historical lens of a particular people at a particular moment in time (as much as we can understand it of course)? What does that mean for the applicability of scripture? As one who is also unwilling to reject God’s role in the process, I still wonder to what extent “inspired” extends to. I could believe that God actively placed each book there in it’s current form for timeless application. Or I could believe that God guided the process to provide the most flexible and evolving source of knowledge possible. Or a million other options.

So while I understand the need for functional framestories, I appreciate the ability to acknowledge multiple possibilities. The faith factor complicates things from time to time. To accept default framestories can be difficult and can cloud understanding. But I guess that’s part of the balance between faith and doubt.

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Peace Like a (Roaring) River

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So the other day my mom was reading her bible and read this verse out loud to me –
If only you had paid attention to my commands,
your peace would have been like a river,
your righteousness like the waves of the sea. – Isaiah 48:18

She read the verse and then commented – “but that makes no sense.” We are all accustomed to the hymns that repeat the image of “peace like a river” but as my mom pointed out rivers are generally not peaceful. You see she is the sort of person whose vacations involve canoeing down the lower canyons of the Rio Grande and shooting the rapids. Rivers are wild unpredictable things – full of uncontrollable power – that are to be respected but not tamed. They are not exactly synonymous with our modern conceptions of peace.

All too often in our world today the term “peace” simply connotes serenity. The whole “peaceful easy feeling” concept conveys a laid back vacationy image. Peace is about not being troubled by anything, letting the world pass you by while you kick-back and relax. Perhaps a hammock, a good book, and a glass of wine are included in that image.

While I have no problem with the hammock/book/wine scenario (can you tell what I’m daydreaming about…), that whole conception of peace is actually a better description of apathy than biblical peace. Serenity and mindless bliss are not exactly the same as Shalom. Peace as seen in the bible often refers to a rightness of relationships – with God and with others. Peace implies the presence of justice, and relationships that are whole. Far from being about personal serenity, it conveys the active bestowing of blessings on others.

So I like the way The Message translated that verse –
“If you had listened all along to what I told you,
your life would have flowed full like a river,
blessings rolling in like waves from the sea.”

Peace is active and ongoing. It is about the abundant life lived to the full in the way of Christ. Peace is like a river – a wild river overflowing its banks. It is about a life that is fully lived in service to others. So of course when one is listening to God’s commands one will have peace – the very nature of following those commands brings about this full and abundant shalom.

So if we want peace like a river we have to be ready for white water rapids.

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Singing the Songs of Zion in Babylon

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Psalm 137 

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How can we sing the songs of the LORD
while in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill .
May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.
Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations!”
O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you
for what you have done to us-
he who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.

The exiles hung up their harps and wept. They called curses upon their enemies, praising those who sought revenge for their misfortune. The joy and passion of their faith crumbled under the weight of exile. Dwelling in a foreign land surrounded by unbelievers whose lifestyles they despised the Israelites withdrew into themselves. Despair, fear, and hatred replaced the songs they had once sung. They longed for home – for the Jerusalem they once loved. The home only an exile can long for – an idyllic place free from oppression and sin. A conception based more on nostalgia than reality. And this nostalgia consumed them to the point of desiring the worst forms of violence and revenge upon their neighbors. They claimed citizenship elsewhere and wanted nothing to do with their current homeland.

Seeing this attitude among the exiles, the Prophet Jeremiah sent them a letter. He wrote –

This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” (Jeremiah 29:4-7)

Settle down. Plant gardens. Seek the peace and prosperity of Babylon. A far cry from the calls for revenge involving bashing babies’ heads against rocks. Basically, Jeremiah tells them to get over themselves and their self-centered whining. God has placed them in Babylon and they need to stay faithful to who he has called them to be. Instead of blaming those around them for the lose of something that never really was, they are to become a part of their new community. They are to put down roots, get involved, and work for the good of that community.

I see this same dynamic at play in the church today. So many Christians (both liberal and conservative) are disgusted to be in “exile” amidst the sinful, secular, bastions of empire. They curse the culture, they curse the government, and metaphorically hang up their harps and withdraw from the system. Since the system is evil, they choose to wash their hands of it and refuse to get involved.

This is especially true in election years. All around me I hear the call to abandon the system lest I be seduced into believing it to hold my salvation. I am encouraged to merely stand at the periphery and observe – not tainting myself by choosing a candidate or even by voting at all. I am reminded that my allegiance is not to this land as if it was only the otherworldly things that matter.

And I admit that I am in exile in Babylon. The pain and suffering around me testify that the Kingdom of God is not yet fully present. I lament the actions of empire and absolutely do not see my salvation in any manifestation thereof.

But.

I am still going to seek the peace and prosperity of where I reside. I will settle down and build community. And in seeking to do these things I will get involved. I will care enough about those around me to vote. I will not place myself above the everyday working of my community by not condescending to use my voice to affect change. And I won’t just get involved in an advisory holier than thou sort of way either. I will get dirty as I put down roots and take a stand. I will serve the Lord and will do so within the community I call home – even if that home is Babylon.

True peace and prosperity serve God. And I have no fears about seeking such even in America. I will not hang up my harp and relinquish hope because my hope is in God and not in the land. Exile should not result in silence, but activism. And so I do not disdain the politics of Babylon, but bring the joy and hope of Zion into my new home.

This post is part of a Synchroblog on God and Politics.  I will post links to the other participants as they become available.

