Category: Book Reviews

2010 Books

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So once again I’m posting the lists of books I read this past year. This is more of a personal post to reflect back on where I’ve been, but maybe others can get a good recommendation or two out of it.

There were books I had to read and those I read for research that are on the list only because I read them. Some, like those by Dobson and Grudem, were painful reads, but served as needed reminders of how much hatred towards women still exists in the church. But the point of the list is the good recommendations. Hands down, the best fiction books I read this year (and in a long time) were Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games Trilogy. Intricately written, they explored the personal and social ramifications of bread and circuses entertainment. Violence and extravagant living always have a price and the books explore (through a fantastic story) the tale of those forced to pay that price. I highly recommend picking up the series and reading it immediately (it’s written for young adults so they are quick reads).

As for non-fiction, I covered a decent amount of territory this past year. I appreciated the postcolonial works I read (especially Chung Hyun Kyung’s Struggle to be the Sun Again) and want to continue to read such books in the upcoming year. My favorites from the year though would have to be Walter Brueggemann’s Out of Babylon and Wes Howard-Brook’s “Come Out My People!”: God’s Call Out of Empire and Beyond. Obviously both dealt with similar subjects – exploring the biblical texts as springboard for commentary for how the people of God should relate to living in empire today. Brueggemann’s text is short and inspiring. Howard-Brook’s text tackles the whole of scripture – becoming the biblical survey book I have always wanted to read. He pulls in not just biblical criticism, but theology, and history, and anthropology, and linguistics. It’s a book that doesn’t limit the Bible to one small lens (which always misses the forest for the trees), but attempts to read it as a holistic text that speaks truth to us today. I bought it for research purposes and ended up being unable to put it down (all 500+ pages of it). It is a great resource and an engaging read.

Non-fiction

Textbooks

Fiction

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God Bless

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In reading Walter Brueggemann’s latest book, Out of Babylon – a fantastic read full of thought provoking insights – I was intrigued by his discussion of blessing. In referring to the confidence of the Davidic dynasty in the years leading up to the exile, he writes –

These [texts] concerning dynasty and temple, regularly reiterated in state-sponsored liturgy, gave certitude and entitlement to those most closely gathered around the center of Jerusalem power. All this certainty about God’s blessing of Jerusalem, its king and its temple, gave the people of Jerusalem an excuse to ignore the social facts on the ground. If God was indeed blessing the power structure of Jerusalem unconditionally, then they need not worry about the economic exploitation and political oppression going on around them.

I think we all too often use this idea of blessing to ignore the needs of others. Living for ourselves, demanding God’s blessing for ourselves, prevents us from opening our eyes to the needs of others. And often enjoying that blessing (politically or economically) results in the direct exploitation and oppression of others. What we see as blessing is simply ill-gotten gain – what we call blessing others live as misery. Brueggemann goes on to say how even with the empires at their backdoor many in Jerusalem lived in denial as they tried to keep up this certainty of blessing with false mantras of “shalom, shalom.” His point is that only the poetic utterances of the prophets quietly challenged those false assurances by implying that the mere saying of “shalom” does not create peace. Saying “we are blessed” while others suffer for our false sense of blessing has nothing to do with actual blessing.

The parallels to modern day America are obvious (which is where Bruegemann goes in the text). We claim God’s blessing with the certitude of a blood drenched flag backing it up and the exploited poor suffering in our wake. We’ve mistaken greed, power, and consumption for blessing. Yet, beyond this obvious comparison to America, what these words on blessing brought to my mind was how often the church acts in these ways as well.

If a church is growing – determined almost exclusively numerically these days (the counting of butts and bucks) – then they deem themselves to be at the receiving end of God’s blessing. If people are showing up and spending giving money, then they must be doing something right for God to bless them in such ways. Unfortunately the same rationale could be applied to a movie theater or football stadium. Claiming God’s blessing because people are showing up to be entertained or affirmed in their pursuit of the American Dream makes no logical sense, but sadly has become a handy excuse for the church to continue ignoring its participation in communal sins of exploitation and oppression or even ignorance. For if God is blessing a church (growing numbers), then why should they change or examine who they really are? Why bother asking what it means to sacrificially follow Christ when everything is going so well?

