The Little Friar

I have more writing projects on my plate than I probably will ever complete. That said, I had another thought tonight. Specifically, it's problem of mixed personae:  The status of benefactions from donors whose character has been subjected to question, the exquisite work of artists who perpetrate horrors, the useability of ideas proposed by morally compromised thinkers, and also the grim side of exemplars held up by the Church, or by culture, as heroes and saints.  Just on a quick run, I came up with Cecil Rhodes, Woodrow Wilson , Eric Gill , Martin Heidegger , Mohandas Gandhi , Mother Teresa , Martin Luther King Jr. , St Junípero Serra , John Howard Yoder -- and that was just off the top of my head. I'm not all that interested in the justification of particular accusations as the relation of the alleged behavior to the reception of the hero/villain's legacy (on one hand), and the rhetoric of accusation and defense that these allegations inspire.  Though we...

It appears to be all the trend for blogs to engage in a navel-gazing exercise this time of year, and post a "year in review" blog. I've been blogging since 2002.  I began on Xanga in 2002, moved to MySpace in 2005, and here since 2008.  Last year was my first "year in review", though.  So I thought I'd take an inventory again. In 2015, my top five posts, in descending order: On suicide, theologically understood Jesus' temple action, and what it might say about rioting Why I supported Muslim prayer at Duke Chapel Love believes the best On why I don't read the Bible literally I excluded book reviews, but to be honest those far exceeded my most-viewed regular writing.  I think I may have missed my calling as a reviewer. There were two popular articles from previous years that also saw triple-digit audiences this year: " All I really need to know About Christmas I learned from watching TV "  " Why I can't say the Pl...

Craig Groeschel's #struggles:  Following Jesus in a Selfie-Centered World is a candid and critical look at the way in which the use of social media has impacted and controlled our postmodern lives.  In it, Groeschel offers pastoral counsel on how that control can be reversed:  We disciples can control social media in faithful ways, rather than having our lives controlled by it. There's no doubt #struggles is a timely book.  My own Facebook and Twitter have been a resource for pastoral ministry.  In fact, one of my friends describes my ministry as "the online pastor".  But with the advent of iPhones, I discovered what so many others had known about their spiritual lives and technology:  We can become controlled by it, obsessed over it, in a way that we don't see developing but find ourselves unable to resist.  Witness the uncontrollable desire to check my Facebook app or my email. Addressing this spiritual dependency is what makes #struggle...

I want to turn to Bonhoeffer's "religionless Christianity".  After having spent a good deal of my own academic career with Bonhoeffer, he's become an important theological mentor.  And this phrase, unfortunately, is often misunderstood.  Pardon this rather long post, placed beneath the fold, but it's been ruminating in my head for some time. Upon their publication in 1951-1952 Bonhoeffer's letters have stimulated a great deal of speculation, commentary, and head scratching -- particularly in reference to his notion about "religionless Christianity". Some were disturbed (then and now) by what seemed to be a liberal turn in Bonhoeffer's thinking.  It bothered people like Karl Barth that Bonhoeffer seemed to be saying things that sounded like Tillich and Bultmann . For many, it was hard to reconcile the "liberal" Bonhoeffer of the Letters and Papers from Prison with the "orthodox" Bonhoeffer of The Cost of Discipl...

Tonight I was reading through Isaiah. When I look at the poetry of the prophet I find three different sorts of poetry, each with a different emotional tone.  The prophets sing three different songs. The first song is prophetic rage and indignation.  This is the cry found throughout Isaiah 13-23. The second song is grief and lamentation, an expression of sorrow in the face of suffering and loss.  Sackcloth and ashes.  Isaiah 3 or 21, for example. The third song is a song of hope.  This is the prophetic turn we see in Isaiah 40.1, where after all the anger and sorrow a song of hope breaks out, "Comfort, comfort my people".  This is the poetry of Ezekiel's vision of the Valley of Dry Bones.  Can these dead things live again?  Yes, they can. I was struck in that reading by a thought:  We all have a natural poetry.  Some of these songs we find easier to sing than others.  The prophets among us are wonderful at the poetry of rag...

Whatever Is Lovely:  A Coloring Book for Reflection and Worship is a true gift for those seeking a new spiritual discipline.  While it's a wonderful adult coloring book, the images are also interspersed with devotional or biblical poetry.  The pages are nice and thick with no image on back so you only color on front of page.  Sadly, though, none of the pages are meant to be removed, so once you've begun coloring, there's no way to share your work. The title -- Whatever Is Lovely -- is taken from Philippians 4.8:  "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things".  Whatever Is Lovely makes a wonderful resource for those looking for a new spiritual discipline -- or adults who just love to color. __________________ I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books...

