Formation of the Heart

I’m working my way through Jamie Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom, and he is driving home the point that it’s not just our minds that need formed, but our hearts. He argues that humans are not, at a base level, thinkers, but lovers. As such, Christians need to be concerned not just with education, but with formation of our practices and desires. I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts later, but this quote stuck out today:

Unfortunately, the church often adopts a … misguided strategy: while the mall, Victoria’s Secret, and Jerry Bruckheimer are grabbing hold of our gut (kardia) by means of our body and its senses - in stories and images, sights and sound, and commercial versions of “smells and bells” - the church’s response is oddly rationalist.

It plunks us down in a “worship” service, the culmination of which is a forty-five-minute didactic sermon, a sort of holy lecture, trying to convince us of the dangers by implanting doctrines and beliefs in our minds.

While the mall paradoxically appreciates that we are liturgical, desiring animals, the (Protestant) church still tends to see us as Cartesian minds. While secular liturgies are after our hearts through our bodies, the church thinks it only has to get into our heads. While Victoria’s Secret is fanning a flame in our kardia, the church is trucking water to our minds. While secular liturgies are enticing us with affective images of a good life, the church is trying to convince us otherwise by depositing ideas.

Hmmmmm…

My 2014 reading in review

Well, with 2014 in the books it’s time for my annual little review of my reading. This was a busy reading year for me - 74 books equals the most I’ve read in a year since I started logging my reading back in 2007.

My fiction/non-fiction split was pretty heavily weighted in the non-fiction direction - 45 non to 29 fiction. That non-fiction was pretty well distributed, too, still a lot of theology, but a good bit of history, biography, and economics. (And economics was more than just Piketty. Go me!)

The full list is on Goodreads but here are some of the highlights:

The Best

The Pastor: A Memoir by Eugene Peterson

This is a beautifully-written memoir by a much beloved pastor and author. Peterson tells stories from his years of ministry, emphasizing the call to a simple, faithful pastoral ministry. (Such a breath of fresh air in the days of celebrity megachurch pastors!) This was the volume I gave away as Christmas gifts this year. Really good.

From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism by Darren Dochuk

A detailed history of the roots of American Evangelicalism, from the Oklahoma radio evangelists of the 1930s, through the migration to Southern California, through the rise of Billy Graham, and all the way to the Moral Majority of Jerry Fallwell. Dochuk’s history is quite readable and fascinating for a guy like me who grew up in evangelicalism but didn’t really know its roots.

The Anglican Way: A Guidebook by Fr. Thomas Mackenzie

I chipped in on the Kickstarter campaign for this book back in 2013, and boy was it ever worth it. Thomas, pastor at Church of the Redeemer in Nashville, wrote an introduction to Anglicanism for those Christians who may not be familiar with the tradition. Fr. Thomas: almost thou persuadest me to become an Anglican.

The Rook: A Novel by Daniel O’Malley

This was my last book of the year, so hopefully I’m not just biased because it’s fresh in my memory. This was a great read, though, if you’re into the sort of supernatural spy mystery/thriller sort of thing. Funny, moves quick, keeps things interesting. Looking forward to the second book in the series sometime next year.

That’s Not All

In addition to those titles I also gave five star ratings to some classics that I re-read (several of the Harry Potter novels, read out loud with the family) or read for the first time (To Kill A Mockingbird was a notable gap in my experience.)

A vast majority of the books I read this year garnered either four or five stars. I hope this is because I did a better job of not wasting my time on books that never captured my interest. The (100 pages - your age) formula has been effective this year. If, 60-ish pages in I’m not engaged and enjoying the read, I’m not going to feel compelled to keep reading it.

