A Disclaimer on my Last Post

When I sat down to write a post about ‘boycotting’ CCM (Christian Contemporary Music) I didn’t think it would quickly become my number one post of all time (only a few friends, neighbors and co-conspirators usually read this). I wrote this at the bequest of a friend, to do a two-part series, the first giving 10 reasons to boycott CCM, the second highlighting artists worth breaking your boycott for. So please read the first post as a broad stroke criticism which is overly general. If you tell me that I am not being fair, I will answer you with one word: yep.

So things you do need to know: I listen Christian artists (though not exclusively), I appreciate the creativity, musicianship and quality of many and I am not really calling for boycott. What I am hoping, is that the previous post makes you think about what Christian music is, what it says and where it can be improved (in general).

So as originally planned, I will wait until next Tuesday for my follow up post. In the meantime, feel free to continue to point me to quality Christian musicians because the heart of my criticisms are this: I long to hear songs that cause my heart to sing of all that Christ has done and is doing in the world. In the meantime, I will resume my regular posting about faith and life, ministry, books, and my theological musings. I love that you found my blog and have engaged me in conversation on some of these things. I’m an extrovert, so love it when people talk back at me, so sit back and relax and lets talk a minute.

 

10 reasons to Boycott Christian Contemporary Music (if you aren’t already)

I promised when I wrote another music post, I would try to be generous and not overly critical. I said I would shine a light on what I see is  good. Then Stacey from Thinking Worship challenged me to write a couple of posts, the first of which was this: “10 reasons to Boycott CCM.” So below you have my opinionated and overly generalized rant against the Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) industry.  I will follow this up next week by highlighting  artists ‘worth breaking your boycott for.’ I just need to figure out who they are.

1. CCM artists lack credibility. I know that is bold claim to start  off my list but consider this: Christian Hip Hop was founded by these guys:  
2. 

   Carman: Christian Music Sensation of the 80′s and 90′s

   Musically, CCM is sub-par compared to wider industry standards. I’m not trying to be unkind to talented Christian musicians, but Christian music is part of the music industry and operates on the same principles as the wider  industry, but in a smaller pond with a smaller talent pool and with less money. The results are not always pretty. No other musical ‘genre’ would Carman ever have been a phenomenon.  Seriously though, CCM began with the idea of being ‘counter-culture’ and became a pale imitation of the wider industry. There is a history of marketing CCM artists like a nicotine patch (if you like ACDC, try listening to . . .). And in such an environment, creativity suffers.

3. CCM lyrics are often trite, tired or just plain awkward. Yes, I know that pop music in general has its share of bad lyrics. But when your favorite secular artists come  out with awkward lyrics you just assume they were probably high when they wrote that. What excuse can you make for bad Christian lyrics? Consider the lyric in Jars of Clay’s wildly popular The Valley Song, “When death like a Gypsy/Comes to steal what I love.” Can you even think of  a secular artist having a popular song which maligns a entire ethnic group to describe a personal experience? (Gypsy=the Romani people group).  But more often we just get the same tired rhymes in every song (i.e. forgive/live,  grace/face, love/above, you/you/you/you, etc.).
4. CCM does not give an appropriate space to lament. Christians like the happy-clappy feel good songs, and because CCM is a market driven industry, it general gives them what they want. I am not saying that Christian music never ‘names the pain,’ but artists who will sit with the pain and wrestle with it, are few and far between.  When you consider that one of the predominant themes running through the Psalms is lament it is an utter shame that Christian artists don’t spend more time doing the same. I think that secular artists are sometimes better at writing what they feel, whereas Christian artists write what they ‘should’ feel. The result is that  lyrically they are less than honest and are more formulaic. Which brings me to my next point.
5. 

   CCM’s Boy Band Bad Boys who in a burst of creativity wrote “I can only imagine.” Since then, CCM has not only imagined it, they represented the same song every which way they could.

   CCM songwriting is so formulaic that they make Nickelback look like musical geniuses.  Canadian Musical giants, Nickelback are known for two things: that song they did, and every other song they did that sounded like the song they did (sorry I don’t know what it’s called). They latched onto a formula of reproducing the same song over and over again. In the CCM world, reproducing the same song is not just the practice of  one artist,  it is an industry’s best practice. So when Bob Carlisle writes a song about getting in his little girl’s face every night, other artists roll out with their songs about tucking in their kids and their great hopes for their future.  And the cycle repeats.  Another example is MercyMe’s I can only Imagine, the runaway hit about dying and going to heaven and how great this will be. If you turn on Christian radio, you will not only  hear this song  in heavy rotation (which is more than 10 years old),  but a number of spin offs about going to heaven when you die, which do not sound  significantly different from the ‘original.’