At the church I attend we have entered into an intense period of discernment as a community. Part of why we are doing so is because the numbers aren’t there, we’re hurting. I think it could be easy to see this struggle as a lack of blessing, or at least to say that we are in need of more of God’s blessing (not that I’ve actually heard this being said). But what I’ve been reflecting on during this time is that perhaps this is an opportunity to help us realize that any blessing we have exists for the sole purpose of us by extension blessing others. It has been providing us a chance to really examine who we are – which I do hope will lead to a response of sacrificial living. I don’t want us to have confidence in our own community for the sake of itself alone, for sometimes even in the midst of struggles it can be easy to do so, just like Jerusalem saying “shalom, shalom” with certainty as empire breathed down their necks. It can unfortunately be just as easy for the struggling as well as the numerically “blessed” church to turn inward and start existing only for acquiring “blessings” for themselves.

The nation of Israel was told that they were blessed to be a blessing to the nations. This wasn’t some warm fuzzy perk – this was a task that required sacrifice, generosity, and ongoing humility. Existing for the sake of others is hard work. Ensuring that the people around us are finding justice, not being oppressed, and being showered with the blessing of God is a lot harder than getting a few more butts in the pews or dollars in the plate. Giving up perceived blessing when that blessing feeds a system of injustice is even harder, but it is only in such actions that the true path to blessing can be found.

So I appreciated Bruegemann’s reminder that blessing can be a tricky thing. It is easy to think we are blessed and miss the point entirely by failing to be actively serving others and seeking justice for all. But we can also easily desire blessing for ourselves without realizing that that is not how God works at all. A church should never exist for the sake of itself, no matter how great of a community it might be. The body of Christ is called to bear witness, to be that communal voice answering the call of Christ – seeking justice for all. Blessing can only be used to bless – to be the healers of this world. Just as saying “shalom” does not bring peace, simply saying “we are blessed” (in praise or supplication) does not make it so unless there is the evidence of a simultaneous blessing of others.

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Hipsters, Faith, and Truth

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So Brett McCracken has been getting a lot of press recently for his book criticizing and making fun of so-called hipster Christians. And yes, here I go giving him more press by adding my “Seriously? You’ve got to be kidding, right?” thoughts into the fray (which is a typical response I’ve been hearing to his stuff, which Daniel Kirk gave best of here and here). And just to clarify (since I know people will say it), it’s not that I think “hipsters,” or culture or the emerging church (which btw, McCracken, is still very alive and well) or discussions about sex or social networking or whatever are above critique. On the contrary, I think any discerning person will constantly be engaged in a critique of the world around them. We are by nature unceasingly in dialogue with our culture – a culture which is not inherently good or bad, but must be assessed and measured as we swim through its waters. Popular culture is not a construct that we can escape; it is a reflection of our collective conscious (for good or for ill). Outright acceptance or rejection of such culture simply because it is popular demonstrates a severe lack of understanding of how we as social creatures even construct reality (although it may sell books). So this isn’t a defensive response to critique, it is a call for informed dialogue.

For full disclosure, I haven’t fully read Hipster Christianity yet – just extended excerpts (thank you Amazon “look inside”), summaries and reviews and articles and blog posts McCracken has written. I don’t know McCracken, but I do have to say that discovering recently on his blog that he was a fellow Wheaton College grad who lived in Traber dorm (a stereotype that only fellow Wheaties will understand) helped clarify his cultural influences for me as well as explain his obsession with C.S. Lewis (who at Wheaton was referred to as St. Jack or “the fourth member of the Trinity). But I did take his “are you a Christian hipster?” quiz, which of course told me I was a hipster. From what I could tell anyone who isn’t fundamentalist or Amish and has a pulse in the 21st century would be labeled “hipster” according to the quiz – including McCracken himself who seems far cooler than I will ever be. As I’ve mentioned numerous times before, I am the definition of uncool. I have no sense of style, I don’t know how to do my hair, I don’t listen to music, I am not artistic, I’m a freaking stay-at-home (mostly) mom for crying out loud. But apparently (according to McCracken) since I read non-male/white/Western theologians, think the church should discuss something as important as sex, attend a church that meets in a warehouse and uses candles, like Stephen Colbert and Lady Gaga, believe we can learn truth from literature and film (I got the same Wheaton College English degree as McCracken after all), desire to steward God’s creation, and think oppression, human trafficking, and modern day slavery are wrong I am a self-centered hipster and therefore in danger of compromising my faith for the sake of being cool.

