The Little Friar

Holy and eternal God, give us such trust in your sure purpose, that we measure our lives not by what we have done or failed to do, but by our faithfulness to you. Almighty God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you; so lead us by your Spirit that in this life we may live to your glory and in the life to come enjoy you for ever; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Your cross, Jesus, remains like a tree on a hill. You show me where I am, you take away my fear, and set me on my course again; help me to watch for you night and day. Amen.

John raises his voice alongside those of other protestors like the authors of 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch.  John was not a solitary, raving lunatic.  The asylum was full of people who just couldn't "see things" in line with the official picture.  The multiplicity of voices calling out against Rome's injustices at the close of the first century, of which John's voice was one, help us to see that Jews and Christians in Asia Minor were not only concerned about local affairs, internecine strife, or throwing stones at the church or synagogue across the way.  The "system," together with all its local manifestations, was also a major problem.  Uniting the practice of exerting control and maintaining peace through violent suppression of dissent, the promotion of an economy arranged for the great benefit of the few, and the prominent use of religious language and ritual claim sacral legitimation for these arrangements -- uniting these is both the genius of Rome and the ...

This week's Friday's Finds selectin is Richard Lischer's A Theology of Preaching .  Lischer, Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Duke Divinity, was one of those profs who taught me to preach, and this book more than any other impressed on me -- twenty years ago now -- how risky preaching is.  This is one of those preaching books that every preacher should re-read every few years.

Thomas Nelson Publisher's have give us a new study bible, The KJV Know the Word Study Bible , that offers three easy ways to begin studying Scripture and helps individuals transition from being a casual reader of the Bible to becoming a regular student of the Bible. You can choose to study the Bible book-by-book, verse-by-verse, or topic-by-topic; each path offers powerful insights that will help you develop a daily routine of Bible study. The book-by-book series of notes leads you through the main points of each book of the Bible.  The verse-by-verse notes help you to dig deeper into God's Word.  The topic-by-topic articles, which cover 21 theological topics, guide you through a series of insightful notes and give you a thorough biblical understanding of each topic.  With the beautiful and timeless text of the KJV translation, the KJV Know the Word Study Bible offers you choices of how to study Scripture and grow in your relationship with Christ.  T...

John Majors' True Identity:  Finding Significance and Freedom through Who You Are in Christ is a book that addresses one of the most common moral dilemmas in the modern world:  How are we to live with all the labels we receive?  It's a book that will help you think about what -- and who -- really defines you. As you adventure into a life of greater independence, responsibility, and maturity, there is one thing you need to know:  You are defined by your place in a greater plan than you can imagine.  Not by society, your gender, your family background, or your friend group -- but by Someone you can always count on.  You are defined by the God and Father of Jesus Christ. I would put this book into the hands of every 9th grader. ___________________________ I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.

Henry Cloud and John Townsend's Boundaries has been around since 1992 -- and in that 25 years they have given us a landmark book that has transformed thousands of lives and relationships.  Now, in an updated edition, Boundaries:  How to Say Yes, How to Say No, To Take Control of Your Life addresses boundaries in the digital age as well as boundaries for online dating, single parenting, and the workplace. Boundaries demonstrates biblical principles to identify the things in life for which you are responsible and for which you are not so that you can live a healthy, balanced lifestyle.  This book helps you define who you are and who you are not.  By applying the principles in this book, you'll learn how to set loving yet healthy boundaries with your spouse, children, friends, parents, co-workers -- even yourself. It's definitely worth the investment of time and money to work through. _______________________ Disclosure of Material Connection: I received ...

Marte Forsberg's The Kitchen Cottage:  Cozy Kitchen in the English Countryside is a beautiful addition for any kitchen's library.  Forsberg is a professional food and lifestyle photographer raised in Norway, and in this fine collection she has embraced the local markets near her adopted home in the Wiltshire countryside and settled there to cook.  Her travels throughout Europe are reflected in her recipes, but the heaviest influences are her Norwegian childhood and her new life in England.  Many of her family recipes are included, such as a warm salmon, mint, and potato salad and Norwegian pork belly with mustard coleslaw. Her mother has strong a presence throughout the book -- giving The Kitchen Cottage a homey, quaint feel.  Forsberg updates some traditional English nursery food, including a truffled vegetable toad-in-the-hole; foie gras and kidney bruschetta with parsley; and a Campari citrus marmalade. Forsberg has given us a beautiful book of...