6. CCM Artists think the Trinity is God the Father, God the Son, and the American Spirit.  Maybe I’m overstating this, but in the past I’ve heard Christian music fail to robustly confess the Trinity (with usual the Spirit being short-shrifted). I’ve also seen Christian artists use their platform as entertainers to promote a  particular political agenda or candidate.  Celebrities do this all the time, but it is a little messier when you present yourself as more than an entertainer (but a minister of the gospel).  Christian artists sometimes evoke America’s Christian heritage and give you that curious blend of God and Country.  A large swath of Christian artists have produced patriotic songs (everyone from Five Iron Frenzy, Rich Mullins and Carman). Is this bad? Not necessarily, but realize when you chose who you listen to based on an ideology, you may get more than one ideology blended in.  You may get the gospel with a theological read of our current political and cultural situation, and a political message.  Be on your guard. 
7. CCM is full of gender stereotypes that demean women and young girls. Recently my wife was listening to Christian radio while she took our daughter to preschool (our other daughter was in the car). We listen to Christian radio in the car sometimes because our little girls repeat every lyric they hear and I would rather they sing Christian songs than lyrics with overtly sexual references (the fare on many radio stations). But Christian lyrics sometimes promote gender stereotypes so after a few songs my wife turned the radio off because she didn’t like what these lyrics were teaching our daughters.  There are songs about princess daughters getting their fairy tale happy endings and young boys making their way in the world. Consider these Lyrics from Mikeschair-Someone Worth Dying For:
   

   You might be the wife, waiting up at night
   You might be the man, struggling to provide
   feeling like it’s hopeless
   Maybe you’re the son who chose a broken road
   Maybe you’re the girl thinking you’ll end up alone 

   What do these lyrics teach us about men and women and gender? Women worry about being left alone and relationships while the males  are independent and providers. Sanctus Real’s song Lead Me-Describes the existential crisis of a man wanting to be the leader for his family that his wife expects him to be. I applaud the real desire here of a man wanting to take responsibility for his wife and kids but this is not the only way to understand and practice masculinity and be faithful as a Christian husband and father. Fidelity and responsibility is a message both genders need to hear and elationships are important to both genders. Please do not impose narrow gender roles on my children which deny their full humanity. Leave that to Disney.

8. CCM lyrics fail to present the the total Christian life. If you listen to Christian radio on any given day, you will hear songs of salvation being found in Jesus, songs of praise, songs about the experience of heaven and songs about how God is present with you. All of these are good things, but are not the whole story. I long to hear more Christian music about the dailiness of living the Christian life or the socio-economic dimensions of life in the Kingdom.  The gospel is not only good news, it is exciting news with far reaching implications. Why then is so much Christian music cliché?  Why are there so many songs that focus on going to heaven when I die instead of focusing on how we live life with Jesus now? Why do so many songs focus on the moment of conversion, but so few that focus on the daily (some times mundane) transformative journey of walking with Jesus?  Why do so many Christian songs express  a real hatred (or at least ambivalence) for ‘this world?’ Are they Gnostic?
9. CCM artists are a bunch of religious narcissists. With a healthy overlay of the prosperity gospel, many Christian songs tout Jesus as the way towards the good life. There is some truth to that, but the flip side is that I need to be reminded to sacrifice, to lay my life down, to serve, to pour out my life for others and I may not get the things I want or think I want from my experience of following Jesus. Jesus came to give us life not to make the life we have better and too many Christian artists fail to make the distinction.
10. Because when Christian Music Artists ‘make it big’ they crossover into acting in Christian films. Yes CCM has its good parts , but  the money you spend on Christian music, indirectly goes to support the Christian film industry. May God have mercy on your soul.
    

    Carman uncovers his own legs to play Boaz in The Book of Ruth (2009)

    

    Jaci Velasquez in Jerusalem Countdown (2011) This is not her first appearance in the Christian-straight-to-video industry.

    

    Michael W. Smith opposit Jeff Obafemi Carr in Second Chance (2006)

Unless a Seed falls. . .

Today is Memorial Day and in honor of the day, the Pacific Northwest Sun retreated to her home behind the cloud. The gentle wind blows as flags fly at half mast, and the rain falls. I look out at our yard. I am losing my battle with the weeds and I am planning my next assault on their domain but for now the solemnity of the day and the wet earth brings an uneasy truce. Do they wince knowing that their days are numbered? Or do they laugh trusting the strength of their number and their subterranean strength?

I look at my garden plot.  On the advice of my aunt, I got all my seed and seedlings in the ground this weekend, with the exception of my tomato plants which I will nurse  for a couple more weeks until the warmth of the coming summer arrives and they will take their place along the side of the house.  So on a day when my country honors their dead, I look for signs of life, practicing resurrection with last year’s seed.