And so once again I state, “Seriously? You’ve got to be kidding, right?” The logic there is so horrible I don’t even know where to begin. I’m struggling to tell if he is just another one of those Christians who lashes out at anyone who has a different faith journey than him (and I’m sure he would poke fun of me using the term “faith journey”), or if he is truly ignorant of how deeply rooted in faith much of the stuff he criticizes actually is (or if this is a disguised theological attack that chooses not to use theology). I just don’t know. I don’t deny that the people he describes exist, or that there are people who desperately just try to be cool. But why he feels this obsessive need to label and therefore dismiss entire sections of the church who are simply trying to faithfully follow Jesus is beyond me.

Why is the conversion of the girl who had her perspective changed by the art history prof in college who now creates non-Thomas Kinkade Christian art as part of worship more suspect as being inauthentic or not truly Christian than the drug dealer who read a Chick-tract and now works in a soup kitchen? Is God not working for transformation in her life too? Or why is believing that Kwok Pui-lan, or Musa Dube, or Richard Twiss, or Gustavo Gutierrez might have something to teach us any different than believing we can learn from C.S. Lewis, or Francis Schaeffer, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Or why is the guy who wears thrift store or fairly made clothes more in danger of having caring too much about his appearance interfere with his spirituality than the youth pastor who spends hours describing to his group (in great detail) the exact sorts of bathing suits or the exact width of shoulder straps the pretty young high school girls are allowed to wear during summer camp? Or for that matter than the middle-aged women who have self-appointed themselves the modesty police or even Richard Foster who devotes a large section of Celebration of Discipline to the clothes Christians should wear? Why is it okay for their ideas about appearance to be faith-based and biblically-sound, but not the so-called hipster’s? Why are emerging forms of spirituality automatically suspect as being more culturally influenced and therefore harmful to Christianity than those that emerged twenty or thirty years ago?

I know I am not a creature independent of my culture. No one is. Anyone who claims otherwise needs some serious re-education. But to claim that we so-called hipster Christians are the way we are simply because we are self-centered “all about me” folks who are trying to be cool and relevant utterly misses the point. I attend a church of broken misfits who are desperately trying to live faithfully. I don’t attend my church because we are so cool that we meet in a warehouse and sit on couches, I attend it for the community that has formed around each other in that particular environment. Sure the environment influences who we are, but it isn’t the sum of who we are – just like gathering by a river or in the catacombs or sitting in pews or a cathedral influences but doesn’t not ultimately define other churches. I don’t read postcolonial voices because that makes me relevant; I read them because I believe the body of Christ cannot survive without all its parts. I don’t buy fair trade because it’s trendy; I buy it because the Bible tells me to care for the poor and to not cheat a worker of his wages. I don’t fight human trafficking because it makes me feel good, I do it because it is wrong that six year old girls are kidnapped and forced into prostitution where they are repeatedly raped by men who have a sick and twisted view of women and sex (two topics that churches apparently should avoid discussing because they are just trendy shock-gimmicks). (And by the way, when we’ve reached the point in the conversation where people are questioning opposing the enslaving of children as sex toys because it might be too trendy and relevant of a topic then I’m done with that conversation – God is nowhere in it).

I am a cultural creation, I freely admit that. But don’t for one minute project your disapproval of my culture trappings onto me and assume that I have uncritically allowed such things to put the “realness” of my faith in peril. If you want to criticize such things or suggest another type of popular culture that you think is more appropriate for Christians to embrace (cuz, we all embrace something) then do that. Let’s disagree, but for the sake of respectful and truthful dialogue please don’t naively dismiss my lived faith as merely an attempt to be cool when nothing could be further from the truth.

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Freedom in America

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In this week after the Fourth of July, I’ve heard a lot of talk about what it means to have freedom as an American. Not that I necessarily agree with this view of history, but that sort of talk generally focuses on a sentimental reflection on how a ragtag people’s movement stood up to the evil and oppressive British and paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. Who cares that when other countries do that nowadays we call it insurrection or communism, for us it was all about our freedom. To be American means to have freedom.
I love freedom; I appreciate the freedoms I have. What I find intriguing though are what exact freedoms it is that we celebrate in this country and which ones we could care less about. The freedom to hold a sign with a racist slur about the President is apparently something we hold dear, as is our “right” to have free and immediate access to porn (not to mention guns). The government had better not interfere with our access to junk food or dare tell our kids how to eat healthy; we’ll develop diabetes and drive up insurance rates if we want to. But we’re okay though with the government tapping our phones and having a kill switch for the internet. And apparently we are also okay with the government allowing companies to sell contaminated meat to our schools and passing laws making it illegal for us to publicly question the companies that do so. Let’s just say our relationship with freedom is complicated.