Almighty and merciful God, more ready to hear than we to pray, giving more than either we desire or deserve; pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgive us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and give us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, except through your Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Come, Holy Spirit, with the new fire; when our prayer seems to fail, when we hear no voice nor any answer, rouse us and light our way. All-seeing God, teach us to be open with you about our needs, to seek your support in our trials, to admit before you our sins, and to thank you for all your goodness. Amen.

I've selected Barth's Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century for this week's Friday's Finds.  It's a theological history book about the liberal protestant theologians from 1700-1900 written by an expert of this era including the most influential liberal Protestant theologians of the Enlightenment:  Rousseau, Lessing, Kant, Herder, Novalis, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Wegscheider, De Wette, Marheineke, Baur, Tholuck, Menken, Feuerbach, Strauss, Schweizer, Dorner, Muller, Rothe, Hofmann, Beck, Vilmar, Kohlbrugge, Blumhardt, and Ritschl (all with dedicated chapters).  And many others appear throughout without explicit chapters, most notably Kierkegaard, Goethe, Louis XIV, and others.  This isn't a history of all Protestant theologians, but those in the long chain of Pietism and the Enlightenment. It's impossible to understand Karl Barth without understanding Friedrich Schleiermacher, and this  book is an excellent read and very accessib...

Revelation offers not an esoteric and encoded forecast of historical events but rather a theocentric vision of the coming of God’s universal kingdom, contextualised in the late first-century world dominated by Roman power and ideology.  It calls on Christians to confront the political idolatries of the time to participate in God's purpose of gathering all the nations into his kingdom.  Once Revelation is properly grounded in its original context it is seen to transcend that context and speak to the contemporary church . -- Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation

As I count it, this is year 25 that I have been reading theology.  I couldn't begin to name all the books represented in that statement -- not all of which, for theological reasons, have been "proper" theology books.  But all of the books I have read have had theological import.  I've read Plato as well as Aquinas.  Shakespeare as well as Augustine.  That's because the liberal arts -- I learned as a college student -- have as much to say theologically as theology books themselves.  If I hadn't attended Carson-Newman I don't think I would think this way.  And since it's homecoming at my alma mater this weekend and Kendra is accompanying me to return to campus (albeit briefly) on Saturday, I've been thinking over the past few days of all the books I've read in that intervening quarter century. My best classes have been taught (by others and those I have "moderated" [taught?]) in a Socratic style around central texts.  For the longes...

So there's this in the news . I've always thought it a serious theological mistake for Christians to use moral law as a basis for creating civil law. That's because I've read Augustine and Aquinas.  Both had serious moral qualms with a variety of measures -- like prostitution, for example -- but thought that those qualms shouldn't prevent taking civil measures to ensure the safety of women. Faith motivates lots of people in politics.  I get it.  But at the same time, I think it's a mistake to take moral law and fashion civil law measures from it.  Each politician has to look at moral law, look at what's good for society (not for their own interpretations of that moral law), and look at what's actually possible, then fashion civil laws. I hear certain politicians saying that abortion should be made illegal in this country.  But I believe that that measure fails to account for the fallen world in which we live.  It simply isn't morally realist...

God of all delight, grant us that joy which none can take from us, of having a work to do, a life to live; that joy in believing which will carry us through temptation, anxiety and grief. Father, let us not serve you grudgingly like slaves, but with the gladness of children who delight in you and rejoice in your work. Almighty God, for the joy that was set before him your Son endured the cross, and by his resurrection turned our sorrow into joy; help us to rejoice in his power that we may walk in his way with glad obedience; through our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

Edward Welch's A Small Book about a Big Problem:  Meditations on Anger, Patience, and Peace consists of 50 meditations on anger, patience and peace that are brief but convicting.  I appreciate that Welch is willing to ask the hard questions that really uncover the way anger manifests itself through various sins. Welch writes with a spiritual depth and a pastoral wisdom about the things that really matter in our interpersonal relationships -- anger and patience.  If Christians are serious -- that Jesus really is Lord -- then how we handle anger is directly connected to the way in which we respond to others, including our enemies.  When we remember the patience and love with which God treats us in Jesus Christ, there is a ground for our own kindness and patience with others. In a culture where exploding in anger is seen as a virtue, that makes Welch's book counter-cultural, even revolutionary. Which is why, thankfully, Welch doesn't stop by merely exposing ...

