The Little Friar

I didn't realize until this evening that it's been well over two months since my last post.  Life seems to shuffle right along -- and so many other obligations take the place of blogging these days. That said, here's what's been running through my mind this week. The American presidential election is finally, and graciously, upon us.  That means so many of my social justice friends have been posting social justice things all over social media. And they wonder why I don't join in the chorus. One of my struggles with Christian social justice warriors is how they relate social justice to the gospel.  This is a difficult issue to raise, as 99% of the time I'm in agreement with the public calls for social justice on a variety of issues.  What concerns me, however, is the path we walk in the church toward those calls. One of my I'm-not-a-progressive-Christian-for-just-this-reason criticisms of progressive Christianity is how it equates social justice with th...

Gary Bell's The Good Book of Mental Hygiene brings the discussion of mental health inside the church out into the clear open -- with all the compassion and empathy of one steeped in the apostolic tradition of pastor and priest, but with the training of a mental health professional.  He brings several different disorders to the forefront in their own respective chapters, mirroring Paul's New Testament letters to those who suffer from such disorders as depression, addiction, grief, ADHD, along with many other disorders.  Bell brings that pastoral tradition of writing letters to the suffering, focusing on readers by beginning with a clear description of the major issues and the symptoms that may affect those readers' daily lives. It's a gracious little book that makes a first step in the conversation about the nature of mental hygiene in the church. _______________________________ I received this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.

Reading David Watts' Authentic Christianity: Why It Matters for Following Jesus has been a refreshing discipline in the midst of the pandemic.  Watts has given us a delightful, readable and thoughtful account of what it means to follow Jesus in a world where such discipleship is often seen to be hypocrisy.  Watts is quick to point out that "Authentic Christianity" doesn't pretend all is right in our lives or the world.  It doesn't seek to smooth the rough edges off.  Instead, it lives in the real world of doubt and struggle and darkness and brokenness. Watts gives us a picture in this book of what it's like to live as a wise, humble, kind disciple of Jesus.  One who doesn't have to agree on everything with everyone, and still love in a way that takes up the cross.  It's the sort of book I would recommend to atheist or agnostic friends who are still not quite sure they want to jettison religion altogether.  There are few books out there that can tal...

Dale Fredrickson's spoken-word album, Blessed is the Man , is the audio recording of Fredrickson's inner dialogue on one of the most timely topics for the church these days:  Toxic masculinity.  Alternating between traditional musical pieces, purely spoken-word and a mix in-between, the album depicts a man very much wrestling with the question of how to be a Christian example in our current imperial patriarchy.  Some songs are immediately personal -- recounting the displays of love between the artist and his father, and how Fredrickson displays love to his own son.  Other songs are equally intimate but told from the perspective of biblical men like Joseph and Peter. The collection is thoughtful and well-written.  And thankfully, Fredrickson aims more to give us fodder for contemplation than ideas for solutions.  The music probably won't stand up alone, so this isn't an album for entertainment, but the instrumentals will help the hearer dig deep into t...

The roads to Zion softly mourn, her women raped beside; within the sanguine city square the dandled infant dies. In streets the ruthless sword unties the husband from his wife; in every house and every home it strips away all life. With fury and with burning wrath the Lord became our foe, to ruin every standing wall and render every woe until the sabbaths come to end, and all the feasts have failed, and law as coward flees away before the whip and flail, and prophet's visions surely cease (their lies the Lord detests), and babies' blood pours gushing out upon their mothers' breasts. The joy of all the endless earth has vanished in the flame. Completion of all beauty's life became a jeering name. A gnawing, biting, hungry void a ruthless need now gives as mothers boil bonny babes that other babes might live, and women eat their children sweet, the ones for whom they care, for none the aching famine leaves, and none the famine spares. On holy temple precin...

2020 has been a strange year.  Especially for those in ministry.  And doubly so for those just setting out in ministry.  You've written your exams, you've survived your psychologicals and every other interview before committee after committee.  Seminary is just behind you.  So now you face the daunting task of discerning who and Whose you are in ministry on the ground.  Where do you turn?  Here's my recommendation of those books you should read every year.  I'm listing a sort of book-of-the-month club for new clergy, but seasoned clergy might well consider this an annual tradition.  These are those books to which I personally turn year in and year out.  In the past, I've made the list assuming an simple annual rotation.  This time, I'm making a two-year rotation (year A and year B) Gregory the Great's Pastoral Rule (Year A) and George Herbert's Country Parson (Year B) Karl Barth's Dogmatics in Outline (Year A) and his The Humanit...