With a vivid metaphor, Jesus once predicted his own death, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies it reproduces many seeds. Those who love their life will lose it, while those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:23-25). The image is of wheat at the end of harvest. The plant, in its death throws lets her seed fall to the ground. From that death came life. The seeds I planted over the last several weeks came from plants long dead. They came to me in tiny packages. I wrested them from these  paper bag sepulchers and laid them in the earth, and as quick as three days later, life sprang out of death.  With this image Jesus showed us how his death, would inaugurate a movement more potent and tenacious than the weeds that threaten my lawn.

But it isn’t Jesus’ death we remember today (though we remember it always) but the death of American soliders, service men and women, who gave their lives for their country. The life I live here in a little suburban town on the verge of Canada was enabled by the sacrifice of others. The  pleasures and freedoms I enjoy and take for granted as my inalienable right, are mine because someone died to purchase this freedom.  This is a fact, and it is fitting to honor those who gave their life. I may sometimes balk at the justice and justification for the wars we find ourselves in, but I also know that the way of life that is possible in America and the way of life I love, was bought by another’s sacrifce.  I say this, as someone with pacifist leanings who hates the way war kills and destroys and forces us to demonize an enemy we fail to pray for.

But it is also a mixed blessing.  What life springs from the death of a solider? Americans like me discard these dead like the husks of old seed and feel entitlement without sacrifice. Americans like me (and you) have benefit from the spoils of war–manifest destiny and fruit from other men’s fields.  We have defended capitalism in the free world by sometimes supporting despots ever bit as bad as those we depose; We have destroyed terrorist networks but alienated our friends and sympathizers.  We have exacted revenge on our enemies under the guise of peace.  We sow to the wind, and reap the whirlwind with American service men and women killed across the globe.

Now, I know some will see the above paragraph as naive and you are probably right. I have no desire to dishonor our dead or the service people who currently serve.  They have given their lives for this country and I reap the benefits. But their death did not bring us the sort of freedom we have in Christ. There death, however noble, also enables the ugly American to use and abuse this earth’s resources and believe  we are entitled to everything.  From death springs life, but whose life? What death?

So this Memorial Day I honor our fallen soldiers for the blessings they have given us and hope for the peace and brotherhood that comes through Christ.

A Pentecost Prayer from Symeon the New Theologian

The following prayer was included at the end of the preface of The Giver of Life: The Holy Spirit in the Orthodox Tradition (reviewed on this blog previously here).  It comes from Symeon the New Theologian’s Hymns of Divine Love  and is a wonderful prayer invoking the Spirit’s presence and voicing praise for all the Spirit does Symeon lived from 949-1022 and is one of the great mystics of the Christian east and an Apophatic tradition. This prayer/hymn emphasizes the radical transcendence of the Spirit of God. In our day and age, we tend to emphasize the immediacy of the Spirit, but we need to be challenged by the ways the Spirit of God defies definition and control and whose ways are most certainly not our ways.  May you experience the infilling of the Spirit this Pentecost Sunday!

 

Come, true light.

Come, eternal life.

Come,  hidden mystery.

Come, nameless treasure.

Come,  ineffable reality.

Come, inconceivable person.

Come, endless bliss.

Come, non-setting sun.

Come, infallible expectation of all those who must be saved.

Come, O Powerful One, who always creates and recreates and transforms by Your will alone.

Come, O invisible and totally intangible and impalpable.

Come, You who always remain motionless at each moment move completely and come to us, asleep in hades, O You above the heavens.

Come,  O beloved Name and repeated everywhere, but of whom it is absolutely forbidden for us to express the existence or to know the Nature.

Come, eternal joy.

Come, non-tarnishing crown.

Come, crystalline cincture, studded with precious stones.

Come, royal purple.

Come, truly sovereign right hand.

Come, You whom my miserable soul has desired and desires.

Come, You the Lonely, to the lonely, since You see I am lonely.

Come, You who have seperated me from everything and made me solitary in this world.

Come, You who have become Yourself desire in me, who have made me desire You, You, the absolutely inaccessible one.

Come, my breath and my life.

Come, consolation of my poor soul.

Come, my joy, my glory, my endless delight.

Thoughts from a book you’ve never heard of on the Kingdom of God by Lesslie Newbigin

Thursday afternoon I found myself up in the library of Regent College to conduct a bit of historical research for an Evangelical Covenant class I’m taking. As Serendipity would have it, I picked up a small book which was completely unhelpful for my purposes but worthwhile anyway. The book was called Sign of the Kingdom, and its author is the late missional thinker Lesslie Newbigin.

This is a tiny little book is long out of print. It was originally published in the UK in 1980 (under a different title) and it comes from 1979 Waldenström Lectures at the Theological Seminary of the Swedish Covenant Church (at Stockholm). I really was happy to find it for several reasons. First, I have an academic and practical interest in the Missional church and love everything I read by Lesslie Newbigin. Secondly, I get annoyed at the contemporary authors and speakers who act like the kingdom of God wasn’t recovered as important theological motif until missional thinkers and NT Wright started waxing eloquent on it in the mid 1990′s. Last year I attended a workshop on the missional church where the presenter made the dubious claim that there was not one single book on the kingdom of God in the 1980′s. While I didn’t believe him, most of the titles that popped into my head, were actually from the 1970′s not the 80′s. So I’m happy to have found a book that proves him wrong (yes, I am that petty). But most importantly, this book has some great things to say about the Kingdom of God.