Renegade:  Martin Luther, The Graphic Biography is just what it claims -- a richly illustrated graphic biography of Martin Luther.  After all, 500 years ago, in October, Luther confronted some of the cultural forces within the Catholic Church and sparked what would become the Protestant Reformation in Germany. I admit I'm a nerd -- readers to my blog will hardly be surprised.  So I was excited when I read that Plough Publishing was giving the world the gift of this book.  With the spate of publishing that has coincided with that 500th anniversary, I suppose it's only right that we have a graphic biography of Luther's life.  I expected some of the highest quality from Plough, and I wasn't disappointed with this book. What readers will find here is nothing short of a fresh, new and powerful telling of Luther's life story, complete with lots of the dialogue taken from Luther's own writing. The dark colors of the panels only lend to growing an appreciation ...

John McDowell and Sean McDowell's Evidence that Demands a Verdict: Life-Changing Truth for a Skeptical World is now completely updated and revised, to reflect some of the important changes over the recent years. I first read this book (then a two-volume edition) back in the '80s.  I was impressed with some of the material in it, even if I remained slightly unconvinced.  In the 30 years since, McDowell's now-classic in apologetic literature has given critics quite a bit to mull over.  With the huge pushback over the question of the existence and know-ability of truth , the most important section in the book, I think, is a new Part IV -- "Evidence for Truth".  Unfortunately, I fear Christians will use this book to argue with non-Christians.  But that has never been the point of apologetics.  Apologetics exists so that Christians may find the courage and strength of their own faith, to share the truth in love.  If you're looking for a book that wil...

Brooke McGlothlin's Gospel Centered Mom:  The Freeing Truth about What Your Kids Really Need exposes all the cultural pressures that moms feel -- the pressure to provide a creative environment for our children at home, the pressure to teach them what they need to know in the home and outside, the pressure to provide the perfect Pinterest birthday parties and the list goes on and on.  All of those pressures add up and leaves us feeling empty and less than equipped to be the mother we think our children need.  But it also goes a step further:  To provide a sane and faithful voice in the wilderness, a prophetic call that reminds mom that the feeling of not being enough is such a universal feeling among mothers.  McGlothlin reminds moms that when we turn to the Gospel, our feelings of not being enough can melt away and we can be confident in our role of the mothers to our children. As I was reading Gospel Centered Mom this week, I couldn't make notes and u...

This week's Friday's Find is John Cassian's Conferences -- just the edited version from the Classics of Western Spirituality series, but still one of the best monastic books ever produced.  I first read Cassian at Duke, with Susan Keefe guiding us through it.  It's been an amazing re-read several times since.  Here's perhaps the most important spiritual advice Cassian has given me:  " The journey to God follows many routes. So let each person take to the end and with no turning back the way he first chose so that he may be perfect, no matter what his profession may be" (p. 158).

Jennifer Grant's When Did Everybody Else Get So Old Indignities, Compromises, and the Unexpected Grace of Midlife is one of those memoirs dipped in grace and reflects on the joy and sorrow that can accompany this liminal space between being young and being old. Reading Grant's story is a spiritual practice for me -- as I begin on the downhill slide to my 50s.  She writes with humor and insight about the struggles that come from raising teenage children, dealing with the grief of fractured or lost relationships and facing the seemingly inexplicable challenges that accompany a body at the precipice of decline.  She affirms that life itself is a gift, and every day we continue to live is a reflection of this largesse we've been offered. Still, growing older comes with its own struggles.  And she is clear about those, too.  She wonders about her vocation and whether she is doing what she's been called to do.  She worries that her own creative efforts pale in...

