David Wellington’s Hydra Protocol: Spy With A Soul (Book Review)

Posted on May 19, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

Jim Chapel gave one of his arms to defend the United States as a Ranger, but after losing his almost-fiancee’s love because of his work, he finds himself realizing that the only thing he has left is the job itself. In the second Chapel novel from David Wellington, we see an emotionally broken special agent who is sent to Russia, intent on disarming a long-lost Soviet nuclear weapons system that could go off at any moment.

Wellington delivers a story that could very well be about Jason Bourne. Not the Matt Damon/Paul Greengrass type, but the type of Bourne novel that Robert Ludlum wrote. It’s intense without being breakneck, entertaining without being spoofed. We feel like Chapel could be a James Bond-type with the beautiful woman, the technology (his artificial arm), and the mission, but we’re made to feel like it’s grounded in reality.

Unlike Bourne or Bond, Chapel has soul.

In one particular scene, he finds himself marveling at the grandeur of a church, and reflecting back on the way that his mother found peace and solitude there. It’s a quiet moment of reflection mixed in deep with an intense story about love, longing, and courage, but it shows us a side of our hero that we never/rarely see with others like him. It’s reflected in his refusal to murder when given other options, to fight back only when necessary, and it’s what makes him wounded… and vulnerable.

Chapel is partnered with a beautiful Soviet spy, who brings in a third member to their team, an IT guy. The three of them brave amphibians, planes, trains, bullets, and nukes, intent on reclaiming the system that could blow civilization off the map. Altogether, the story covers most of the known world geographically, with dialogue, romance, danger, and more, forcing me to search for a copy of Wellington’s initial Chapel novel to find out more.

This one comes fully recommended for the espionage thriller lover, with a few extra twists by the end that tell me we haven’t seen the last of Jim Chapel.

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@JoshMalerman – #BirdBox: High Strung Society (Book Review)

Posted on May 17, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

Josh Malerman’s debut novel, Bird Box, is as down-to-earth a horror novel as I’ve ever read. At least, I think it’s a horror novel. Chilling and unboxed in by convention or prose, it tells us the story of Malorie and her two children, Boy and Girl, in a world that would make Cormac McCarthy, Hugh Howey, and Stephen King all seem comfortable. It’s a world after; it’s just after what that we’re not sure.

We see much of the novel in the present, as Malorie and her two children make a break for it from their home of the last few years, and the past, as we see Malorie in a world much like ours as telltale signs of a world on the brink pop up around her. We know that everyone in the present tries to keep themselves from seeing, because seeing leads to (or appears to lead to) The Madness [my term, not Malerman’s]. When the Madness descends, people take their own lives by any means possible. No one seems to know where it comes from or why.

In the past world, we understand that people become further and further removed from each other, from community. Malorie takes refuge first with her sister, and later with a group of strangers. Like any post-apocalyptic scenario, we realize that there is good, there is evil, and there is paranoia. But when everyone is forced to wear blindfolds to keep from going mad… they go a bit insane in their closed off worlds. [There’s a bit here about Matthew 18:9 about “if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out,” but I’m still mulling that one over.]

I don’t want to say much more to avoid ruining the suspense, but I felt compelled to finish the book in a day. My sleep was troubled, I admit. But was it troubled by the horror of the book, not horror revealed but just around the corner (and here, complimentarily, I will compare it to M. Night Shymalan’s Signs)? Or was it troubled because this is a parable about how we relate to each other when our own worlds go to hell in a hand basket, putting up blinders, defending our turf, and leaving everyone else to rot? It seems apropos, not just when we see World War Z but when we encounter depression, recession, natural disasters, etc.

Malerman is entertaining, but he also leads me to consider society, and how strung-out we are on our own individualism. We are into our own salvation, damning everything and everyone else to hell, when we lock in on ourselves. Ultimately, salvation doesn’t seem to find us without community, and vice versa. And maybe that leaves me with this as a final critique: Don’t read this book if you don’t want to think.