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Self Help and the Bible

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I have a really hard time with self-help books. I am always finding them to be either too specific or too generic. Either the book gives you a blueprint for the exact 12 things you need to do to improve whatever in your life or it gives no practical advice whatsoever. I generally find the overly specific suggestions laughable. I’m okay with lists of possible ways one can say encourage creativity in your kids – I have the freedom then to adapt what I find useful to my circumstances. But I’m not a fan of the formulaic step-by-step scripts for ensuring a compliant child or showing your husband you appreciate him. How cheezy is it to assume that all people are exactly the same and that saying a certain sequence of words will have the same effect on every child or husband? Maybe it’s my inner non-conformist emerging, but I don’t do scripts like that.

But I also equally dislike overly generic self-help books. These books present ideas that sound great – of course I want to “be a better friend” or “love my child unconditionally” – but they are lacking in specific advice for how exactly to do that. I’m sick of books that latch onto one phrase and repeat it incessantly without ever fleshing it out. I find this a lot in devotional books. They can be all about drawing closer to God, but I think they assume that if they just convince me that I need to draw closer to God (by endless repetition of that phrase) then it will magically happen. Did they ever stop to think that I would never have picked up the book if I wasn’t already looking for ways I could make that happen? That’s why I don’t “do” devotional books, I find them generally pointless. I’m Goldilocks searching for the just right balance motivational concepts and practical advice and so far it’s been hard to find.

So as I was reflecting on some of the disappointing books in this genre recently, I began to think about how this relates to some of my issues with the Bible. Often the way the Bible was presented to me fell into one of these extremes. Either it was taught in sweeping generalities (if you just believe/trust/pray everything will work out). Or it was interpreted with the addition of long lists of how exactly one should live (here are the words you can never say, the movies you can never watch, the ideas you can never question in order to be a good Christian or a Christian at all). I got sick of these interpretations. The Bible felt trivialized, it was just another bad self-help book that didn’t deliver. It felt wrong to read a single verse about the early church praying in Acts and then be told just to pray more (or be given the formula for prayer). It didn’t work for me.

It took years before I realized why this self-help spiritualization of scripture bothered me. As with most self-help books it didn’t come across as genuine or authentic. I wanted something that made sense within the context of real life, not just a mantra I could chant. So it helped once I started reading whole passages at a time from the Bible and paying attention to the historical context of the whole thing. Verses no longer mere devotional ideas, but part of a bigger picture. The church in Acts didn’t just pray, they prayed for specific things and “therefore” certain things occured in their communities. It was all authentic and meaningful within certain contexts and in relation to individual lives. To me that’s much more meaningful than slogans or lists of rules. Ideas, plus guidelines, plus examples make sense to me. That’s the type of “just right” advice I can follow and learn from. But maybe that’s just me.

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Book Review – My Beautiful Idol

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So I recently joined the group of Ooze Select bloggers which basically means I get to read cool books and review them here. Works for me. The first selection I was sent was Peter Gall’s My Beautiful Idol. Before I go any further though I do have a confession to make. While the book was just recently released by Zondervan, an earlier version titled Gall came out a few years ago. My confession is that I was sent that version to review then and I never read the book. So my apologies. But I must say that my failure to read then was completely my loss since I greatly enjoyed My Beautiful Idol.

My Beautiful Idol falls into the genre of spiritual memoir and is being compared to the styles of Anne Lamott and Don Miller. I love Lamott and refuse to read Miller, so my response to those comparisons is “kinda.” What I can say is that this is a very different sort of memoir – it goes places one really doesn’t expect in these sorts of books. Namely Peter has no qualms about being brutally honest and blunt as he recounts the period of spiritual searching and awakening he went through during the 1990’s. He is not afraid to tear down the cliches and idols of the Christian culture nor to just outright question the conventional wisdom one finds in the church. This is a culture I am familiar with and so I resonated with much of what he was describing. I was also amused to recognize so many of the artifacts of the 90’s “contemporary Christian subculture” in his descriptions – from the bad music and “bible studies” to the ubiquitous presence of Mountain Dew.

I had two main issues with the book though. The first is entirely personal and situational, but I have come to the conclusion that books or movies that include scenes of mothers or babies dying in childbirth should come with a warning label. This is like the third time I’ve been blindsided by such a book this pregnancy, and while I am not usually an overly emotional person, those sorts of things really really get to hormonal pregnant women. So a little warning would have been nice. (and no this isn’t a huge part of the book, just one event in a spiritual journey…)

My other issue is more spiritual/theological. The book endeavors to expose the idols we create of our own spirituality and ability to serve God. It explores how we can trust too much or take too much pride in our good works. Often we elevate such things above the realities they entail and spiritualized them into pithy nothingness. I loved the way Peter revealed those ideas through his story, but I was left with too much bitter pessimism. Because so much in Christianity is fake and idolized, he seemed to go too far in rejecting the value of any pursuit of good works. There was very little balance or acceptance of the paradoxes of Christian life. The sarcasm, wit, and gritty reality sometimes overpowered any whisper of hearing where God actually was working. I know the memoir just represents a period of his life, and I’m not looking for a sugary happy ending or anything, just more of a “where do we go from here” wrap-up.

My issues aside, My Beautiful Idol is a good read. Engaging and challenging if one is willing to be pushed outside the box of typical Christian spiritual assumptions.

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