Anthony Bourdain addresses the food contamination issue in his latest book, Medium Raw, wondering why we are okay giving up the freedom of our access (our children’s access) to uncontaminated food. His snarky, uncensored take on the subject is one of the best I’ve read yet. And this is from Bourdain, the guy who is not shy in his frequent mocking of vegetarians or the organic/locavore movements. He writes on the meat industry in America –

In another telling anomaly of the meat-grinding business, many of the larger slaughterhouses will sell their product to grinders who agree to not test their product for E.coli contamination – until after it’s run through the grinder with a whole bunch of other meat from other sources. Meaning, the company who grinds all that shit together (before selling it to your school system) often can’t test it until after they mix it with meat they bought from other (sometimes as many as three or four) slaughterhouses. … It’s like demanding of a date that she have unprotected sex with four or five guys immediately before sleeping with you – just so she can’t point the finger directly at you should she later test positive for clap.
…
I believe that, as an American, I should be able to walk into any restaurant in America and order my hamburger – that most American of foods – medium fucking rare. I don’t believe my hamburger should have to come with a warning label to cook it well done to kill off any potential contaminants or bacteria. I believe I shouldn’t have to be advised to thoroughly clean and wash up immediately after preparing a hamburger. I believe I should be able to treat my hamburger like food, not like infectious fucking medical waste. I believe the words “meat” and “treated with ammonia” should never occur in the same paragraph – much less the same sentence. Unless you are talking about surreptitiously disposing of a corpse.
…
Is it too much to feel that it should be a basic right that one can cook and eat a hamburger without fear? To stand proud in my own backyard (if I had a backyard), grilling a nice medium-rare fucking hamburger for my kid – without worrying that maybe I’m feeding her a shit sandwich? That I not feel the need to cross-examine my mother, should she have the temerity to offer my child meatloaf? P.98-100

Seriously, when did cheap and convenient become more important to us than avoiding consuming fecal matter, chemicals like ammonia, and deadly viruses (or for that matter the right to question the presence of such things in our food)? In the wealthiest and most technologically advanced nation in the world, that we have given up the freedom of knowing that the food we eat is safe is telling. Or perhaps it’s just that we value the freedom of the meat-industry to serve us contaminated food more. Like I said, our views of freedom are complicated. Or just plain crazy.

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I’m a heretic, so what?

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So I finally got around to reading Dan Brown’s latest book, The Lost Symbol. My point here isn’t to comment about the book – it was entertaining, I wasn’t expecting more. What I found intriguing through are the ways he managed to weave in comments directed at the people who freaked out about The Da Vinci Code. At various points in the book, he had Robert Langdon comment about the sorts of people who aren’t capable of seeing the world from another’s perspective and who cause trouble for those who think differently from them. It was cute, and not a very subtle response, but given the way he has been demonized, it had to be addressed.

I had read The Da Vinci Code before it got really popular (I was on a “intellectual thriller” reading kick at the time). A year or so later I heard the pastor at the church I worked at talking about an upcoming Sunday School series he was leading about how evil the book was. He was shocked to hear that I had actually read the book, since he had not and had no plans to read it (even as he taught a class about it). I soon learned that his was the typical response of many evangelical Americans. When confronted with an idea that is outside the way they had been taught to see the world, they engaged fight or flight – denounce the work as evil or protect themselves from being exposed to its ideas.

Hence Dan Brown’s asides in The Lost Symbol.

I don’t agree with all of Brown’s ideas in The Da Vinci Code or The Lost Symbol (that’s not my point here), but I appreciate how he started a conversation around topics that might otherwise remain hidden. There is truth in the fact that the church is driven by ideology. The Bible we have today was shaped by opinions of factions in the church. Systems of patriarchy marred the name of Mary Magdalene by suggesting then upholding as doctrine that she was a prostitute. With the way Bible history is taught (or isn’t) in churches and schools today, this side of the story gets forgotten as embarrassing history to the point that basic biblical scholarship is labeled shocking heresy by the average Christian. Whether or not one agrees with Brown’s ideas, he at least helped some people ask if perhaps their way of viewing the world isn’t the only way.