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Godzilla: Battle Of The Beasts (Movie Review)

Posted on May 16, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

Did you know there are fourteen foreign films about Godzilla and four American ones? After sitting through two and a half hours of this year’s version from director Gareth Edwards (whose Monsters was quite engrossing), I say if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all. [Okay, maybe discounting the Matthew Broderick one set to Puff Daddy and Led Zeppelin.] Here, we get none of the heart or acting of last year’s Pacific Rim, and are instead left with massive CGI-driven battles between giant preying mantises and Godzilla. Or something like that.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kickass) is the name for the younger viewers, starring as the son of a nuclear physicist (Bryan Cranston), who joins the military after his mother’s tragic death and ends up ‘battling’ the giant monsters. We’re told some backstory, like “we weren’t really testing nuclear weapons in the 1940s, we were trying to kill these monsters,” but it’s all pretty much in passing. We get some back story with 1999 and the family tragedy, and then it’s fast forward to the present.

Brody (Taylor-Johnson) is just home to San Francisco to see his wife (Emily Olsen) and son, before the call comes in that his father is snooping around the old site. Up until this point, the film actually has some engrossing moments, and I thought I might be turning the corner on disaster/large-rampaging animal movies. [For the record, I went very skeptically to see Pacific Rim; Idris Elba, the giant Voltron-like robots, and some actual emotional plot development made it the surprise hit of last summer.] But as soon as we see Godzilla and his other beasts… I’m done. The element of surprise is up, and we’re in for some all-out mayhem that makes me think Rampage (the game), not some entertaining movie worth $8.

While we’d like to think this is going to be a heroic turn of events, but in truth, Brody is just making his way home. His wife gets the ‘damsel in distress’ treatment, and his son is a trapping stereotype, not a developed character. We don’t get anyone else to even blip on the emotional radar (past some kid on the Hawaiian tram system) and frankly, the film becomes laughable… especially when Godzilla vomits chemical waste into the other beast’s mouth. My friend Ben was literally laughing out loud. (Not lol-ing, but really, really belly-laughing out loud.)

If you still feel the need to go see it, I can’t blame you. (Yes, I can.) But the truth is, I paid $5 for a copy of The Change-Up and got an $8 voucher for Godzilla. Then the HVAC kicked into overdrive and management showed up with free movie vouchers for another movie. So I guess I turned my $5 into $16, which is pretty good at the end of the day. Maybe Godzilla wasn’t that bad….

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Steve Berry’s The Lincoln Myth: Brigham Young vs. Abe Lincoln (Book Review)

Posted on May 15, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

Dan Brown has made a habit of initiating feuds with subsets of various religions, whether its Opus Dei in The Da Vinci Code or the Freemasons in The Lost Symbol. One has to imagine that Mormons, members of the Church of Latter Day Saints, may respond similarly to Steve Berry’s revisionist history thriller about how a deal between Abraham Lincoln and Brigham Young threatens to unravel the democratic union of the United States in the present day. Slowly building to an explosive finale, Berry’s The Lincoln Myth again steers Cotton Malone out of quiet book selling and spy retirement into Jason Bourne territory, where he and those on his side must save the world.

After a brief 19th century interlude, we’re launched into the life of Malone, who responds to his previous boss, the U.S. Justice Department’s Stephanie Nelle, and finds his quiet life ripped away. Soon, he and a new agent, Luke Daniels, are tracking a radical Mormon named Josepe Salazar from Denmark to Utah, as political moves are made in back rooms to cover up truths that have been kept secret for nearly two centuries. But complicating matters is the fact that Nelle has also sent Malone’s girlfriend, Cassiopiea Vitt, into Salazar’s inner circle because Vitt was Salazar’s adolescent love.

I know little-to-nothing about Lincoln and the Mormons but there’s some interesting stuff out there. [If you’re interested, you can check out Ted Widmer’s essay for the NY Times here. Most of the other top links are provided by Mormon publications.] What is clear is how fragile the various bends and conflicts of the road toward a “more perfect union” were, and how little most of us really consider the fragility of all of that. The book challenges our expectations (or childhood history) about the Civil War, the Revolutionary War, and Abraham Lincoln’s involvement! But enough about the history itself.

Putting aside the wealth of real and fabricated Mormon history that we read about, there is a real sense that Cotton Malone fights for his love, that is, Cassiopiea Vitt. He’s set up to believe she’s on her own with Salazar even as he knows that Nelle is manipulating him. His heart, and his level of commitment, cause him to throw himself beyond the realms of his musty book store and explore that world again which he seems to leave behind in between books! But honestly, without his dedication, all would be lost.

