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 It has been far too long since I’ve read a novel, and I’ve had Catch-22 sitting on my bookshelf for a very long time without having read it.  So I’m deciding to crack it open.  Apparently, it’s one of those sleeper books that everyone loves, but hasn’t quite made it to the lists of top books out there.  The introduction was an interesting sort of memoir about how the book finally got to be published, which intrigued me.

The text of the book so far, the setting and the characters seem to be somewhat similar to the oddly humored MASH unit of Hawkeye Pierce…and I must admit I’m imagining Yossarian the protagonist as Hawkeye so far.  We’ll see how this goes.

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 My charismatic friends, when they are talking about speaking in tongues, often describe it in terms of Romans 8:26, “the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”  By this verse, they mean that by their glossolalia (the technical term for the charismatic practice of “speaking in tongues”) they believe the Holy Spirit is speaking His own words through their mouths.  I bet a few of them would be surprised to find out that their not-so-given to tongues-speaking brothers and sisters in the confessional Lutheran Church Missouri Synod wholeheartedly agree on this specific idea when it comes to all prayer (perhaps the LCMS folks would be even more surprised at this simple agreement).

By its own admission, this official doctrinal statement of the LCMS concerning the “theology of practice and prayer” seeks to find some common ground in the prayer understanding of the more American influenced Evangelical church bodies and of the more European influenced catholic or liturgical church communities.  Seeking this common ground is, of course, natural for a church body that finds itself put into both categories by sociologists who study religion.  

In short, it seeks to hold in tension the more individualistic tendency of prayer - the natural outcries of the Christian heart in faith and the more communal aspect of prayer, praying the same prayers (such as the chief of prayers, the Lord’s Prayer) together as ways of understanding how to speak with God.  It explains how both the individual and the community are involved in the praying act and how we understand prayer’s power and nature.

This official doctrinal statement is impressively readable for most Christians and uses eloquent examples and illustrations to solidify the points.  I would recommend this to anyone - Lutheran or not, clergy or not, and even Christian or not - to understand better the Biblical and theological underpinnings of Christian prayer.

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 This book seeks to answer the questions: 1.) What is the church? 2.) What does that have to do with the Trinity?  Both questions that could be argued back and forth for years upon years.  In fact, they have been.

As a student of generations, I wonder if Miroslav’s writings here will turn out to be prophetic as we look into the future of what the Millennial generation is predicted to solidify in terms of ecclesiastical structures. Miroslav approaches the form of “Church” looking from the current structures of episcopal (that is, more hierarchical) and “Free Church” (that is, more independent, autonomous, and egalitarian) models.  

Additionally, Miroslav promises to approach these questions with the Trinity in mind, looking at how the community displayed between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can inform the structures of the church as they present themselves for the dawning of yet more years of history before Christ’s return.

Thanks to Daniel Prugh for recommending the book.

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 I feel like I need to give disclaimers before I review this book.  Disclaimer One: This “book closing” is about Mr. Prince’s book “Destined To Reign” which I have read, not the entire body of his work which I have not read or witnessed.  Disclaimer Two: Mr. Prince and I come from what appear to be radically different sides of the spectrum of Christian faith, I’m a Lutheran, he is a non-denominational charismatic that has been accused of being a “prosperity gospel” advocate.

That said, I was surprised by the orthodoxy of this book when it comes to the nature of what the Gospel is, and Mr. Prince’s seemingly unwitting allusions to the Lutheran concept of “Law and Gospel”.  

Not only did I find Mr. Prince orthodox in many of his statements about the supremacy and primacy of the Gospel, but I found his unabashed preaching (which is certainly what this book is, a lengthy sermon) on the primacy of grace refreshing - perhaps even more heartfelt and enthusiastic than my own “tribe” of Lutherans who are supposed to know “Gospel” if nothing else.  Mr. Prince’s words lit a fire under me concerning the fact that the Gospel reigns supreme over the Law, and he takes very clear steps to avoid “mixing” Law and Gospel to come up with a semi-Pelagian (part works-righteousness) point of view on salvation.