This is a really short (70 pages) booklet but it packs a serious punch. I think one of the interesting things about Newbigin, is while he certainly wrote for his context, a lot of what he says has real import for today.  In three parts Newbigin explores the theme of Kingdom and its relationship to mission. Part one addresses the historic perspective, part two, the biblical perspective and part three sketches the importance for today (which would be 1980). While all three sections have sections worth pondering, part two is the section I keep rereading.  Newbigin makes five basic points about ‘the time being fulfilled and the Kingdom of God being at hand’ which are worth pondering:

1. This is the announcement of a happening. It is news!
2. The subject of this happening is the malkuth Yahweh, the Kingdom of the God of Israel. This is public news not restricted to the religious sphere and ‘private sector’ but cosmic in its scope. While Yahweh’s kingship is not exactly ‘news,’ with this announcement, God’s sovereignty has become a present reality with which one has to come to terms.
3. The announcement is linked to the call to repent (“repent now and believe in the gospel”). The call to repent, means that the entire nation is turned the wrong way looking for salvation in the wrong direction. Until they turn, the Kingdom of God is hidden from view.
4. The response will be–not open vision–but faith (i.e. we understand the reign of God is a present reality though faith) This faith is not a human decision but is a gift of God to those who are called.
5. This call begins immediately (all five of these points are cribbed or completely quoted from pages 24-26).

Newbigin also says several other things which I will quote at length (most of the rest of this post is quotes). I just think these selections capture wonderfully what the Kingdom is, or experience of it and what it is all about:

Jesus did indeed preach the  kingdom, but the only thing that made his preaching news was the kingdom was present in himself. Faithfulness to the mission and message of Jesus absolutely required that the early Church should have Jesus as the centre of their gospel. If they had simply preached about the kingdom of God there would have been no gospel. The news is that ‘the kingdom of God’ is no longer merely a theological phrase. There is now a name and a human face. This is why there is a gospel: the reign of God has drawn near, and we can speak of what we have seen and heard and handled (32-33).

Newbigin reflects on the disciples question about when the Kingdom comes in fullness and asks can we expect the manifest reign of God now? He offers a two part answer. First addressing the ways in which ‘the Kingdom of God’ is a warning:

The answer of Jesus is in the double form of warning and promise. It is first of all warning: it is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. The kingdom is simply, the reign of God. This is so fundamental that is is constantly forgotten. We are not dealing here with a programme, a campaign, a promotional ‘drive’ for which the techniques of high pressure salesmanship or military planning would be appropriate.  Nor are we engaged in the support of a ‘good cause’ of which it is possible to optimistic or pessimistic. . . .It is not possible to be optimistic or pessimistic about the sovereignty of God! It is simply a fact. The question about which everyone has to inquire is the question: am I living in total faithfulness, trust and loving obedience to him who is sovereign? The sharp words of Jesus have to be heeded in every situation–whether the temptation to worldly optimism or pessimism. Our attention is directed to God himself. He alone is king. What is called for in us is total trust which–whether in success or in failure–simply places all its hope in him; which accepts the promise: Fear not, little flock, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

I think this is a warning to be heeded as we take the theme of the kingdom as a clue for missionary thinking. There is a very easy but fatal shift that can take place by which the language of the Bible, which always points to the personal presence and action of God, is converted into language which points to programmes of our own. . . .The biblical language is centered in the reality of the living God–his faithfulness and kindness. The other kind of language leads quickly into an ideology which is centered entirely in one’s expectations about the possibilities of political action. The biblical language has been for so long (and especially in our western culture)  interpreted in a purely private and pietistic sense divorced from the realities and obligations of political life, that a correction was urgently needed.  But in making this correction it is important that one does not lose that which is central to the biblical witness–the formidable reality of God who alone is the sovereign of his kingdom (34-36).

But Newbigin also points us to the ways in which the Kingdom of God is recieved from God as a promise and a gift:

The answer of Jesus to the question of the disciples is, in the second place, a promise. ‘You will recieve power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be my witnesses. . .’ The first point to be noted is that it is a promise, not a command. Witness is not a burden laid upon the Church. It is not part of the law. It is gospel, gift, promise. We misinterpret the whole thrust of the New Testament when we convert this into a law, a burden laid upon the consciences of Christians. There is a profound inner necessity which leads Christians to bear witness of Jesus and Paul’s letters bear ample evidence of this. But neither Paul nor any of the other New Testament writers can be found laying the duty of witness as a burden upon the consciences of their readers. Failure to observe this point, I think, has had grievous consequences for the life of the Church. What is given here is not a command but a promise.