Again, Berry has delivered an engrossing, multi-layered tale of courage, camaraderie, love, and patriotism, in the midst of an ever-changing world that remains strongly tied to our historic but still fluid past.

Buy it here!

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Ten Words #3: The Name

Posted on May 14, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

“You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.” (Exodus 20:7)

“What’s in a name?”

That’s the question that Juliet asks, bemoaning the fact that Romeo comes from the Montague family and she comes from the Capulet one. She says we could call a rose anything we wanted but it would still have a beautiful smell. But the truth is, that Romeo and Juliet die because of their names; where they come from matters.

I remember, not exactly when but only that I was still young, that my uncle thought it was funny to call me “Jake,” instead of Jacob. That ended when my mother threatened to hurt him (I actually believe she offered to “wrap him around a tree” if he called me that again). It mattered to my mom that she and Dad had named me Jacob– that was my name. Who gave us the name matters.

[My favorite Christian metaphor for this is one told by a bunch of Weird Al Yankovic types. The guy says that when he has a kid, he’s going to name the boy “Bill” but call it “Steve.” Because our names are really sinful and corrupt and broken but by the blood of Jesus we are called forgiven and redeemed.]

A friend of mine told me a story recently about a period from his childhood when he was acting out. He would get to school, get in trouble, and find himself cooling his heels in the principal’s office. None of that really bothered him, but when his mother, a widow, showed up, well, that’s when it “got real.”

“What’s your name?” she would ask, leading him by the ear out to the car.

“William Browning Johnson.” [The names have been changed to protect… the innocent.]

“No,” she would say, “that’s not your name. William Browning is your name, Johnson is my name that you’re dragging through the mud.”

What we do with the name matters.

Think about the power in a name. Some incite excitement, some incite terror. In my house, we talk about Leroy Jethro Gibbs like he’s a family member (you either get that or you don’t.) But these folks are on first name basis in most of our minds: Hitler. Eastwood. Katniss. Stalin. Bogart. Voldemort. Pele. Popeye. Magic. Lincoln. Dahmer. Lennon. Yoda.

Think about the people you know by name who need no introduction.

Your mother. Your father. Your spouse. Your children. Most of the time, you don’t even need to have them be identified on the phone, because you know their voice! You can call them, and conversation resumes as it was the last time you talked.

You are known by them and they are known by you. You are in relationship.

The context of the name matters.

In Exodus 3:14, we saw that God told Moses that his name was “I AM who I AM.” It’s God’s name, like discovering what the first name of your parent is for the first time. (My youngest has taken to calling me “Daddy Jacob” lately, as he gets used to my ‘real name’ in his mind.)

There’s a sense that God wants his people to understand who he is, so that they can be in relationship. He knows who they are but he also wants them to know who he is.

We see in our Scripture today in Exodus 5:22-6:8 that Moses, who at the time has moved from staring into a burning bush that is miraculously unconsumed by fire to being God’s spokesperson to the people and their slave master Pharaoh, still struggles with God’s identity and what it means to represent God.

“Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble on this people, and you have not rescued your people at all,” Moses whines.

But God’s answer is swift and decisive: God will not let his name be fruitless and weak. Instead, he says he will cause Pharaoh to be so upset that he will drive the Israelites out of Egypt. He won’t just let them go but he will force them out!

But God realizes that if Moses is to really “get” God’s name, if he’s really going to be in relationship with God, he has to be able to put it all together. They are getting to know each other, not in a speed dating relationship where people flit around the room but in a committed covenantal relationship where they will become known to each other.

God revisits his ‘business card’ of sorts. He begins and ends with “I am the Lord.” He reminds Moses that God first appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as “God Almighty” but that he wasn’t fully known to them. He reminds Moses of the covenant that will bring the Israelites into the good land of Canaan, and he reminds Moses that he is the Slave Freer. He is the liberator. He is the covenant keeper.

With this introduction, like a royal party being introduced before the court or the bride and groom at the wedding reception, God tells Moses to say to his people: “‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord.'”

I, God, will free you. I will take you as mine, you will know me, and I will fulfill the covenant.

It’s amazing to me that we can divorce the Old and New Testaments, and see only the differences in situation and language. God is working toward a real relationship with his people. He established it in the Garden of Eden and it was broken; he set them up to succeed and they failed; he continues to work on it over and over again, even sending his son.