It’s when we are willing to think about our beliefs in those ways that we truly learn. Granted we might end up believing as we always have, or we might tweak our beliefs a little, or change them entirely. And while I understand the people that instinctually engage with fight or flight when presented with anything other, what I don’t understand are the people who go through the charade of pretending to engage with other ideas only to reassert their original belief because they feel like they have to. I read a book recently that did just that. It claimed to be a fresh new perspective for evangelicals on a controversial topic, and while it did a great job deconstructing why a new perspective is needed, in the end it simply reiterated the same old traditional answer. In that evangelical tradition only one answer on the topic is acceptable, and so instead of actually allowing the intellectual wrestling to actually inform his perspective, the author ignored everything he had written about and parroted back the one acceptable answer. It made no sense. It wasn’t intellectually honest. But it kept the author (and publisher) safe within the box of their tradition. It wasn’t about truth, it was about allegiance.

So that’s why I am beginning to care less and less about being labeled a heretic. The term has nothing to do with truth (as much as they accuse us postmodern of abandoning truth). It has everything to do with toeing the line of a particular tradition. Call it what you will – “orthodoxy” “historic Christianity” “biblical Christianity” – all it is is the box that you feel comfortable in and pledge allegiance to. People who look, think, and act like you are in and everyone else is out. And while I fully acknowledge the need for community and tradition and admit I have allegiances, when that box becomes a shield to defend against ever learning anything new or entering a conversation in order to grow, then I have no use for the box. So while I love and appreciate (to varying degrees) The Apostles’ Creed, Augustine, Martin Luther, Calvin, Barth, and McLaren, I’m not going to exchange my faith in the living transforming God in order to cement myself in their camps. I may be a heretical Barthian or C.S. Lewisian, but since that really isn’t the point of my faith, I no longer really care.

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Book Review: Manifold Witness

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So the awesome folks at Abingdon sent me a copy of John Franke’s new book Manifold Witness: The Plurality of Truth awhile back and while it’s taken me forever to get around to doing it, I wanted to post a few thoughts about the book. Like I mentioned in my year’s end list of all the books I’ve read this past year, Manifold Witness was one of the ones that I couldn’t help but mentally return to over and over again. Franke does a great job at getting his message across in an accessible way that I think will help define and clarify the conversation about the nature of truth.

While the topic of truth gets a lot of air-time these days, few actually take the time to define what they are talking about or move beyond critiquing the “other side.” Franke though stays true to an evangelical affirmation of truth while at the same time thoughtfully engaging with the reality of pluralism. His nuanced approach to the discussion doesn’t rubber-stamp any extreme, but admits the complexity associated with faith and truth. And for that, I found his work to be refreshing. He admits upfront that “the expression of biblical and orthodox Christian faith is inherently and irreducibly pluralist” (7). But this isn’t an in-your-face assertion that must be swallowed whole; it is instead the idea that the whole book seeks to unpack and explore. With a faithful commitment to scripture and a tender compassion for the reader, Franke demonstrates how pluralism is not something to be feared or fought but is instead simply a beautiful intrinsic aspect of not just our faith but all creation.

I appreciated how Franke in his discussion of truth quickly moved beyond the absolute and relative dichotomies. Neither accurately represents truth as the first tries to commoditize it for the sake of power and the second deny it in the name of tolerance. Pluralism and truth are far more complex than the extreme camps allow us to admit. Our world is diverse, as is our faith. And Franke rightly points out that culture and our faith is always changing, God never leaves us where we are at, but is constantly transforming us with the gospel. The constant renewing of our minds allows us to faithfully claim traditions in the church as well as celebrate the new things God is doing. The celebration of plurality affirms the “importance of multiple perspectives in the apprehension and communication of truth” (40). Just as The Father, Son, and Spirit are one even as they are different, the church can be one while living fully into our own diversity.

I also was grateful for Franke’s assertion that we can never let our particular cultural setting trump our commitment to truth. We are situated in culture, but when we start to assume that our cultural habits are the only way to present truth, we are in fact limiting God and truth. Scripture and God cannot be subject to cultural assumptions, but must be celebrated in their plurality. Similarly, we should remember that God doesn’t seek to assimilate the Other and make us all the same either. Franke brilliantly reminds us that we can be silencing God when we do not listen to voices that might not fit our accepted cultural theological norms. He writes, “theology is not a universal language. It is situated language that reflects the goals, aspirations, and beliefs of a particular people, a particular community” (94). If we are to affirm the plurality that God affirms, we must thoughtfully seek out the diversity of theological voices. This was a poignant wake-up call for me as I too often only listen to the voices of those similar to me. I need to be striving to affirm God by affirming the truth of the many legitimate inculturations of the faith.