T. Wilson Dickinson's The Green Good News: Christ's Path to Sustainable and Joyful Life tells the story of the Gospel that is focused on firmly on Jesus, and told in a way that includes the entire world.  Reading this book in the middle of a global pandemic has been a balm, precisely because the world is in so much pain and groans for its own redemption in ways Dickinson has learned to hear.  He admits, quite early on, that he hasn't always had an ear for this "green" Gospel.  The damage we have already done to the earth -- at least from the perspective of scientists -- is already irreparable in so many ways.  With rising temperatures, water levels, weather extremes, carbon emissions and resource consumption, there has been very little good about the world's news.  But Wilkinson invites us to hear Jesus again, learning to listen to the Gospel -- the good news -- that is told in such a way that the world will hear its own redemption. Dickinson divides the boo...

Ragy Girgis's On Satan, Demons, and Psychiatry offers an in-depth analysis of one of the most neglected topics in biblical study -- the way in which mental illness is commonly associated with psychosis, and how that association often influences the way in which we read biblical narratives. The Bible is replete, according to Girgis, with narratives that speak to themes commonly associated with mental illness -- severe depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, for examples.  In Girgis' reading of the Jonah story, for one example, he finds Jonah suffering from symptoms often associated with narcissism personality disorder. Girgis is careful to see these mental disorders as part of the human story -- one that lives and breathes even in such an ancient text as the Bible.  Girgis therefore concludes by normalizing these disorders and finding support for their treatment in modern psychiatry.  It's a worthy endeavor, but I fear Girgis ends up using the biblical text for mo...

Mark Nauroth's new book, Power of the Creed: These Ancient Truths Will Change You and Your World is a deep, yet accessible guide into the baptismal pool that is early Christian faith -- and the difference that faith makes in our own world. Nauroth has been able, in just 200 pages, to skim church history for a narrative that helps Christians understand who we are -- and Whose we are. The difference in that narrative is absolutely essential in a world only too willing to tell Christians those things. And in a world where Christians don't know how to distinguish the difference between what we believe and the power that has to shape how we are in the world, the creed is not simply a set of philosophical or theological precepts. It's a powerful statement that shapes how we see God's interaction with the world and with us. In short, the creed, for Nauroth, is a spiritual statement of trust.  That's what makes Nauroth's Power of the Creed so refreshing.  And a mus...

Elizabeth Rankin Geitz's Spiritual Truth in the Age of Fake News sets the record straight on what the Bible really says regarding sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, and heterosexism.  "Fake News" about the Bible can be deadly.  It has and continues to destroy lives.  Geitz cites examples of violence from the resurgence of many "-isms" -- sexism, racism, heterosexism, anti-Semitism -- that many people support with misinterpretations of the Bible.  "It is time to set the record straight on what the Bible actually says regarding the many 'isms' alive and well today", she writes.  "It is time for the Fake News about the Bible to come to a screeching halt.  It is time for us to claim our inheritance of spiritual truth for all people." In this concise, and compelling book, that's precisely what Geitz does.  Understanding that divine images are foundational to our worldview, Geitz begins her book by countering the Fake News that the B...

Radical violence in the United States -- particularly connected to the institutionalized racism that takes place in a variety of ways (not simply with law enforcement, but certainly most visibly with law enforcement) -- has reached epidemic levels.  Our social fabric is entirely frayed, and there seems to be no real way forward. There have been, of course, certain very localized attempts to solve this racism.  For example:  But those localized efforts lack the larger vision necessary to develop a collective accounting of racism and its effects on our various social and cultural institutions. This is why so much white guilt continues unaddressed.  Younger generations, when confronted by the realities of that racism, then demand that we remove statues, ban flags, change names of military installations, etc.  Those generations don't realize that those actions really don't address the white guilt over racism and its historical constructs.  So what do we do? On ...

As I write, riots are sweeping through several American cities.  While rioting and looting are always inexcusable, they are perfectly understandable.  Those who decry the violence must first acknowledge the violence of the racist system of law-enforcement in the US.  The Brazilian educator Paolo Freire, in his seminal work Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), pointed out that "Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed.  How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?  There would be no oppressed had there been no prior situation of violence to establish their subjugation." But he went on, in that same work, to caution:  "When people are already dehumanized, due to the oppression they suffer, the process of their liberation must not employ the methods of dehumanization." Institutional racism and police brutality against colored people long pre-date Trump, though the latter has emboldened white s...

Yohan Hwang's Reclaiming Our Political Roots:  Rethinking Church in Nationalist Times is one of the clearest calls for the Church in America to wake up -- wake up from the nightmare of trying to provide therapy or social belonging in a culture all too enthralled with both.  Reclaiming Our Political Roots is nothing less than a clarion call for the Church in America to be the Church -- "a true community ... where its members have political and economic commitments to each other". I have little doubt that this book will infuriate all sorts of folks.  But as a church leader himself, Hwang has a handle on what this change might mean.  Hwang details how the Church has fulfilled this role at various points in history and how we can learn from the past.  In a culture where Christians have become so engrossed in maintaining the status quo for American culture through political power, Hwang envisions what the Kingdom of God envisions:  An alternative to worl...