Now, there’s something in a name. How many names can you come up with for God’s son?

Consider these: Christ, or anointed; Lamb of God, echoing the Passover in Exodus when the Israelites are freed; Messiah, or savior; Son of God and Son of David, connecting Jesus to both his heavenly father and the kingly line of King David; Immanuel, or God with us.

All of those add something to the building and deepening of the relationship, in the same way that we develop an understanding of who someone is and what they mean to us. But that makes it even more powerful when we use the name… or misuse it.

Many of you probably have been taught since childhood not to “use the Lord’s name in vain.” It’s akin to ‘don’t swear’ or use profanity. No adding middle names to Jesus’ name. No invoking a prayer when you smack your thumb with the hammer. But what if the Third Word is so much more?

What if ‘not swearing’ is just the minimum? What if God was trying to help the Israelites recognize that in community with him and with each other that they had to represent The Name well?

Jesus taught his disciples the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6:9-10 (which you can also read in our bulletins). He tells them to call God “Our Father,” another name implying intimacy, with the spoken thought “hallowed be your name” or “may your name be kept holy,” coupled right there with “your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Is Jesus teaching that his disciples should pray to remind God to keep his name holy? Does God really need to be reminded who he is and what he is?

I hardly think so.

Instead, Jesus is building on Third Word and reminding the disciples that they must keep the name holy, that they must honor their end of the covenant in the way that they live their lives by “hallowing” God’s name.

Jesus tells them that they should have a healthy fear, respect, love, etc. for God and God’s authority. As Bishop Cho says, “God is not your waiter.”

The Israelites took using a name for God seriously; they didn’t say what they considered the name to be, Yahweh, out loud. But how they acted toward God mattered even more than what they called him. Their behavior mattered.

So, wait, this commandment is not just about the things we call God or when we blurt out his name? There’s something more we need to do proactively?

Flip open your Bible to John 3. Look at verses 16-18:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

John 3:17 is still one of my favorite verses of all time, but look at 18 again. John writes that everyone who believes in Jesus is not condemned but that those who have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son are.

What does it mean to believe in Jesus’s name, and therefore God’s name?

There are things we like, that we believe, but we’re not saved by them. I believe that chocolate is the best flavor on the planet. I believe that Coke is better than Pepsi. I believe that the Red Sox are the most maddening team in baseball to watch. I believe Krispy Kreme are better than Dunkin Donuts!

I believe those things are true, but I wouldn’t sell my soul for them. I don’t believe in those things enough to make them my identity.

But if I believe in God, then something has to change, right? I can’t say I believe and give lip service to it, and then not actually be changed in the way I behave… or I have not really believed.

I asked on Easter why some folks come on Christmas Eve and Easter but not the rest of the time in between. What power do Christmas and Easter hold that make people come, when they don’t believe church is important otherwise? Because if Christmas and Easter have the power that I believe they do, then I have to follow through on the rest of the covenant by being present to worship God, learn more about God, and fellowship with other believers.

It’s what Jesus said those who believed in his name should do.

If I don’t do those things, I might as well not come on Christmas and Easter. Not just for me but for the way that my witness or my “anti-witness” speaks to what it is that I say is important.

In Romans 2:23-24, Paul wrote, “You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written: “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” That’s the first century equivalent of Brennan Manning’s “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle.” (I’ve used it before, but it’s a great quote.)

We misuse God’s name when we fail to be like God in the way we act.

Consider the deceased Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church for a second. In the name of God, they have picketed the military, bashed gays, and proposed that God used people to kill pro-abortion doctors.

In the name of God.

I remember being on campus at the University of Richmond, and periodically a group would slip onto campus and start “telling people about Jesus.” There weren’t always signs but it usually involved shouting and a bullhorn, sharing age-old messages that made my life as a Christian harder and as a campus minister who wanted to share God’s love ten times more difficult.

“God hates you” (or “your sin”).

“Turn or burn.” “You all are going to hell because of your [piercings, short skirts, lack of faith, color of skin, etc.]”

“If you’re not baptized (like this) or don’t go to (this church) you’re not good enough.”