Today is the feast day of St Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Which makes this a very good day to be mindful of our brothers and sisters throughout the world who are facing persecution, violence and death for their faith. While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Then he fell on his knees and cried out, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." When he had said this, he fell asleep. Light a candle and say a prayer today . And may we all aspire to the love St Stephen displayed with his final, dying words.

Robert Hutchinson's Searching for Jesus: New Discoveries in the Quest for Jesus of Nazareth -- and How They Confirm the Gospel Accounts explores the textual and archaeological evidences of late that demonstrate there's more to the biblical accounts of Jesus -- who he was and what he said and did -- that modern biblical scholarship has, over the past 200 or so years, been willing to recognize. For example, in 2000 archaeologists uncovered the Gabriel Revelation -- a first century stone tablet discovered in the Jordan River that speaks of a messiah who would suffer, die and perhaps even rise again (see chapter 5). The implications are not really making their way down to popular media or to academic circles, so Hutchinson set out to explore items like the Gabriel Revelation and the implication those discoveries have on the standard academic suspicion of the historicity and reliability of items found in the biblical gospels' narratives. Critics have spent a century ques...

One of those tasks that I'm called upon to perform, more often it seems these days, is to offer advice for those who are dating.  So, here are my 13 distilled bits of wisdom based on those years of conversations. "Falling in love" with someone doesn't mean you should marry them.  Neurologically, infatuation has a lifespan of about 12 to 18 months.  Marriage is a lifetime commitment that is built on so much more. Marry someone you want to be married to, not someone you hope to transform.  You won't change them. It's not enough to "love" your boyfriend or girlfriend.  Do you also like them?  Are they the kind of person you enjoy being around?  If it wasn't for the sexual chemistry, and if you didn't feel romantically inclined toward them, would you still enjoy their company?  Because that's sort of how it's going to be, in one sense or another, for the rest of your life.  It's the friendship that keeps the romance alive, not vi...

Advent -- those four Sundays that begin the Christian year -- count to the arrival of God on the earth.  They're weeks of pregnant expectation -- waiting, longing, hoping. That's why, ultimately, Christians tell stories.  Stories accomplish things that principles cannot accomplish.  Christmas is supremely the story of a God who is not interested in telling us about principles.  Christmas doesn't offer an alternative set of economic theories or even a social program.  It's a story -- the record of an event that began to change the entire framework in which we think about human life, so that the unique value of every life came to be affirmed and assumed.  That's one reason why we tell this story repeatedly, the story of the "unprincipled" God who values what others don't notice, who relates to people we'd all rather forget, whose appeal is to everyone because he has made everyone capable of loving response. Christmas, you see, is a unique...

The real war on Christmas isn't "political correctness" in the sense some conservatives believe.  It's how little we can question the commercialization of our culture, the commodification of Christian saints like St Nicholas, the abuse of Christian kindness into a psychological attempt to manipulate children to conformity.   If the real meaning of Christmas is "God with us", Santa Claus doesn't show that God very well.   At all.

You can't think your way into the Kingdom of Heaven.  You can only love your way into the Kingdom. And love is always aimed at a vision of the good, a vision of human flourishing.  Love is always desiring a particular vision of life together -- of a Kingdom. So what sort of Kingdom are you desiring, loving and craving?  That's the question that being a Christian poses For me, the Kingdom of God looks like how Jesus moved through the world.  That's the vision of the Kingdom I'm loving my way toward.  In that sense, Jesus is my aesthetic, how I judge was is beautiful and ugly in my life and in the world. Christianity is, in theological language, the practice of an incarnational aesthetics. Loving your way toward something beautiful, loving your way into the Kingdom of God.

It is not the Second Amendment but the First that is the real sacred text of the NRA.  The right to bear arms is, foundationally, a matter of freedom of religion.  The deity is Moloch (and Charlton Heston is his Moses):  Worshiped with weapons (V: "Praise the Lord!" / R: "Pass the ammunition!"), propitiated by blood (" Hic est sanguis tuus ") -- a lurid liturgy -- his providence unfolding in a national narrative of redemptive violence.  Hence the remorseless fusillades against proponents of gun-control:  We are not just liberals, we're heretics.

Ho- Ho-Ho- Holy- Wholeness hoping we come mindful to year's end, to Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa ... and to a new year. Cheers and tears, sad and happy, mingle on faces near and far. The world weeps for what could be but isn't, and what is that is good, true and beautiful. Ordinary things stand out in the light of hope’s candle burning there in Paris and San Bernardino, in refugees welcomed in Greece, Germany and Sweden, in Kansas farmers conserving soil with grain-bearing grasses, in a child afire with a sense of her future and a hope. The universe is more stunning than we knew before Hubble and the Pluto fly-by. 'Tis the season: Earth rests, we breathe; enough is enough. The stars shine and divine sanity still waits for us.