Manifold Witness is accessible, but it is also challenging. Franke goes places that others have avoided – not for the sake of controversy, but out of a deep desire to be faithful. His commitment to loving and serving God is apparent on every page of this book making his exploration of the plural nature of truth a gift to the Christian community. I highly recommend this book not just for those caught up in the discussion of truth, but to all Christians eager to celebrate our expansive God in the full diversity of his church.

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2009 Books

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2009 Books

So each year I like to survey the past year by posting the list of books I read that year. Looking at this list, which is probably the shortest list I’ve ever posted for a year, I wish I had read far more than I did. I guess life, publishing my own book, and (admittedly) watching the entire Battlestar Galactica series got in the way of reading. But even so, it’s a decent list with books that taught me, challenged me, entertained me, and angered me which makes them worthwhile in my opinion.

2009 Books –

Non-fiction

Fiction

While there are a few books on this list that I would classify in the almost to painful to read category, for the most part I enjoyed this years books. For sheer entertainment in a satirical intellectual sort of way, I would list Cuisines of the Axis of Evil as a favorite. As for books that I’ve recommended the most and mentally returned to most often I would list Mama’s Got a Fake ID and Manifold Witness. I seriously hope to expand my reading this next year – especially by reading non-majority (not white, western, or male) theological works (any recommendations would be appreciated).

So what about you – what were your favorite reads of 2009?

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Book Review – Sacred Friendships

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In this post-Christian age where those of us who follow Christ find ourselves increasingly moving towards the religionless faith that Bonhoeffer so accurately predicted would emerge, ideas that engage our spirituality continue to capture our attention.  We are looking for paths to follow that take us beyond dry and heady formulations of faith and allow us develop as spiritually whole persons.  So as one who participates in conversations regarding what a spiritually holistic faith might look like, I was excited to be sent Robert Kellemen’s and Susan Ellis’ new book on soul care and spiritual direction.  Sacred Friendships not only claimed to explore such topics, but to do so by giving voice to the myriad of silenced women’s voices in those fields throughout the centuries.

So it was with great eagerness that I started reading Sacred Friendships.  I desired to learn from the voices of the women who, according to the authors, participated in the “sustaining, healing, reconciling, [and] guiding” of their fellow believers.  I also greatly appreciated that the authors had chosen to listen to the voices of women from different time periods, many of which were outside of their own Evangelical camp.  In fact they make a good argument in the book for why Evangelicals can and should look to the full tradition of the Christian experience for inspiration and guidance.  I was grateful for that stance and dove into the book with high expectations.  Unfortunately those expectations were quickly disappointed as I became more and more uncomfortable with the picture of faith and women I encountered on the pages of the book.

Instead of holistic portrayals of women living a realistic faith, I discovered instead truncated hagiographies of women in traditional gender roles throughout history.  Although the authors stated that they had a great passion for empowering those who had been robbed of their voice, the authors took great care to let the reader know that in their desire to give voice to the silenced voices of women they were not supporting feminism.  And in fact they only gave voice to women in traditionally nurturing and caring roles like mothers, wives, and nuns.  While I fully agree that such women’s voices should be heard, I missed the voices of the teachers or preachers.   Even the stories of the women who perhaps skirted too close to that leadership line were quickly explained away as them simply living into their role as nurturers as best they could.  I failed to see how any of the included voices could ever have been considered silenced since they seemingly support historically approved roles for women.