Father, imprint upon our hearts that because we belong to you no one can pluck us from your hand, and because we fear you we need fear no other. Holy God, grant us the beginning of wisdom and love to cast out every fear: that we may grow more brave, more ready to hear, more ready to obey. Holy God, holy and strong, holy and immortal, keep us under the protection of your good providence, and help us continually to revere and love your holy name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Bruce Bickel and Stan Jantz's Answering the Toughest Questions about Suffering and Evil brings together some of the richest resources together into a holistic theology of evil and human suffering in the world.  Here, with a pastoral heart and a keen theological insight, they explore some of those questions that plague Christian faith in the modern world:  Did God create evil?  How could a good God allow evil?  How could a loving God allow people to suffer? Overall, Answering the Toughest Questions is an excellent book for beginning theology students.  This is a good book in prompting the reader to look seriously at pain and suffering, although many people who read this book will likely be pretty familiar with their own weaknesses and their own suffering.  These authors will not shy away from uncertainty, either.  This is a book that welcomes questioners and doubters.  Which makes it an invaluable companion in the journey that is the quest...

Dave Carter's Anatomy of an Affair:  How affairs, attraction & addictions develop and how to guard you marriage against them is a revision of a much earlier book ( Close Calls: What Adulterers Want You to Know About Protecting Your Marriage ), but is filled with updated information and practical wisdom.  Carter writes of the warning signs, triggers and close calls in our marriages.  He highlights the tools necessary to make marriages stronger. Complacency and comfortability can sometimes signal the dangers that make affairs possible.  Communication is key for marriage that weather these storms.  Carter is able to offer resources along with exercises and stories that can help us guard our marriages against affairs. I believe this book is a great resource for pastors and couples and will use it in marriage counseling for years to come. _______________________ I received a free copy of this book from Moody Publishing in exchange for my honest review h...

John Eldredge's All Things News:  Heaven, Earth, and the Restoration of Everything You Love is a book written to address what Eldredge calls "the great crisis of hope" -- Christians who long for the ideal afterlife instead of working for the Kingdom of God to come on earth as in heaven.  Citing political and economic instability, rising suicide rates, and increasing use of antidepressants as the crisis, he asks his Christian readership to stop longing for an ideal afterlife and instead find paradise here on Earth by thinking differently about the end goals of Christianity. This little book turns the book of Revelation on its head, because as Eldredge rightly points out, there is a "Great Restoration" at the end of the story:  "Death is utterly swept away at the Great Restoration. You will be completely renewed -- body, soul, and spirit".  He writes openly of the deaths he has encountered in his years of ministry, and of the spiritual retreat i...

The scariest thing to my mind about mass shooters (which was again borne out this week in seeing images of Stephen Paddock) is how normal they are. Contrary to President Trump and nearly all the media coverage since last Sunday's shooting, Paddock (and the many others like him) isn't mentally deranged or evil.  That isn't what sets him apart.  What seems telling about these killers, however, is not how much they have in common but how much they look and seem like so many others who do not inflict harm . We'd really like an explanation of the shooting that makes Paddock unlike every other shooter.  So we say he was obviously mentally ill, and thus our society should focus on caring for the mentally ill instead of worrying about preventing the next mass shooting by worrying about gun control. While it’s true that we need to do a better job caring for the mentally ill (where does this leave the dismantling of the ACA now?!?), the vast majority of people with menta...

This week's Friday's Finds is a book that is part of my Karl Barth collection and one that, sadly, isn't as well known as his other words:  God In Action .  It contains five addresses Barth gave between April 10 and September 12, 1934.  The pressure of the Nazi government on the churches in Germany during this period was fierce.  The Barmen Declaration -- written mostly by Barth -- was adopted during that previous May.  Repeatedly in God in Action Barth refers to the "remarkable apostasy of the Church to nationalism".  Each of the five lectures attempt to pry off Nazi fingers from the Church:  (1) Revelation, (2) the Church, (3) Theology, (4) the Ministry and (5) Witness are only rightly conceived as primarily what God has done and does.  Barth urges the Church to take its orders from God rather than human authorities.  The title of the work comes from his statement, "What is done to us, God in action for us, is a divine miracle"...