That’s a pretty sharp contrast to what we’d put on our church t-shirts and go do, right? (But that opens up another hole can of worms: what can you or can’t you do in a church t-shirt? I digress…) It still seems that if we want to represent God’s name well, if we want to “not take the Lord’s name in vain” to promote our relationship with God and each other, we need to think about how we represent him.

With our spouses, with our kids, with our parents, with our coworkers.

With our driving, with our spending, with our voting, with what we watch, with what we talk about, with how we talk.

With the way we treat each other in church, in the church parking lot, in the way we talk about each other on the drive home, in the way we tell or don’t tell others about church.

We need to recognize that it’s not just enough to not do them harm, our friends and our enemies, but if we’re covered in the name of God, if we’re representing God on earth because we claim to love him, then we have to want what is best for everyone.

We have to be a blessing to them and not a curse. We have to recognize that we might be what they think of when they think about God, or Jesus, or the church.

The theologian Joan Chittister wrote, “When we use the name of God to demean or diminish any other human being it is not they whose merits we measure. It is our own. And in public.” But I’ll take it a step further: when we demean someone or diminish them and they know we’re a follower of Jesus, we fail to keep God’s name holy.

There are countless examples of failing to keep God’s name holy that we could discuss.

There’s the concept that seems prevalent in our area to advertise that you are a “Christian so-and-so.” ‘I’m a Christian real estate agent.’ ‘I’m a Christian painter.’ Or more universally, “I’m a Christian author” or “we’re a Christian band.”

What happens if you’re terrible at your job? Are you giving God credit that you’re lazy and not good at spreading out the drip cloth? When you make music and it’s terrible, do you think God wants to be known for your inability to carry a tune?

We need to remember that there’s a fine line there. We’re following Jesus but we’re not God. God doesn’t want all of the credit for what we do or how we perform if we’re not going to be willing to fully follow. If we’re not willing to take the good with the bad, then maybe the first way we keep God’s name holy, is to not glue it on over all of our mistakes.

I’ll admit it: my language has improved greatly since my eldest learned how to talk! You want to know what you sound like, or look like, or act like, spend significant time with a kid!

Are you a follower of Christ? A kid will let you know!

Are you full of it? A kid will let you know!

Are you leading well…?

To paraphrase Manning, we can either make disciples or make atheists.

Because we’re all making something.

There’s one last name for God I want to highlight today, from Revelation 1:8. It’s not because I read Revelations about the way we’re headed or where we’re going but because I think it reminds us of the truth about who has the Final Word.

God says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”

To quote Highlander of the Clan McCloud: “there can only be one!”

That’s God. He’s awesome, and perfect, and forever. It’s I AM’s name, and we shouldn’t wear it out in idle or unholy behavior. We should use it and ourselves to build others up, to build the kingdom up, to “make the kingdom of God on Earth.” We should use it to proclaim God’s love and the salvation that only one name, Jesus Christ, can provide.

With our witness.

With our message.

With our words.

With our lives.

Let’s wear God’s name out.

For more on The Ten Commandments, check out Sean Gladding’s book, Ten.

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Rollins & Blackwood’s The Kill Switch: K9 Spy Thriller Redefines The Genre (Book Review)

Posted on May 13, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

James Rollins has delivered every time, with Robert Ludlum-like tales that spinout all over the globe, sending characters we come to care about into harms way to save the world. Now, he teams with Grant Blackwood to deliver the first-ever K9 spy partnership of Tucker Wayne and his Belgian shepherd, Kane. Sent by Sigma Force’s Painter Crowe on a mission to transport a scientist across the border of Russia, they find themselves up against a nefarious conspiracy and a plot that could change life as we know it.

I’ll admit it: I was skeptical of a tale about a warrior dog. I appreciate animals but I’m not one to say that my dog is the equivalent of one of my children. But I like Rollins’ work enough that I had to check it out, and the advance time I had to read it sucked me into a story that made both the human and the dog into characters that I cared about. It seemed possible that they could both be badly hurt, if not killed, and I wanted them to succeed because their moralistic decisions erred on the side of mercy, even as others tried to destroy them.

Fans of Ludlum, any of the Ian Fleming or John Gardner 007 books, or past Rollins or Tom Clancy work will appreciate this tale that gives us enough military process without overwhelming us with it. We traipse with our pair of heroes over Russia, into Africa, and back to the States, and the description adds to the element of adventure, rather than drowning it or appearing superfluous. We don’t always know what lurks around the corner but we feel like we know what these two are risking.