Up Next

I still have a pile (though not as sizable as it once was) next to my bed that will keep my reading well into 2015. Most likely I will be reading:

  • Prayer by Tim Keller. (It’s Keller. Duh.)
  • Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Unset. (A historical novel written in the early 1920s by a Norwegian author who won the Nobel Prize for literature. Obscure but highly recommended by those in the know.)
  • Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris. The next volume of his Theodore Roosevelt biography. The last one was excellent.
  • Paul and the Faithfulness of God by N. T. Wright. I got this one for Christmas last year and didn’t get very far. I think I’m ready to give it a go here sometime soon.
  • Lila by Marilynne Robinson. Her follow-up to the excellent Gilead.

Happy 2015, everybody!

Yeah, I only gave Augustine''s "Confessions" 4 stars

I went on a quick business trip this week which gave me several hours of airplane time to do some reading. I finished up both Confessions by St. Augustine (a foundational bit of Christian theology from a millenium ago) and The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence by John Sanders (a rather dense defense of open theism from not too many years ago).

I read a lot, and being the nerd that I am, I keep a log of my reading over on Goodreads. And when you add a book to your shelves on Goodreads, it prompts you to rate the book, using a 1 - 5 star rating system. Being the nerd that I am, I can’t not rate them. And so as I add the books to my “read” shelf and to the shelf for the current year, I also give them a star rating, and those star ratings are automatically tweeted on my Twitter account.

So, back to this week. Not only did I finish both Confessions and The God Who Risks, but I gave them both 4 stars. Having the temerity to even assign a star rating to St. Augustine got me a bit of good-natured flack on Twitter. So I figured it was time (for my own sake, at least) to explain how I assign star ratings. (To the 3 of you who want to continue reading past this point: seek professional help.)

Whether I’m rating fiction or non-fiction, I tend to value similar traits in a book: well-written prose; an engaging topic; a coherent plot or argument; an appropriate length. I’ve gotten choosier over the years and more willing to give up on lame books. (It’s getting harder and harder to find fiction that’s worth my time.) When I’m reading non-fiction, and particularly theology, my rating isn’t based at all on the relative importance of the work in history (I’m actually not well-qualified to judge that) or whether I agree with the position being argued. I will base my rating, though, on how even-handed the author was in argument, how well I felt like the case was made, and how well the book kept my interest. I also like to reserve 5-star ratings for books that are really top-notch, can’t-beat-em volumes. The ones that make a significant impact on me, that I want to read again or buy copies for other people.

So, Augustine got 4 stars for Confessions. The translation I read (downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg) was a little big of a slog, but significant chunks of it were (in my untrained opinion) quite brilliant, and kept me thinking. Definitely glad I read it. Quite certain I don’t have the seminary education I’d need to understand how it molds the next thousand years of Christian thought.

But Sanders also gets 4 stars for The God Who Risks. It’s also a bit of a slog. (At one point in the text he refers back to an earlier section in the book by its section number, something like 3.4.6.2-5. That’s some serious outlining going on.) Still, Sanders makes a reasonable argument for openness and I felt like he dealt fairly with the topic and opposing viewpoints. I don’t know that I completely agree with him, but I’m glad I read the book and gained a better understanding of that perspective of the topic.

Mid-way through writing this post I went and counted up the number of 5-star reviews I’ve given on Goodreads. Of 530-ish books I’ve read, I’ve given 5 stars to about 70. (That’s more than I would’ve thought if you’d asked me.) I’ve given 5 stars to more non-fiction than fiction; some history and biography, a lot of theology, and a bunch of classic fiction. Upon reflection, does Augustine deserve 5 stars for Confessions? Yeah, probably. Maybe I should go do a re-read and see if I have a better appreciation for it after another go-round. On the other hand, maybe if I’m allowing myself the cheekiness of assigning reviews at all I shouldn’t be ashamed of just assigning scores as I see them.

In the end, I’m glad to have that list of books and the associated ratings, if only to look back and remember some favorites, help me recommend books to others, and to find some re-reads. And, I suppose, because I’m a nerd. Somethings never change.