Hamilton Alexander Today is the Feast Day of St Francis of Assissi.  That means any number of churches will be hosting services of prayers of blessings for animals.  It's such a significant counter-cultural act, I think, that a little meditation is in order. This year, I bless our four "fur babies" -- all four of them.  But why? Let's be honest.  Some folks probably see Christians blessing critters as little more than a gimmick.  But for us -- as we live our life together as a Christian family -- it's a way of celebrating that these  four "pets" are very much a part of our family.  Through them and in them, we experience God's good love.   And that love is a direct challenge to a wrong-headed cultural bias that being Christian is just a matter of the interior life.  Somehow we've adopted a world-denying concept of being Christian.  I say wrong-headed , because being Christian is very much a world affirming ...

Frederick Buechner's A Crazy, Holy Grace:  The Healing Power of Pain and Memory explores one of the fundamental questions at the heart of the Christian faith:  When our human pain is so real, where is God? A Crazy, Holy Grace is a release of a lecture given some time ago.  Its message has never appeared in print before.  But it's as timely as this morning's news.  The world is rife with human suffering -- written in the news scroll across my television screen, but as real and burning as the person's life whose story makes the lead on that news. We all have known this loss and the pain associated with it.  That pain has its own unique memories.  And in this little book Buechner does again what he has done so many times before:  He writes with the poignancy of a spiritual friend who can guide us through that grief and into healing. Even when God seems the most silent, Buechner advises, he is always the nearest.  He gives wisdom about ...

Frederick Buechner's The Remarkable Ordinary:  How to Stop, Look, and Listen to Life is an amazing collection of previously-unreleased lectures that bring together rich insights for a theme that has been just at the surface of so much of Buechner's earlier work:  How to discern your life and God's work and message within it. I've written a fair amount of book reviews just this morning, but I'm honestly at a loss for where to begin with a review of a book like The Remarkable Ordinary .  That's because, how can I -- a budding writer and spiritual director -- ever rise to the level of offering a critique of a spiritual friend who is also a master on the way of living with discernment? Buechner has the great ability to cause you to "stop, look, and listen" to your life.  He does this by telling his story in such a way that you find your own story somewhere beneath the surface.  In one chapter he talks about his relational connection with Maya Ange...

Yet another mass shooting.  This time at the American Mecca of recreation:  Las Vegas. After each of our increasingly routine (!) mass shootings, there's this predictable exchange:  American liberals advocate gun control laws, while conservatives say we shouldn't do that.  I have to say that at a practical level, I'm with the liberals on this one.  No matter what some dangling participle in the Constitution seems to imply, one of the primary goals of forming any human society is increased safety from unpredictable interpersonal violence.  No law can stop people from getting angry and lashing out, but those people will do a lot less damage if they don't have access to military-grade weaponry, for instance.  We began controlling access to automatic weaponry for a reason (St Valentine's Day Massacre, anyone?).  And the vast majority of Americans supported that control in the 1930s.  That being said, it cannot be the case that access to f...

Father, imprint upon our hearts that because we belong to you no one can pluck us from your hand, and because we fear you we need fear no other. Holy God, grant us the beginning of wisdom and love to cast out every fear: that we may grow more brave, more ready to hear, more ready to obey. Holy God, holy and strong, holy and immortal, keep us under the protection of your good providence, and help us continually to revere and love your holy name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Eternal God, light of the minds that know you, joy of the hearts that love you, strength of the wills that serve you; grant us so to know you that we may truly love you, and so to love you that we may gladly serve you, now and always. We pray you, Jesus, take the old water, our busy, conscientious lives, and turn them into gospel wine, that everyone may see your life and thirst. Merciful God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as pass our understanding; pour into our hearts such love towards you that, loving you above all else, we may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Ta'Mara Hansom's The Pretender: A Blackguard in Disguise is an amazing first volume in her "Caselli Family Secrets" series.  It recounts the story of Tillie Caselli and Noah Hansen, who have pledged their love for one another and plan to marry.  But when the appearance of infidelity to those promises appears, there's a tragedy that results in lives changed for nearly everyone involved. The Pretender is at once a fun book that will also have you in tears at a variety of points.  It's a complicated tale above love at first sight that ultimately leads to a question:  Is this Tillie's knight in shining armor -- or her blackguard? The Caselli's are such a loving family, offering support and forgiveness.  They love God and do their best to follow his ways.  They have high values, and they are prayer warriors.  But there's a twist in their lives that ultimately leads to a different, unplanned adventure. I received a free copy of this book as pa...