Steven Furtick's (Un)qualified:  How God Uses Broken People to Do Big Things is a book for which I had high expectations.  It purports to explore that "gap between our weakness and our dreams, between who we are and who God says we are meant to be".  I had so wanted a rich theological account of God and God's providential care for us.  I had hoped for an exploration of having our wants and needs trained and honed by that care -- teaching us to desire the things the prophets, and Jesus, envision as God's desire for us. What I found, though, was so much self-help, pop psychology masked as Christian faith.  (Un)qualified is full of "feel good" Christianity -- all the motivation and inspiration with none of the cross.  Absent at the rich textures of an imagination honed by Scripture and the spiritual wisdom of Christians throughout the centuries.  None of Paul's wisdom about Christians as broken vessels.  Instead, Furtick offers a vague sense o...

In light of yesterday's post I wanted to share again another favorite Advent painting:  Henry Ossawa Tanner's The Annunciation (oil on canvas, 1898). This is my favorite depiction of Mary's visitation by the angel Gabriel.  Mary is a youthful teenager, looking scared and vulnerable. This vulnerability -- and even ignominy -- is the scandalous and incongruous power of God.  On the outskirts of Empire, through this poor, young, frighted peasant girl God saved the world.

I've enjoyed Max Lucado's writing since the early 90s.  His is a fresh perspective that keeps readers' attention on one object alone -- Jesus.  His wise words have on more than one occasion been a soothing balm to my own wounded soul.  His is a spiritual writer's gift to take everyday issues and blend Scriptural wisdom to offer Good News to the world that's full of so much bad news. And his new devotional, God Is With You Everyday brings some of that wisdom into small chunks for a new audience.  It draws from so many of his previous writing, but adds a daily Scripture, to give a devotional for every day of the year. This devotional would make a great gift for a new year, for women or men of all ages.  ____________________ I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.

Some weeks ago, I began devotionally reading through the Hebrew Bible -- something I've really only ever done with the New Testament Greek.  My goal was simple:  To allow God to speak fresh in the words of the text itself. Today, I reached 1 Kings 17.  Elijah is introduced to us in the opening verses of ch. 17.  After the previous chapters chronicling the kings the prophet rudely enters and interrupts the story.  (Isn't that just like a prophet?)  What follows are my thoughts after reading. King Ahab and Queen Jezebel have turned away from YHWH to worship Baal, the Canaanite rain god. In a direct assault upon the rain god Elijah pronounces a drought to the king.  At the start of the drought Elijah is fed by ravens by a brook in the Kerith Ravine.  As the drought worsens and the brook dries up Elijah is sent into enemy territory, to Zarephath in Sidon, the providence at the heart of Baal worship. In Zarephath Elijah encounters a poor wid...

Troy Caldwell's Adventures in Soulmaking is a resourceful guide for helping those interested in growing in their Christian spiritual life.  Life itself, Caldwell maintains, is a spiritual journey.  And like every journey, those who travel it need a good, helpful guide.  Caldwell has give us one of those guides. Part depth psychology, part psychiatry, and part spiritual direction, Adventures in Soulmaking is an inspiring, evocative, and at times simply fascinating book/workbook that depends upon the Christian contemplative tradition.  That tradition may seem strange to some, but my own background in spiritual direction makes this one of those books I'll reach for again and again.  Caldwell's devotion to Christ, combined with his years of training in psychiatry, help us discern what makes us "tick" spiritually and psychologially, and points us toward that wholeness that is the salve in salvation . Caldwell, though, refuses to travel the tracks of "pop ...

Annelies Zijderveld's Steeped:  Recipes Infused with Tea is a real treasure.  It's a well-organized introduction, for newcomers and tea-lovers alike, that begins with a brief introduction to tea.  The "Tea Cooking Cabinet" section -- in which Annelies goes into details about the types of teas that are used throughout the cookbook and what she finds they are best paired with -- is a great resource.  Steeped uses 10 classic teas/tisanes ranging from English Breakfast to Chamomile and loose leaf or bagged.  If you have a favorite type of tea that you would like to cook with, the "Recipes by Teas and Tisanes" section in Steeped is a wonderful resource to find all the pages to recipes infused with a specific tea. "Methods for Cooking with Tea" is another excellent section that teaches you the many ways you can incorporate tea into your food.  It's nice that Steeped uses various practical ways in all of the recipes from grinding tea l...