How is the promise related to the question? The question is about the Kingdom, the promise is about that which is the foretaste, the first-fruit- the arrabon of the Kingdom–namely the gift of the Spirit. The word arrabon which is (I am told) still used in colloquial Arabic, expresses vividly what is otherwise expressed in such metaphors as ‘foretaste’ and ‘firstfruit.’ An arrabon is a payment which is, on the one hand, solid cash which can be spent like any other money, and, on the other hand, is a sign and pledge of full payment to come.  It is not a verbal promise. It is real cash. Yet its significance is far more than its actual cash value; it is the assurance of more to come. The Holy Spirit is such an arrabon of the Kingdom. It is, on the one hand, a real foretaste of the love and joy and peace which are the very substance of God’s rule. But–on the other hand–it is not yet the fulness of these things. It is the solid pledge which gives assurance that the fulness is coming. And this what constitutes witness. It is not the lantern which a traveller in the dark carries in his hand; it is the glow on his face which reflects the coming dawn. It is pure gift. It is not an accomplishment of the one who bears witness but rather a gift which comes from beyond him and so directs men’s attention away from the bearer to the source of the gift–to the light in the eastern sky. In this sense one must say that the Church is not the author of the witness; it is not that the Church bears witness and the Spirit helps the Church to do so. This kind of language completely misses the point.  The point is that the Church is the place where the Spirit is present as witness. The witness is not thus an accomplishment of the Church but a promise to the church. (36-38)

Finally, Newbigin closes this chapter with these words:

. . .apart from the living community in which there is already a foretaste of the reality of the Kingdom, a present experience of its joy and freedom, the preaching of the kingdom becomes mere ideology. We have seen this happen in the past when ‘kingdom’ has been separated from ‘church’  in missionary thinking. When abstract nouns replace the biblical language about God’s just and loving rule, this is what happens–and the sane us trye wgetger these nouns are such as were popular fifty years ago (‘social progress’, ‘civilisation’, etc.) or such as are popular now (‘liberation’, ‘justice’, etc.). The content of the preaching of the Kingdom can never be any such concepts; it can only be Jesus himself, incarnate, crucified, and risen. The hermeneutic can only be the living reality of a community which the first fruits of the Kingdom are already being enjoyed and shared. This will be a community which shares fully in solidarity with the suffering of the oppressed and therefore shares the secret of Christ’s vicotry over death and the hope of the completion of that victory over death and the hope of the completion of that victory at the end. The whole of the eighth chapter of Romans is a picture of such a community sharing in the trubulation of Jesus and therefore sharing also in the assurance, hope, and joy of his victory. Such a community will be the living hermeneutic of the message of the Kingdom which it preaches. There can be no other (42-3).

It is a shame, that this little book hasn’t been more widely read. Seriously good stuff!

If You are Really Viral, Lets Just Be Friendz on the Interwebs: a book review.

A couple of years ago a co-worker of mine came back from a conference and quoted Len Sweet as saying, “The question is not whether or not Jesus would tweet, the question is how he would tweet.” I was curious but remained unconvinced. Technology comes with a whole set of issues and where I have connected most with Christ has been when I have unplugged (rather than from some 140-characters-long-message). Then a year ago, a friend and professor of mine, John G. Stackhouse, Jr. came back from an ‘Advance’ with Len Sweet in the Orcas Islands and decided to jump into the twitterverse . I was already on Twitter, but only making occasional use of it and didn’t see the point. So when Len Sweet published a book detailing how social networking is poised to ignite revival, I thought I should read it, so I could maybe understand (and jump on that bandwagon).

Ideologically I generally feel a little out of step with Sweet. He is always waxing eloquent about where we are in culture and how we should speak relevantly in our context. I want to ask how our context can prevent us from experiencing the truth of the gospel and numb us to the Spirit’s movement. I feel this most acutely in relationship to technology. I have a blog, I’m on Facebook and Twitter and happy to amass friends and followers at each venue (and yes, I blog as a Christian), but I also wonder how technology is numbing my ability to know God intimately, to be in silence and solitude, and to make meaningful connections where I live.

When I read Viral, I heard Sweet’s strong exhortations to get with the time, to embrace the social medium and use my platform to share Christ.  These pages don’t have the prophetic edge of a Jacques Ellul or Albert Borgmann questioning what meaningful thing is lost when we embrace new technologies (although Sweet quotes Marshall McLuhan several times). You also won’t find Neil Postman’s incisive analysis of how Western culture developed technology, but technology is now making us. But Sweet is not wholly ignorant of the dangers inherent in this tangled web we weave. He just chooses to accentuate the positive.