Rob Ryerse's Running for Our Lives: A Story of Faith, Politics, and the Common Good was a book I had to read.  An evangelical pastor and progressive Republican, Robb Ryerse has ran for Congress, worked with the Vote Common Good campaign, and helped foster some of the most important relationships across the current American ideological divide in politics.  So this is a book I simply had to read.  I expected to be challenged -- and I was, and I found myself changing my mind on some political issues of our day. What I didn't expect was to become hopeful. I'm a firm believer in the wall of separation between American politics and Christian faith.  The state shouldn't be telling the Church how to live and worship and the Church shouldn't be telling the body politic how it should live and what it should do.  I believe these things precisely because I follow Jesus Christ, not in spite of him.  What I didn't expect was to find myself challenged -- and chan...

God came to me, rebuked me for my life of sin and showed to me a way in which we both could win; I heard his offer out, but in the summit of my pride I chose to win alone.  God I crucified. I hanged him on the tree, and on the tree he died. But God does not just die; he must rise to live again, and soon returns, rebuking me for my life of sin. Frustrated with his returning, that he does not simply die, I choose myself again, and him I crucify. I hang him on the tree again; on the tree he dies. He returns and comes again, each time so vital, bold, that I can only crucify by growing yet more cold. Where our ending finds us is where we did begin; we either taste of glory's grace or we crucify with sin. Each time we hang him on the tree; again on the tree he dies. Finally, though, my will submits because his grace is so true. That will now crucified with him; on the tree we die. My life now found in God with Christ alone, crucified and dead, I'm raised to li...

                   Kill me not ev'ry day, Thou Lord of life, since thy one death for me         Is more than all my deaths can be,                     Though I in broken pay Die over each hour of Methusalem's stay.                     If all men's tears were let Into one common sewer, sea, and brine;          What were they all, compar'd to thine?                    Wherein if they were set, They would discolour thy most bloody sweat.                      Thou art my grief alone, Thou Lord conceal it not: and as thou art          All my delight, so all my smart:                     Thy cross took up in one, By way of...

John Goodrich and Mark Strauss have edited one of the most important collections of essays about discipleship in the New Testament:  Following Jesus Christ: The New Testament Message of Discipleship for Today .  Bringing together 21 contributors, this volume of around 350 pages and 20 essays provides a clear, thorough biblical picture of the nature of discipleship to Jesus Christ in the world.  17 of the chapters explore the message of discipleship in each of the major New Testament writers/books, and it is written for pastors, seminary students and advanced college classes in mind. The material here is comprehensive, but in an accessible way.  Not one of the chapters is overwhelming, but each is as complete as one might expect from a scholarly work such as this.  For example, readers will encounter some occasional discussions about the Greek text, but not in a way that makes the work inaccessible to lay readers.  I only wish Part 2 -- "Discipleship T...

Several clergy friends have asked for a resource they can use to gather their congregations (at least online) to pray.  I've put together an ecumenical daily prayer liturgy in response.  Congregations (or individuals) are free to use it.  The two hymns in the liturgy have music that are linked to existing YouTube videos; that way, everyone can sing together, too!  These are strange times -- but the Church continues to do what it has always done in obedience to the God who continues to do what God has always done.

Thomas More and Timothy Sprankle's Philippians:  A Commentary for Biblical Preaching and Teaching brings together the exegetical, theological and homiletical purposes of the text under one easy to use biblical commentary.  Each section of a chosen pericope within the Philippian letter deals with these three themes in succession.  For example, on Philippians 2.5-11 (the well-known kenotic Christological hymn), the exegetical idea is how Christ modeled a servant.  The theological focus is humility.  And, finally, the preaching idea is to climb down the ladder of privilege to reflect the attitude of Christ.  After the three areas of focus, the commentary, in the summary section, lists "Preaching Pointers" that give the preacher/teacher ideas about what they should drive home when delivering the text. This commentary contains all the usual information about the biblical book early in the commentary -- an outline, authorship, date of writing, location...

the wholeness of good possessed as a whole the completion of powers inherent in you at splendid things true joy of the soul triumph at being your self pure and true well-reasoned choosing of the natural thing viewing the order of all things in all to be like a circle or unending ring in all choice and thought to hear virtue's call achievement of life that is smooth in its flow that which makes nature finished in kind the good to will and the true to know being the divine that in us we find