Best Books of 2010

Anyone who considers himself a reader will probably tell you that they still don’t read as much they would like. I count myself a member of this not-so-rarified air. I’d like to read a book a week. It seems a tangible, realistic, and obtainable goal. Unfortunately, I usually fall short of this goal. Now, mind you, partially this isn’t entirely my fault. When your regiment of reading includes multiple novels hovering around 500 pages and you’re carefully picking your way through Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics—whose individual volumes average around 700 small-printed pages of ridiculously thick meaning, you’re bound to fall short in the book-a-week front.

Still, I think I read a fair amount.

While I don’t have a list to back it up, I’d estimate I read about 40 books last year. Of these, they were split fairly evenly between fiction and non-fiction. Most of my non-fiction selections were of the theological or philosophical variety, but not totally. I did enjoy books by Barbara Kingsolver on growing her own food and Sara Marcus on the Riot Grrrl movement of the 90’s. (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Girls to the Front respectively)

Of the 20 or so novels I read in 2010 only a handful were published this year. So, I’m hardly an expert on the best of the bunch from twenty-ten. Still, I do consider myself a reader. And, I’d like to believe I have discriminating taste. So, with that caveat, here are some newish books that I enjoyed in 2010:

David Mitchell

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

To say I recommend this book isn't saying nearly enough. Truthfully, this is one of the most enjoyable and memorable work of recent fiction that I have had read in some time.

Jacob de Zoet arrives in 1799 to Nagasaki Harbor on a five-year stint as a clerk with the Dutch East Indies Company hoping to earn enough money to return home and marry Anna. Instead he meets a mysterious Japanese mid-wife with a disfigured face, duplicitous translators, rogue colleagues, warring shoguns, and a changing Europe.

At it's core, this is book of collisions--cultures, religions, values, classes, genders, economic systems, etc.. But it’s more than that. It's a character study of one idealist full of scrupulous morals, values, and ideals facing a life in a world where those values are not shared and are in fact spit upon. Mitchell is able to create a multi-dimensional world that moves beyond the black and white and creates dilemmas and conflicts that are brutally honest in their reality. Good is never strictly good and bad is never strictly bad. Just like today's philosophical marketplace there is a spectrum of options and mores that we all must navigate. De Zoet is certainly a fine guide in this regard.

Thousand Autumns also deserves mention because it introduced me to the wonderful David Mitchell who has quickly become my favorite living author. I finished the dazzling and mind-bending Cloud Atlas over the holiday and now I’m enjoying his life of a 13-year old boy in 1982 England Black Swan Green.

Jonathan Franzen

Freedom

You’ve probably heard of this book. It made the cover of Time magazine before its print. When’s the last time a book that didn’t feature vampires or a teenage wizard did that?

If you haven’t heard it Freedom, you might be familiar with his tour de force The Corrections. Freedom has many similarities with that work. Both cover an enormous amount of time. Both deal with families in crisis, existential and otherwise. Both deal with the disconnect between a Midwestern locale and an east coast worldview. Both are full of characters pre-disposed to destroying the people closest to them.

But the similarities end there. Putting it bluntly, there wasn’t a single character in the Corrections that liked. I found them petty, mean-spirited, sad and spiteful people. In Freedom, the Berglands often embodied many of those same qualities but came off as much more likeable. I found myself rooting for them, which made their pain, follies, and failures all the more difficult to watch unfold. One never wants to see a friend self-destruct and be destroyed.

Further, I found the writing to be even better. Like the Corrections, Freedom is an equal opportunity critique on American culture where no one is left standing. The left, the right, the Christians, the atheists, the punks, and the suburbanites all look equally bad. Anyway you slice it we’re all consumers waiting to devour our next kill. But this time, Franzen writes with a warmth and humor that makes the pill easier to swallow. I’m a Christian, NPR-listening, leftist-leaning, indie rock kid. Let’s just say none of those identities look good here. But rather than being mean-spirited Franzen simply props up a mirror and allows us to see all our idiosyncrasies in unflinching details.