Where Mr. Prince and I seem to disagree is in the nature of the life of the redeemed.  Mr. Prince claims that the life of the redeemed will be evident in the lives of people in the following concrete terms: 1.) The redeemed will be able to refuse sin 2.) The redeemed will be able to avoid illness 3.) The redeemed will experience earthly riches.  Mr. Prince points to these things as happening in the life of the redeemed as “sanctifications” (God’s holiness being shown in man) that happen passively for the redeemed person.  Hence, the redeemed person is “supposed to” experience healing and wealth as a natural outcome of that person’s redemption - which brings into question the salvation of anyone who is sick, poor, or unable to escape temptation into sin.  This is where others have accused Mr. Prince of the theological heresy of “prosperity gospel”.  Since it does not show up in a significant way in this book, however, I withhold discerning if Mr. Prince is guilty of this heresy and will only say that his words on the subject in this book are dangerously close. All of that said, Mr. Prince’s book focuses more on salvation itself than it does on the life of the redeemed.

All in all, I recommend Mr. Prince’s book with some reservations.  This book should be read critically and examined side by side with the Scriptural account and the reader should not be surprised to find challenging discontinuities with the Scriptures at times concerning the evidences of salvation in one’s life, but it should still be read for the Gospel wallop that it packs.

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 I’m opening this book with a political science graduate student here at FSU named Matt.  Matt and I have talked about all sorts of different things in the past - from the Resurrection to the nature of evil to pornography to basic Christianity.  He’s a great discussion partner to have for a book, and this is right up his alley - being about the development of the mixing of political and theological rhetoric.

The introduction to the book makes it seem like it’s going to be a little like drinking water from a firehose.  The author, Greg Foster, even says that every page is about a decade’s worth of historical development of theology and politics.  He also makes a big deal about the concept of natural vs. revealed law, and it will be interesting to see where he takes that.  

Should be fun….it will also take me a while to read this because we normally read a chapter, discuss, read a chapter, discuss.  So expect to see this on my reading list for a while.

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 I received this book a while ago, and it has been staring me in the face along with a few other books that I still haven’t read yet.  It makes me look back at when I was buying more books than I was reading and thinking about how idiotic it was to think that I was amassing knowledge by amassing books that I hadn’t read.

Today my Circuit (pastors of 7 Lutheran churches around here, essentially) wrapped up our discussions on an earlier book, the Prodigal God by Tim Keller, and we needed a new one.  I brought 5 or so of the books that were staring me in the face from my bookshelf for us to decide upon for the next reading.  We wound up on Peterson’s “Living the Resurrection” which apparently also has the title “Stop Witnessing, Start Loving…” as I looked for it on Amazon.

I’ve never read a Peterson book, besides here and there reading his Bible paraphrase, the Message.  I’ll be interested to see how Peterson’s tendency to contextualize (over-contextualize?) shows up in this book about the Resurrection of Christ and what that means for us as Christians.  Should be an interesting read.

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 At the end of this book, I’m left feeling the same way that I feel after reading most of Seth’s books, and that is this:  I didn’t take enough time to write about this stuff.

This is my second time through “We are all weird,” and I’m a much bigger fan of this book than I was “Linchpin”.  More like “Tribes”, this book is short, concise, and leaves a lot up to the imagination - which is one of Seth’s strengths: he makes you imagine how his words might have freight in whatever field you’re in.

When I think about this book in terms of my professional field, the church, I think of how my denomination has spent a great deal of time and energy on “mass production” as have many denominations, and how my denomination now finds itself beset by “the weird” (those who demand choices that are outside of the statistical norm) on all sides.

Analogous observations could probably be found in my brother’s career with insurance, my uncle’s bed and breakfast business, and the farmers on my mom’s side of the family.  

Simply put, Seth proves that you are “weird” (having the desire to choose), and that you are most likely can be or already are “rich” (having the ability to choose).  Don’t believe me?  Read the book and see what your imagination tells you.

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 Jesus said “Love your neighbor as yourself,” which immediately causes a few questions to arise in most people’s minds: “How do I love myself? Should I love myself? Why should I love myself?”  

The unhealthy answers to these questions include self-abasement, martyr complexes, and co-dependent relationships.  The healthy answers try to find a balance between the descriptor that Jesus uses (love yourself), and the command that He gives (love your neighbor).

Karl Galik’s book examines the problems that we have with loving ourselves and how that hampers our ability to truly love others.  In a quick 22 chapters, Karl shares stories from his career as a counselor and pastor with the goal of teaching that the solution to finding balance in loving yourself and loving others is two fold: First, engage with others as completely as you can.  Second, disengage from others in order to live well as a created being who trusts Jesus and has energy to love others.