Unlike some of our human ‘buddy’ pairings, we come to understand what it means to really rely on the other person. This is like a buddy cop film, without the slapstick humor and with more of a feel for what these two mean to each other. Obviously, animals have more of a unconditional love element (they forgive the moment they’ve forgotten) but we walk away from an exciting story recognizing that there’s something special about their partnership as well. I’ve seen it with a friend who has a service dog, and it makes you stop and consider how you relate to others, whether they’re your four-legged friends or another person.

Ultimately, Rollins and Blackwood prove that they can work together to deliver top-shelf excitement, just as their characters deliver cooperation in the mission. It’s well worth reading, and I can’t wait for Round Two.

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Adam Hamilton’s Making Sense Of The Bible: How Do You Read? (Book Review)

Posted on May 11, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

Adam Hamilton, founder and lead pastor of Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City, has produced a long line of books and resources  but Making Sense of the Bible is the first that I’d call a thoroughly accessible seminary class. Beginning with the origins of the Bible, the book takes us through three-hundred-pages of exploration into how the Bible was formed, what we should understand about its nature, and why its contents are relevant for the lives we live two thousand years after it was written down.

The “fifteen minute version” of both the Old and New Testament is written so that anyone could follow it, and none of the contents in between really stretches beyond the most straightforward United Methodist understanding of the Bible. It’s not until the section called “Questions about the Nature of Scripture” that I imagine some eyebrows (not mine) will go up as Hamilton examines, a third of the way in, what it means for the Bible to be God’s inspired word and whether it’s inerrant. [That’s actually putting it too directly– it’s more what kind of inerrancy we’re talking about.]

The final third is solidly around several issues, many of which Hamilton discussed in When Christians Get It Wrong but some of which get a different twist to their explanation, often more deeply. Can Christians be scientists (evolution believers, for short)? How does Hamilton understand the stories of creation, Noah, etc.? What do we do with the apparent difference between the ‘nature’ of God in the Old and New Testaments? How do we handle the problem of evil? Are Christians exclusive?

It would seem, based on his outspoken and compassionate proposal of changes to the United Methodist Book of Discipline, that the book is set up to get us to a thoughtful take on Chapter 29, which discusses the current hot-button issue in the UM church, if not the world: homosexuality. Hamilton argues for what might cause some to reflect with thoughtfulness and others to get defensive, that maybe we’ve taken the verses that talk about (or appear to talk about) homosexuality out of context. That alone is enough of a discussion starter!

One of my favorite passages in the book sets us up to reconsider many of our “sacred cows” in church, as Hamilton points out that Jesus’ most important commandment (in response to the rich young ruler in Matthew 22) was to love God and love your neighbor: “These seem to have been the interpretive lens (scholars might call it Jesus’s ‘defining hermeneutical principle’) by which Jesus read the whole of his Bible.” It makes you stop and wonder how you’d read the Bible in its entirety, if you were Jesus, and if there’s anything you might take another way. It’s food for thought, as Hamilton again digs into the ‘same old Scripture’ and comes back with articulations that make us reflect on who we are in relationship to God and each other.

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Ben & Julianna Zobrist’s Double Play: More Than The Big Time (Book Review)

Posted on May 10, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

I knew two things about Ben Zobrist before I read his collaborative memoir with his wife, Julianna.

One, Zobrist plays for the Tampa Bay Rays, one of my beloved Red Sox’s arch rivals.  Two, He’s a great fantasy baseball player, as a second base, shortstop, and outfield-eligible player.

But now I know two things that are significantly more important.

One, Ben and Julianna Zobrist love and trust in Jesus Christ for direction in their lives. Two, the Zobrists have worked through their exploration of love and marriage with hearts that are scarred by the “worse” but focus on the “better.”

DoublePlay follows in a long line of sports memoirs that narrates a player’s rise through adolescence and the minor leagues until they make it to the big time. But unlike many of the memoirs, the focus is not on the big time (which doesn’t come until the last quarter of the book) but rather the courtship and marriage of the Zobrists.