Pre-hyped extensively, it would be hard for Freedom to live up to its early buzz. But it exceeded and more.

Gary Shteyngart

Super Sad True Love Story

There is more than the slightest bit of irony posting a blog review of this super, sad, and hopefully not true love story on Facebook. Still, onward I go.

Set in a near dystopian future eerily similar to a Brave New World, the United States is crumbling. Swallowed by foreign debt and an obsessive addiction to fame, fashion, and sex, the populace is mostly a functionally illiterate mass of libido. Rather than communicate, “friends” troll together with their faces pressed to their i-pad like devices, updating statuses, tweeting, and rating people in personality and “desirability” (or a much more profane term).

The book follows the affable Lenny, keeper of perhaps the world’s last diary, and his romance with the anorexic Eunice. What happens isn’t quite as important as the world Gary Shteyngart describes. For this bibliophile, the future Shteygard describes is terrifying. Harnessing the ghosts of Douglas Adams, he writes with a satirical humor and an absurdist wit that keeps the book from collapsing into doomsday prophecies or morose navel-gazing. Instead it’s a chipper, if not perverse, delight that hopefully is no more than a fanciful romp into a future that is in no way coming.

This book is worth it just for his description of “onion skin” jeans alone.

Rafael Yglesias

A Happy Marriage

I’ve already written about this book before, so I’ll keep it short: this book destroyed me.

Like many of the best plots, it’s deceptively simple: it’s the mostly autobiographical love story of Enrique and Margaret. It alternates between their fast and furious meeting and courtship and the last few weeks of Maragret’s life as she wastes away from cancer.

I’ve never experienced the horrors and sadness Yglesias faced. I’d like to believe he put into words the universal feeling of emptiness and loss and the total inadequacy of expressing to the person you’ve shared your life with, just who they are to you. This is a tear jerker in the most real of worlds—the one we live and walk.

Michael Chabon

Manhood for Amateurs

This isn’t fiction, but it’s my list so you’ll have to deal with it.

Chabon wrote the memoir Manhood for Amateurs based off one undisputable hypothesis: the standard being a good father is set abysmally low.

Manhood is written for people like me. It’s a book for Dads who are finding their way in a new landscape of parenthood. It’s a book for Dads who want to be involved. Who like their kids. Who don’t believe that parenting is the responsibility of the mother.

Manhood isn’t a how-to. It isn’t a tome. It isn’t a revolutionary siren call. It’s one man’s reflection on what it means to be an involved, active, and responsible parent. Chabon does this with humor, heartbreak, insight and poise. I’m thankful there are books like this being written.

Words or Images, Words and Images?

Do we think and interpret mostly in words or images?

From my couch, I can see a piece of cardstock. It’s hanging from a piece of string that is strung across the mantle of our fireplace.

But it’s not just any piece of paper.

It is red rectangle with a solid white boarder and measures about 2 ½ inches in width and 3 ½ inches in height. In the bottom right quadrant, a white triangle stands on its tip. Resting on top of the triangle are three green-hued half circle like spheres, stacked on top of one another.

It’s a birthday card. On its front is a drawing of an ice cream cone.

Sitting from the vantage point of my couch I’m able to look at the card, analyze its components and recognize it as “ice cream cone”. With virtually no effort my brain translates the image (red rectangle, triangle, spheres) into words (ice cream cone) and concepts (birthday card).

Certainly there is a strong correlation between images and words, pictures and concepts? But does one drive the other? This question came to a head when I read 17^th century theologian Polanus’ fine definition of Bible interpretation:

The interpretation of sacred Scripture is the exposition of the true sense and use of it, organized in clear words for the glory of God and for the edification of His Church.

While there is much to reflect upon here (e.g. “true sense” of scripture? I wonder how this term might play out in debates concerning the inspiration and infallibility of Scripture? Is there a supra-historical meaning of the text that lays beyond its historical form?), the words italicized above captured my fancy: interpretation of Scripture is “organized in clear words”. Reformation iconoclast tendency aside, Polanus suggests that the results of a detailed investigation into the true sense and use of Biblical words, stories, and texts are to be conveyed in “clear words”. Not images or pictures, but clear words.