Similarly many of the women profiled as saintly nurturers were in fact women from history that I would be quite hesitant to lift up as examples of positive faith at all.  Women like Augustine’s mother Monica who is generally known for her toxic manipulative faith were praised for speaking the truth to bring others to Christ.  There was no balance to the picture or admitting that sometimes guilt-tripping others into the faith might not be the healthiest way to spiritually direct a person.  But I soon discovered that the authors’ very definition of spiritual direction was simply confronting people with their sins and guiding them to conformity in Christ.  In no other context have I ever heard spiritual direction defined in such a way.  In my experience (and according to the definition provided at Spiritual Director’s International), spiritual direction involves conversations that help people discern where God is touching their lives directly or indirectly.  While making people feel guilty through confrontation or manipulation might make a woman a hero of the faith in the authors’ definition of spiritual direction, I could not affirm that as the most healthy or effective means of leading others into the faith in our post-Christian world.  Those of us within the postmodern sensibility see the hurt and the pain around us and we know we are responsible for causing that pain.  Being consumed with guilt and feeling bad about it doesn’t produce the fruit that is needed to change and heal the situation.  Healthy spiritual direction should help us get on board with what God is doing in the world, not paralyze us with navel-gazing introspective guilt.  While I think the authors might agree with me there, the endless stories of women presented in the book presented a far different story that encouraged readers down toxic spiritual paths.

I felt similar unease with the presentation of soul care in the book.  While the stories of women who helped others through their pain and suffering were inspiring, I found the manner of how to do so to be generally unhelpful.  The authors made clear their disdain for modern therapy and the use of drugs to treat depression (which was equated at one point with the sin of sloth).  The alternatives they presented though often promoted Gnostic dualisms like the rejection of the body and this world in favor of focusing on the blessings of heaven to come.  They similarly encouraged readers to simply dwell on the idea of Jesus for healing as if he were some sort of magic wand that can make everything all better.  I cringe at such advice because I have seen too many people hurt by the counsel to just repeat the mantra of Jesus’ name without ever doing the hard work it takes to heal their hearts and relationships with others.  While Jesus is of course the one who heals, healthy soul care should offer more substantial advice that to just “fix your eyes on Jesus.”

Our world has changed and the name of Jesus is no longer best proclaimed through systematic ideas and structures.  People are desperate for a holistic spirituality to guide their faith journey.  The idea of reaching back into the wealth of historic voices, especially the voices of women, to find wisdom to shape that journey is a beautiful thought.  Being sustained in our faith, healed of our pain, reconciled in our relationships with God and others, and guided into where God is already working are all concepts that should be affirmed in this postmodern world.  I just couldn’t get onboard with the often unbalanced and unhealthy ways of doing so suggested in Sacred Friendships.

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Book Review: Cuisines of the Axis of Evil

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Every once in awhile, I stumble across a book that is just purely enjoyable to read. And as odd as it may sound to classify a book on politics and the nuclear arms race in that category, Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States: A Dinner Party Approach to International Relations was exactly such a book. As you can probably tell from the title, this wasn’t your average political commentary. One endorser described it as Iron Chef meets The Daily Show – culinary mastery with wit and snark. In short, my type of book.

in the book, author Chris Fair takes a close look at the evil powerhouses in the world (i.e. those countries with the bomb or those who are trying to get it) and humanizes them with an exploration of their cuisine. From the so-called “axis of evil” (Iraq, Iran, North Korea), to nuke-possessing human-rights violators (Israel, India, and Pakistan), to the dashers of democracy (Cuba, Burma, and China), to the Great Satan herself (USA), the reader embarks on a rather peculiar world tour. Fair is unashamedly biased and opinionated, and yet manages to present a balanced perspective on many of these countries. What is extremely helpful is her brief modern histories of each country. Basically she explains why these countries hate the USA and what our past relationship with them has been. So for all of us 30-somethings who were too young to watch the news while, say, the Iran-Contra affair was unraveling, and whose history textbooks and teachers never made it past World War 2 (because what teacher wants to touch Civil Rights and the Vietnam War), these brief histories are the most concise explanations of these events you will have ever heard. One reads of the whole convoluted history of our relationship with Saddam Hussein, how the Taliban got its weapons, and why we let China walk all over us. The author doesn’t hold back – all the countries are equally criticized and celebrated at the same time. It truly is a dinner party approach where friendship has to guide all other conversations.

And I know this sounds bad, but my biggest issue with the book was in it’s treatment of the USA. Now, I have no problem pointing out our flaws. We are hardly ones to point the finger at other “evil” nations when we were the ones who funded their armies and set-up their regimes to begin with. America is far from perfect. And I appreciated the author setting the record straight that the Muslim world doesn’t hate us for our freedom, they hate us for being a bully. But in exploring other reasons why the world hates America, I think the author let her personal opinions influence her focus a bit too much. She argues that the world hates us because a majority of us are so stupid we don’t believe in evolution or at least think God might have been involved. Whatever her opinion on that issue, I highly doubt that most of the world hates us because we believe in God. If she thinks we are idiots, fine, but the argument went a bit too far in that particular case.