Sweet compares the two cultures that co-exist in our time. The Gutenbergers, love the printed word, sustained thought, but are also individualistic, narcissistic and prone to argument. The Googlers are digitally connected, think its more important to be in relationship than to be right and prize images and symbols and metaphors (though they still like text). As I expected, Sweet thinks that the Googlers are where our culture has moved to and so if we are serious about engaging the world with a Christian message, than we ought to move into the digital age engaging in the entire spectrum of the ‘TGIF’ culture (Twitter, Google, iphone, Facebook).

Yet Sweet does not give his wholesale stamp on every phenomenon in the Google world.  What he is really interesting is describing our context, where we live and how we relate to each other in our day and age, and how we remain faithful to Christ in the midst of that culture. So while much of this book is a glowing endorsement of twitter and iphone, Sweet augments that with suggestions of how to tweet in a transformative way and how to tell beautiful, poetic stories of God’s goodness in an era where people spend half the day looking at cat memes.  A lot of what he says tells people how to navigate the Google world better, some of it cries out for some of the Guttenbergers’ literary skill, left brain thinking and analysis. So while Sweet comes down on the side of the Googlers, he affirms that both groups need each other.

This a worthwhile read and despite my skepticism and suspicions, I found some real insights here on how to use my online platform for the kingdom of God. This book is way over simplified in its analysis (Sweet admits as much) but it does a good job of naming and illustrating some of the major trends in culture that has happened over the past forty years. As always, Sweet provides you with a plethora of acronyms and witty terms which you will either enjoy or roll your eyes at. But despite his trendy, poppy prose, this book has good stuff to say and I would recommend it to those who are trying to be ambassadors for Christ in a digital world. As always, Sweet’s interactive discussion questions, poke and prode and invite you into deeper learning (rather than just rehearse the chapter for you). Read it. According to Sweet, if you are Googler you will read it on your reader or ipad, if you are Guttenberger, you will read the print version. I read both, which I suppose means I’m every woman (or boy).

Thank you to Waterbrook Multnomah for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for this review.

Surfing for Porn . . .er. . .I mean God: a book review

Pornography is a real problem. Consider these statistics:

• 25% of search engine requests are for pornography – 68 million per day.
• 70% of the hits on Internet sex sites occur between 9-5 on business computers.
• Over 50 percent of evangelical pastors report they viewed pornography last year.
• Over 70% of Christian men report viewing pornography in the last year.

And I would say, that as a whole Christians have responded rather poorly to what amounts to a sin epidemic in our culture.  So I am happy to recommend a book which gets at the heart of some of the issues which are tangled up with pornography.  Michael John Cusick is an ordained minister, licensed professional counselor and spiritual director. He is also is a recovering sex addict (living in freedom) who had an addiction to pornography, strip clubs, masturbation and prostitution. He sees the bankruptcy of a life in bondage, but he also knows that men act out in sexual sins because they are broken and wounded.

But before I tell you about this book, let me briefly tell you where I think other Christian approaches get this wrong. One popular Christian book seems to say:

• Objectifying other women is wrong, just objectify your wife. She is there primarily for your sexual pleasure(based on a reading of Job’s famous ‘covenant with his eyes in Job 31).
• Women who are not your spouse are sources of temptation and should be avoided at all costs.
• You should also avoid places like parks, the beach, roads that women jog on, supermarkets, hair salons and shopping malls.

The problem with this advice is that it basically gets guys to modify their behavior, but does not touch the wounding and longing that led them to a pornography addiction in the first place (although to be fair, this approach takes serious the idea of sexual sin and the need for accountability). It is also unrealistic. Only stay-at-home dads can avoid women, who are increasingly colleagues and men’s bosses in all walks of life.

Cusicks approach is much more holistic. He sees pornography and other sexual sins as sympomatic of the deep longing for connection and reality (and yes, ultimately God). By sharing the story of his own struggle (and victory), he  addresses the root issues of pornography, the empty promises and real idolatry, personal brokenness and the cycle of shame, but also the real freedom that is ours in Christ and transformation that is possible and the disciplines which care for your soul. He is also attentive to a very real, spiritual dimension to this struggle and the dynamics of temptation (and its relationship to idolatry). As a counselor he is aware of the ways in which pornography (and other online habits) affect the brain, but also draws hope from the brain’s plasticity. His advice for those lost in sexual temptation online is to unplug, pay attention to your desires and cravings to find out what is happening in your heart, and to practice solitude and centering prayer. Ultimately he wants people to journey from their self medicating numbness, to a relationship with God where desires are rightly ordered and they are attentive to their own soul care (in community, of course).