Comparable in tone and delivery to Coach Tony Dungy’s books about life and faith, the Zobrists narrate Ben’s rise to stardom and Julianna’s development as a Christian pop sensation. From the outside looking in, it’s all gravy, right? But as with most stories, there are the moments of insecurity and actual trouble that the two experienced, from an early sexual assault in Julianna’s childhood to Ben’s adulthood anxiety attacks. No, this isn’t as flamboyant as the troubles of Los Angeles Angels outfielder Josh Hamilton, but it’s more realistic for us “non-stars” to wrap our minds around.

By the end of the book, I was reflecting on my own marriage and witness, and considering the ways that I needed to be more humble, more self-less. It’s a testimony to the way that Mike Yorkey helped shape the Zobrists’ story for us to read it, but even more, it’s a witness to the life that the Zobrists live.

 

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@Rick_Mattson Faith Is Like Skydiving: An Apologetic’s New Handbook

Posted on May 9, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

Rick Mattson, a campus minister and “apologetics expert” for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship delivers a thorough look at the various conversations that people of faith have with folks who fall on a spectrum of disbelief. Some are seeking more information, some are skeptical, and some are antagonistic. Mattson takes them all on a humorous, intelligent, and heartfelt examination of the discourse to be had, with specific points for those on the side of faith who long to engage their friends and community on the other side of belief.

The book is careful to be straightforward about Mattson’s own faith, but he’s honest about the fact that he might be wrong, he might not understand everything, he might be able to learn from people who don’t agree with him, etc. Along the way, he touches on conversations similar to the ones that Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey’s characters have in Contact, with real life examples about suffering, pain, doubt, and faith that looks at life through the lens of faith.

Some of the explanations flow into other areas, like the examination of what allows the Earth to permit life, shading into scientific range; others, like the examination of Jesus as God’s Son, look at the way that historians examine a text’s reliability and accuracy in conveying what really happened. If this sounds a bit like Lee Strobel’s books, like A Case For Christ, that’s because the material itself lands in that apologetics world. But the difference is that Mattson is especially interested in setting up our story in The Story with talking points to direct, influence, and navigate real-life conversations with people who disagree.

While Mattson will tangle with the ideas proposed by Dawkins, Hume, and others, he’s really about making the conversation work effectively with ‘real’ people in our lives. He uses a hammer (which does damage but can’t swing itself to discuss the negative impact of Christianity) and a hole-in-one (which doesn’t happen often but can happen to explain how one might refrain a skeptical debate about the gospel). Overall, it’s insightful (there are several practical takeaways I made note of) but also written in a way that you don’t need a seminary degree to understand. Hats off to Mattson, for sharing his real-life experiences, keeping his heart compassionate, and recognizing that there are many ways to have real-life conversations.

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Barbara Brown Taylor’s Learning To Walk In The Dark: What Are You So Afraid Of? (Book Review)

Posted on May 9, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

I am a novice reader of Taylor’s. Granted, there have been a number of sermons I’ve heard that cited her works (Leaving The Church) but I’d never read one of her books. When Learning To Walk In The Dark arrived, I dove into the world she explored through the lens of faith. I learned about constellations, collecting chicken eggs, and, the impact of the lightbulb on humanity. It’s artfully wrapped together in a way that takes complex ideas and allows her readers to digest and internalize the possibilities.

“When we run from darkness, how much do we really know about what we’re running from?” Taylor asks. She challenges us to consider whether we divide things into light and dark on principle, either/or, and if we’ve made the definitive dividing line into something that causes us to ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater.’ But she also proposes that it’s possible that what we experience as a ‘bump in the night’ is actually God, holy, or necessary for our growth as human beings and people of faith.

Deeper into the book, as she explores these possibilities of the darkness, Taylor reminds us that faith/religion doesn’t just translate, but that it also transforms, that the salvation of ourselves and our lives begins with Jesus’ understanding that we will die to ourselves. Here, we see an echo of baptism, that we (in immersion) are plunged into the water to ‘die’ and rising to live, we also experience the ‘death’ of what we know when we leave the light in which we can see to venture into the dark.

Taylor’s exploration has me thinking about my perception of light and dark (even my divisions of ‘right’ versus ‘wrong’), in a way that I’ll be wrestling for days. She proposes in the epilogue that “the real problem has far less to do with what is really our there [in the dark] than it does with our resistance to finding out what is really out there.” She’s opened my eyes to what could be, and I’m better for it.

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