Clarity in interpretation seems straightforward in theory and harder in practice. Anyone who has been given the task of conveying the Word of God knows clarity in interpretation is ¾ of the battle.

For me the issue is the use of words. Does Biblical interpretation preclude the use of images? And if not, do words take priority and precedent over images?

Bear in mind I ask this as someone who is much more verbal than visual. About the worst thing you could ask of me would be to give me a blank piece of paper and some paint and tell me to make something.

But the scenario with the card got me thinking, can images convey meaning beyond words? Do we need words to make sense of an image? In the case of Biblical interpretation (which following Polanius is not a historical-critical exercise drawn independent of a Biblical theology or ethic, but combination of the exposition of true words and events that give meaning to our world today), should the use of images be used concurrently with words?

Anybody have any thoughts on this?

Why I Love my Church

I’ve been a part of First Presbyterian Church in Bellingham, Washington for just over 13 years. I wouldn’t trade it for another. It’s not a perfect church. No church is. Still, I love my church. Today I was given three healthy reasons why.

First, it’s Presbyterian. I’ll just leave it at that.

Second, it’s not always pretty.

No one would ever consider FPC of being polished. No ministry magazine will knock on our door asking us to host a ministry in the 21^st century webinar. We miss cues. There are more technical hiccups than I’d care to admit. And let’s not forget the dreaded dead spaces. The service generally incorporates the buzzing beehive of noise that is crying babies and anxious kids. We pray a lot. We confess our sins. (Who wants to be remided of that?) And then we pray some more. Not everyone that stands to speak was born to do so. From a purely professional standpoint, it leaves something to be desired. If you wanted to critique it and run a review in the paper, you would have plenty of reasons to complain.

It isn’t amateur hour either. We have immensely wonderful talented, Spirit-filled people creating music, writing and giving prayers, preaching sermons, and pushing us into devoted care and service for all that we meet. Still, we’re human. And that means Sunday morning isn’t always the paradigm of beauty.

And I love that. It’s a tangible reminder of how God’s grace comes to us. It’s in this messiness, these failures, and moments of weaknesses that I’m confronted by the character of God.

God’s salvation didn’t come pretty. It came in a man born and raised in a backwoods town. Most of his life didn’t warrant mention. He made his name as a wandering preacher of the rule of God, healer of the lame, one who eats with all kinds, and a challenger of the religious status quo. It didn’t end well either. Just when things seemed to be going his way, the tables were turned and he was crucified as a blasphemous, God-forsaken, political rebel. And in the end, this same Jesus of Nazareth was vindicated by God the Father in his resurrection from the dead, bringing forgiveness, healing, and life for all.

Like any church, FPC is a group of real people. We do your taxes. We pour your coffee. We teach your children. We park next to you. On Sunday morning we’re real people who gather together as ones who have been vindicated by God through the power of Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. We live as people who experience God’s presence in the person and work of the Holy Spirit. We come not as people who have it all together, who have everything figured out, and then put on a show to impress each other or whoever might show up. It’s not a time to pat each other’s back on the ways we have it figured out. It’s not a time to celebrate how we’ve got it right. It’s not even a time to point out where those around us have got it wrong.

We come as people who do what we can to offer what we have. We come to give our thanks and gratitude to God.  We come to listen and hear.  We come to proclaim. We come to encounter God and to be changed. I know I can’t speak for everyone, but I feel this in our awkwardness, messiness, and fragility. It’s by God’s grace we’re gathered. It’s by God’s grace we’re healed.

Finally, FPC is a church that affirms, encourages, and enables the Spiritual gifts of women. At FPC, all women are given a chance to use their God-given gifts to minister, equip, challenge, and encourage the entire body of faith—man or woman, adult or child.