Nevertheless I think this book has two limitations which I think are significant:

1. It treats sexual sin and pornography as a personal, individual sin. This needs to be addressed but he never addresses the other side of the equation. Men who go to prostitutes victimize women; men who view pornography, go to strip clubs and seek out adult entertainment,  have participated in an unjust system which truncates the humanity of women (and men) and causes tremendous psychological, physical and sociological damage. I applaud Cusick’s efforts to address the ways sin and acting out come from personal brokenness. I just want him also to address the significant justice issue that is wrapped up with this.
2. This book is also limited in terms of audience. This is a book written by a man for men, and speaks most meaningfully to men who are married.  Single guys can read this profitably while making adjustments in a couple of places; however, I have friends who are women who also struggle with an addiction to pornography. While much of this advice is applicable to them (solitude and centering prayer, the need to pray through and address woundedness and idolatry), they will find themselves unaddressed by Cusick. When you consider the real shame that comes with sexual sin and that pornography is considered by many Christians a ‘man’s sin, the cycle of shame is compounded for women who are stuck in addiction to porn and sex. This book could have easily been inclusive of both genders in addressing a real struggle which affects both sexes.

But for the particular niche of  ’men who struggle’ working through their own personal issues, I think this book is one of the best.  This is a book I would use pastorally and found a lot of it personally helpful. So it gets a solid recommendation from me.

Thank you to Thomas Nelson for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for this review.

Becoming who she is meant to be: celebrating my daughter’s fifth birthday.

I am the father of three beautiful children all of which I am completely smitten by. My wife sometimes laughs at me because I  tell her which one of our kids is my absolute favorite, cycling through each kid, appreciating things they say or do or their general disposition. But my oldest daughter has been my favorite the longest.  During these five years I’ve watched her learn and grow and change. It is a wonder to behold who this little lady is! All my children are their own persons and any parent will tell you that raising kids is as much a discovery of who this little stranger you’ve welcomed is, as it is about anything else.

And first kids are special. I don’t mean that the others are not, but my daughter ‘broke us in.’ Her smile grabbed my heart in a way that no kid before ever did. We watched her experience milestones and at every stage I’ve beamed with pride.  We saw her personality blossom and we love how much she enjoys people, and how imaginative she is.  At five, I have no idea who she will become, but love helping to foster her development and encourage her.

Of course being the first, she also bears the brunt of our bad parenting.  I personally have sometimes been impatient with her and expecting her to understand things she wasn’t developmentally ready for. With my other kids I’ve learned a little more about respecting life stage and so when we find ourselves exasperated, aggravated and at the end of ourselves, we also remind ourselves how our oldest daughter behaved at the same age and stage. The kids are all different, but a lot of our issues are the same. I have more patience, kindness and understanding with my two littler ones, in part because their big sister taught me.

As a Christian, I also want to foster faith in my children and am always looking for ways to introduce them to Jesus and form them in the faith. I read stories and talk about Jesus and their experience and pray daily with them.  I love hearing my daughter recount bible stories and talk about what Jesus did. Of course at their ages  I don’t know what any of my kids really understands but I am hopeful that my efforts bear fruit. One of my favorite times of day, is tucking my daughters in at night and hearing about their day. I always ask them about their favorite part of the day, and I probe to see if I can get them to talk about the hard stuff (which at 5 and younger is usually getting in trouble) and I ask them if they want to pray for anyone. When my older daughter prays, it is usually for one or two people (a grandparent or aunt) and fairly simple, but it is a start. I want to her to grow into a woman of prayer and someone who cares deeply for God and others. That’s my prayer, and in small ways, she’s on her way.

The other day she began telling me a story. She said, “Once I was in my mommy’s tummy and I came out and was a little baby.” She paused and said, “This is a long story which is never going to end. I hope it never ends.” Daughter of mine, your hope is my hope. May you grow in the knowledge of Christ and trust yourself to his everlasting care.  Amen.

Here is a link to a post I did a year and a half ago reflecting on what my children have taught me about God’s love:

Learning the Love of God from Little Girls.

How Do ‘You’ Pray?: A Book Review

How does your personality affect your prayer life? Do certain temperament types find different types of prayer easier than others? What about your past history?  What are the therapeutic benefits of prayer?  Is prayer just auto-suggestion, conditioned response or childish illusion?  Are all prayers the same? What about Eastern meditation?

Psychiatrist and Bible teacher Pablo Martinez brings his professional insight to bear on the topic of prayer.  In Praying with the Grain: How Your Personality Affects the Way You Pray, he offers biblically sound direction to developing your prayer with keen psychological insight from an evangelical perspective. The late John Stott wrote the foreword for this book (I think the foreword is a carry-over from the book’s previous incarnation entitled Prayer Life, 2001). I certainly appreciated that this book delved  beyond your typical pop-psychology pap with good biblical grounding from an evangelical perspective. Really, I think this is a rare combination in the Christian book market!