I would recommend this quick book to any Christian in any vocation who is seeking balance in their life to make work more fruitful and life more enjoyable.

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 The basic idea that Strauss and Howe are trying to get across in this book is that history is cyclical.  To prove that point, they set out to determine exactly what that cycle looks like.  In the fourth turning, subtitled  ”An American Prophecy”, they go about looking through history in order to arrive at a pattern that might help us to better understand the future - or at least put ourselves in a place ready for the future.

The cycle, as they see it, can generally be traced to 4 archetypal “generations” that follow one another in 4 archetypal “seasons” that are brought about by the interaction between those generations and their characteristics.  Each of the 4 generations and their seasons make up a “saeculum”, a generational year - after which the cycle begins again.

The worrisome part of the book is that Stauss and Howe tell us that we are currently at the end of our saeculum, which means “generational winter” which will bring a freeze and death to much that we see living today.  In a later edition, Stauss and Howe identify the major crisis of that “generational winter” as the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001 - which happened about 24 years before they thought it might while writing this book in 1997.  

My own generation, the 13th Generation or “Gen X”, is a largely survivalist generation with a jaded personality.  The generation immediately older than me, the generation of my parents, is the Boomer generation. The generation older than them, the Korean War era “Silent” generation.  Normally I have more interaction, however, with the generation directly younger than me - the Millenials.  

As I was reading this book, I was engaging in meetings with people who were largely outside of my generation - largely Boomers with a few Silent.  Reflecting on my interactions with them, I was amazed at how precisely it seemed that Stauss and Howe nailed our conflicts with one another. This led to my major critical thought about the book: Are these conflicts and cycles real, or is this simply self fulfilling prophecy.  

I thought to myself, is this nothing more than a generations-styled horoscope?  I can understand the horoscope on three levels (without the silly “mumbo-jumbo” way of understanding them):

1. A horoscope may appear true because you make it so after reading it (self-fulfilling)

2. A horoscope may appear true because it is generally vague enough to fit in a variety of experiences 

3. A horoscope may simply explain how people born in different times of the year experience a different cycle and rhythm of life than people born in other times of the year

To fully believe what Stauss and Howe have to offer, one has to at least hold the possibility that “3” might be possible.  It might be possible to understand generational interactions, and therefore history, by examining the cycle of birth (and subsequent death) of those generations.

While the predictive power of Stauss and Howe’s book may be seen as the greatest “pay-off” of their research, it is not the greatest proof.  The greatest proof of Strauss and Howe’s theory of a 4-generation cycle is to examine how X’ers and Millenials and the upcoming generation (Alpha’s?) will attempt to live together in unity.  We have had our crisis, now what do we look to?

Yet perhaps the greatest real power of this book is simply to cross generational boundaries with the notion of having generational diversity that is somewhat understandable.  If I can understand the generations on either side of mine (the Boomers, the Millenials), or at least grant them the ability to be themselves - then perhaps I can be better suited to love them as my neighbor and as myself.

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 I’m opening this book because it is the recommended reading for my next PALS (Post Seminary Applied Learning and Support) meeting.  The book is actually by a guy that I know, which is always an interesting phenomenon that not many people can claim about the books that they read (at least I can’t).  I don’t know Karl real well, but we’ve talked, and I’ve heard some of what he has to say in this book before.

The book itself is about a topic that is somewhat controversial within my own soul.  It’s about Jesus’ statement about the second great commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  

I don’t have a problem with understanding “Love Your Neighbor”, that seems pretty clear cut to me.  The thing that I wrestle with is loving my neighbor “as myself”.  In order to understand that, I have to understand how I love myself - and that’s a weird conversation to get into. I either feel guilty of hedonism, loving myself too much - or guilty of self-abasement, loving myself too little.  

I’m looking forward to seeing what Karl has to say about all of this.

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 I picked up this book because it’s a Chuck Palahniuk book…and he rarely disappoints. I’m especially intrigued by Chuck’s accessibility to a Christian reader.  While his subject matter is rarely anything that a good moralist would ever condone, the amount of seeming allusions to the tenets of Christianity usually leave my head spinning.

Enter Chuck’s book set in hell…

That’s right, hell.  Apparently, at the opening of the book, we find ourselves (or at least the protagonist) in hell, explaining how she got to be there.  Will it be interesting?  No doubt there.  Ready for the wild ride.

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