This morning the music was led by the talented Jocelyn Meyer. As usual her choice of songs was purposeful and appropriate to the themes of the morning. She led the worship to in a set of songs that were an equal mix of frailty and wild abandon. Technically proficient, they never focused the attention on themselves. They did what they were there to do: lead the congregation in songs of thankfulness and praise.

The prayers were delivered by Linda Kolody. She guided the congregation in a communal praying for not only our community but for our entire world. She prayed for a government that transcends political differences but zeroed in on the concerns of the Kingdom. She prayed with honesty and fearlessness and was grounded in our hope in Christ.

Lastly Lisa Schwank brought a beautiful message of God’s healing power. In her own word and voice she proudly and powerful proclaimed God’s word. In it I was confronted by God to my own inertia and willingness to simply accept as is the areas of my life that need healing. I was reminded of just how much a willingness to receive the healing of Christ means a radical rupture of my carefully constructed life. To put it bluntly, Lisa faithfully proclaimed God’s Word to God’s people and I am thankful for that.

I’m thankful that I’m a part of a congregation that allows these wonderfully gifted women to use their gifts to minister to not only me but the entire congregation. They fearlessly allowed themselves to proclaim God’s word to a broken, yet being restored, people of faith.

My hope is that everyone can say this about their church. I don’t want anyone to leave their church for mine. But if you’re in town on a Sunday morning, we’d love to see you here.

God Wants Us to Eat Whatever We Want?

Over the Christmas holiday, I read this little article about Rupublican politicians who are supportive of First Lady Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity efforts.

Of course, since the issue at hand is a political one, the article devotes much of its space focusing on Obama’s detractors, notably the magnetic Sarah Palin. Since the horrific shootings in Tuscon and the grotesque political posturing in the shooting’s wake, the verbal spats found here seem petty and inconsequential. Still, there was one comment by Palin that deserves mentioning.

According to the article, Palin appeared on talk-show host Laura Ingraham’s radio program in order to promote her new book. At one point in the interview the conversation turned to Palin’s criticism of Obama’s efforts to encourage individuals to voluntarily fight obesity by changing their eating habits. This rubbed Palin the wrong way.  She perceived it as indicative of a nation gone soft and an attack on a person’s right to choose whatever they want to eat. Politicians (or anyone else presumably) should:

“get off our back and allow us as individuals to exercise our own God-given rights to make our own decisions” (emphasis mine).

It matters little to me that it was Sarah Palin who made this statement.  What matters to me is that it is indicative of a common and severe theological confusion on matters of freedom and individual rights. Palin, and she’s not alone in this sentiment, seems to be suggesting that as individuals God has given us the freedom or right to do whatever the hell we want and no one, let alone any politician or government, has any right to say otherwise. Our freedom to do as we please is written in the very DNA of creation and any attack on this liberal freedom is not only an attack on freedom but an attack on the very God who granted this boundless freedom.

From a strictly Judeo-Christian perspective, this is wildly false. Now, I will admit that in one regard we are free to behave as we choose. We’re morally responsible free agents. But in the end we’re accountable for those choices. We’re accountable because we are given directives by God as to the patterns in which we live our life.  Those God-given patters of living take specific and concrete forms.  To put it another way: we’re not free to do whatever the hell we want. We live under the authority of the Word of God, i.e. Jesus Christ as he is attested in Scripture.  As people who live under the authority of the Word, we have a limited and contingent freedom dependent upon God’s total claim over our lives.

Even excluding my interpretation of God and freedom, I don’t think Palin or anyone else holding her libertine position of a freedom derived from our “God-given rights to make our own decisions” would allow the purposeful ending of another person’s life.  Doing whatever the hell we want doesn’t allow for that.

Perhaps what Palin meant when she voiced the conventional wisdom that we have a “God-given right to make our own decisions,” she was referring to trifling matters such as the food we consume. In a Kantian sense, maybe there are some universals that we just should never do (e.g. purposely and maliciously taking another’s life) but in smaller matters such as the food consumed there is a God-given right to do whatever the hell we want.