But in general, this provocative and satiric take on world politics was pure brilliance, and the featured cuisines were enticing. The author not only describes typical meals in each of the countries – complete with drinks and ambiance, she provides detailed recipes for a full-course dinner party. Since reading the book, I’ve tried a couple of the recipes (and can highly recommend the Margat Bamya stew from the Iraq chapter). They are easy to follow and she takes care to tell you exactly what should be happening with the food at each step and where you can go to find the more exotic ingredients listed. On the whole, I can only say that I wish all approaches to international relations were this entertaining and yummy.

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Cosmopolitan Ethics

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I recently finished reading a fascinating (although at times frustrating) book called Cosmopolitanism : Ethics in a World of Strangers. Written by Kwame Anthony Appiah, a Ghanian educated in England now teaching philosophy at Princeton, it was an exploration of our moral obligations in a global society. As the author defines it, this idea of being a cosmopolitan implies (1) that “we have obligations to others, obligations that stretch beyond those to whom we are related by the ties of kith and kind, or … shared citizenship,” and (2) that we value human life so much that we take “an interest in the practices and beliefs that lend them significance. People are different… and there is much to learn from our differences” (xv).

I liked his distinction that this cosmopolitan sense of obligation to all tends toward a pluralistic respect of the other and not obligatory uniformity. Too often the foes of tolerance accuse us of simply desiring everyone to be the same. But it is in fact the counter-cosmopolitans who push for that uniformity. As Appiah writes, “Join us, the counter-cosmopolitans say, and we will all be sisters and brothers. But each of them plans to trample on our differences – to trample us to death, if necessary – if we will not join them” (145). When the needs and differences of the other don’t matter, or, at least, don’t matter as much as whatever particular in-group you are a part of, that sense of respectful obligation has little meaning. If your in-group is your nation, and you believe that your nation is superior to all others, then it is easy to demand that all others become like you… or else. Osama bin Laden, for example, doesn’t respect that others might not want to follow the path of glorious Allah, his vision of a perfect world is universalism through uniformity.

Cosmopolitans though prefer universalism through respectful pluralism. Instead of insisting the other become us, we allow them to be themselves. As Appiah puts it, “the cosmopolitan may be happy to abide by the Golden Rule about doing onto others … But cosmopolitans care if those others don’t want to be done unto as I would be done onto” (145). This, of course, becomes complicated when our obligations to others (to protect them from harm) conflict with that sense of respect. It is in Appiah dealing with that issue that I start to have issues with his approach to ethics.  He describes numerous ways to disagree and determine morality amidst disagreement, but in the end doesn’t give a clear answer on those issue. His conclusion is that we have moral obligations to others, we may not know the extent of those exactly, but we obviously aren’t doing anywhere enough already. Needless to say, after reading a whole book exploring our ethical obligation to strangers in a globalized world, the “just do more” conclusion was a tad lacking.

What frustrated me the most with this conclusion and entire approach was the lack of a third way approach. In describing cosmopolitans, the author seems caught with just the extremes of pluralism and fundamentalism. He repeatedly resorted to saying things like, “we just know its wrong” when faced with examples of evil. While I can respect common sense morality, it bothered me that his modernistic worldview wouldn’t allow him to accept religion aside from control or a deeper value than respect. This is where I believe the postmodern focus on justice and love makes a significant difference.

While upholding the need for respect of the other, for postmoderns that respect is guided by a deeper sense of justice or love of the other. Love can temper the religious impulse to turn others into copies of oneself and love can care for a person outside of the constraints of intellectual respect. Such things can’t be codified (although many try), but always exist in the particulars. What is just and loving will always be relative to the people involved and therefore resists hijacking by systems that control. While it may not be significant to some, there is a difference between the moral rationales of “I just know its wrong” and “because it is loving.” Justice and love serve much in the way some would desire “absolutes” to function, but they are a far cry from those rigid foundational dogmas. Justice and love are more pervasive than a so-called “firm foundation.” They are more like the ties that bind us all together – pervasive and indefinable at the same time. It is far bigger than ourselves, which, I think, in a cosmopolitan world, is what we need in order to navigate uncertain ethical interactions.

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