This is a short book, composed of five chapters. Chapter 1-3 compose part 1 of this book which address the psychology of prayer. Chapter one focuses on how our personal temperament affects the way we pray. Martinez argues that different temperament types have natural strengths and weaknesses in their approach to prayer. Using Carl Jung’s temperament types he explores how the various types (thinking, feeling, sensation, intuition)  and the proclivity toward introversion or extroversion has real affect on our prayer life. For example, introverts are introspective and turn inward while extroverts are activists who focus on other people and things. Thinking types tend to be rational and methodical in their approach to prayer making them effective intercessors and good at confession  but they aren’t so good at expressing adoration and worship. Feeling types are more relational in their approach to prayer and are more likely to ‘feel’ God’s presence and show concern about concrete situations of social injustice; yet they can tend toward excessive subjectivism.   Intuitive types are the natural mystics and contemplatives and prize freedom in prayer (which means sometimes they aren’t particularly grounded).  The Sensation type addresses God through the senses and tend to relate to God in a childlike way but are sometimes too reliant on external circumstances and never pray for very long. Martinez’s goal is both to help us affirm and appreciate the different ways people experience God but also shore up and develop in areas where we are naturally weak (it is healthier to be nearer the center in each of the temperament types or in terms of extroversion/introversion).

Chapter 2 addresses emotional problems and prayer and difficulties people have when they come to prayer. These include difficulties in the course of prayer such as getting started, not feeling God’s presence, not wanting to be hypocritical, difficulty in concentrating (i.e. anxiety or nervousness, bad thoughts)  and the  inability to pray in public. He also addresses the different content of prayer (adoration and praise, confession, request and intercession) and asserts that a healthy pray life needs to include each element regardless of your natural proclivities.  In chapter 3 Martinez describes the ‘therapeutic benefits of prayer,’  both existentially and in terms of  a ‘psychotherapeutic process” of  a growing  intimate relationship, a cathartic unburdening, providing guidance and discernement, and personal growth.  In both of these chapters Martinez’s psychological insight is helpful for entering more fully into prayer.

In part 2 Martinez provides an apologetic for Christian prayer.  Chapter 4 addresses secularist/modernist criticisms of prayer (i.e.  prayer as self-suggestion,  prayer as conditioned response, or childish illusion. In chapter 5 he examines the differences between Christian prayer and meditation and Eastern style meditation and Platonic mysticism.  I think he does a good job of dismantling psychologically shallow caricatures of prayer and demonstrating that there is real substance to prayer beyond a placebo effect.  He also demonstrates how Christian meditation has a different purpose, method and content than either Eastern meditation or Platonism.  What I really liked about his final chapter is the way he eschews method and technique  (which is the Eastern approach) and proclaims that the Christian understanding of prayer is an intimate relationship.

While I found part 2 interesting and think that Martinez is able to articulate important points succinctly and with insight, I think the real value of this book is helping people develop as pray-ers.  The insight that our  temperament type and personal history provides us with a natural style of relating to God. For a short book, Martinez gives significant space to exploring the difficulties we have in prayer and the strengths and weaknesses we have as a result to our unique shape, temperament and history.  There is a lot here that is of real help to those of us who want to grow at prayer and foster our relationship with God.

Martinez’s evangelical perspective makes him suspicious of some of the excesses of the contemplative and mystical tradition.  He does affirm a lot in the Christian mystical tradition but is suspicious of the ways that Platonism has robbed much of it of its Christian content and thus urges that our approach to meditation should be focused on scripture.  Certainly I can see how people get mystical and strange and become unhinged, but I wonder if there is more merit to some of the approaches to prayer that he criticizes. But this is more of a wondering, his approach to Christian meditation as centered on the word and our experience of the word is in keeping with my own practice, experience and conviction.

Thank you to Kregel Publications for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Prayer for Ascension/Easter 7

Liturgically, this is the last Sunday of Easter before Pentecost. This past Thursday was the feast of the Ascension which commemorates the event described in Luke 24 and Acts 1 when Jesus was taken up into Heaven. The disciples were commanded to wait for the Holy Spirit, but the Ascension itself describes one of the central mysteries of the Christian faith. We proclaim that  God’s Kingdom is near, that it is at hand, that it is here. But are King is absent from the scene (present by the Spirit). We declare a kingdom but the nations see no King. This is the now-but-not-yet-ness of the Kingdom of God. To our risen and ascended Lord we pray:

 

Jesus we know that you drank the dregs of our humanity,

that you suffered heartbreak and loss,

You were rejected and abandoned by those you called your own,

We know that you know betrayal and that you bore

all the abuse we could throw at you.

We  trust in your resurrection and the power of new life you offer.

 

But when we look at our world and wonder. . .

Where are you when the single mom is evicted because she can’t make ends meet?

Where are you as warfare, abuse and sexual immorality destroys families?

Where are when we ourselves struggle? Feel abandoned? Feel alone?

 

We know your kingdom is here and we trust that you are at work–

interceding for us, preparing our place, reconciling the world to yourself.

But sometimes we still feel the dull ache of your absence on the earth.

Come Lord Jesus and restore all things!

 

 

Make us mindful of your presence with us by your Holy Spirit and let us rejoice at the hope of your coming again.

 

Come Lord Jesus!

 

Amen.