This is a bit long, but if you like books, you’ll probably like this!
Stress does two things. It exposes the broken pieces of your soul. And then it picks up your body, your life, your relationships, your money, your house, all the things that make up you as uniquely you, and it runs them all back and forth over the sharp spots, shredding you, making you bleed all over those you have to live with.
Stress is not a pretty sight.
Thankfully we had the foresight months ago to realize we would need a break from the emotional stress of starting a new job. By taking 3 days of vacation during Thanksgiving week, we got 9 days of rest (and our first Thanksgiving with just our family!!). We went to Kentucky, and I knew I wouldn’t have phone or internet service, but we also found out there was no cable, so there was no excuse for me not to get some serious reading done, my favorite form of relaxing.
I have a very long running Amazon list of books I want to read (up to 944 right now – holy cow), and I use that to request books from the inter-library loan service. So the books I request are sometimes random, and don’t necessarily go together. The books I ended up taking with me, surprised me at their points of commonality. I finished reading them, and I though I thought I was reading these books for knowledge or inspiration, these 6 ended up being deeply formational books instead.
I’m going to summarize the books briefly, and then because I loved them so much, while I get back on a schedule of writing every day and getting some actual posts written, I’ll be posting lots of quotes from some of the books the rest of this week.
*****
I started with You Lost Me by David Kinnaman. I find this whole discussion fascinating, because I believe it’s true. I am on the edge of the line between two demographics, and sometimes I find myself just barely hanging on. I related a lot to what he said, and found his description of the exile group to be pretty accurate. Sometimes, being labeled can be really helpful.
One of the parts that spoke clearest to me was his chapter on a shallow faith, and what is necessary to form a deeper faith in ourselves, in our kids. I knew a lot of what he said, but somehow, this time, it set the stage for the rest of what I was going to read, putting my apathy in sharper contrast.
He also had some excellent parts on identity and vocation and what the lack of them means to people. Identity and vocation would be a theme that continued to emerge (which struck me as somewhat funny as that’s been a recurring point of discussion the past few months as we’ve talked about what it means to work for a company.)
*****
Then I read The Promise of Despair by Andrew Root.
On my first read through, I thought it was very awkwardly written, but as I went back looking up the quotes that I had noted, I found it less so. Maybe it’s a book that needs to be read a couple of times. A lot of times people will talk about entering the pain, or brokenness, and that’s something I believe strongly in, but sometimes that comes across as ‘be friends with people who are sad’. Sometimes it seems disconnected from a deeper meaning as to why, and what that looks like.
This book gives a very good theological defense as to why followers of Jesus are called to the way of death and despair, in order to find the life that is there, to find where God has been at work.
He also gives a definition of sin that changed how I looked at the rest of the books I read. And changed how I look at sin, actually.
“Sin is not ultimately the bad things we do; sin is the inclination toward serving death as the ultimate reality rather than serving the God who brings life out of death.”
He has an beautiful section on hope vs. optimism. As Christians, we are not called to be optimistic people, but we are called to be hopeful people.
I much prefer a Christus Victor view of atonement instead of the penal substitutionary one, and this is one of the reasons why.
“Hope is born in the future – a future that is not out ahead of us, but that is a completely new reality, even now in small ways breaking into our lives……..Optimism says, ‘something good will come out of this experience.’ Hope says, ‘in the midst of this hell God will act.’ In the midst of this present hell of death God’s future will bring the fullness of life…..Optimism needs no secret, because it is looking for the silver lining in the present of this reality….But hope is a secret that calls for silence, contemplation, and deep reflection….we are hoping in an altogether different reality, in the dawn of God’s future, where death is not optimistically given face paints and cotton candy to hold, but is obliterated in the fullness of life in God’s Love. Hope is a secret because it is trust in a wholly new reality, not just this reality shined with the spit of optimistic positivity.”
One section of the book talks about how people organize their lives, and it made me wonder,
What am I ordering my life around?
*****
The next book I read was Walking With the Poor by Bryant Myers, and oh my goodness. I wish everyone would read this. It has so much to say beyond physical poverty. I read this with a high level of respect because of the Sri Lanka blog posts. World Vision knows what they are doing and talking about.
“Any Christian understanding of transformational development must keep the person of Jesus and the claims and promise of the kingdom central to the defining of what better future we are working for and for choosing the means of getting there.”
What better future am I working towards?
The book also centered around the themes of relationship, a correct theology of sin, knowing our identity and the purpose of the church. He keeps saying that people have ‘marred identities and distorted vocations.’ I love that terminology.
“Understanding poverty as relationships that don’t work as they should is consistent with the biblical story as well.”
“Sin is the root cause of deception, distortion, and domination. When God is on the sidelines or written out of our story, we do not treat each other well.”
“Anything that is for life, that enhances life, or that celebrates life is pointing toward the kingdom.”
*****
After I finished that book, I read Lectio Divina by Christine Valters Paintner, which had actually been mentioned in WWP. This book gives practical ways and descriptions of what it means to move close to the heart of God, out of which comes the actions talked about in the rest of the books.
*****
Then Desert Fathers and Mothers by Christine Valters Paintner, which had sayings and explanations, and which constantly pointed to the desert way of life.
“The desert journey isn’t about embarking on a long and arduous struggle to find God at the end of the road. Desert spirituality is about looking for God right in the very midst of wrestling with ourselves. God is in the heart of the struggle, and so we are to stay there with the holy presence until the treasure is revealed.”
*****
The last book was Desiring the Kingdom by James K.A. Smith. This book was incredible. (Even more incredibly is that this was written from a Reformed perspective and I still absolutely loved it. This might be my favorite of all of them.)
He opens up with an elaborate description of a religious worship center and all of the sights and smells and icons and priests and offerings and chapels and a sense of community, and then reveals that he’s talking about a shopping mall.
The book talks about how the practices and habits we engage in are rituals, liturgies, that form our souls. Which kingdom are we training ourselves to desire? It’s incredible. He even talks about how Victoria’s Secret gets it right and the church gets it wrong when it comes to appealing to our heart’s desires and the fact that we are made for love.
“To be human is to love, and it is what we love that defines who we are.”
*****
You Lost Me sets the stage in describing that people are leaving the church. The Promise of Despair invites to not leave, but enter the darkness. Walking With the Poor shows us how we cause the brokenness, what happens when we ignore it, and how to have a life-giving approach to entering. Lectio Divinia keeps us close to the heart of God, Desert Fathers and Mothers anchors us to the historic path of brokenness, and Desiring the Kingdom describes how to be formed into the kind of people who are able to follow Jesus into the darkness.
Spending a week circling around these ideas of what it means to be fully human, to follow Jesus and love my neighbor, centered in brokenness and death, at the same time that I was recovering from being so completely broken is one of those gifts that just makes me smile. It’s a glimpse of light in the darkness, and as we move into the shortest, darkest time of the year, while anticipating the greatest light, I feel like I too, am entering a new period of light.