But again, this isn’t correct. The Old Testament devotes an inordinate amount of space to what God’s covenant people could and could not eat, when and where they could eat it, and how it should be prepared. Simply put, what they put in their mouth wasn’t a matter of a “God-given right to make their own decisions”.

While many of the dietary restrictions of the Old Testament were restricted or abolished by Jesus, there is an even more demanding call: total obedience to the command of Christ. This call to total obedience is one of moderation and submission (even to *gasp* political authorities). Jesus’ command is one of total loyalty to his claim over our lives.  This is hardly the type of “God-given rights” Palin seems to think we have.

Perhaps I’m reading the situation incorrectly. Perhaps she meant something entirely different. Perhaps “God” was simply an archaic deistic injunction to natural law philosophy.  If so, please leave God out and call it what it is. But if I’m right, please leave God out it and leave the theology to those better equipped.

What Jim Morrison Taught Me about the End

I once had a roommate who was really into the Doors. I think the only two books I ever saw him read were a biography of Jim Morrison and a collection of “poetry” by Morrison himself. It probably doesn’t need to be said, but he listened to the Doors a lot. Since the Doors were lame, I tuned most of it out. Although I would never publicly admit to actually liking it, there was one song that sort of stuck with me: “The End”. It’s a hard song to ignore.  At 12 ½ minutes, its an epic hallucinogenic trip replete with over-wrought emoting from the dark prince himself. The lyrics themselves are an impressionist smattering of self-destruction, violence, ego, and finality as the narrator embraces his own end: “this is the end/beautiful friend/this is the end/my only friend, the end”.

While Morrison would have us believe the meaning of the song is open, it seems to me that for him, the end was simply the end. It was the finish. The point-of-no-return. It was the abyss that cannot be crossed.

For me, then and now, the end is something different. It is something new. With Bonhoeffer, I say the end is the beginning of life.

This is something that 2000 years of Christian thinking backs up. The end is not some cataclysmic decent into a nihilistic void, but flush with energy, vitality, and … life. It is the hope for the resurrection of the body, union with Christ and life eternal.

But is this end a beautiful friend?

On more than one occasion the Church has been accused of shirking the responsibility of our present historical reality and slipping into a passive waiting for this end. Why fight for justice now when you got your ticket punched for the big dance? Pop critics of the Church love pointing out all the times we have been on the wrong side of progressive social change. And guess what? They have a point. Sort of.

One of the greatest treasures of 20^th century theology has been a revitalized vigor for a Christian eschatology that can embrace both the otherwordly nature of “the end” and combine it with a passion for justice in the here and now. Biblical scholar George Ladd referred to it as the “already/not yet” aspect of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God. God’s Kingdom was and is present in the person and work of Jesus Christ but is waiting its ultimate consummation in the end. In this sense, “the end” includes a vital social component. Just as the kingdom Jesus proclaimed and actualized involved care for the marginalized, the righting of wrongs and a cosmic renewal of the creation, our “end” reflects that same reality only in its total fulfillment.

But my favorite contributor to this movement has been the writing of German theologian Jürgen Moltmann. According to Moltmann, “the end” can, is, and should also be realized here and now. In this present moment, we live into “the end” by practicing the reality of our “end”. In his epoch-making The Coming of God, he affirms our very existence is one in which we live in “an expectation of the future in the eschatological context of the end, and the new creation of the world.” (192)

This means the end is already present in an anticipatory form. In anticipating the end, we are called to participate in the proleptic human struggle for God’s justice. Of this he writes specifically of the apocalyptic book of Revelation. It

… was not written for "rapturists" fleeing from the world, who tell the world ‘goodbye’ and want to go to heaven; it was meant for resistance fighters, struggling against the godless powers on this earth (153)

So while the book of Revelation imaginatively depicts a revealing picture the end, it becomes an invitation for resistance against the present evil world order.  For John and the early Church that was Rome. Today you have a different Rome. You might even be Rome. Just don’t let waiting for the end get in your way.