Assorted recommended reading

I haven’t had a lot of original thoughts to share in long-form here on the blog lately, but I can pass along some links that are good recommended reading:

  • Scandal and Madam Secretary: A Tale of Two Political Dramas - In days when it’s hard to not be cynical about anything remotely political, I really appreciated Alissa Wilkinson’s attitude toward the new show Madam Secretary. It reminded me what it means to “hope all things”.
  • Disorderly (mis)Conduct: The Problem with ‘Contempt of Cop’ Arrests (PDF) by Christy E. Lopez. Ms. Lopez apparently now works for the DOJ and is part of the federal Ferguson investigation. A good piece documenting issues with the ‘contempt of cop’ arrests and making recommendations for making improvements.
  • Justice then Reconciliation - Austin Channing Brown bringing the truth. “Reconciliation is what we practice after we have chosen justice.” Powerful.
  • College Girls: Education, Imago Dei, and the Gospel - Hannah Anderson bringing truth on why we educate both boys and girls: “We educate girls and women for the same reason we educate boys and men. We educate our daughters because they are made in God’s image. Full. Stop.” Bravo.
  • How does the iOS 8 Time-lapse feature work? - Just so I’m not linking to all political and theological heaviness, here’s some nerdiness to go along with it. Apple came up with a fiendishly clever and simple way to do the time-lapse video thing. Really neat.

So yeah, there’s some recommended reading. Enough for now, I’m going to bed.

I'm still reading...

So, what have I been up to reading-wise? I don’t know that any of you were actually asking yourselves that, but I’m going to answer anyway.

  • I really enjoyed Richard Beck’s Unclean.
  • I read the first chapter of Vanauken’s A Severe Mercy and found it slow-going stylistically. I’ve heard so many folks say so much good about it I’ll keep at it and see if it gets better, though.
  • I started O’Donavan’s Resurrection and Moral Order and wow, it’s dense. That’s not necessarily bad, but wow. Of course, maybe I should’ve taken the hint when Alistair Roberts told me that you had best read it slowly.
  • I read a quick WEB Griffin novel and a short popular history.

Business trip again next week so maybe I’ll get some more substantive reading done.

As an aside: I mentioned a discussion this week with a couple of co-workers that I’ve logged and rated every book I’ve read over the past 8 years. They looked at me like I was nuts. I trust you, dear reader, won’t judge me near so harshly.

The book pile:

  • Surprised by Scripture, NT Wright
  • Merton: A Biography, Monica Furlong
  • Meditative Prayer, Thomas Merton
  • Resurrection and Moral Order, Oliver O’Donavan
  • Paul and the Faithfulness of God, NT Wright
  • A Severe Mercy, Shelden Vanauken
  • From Bible Belt to Sun Belt, Darren Dochuk
  • Parables of Judgment, Robert Capon
  • Theodore Rex, Edmund Morris
  • Evangelical Theology, Karl Barth
  • Confessions of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton
  • The Wounded Healer, Henri J. M. Nouwen
  • The Monster in the Hollows, Andrew Peterson

Books I’ve started but not yet finished:

  • The Kingdom of Christ, Russell Moore
  • Jesus Manifesto, Frank Viola & Leonard Sweet
  • The Fiddler’s Green, A. S. Peterson

Books I wanna re-read:

  • The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, David Dark
  • When I Was a Child I Read Books, Marilynne Robinson
  • Between Noon and Three, Robert Capon

Unread on my Kindle:

  • Barefoot Church: Serving the Least in a Consumer Culture, Brandon Hatmaker
  • Center Church, Tim Keller
  • The Pastor: A Memoir, Eugene Peterson
  • Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity, Frank Viola
  • Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures from the Nazis, Robert Edsel
  • Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality, Richard Beck
  • Why Holiness Matters: We’ve Lost Our Way–But We Can Find it Again, Tyler Braun

Argument is offered to justify the felt judgment...

I’ve finally been catching up with Richard Beck’s Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality and I’m finding it fascinating. Beck is a professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University and his work usually sits at the intersection of faith topics and psychological study.

In Unclean he looks at the psychology of purity and disgust and how Christianity interacts with those built-in reactions (such as disgust) and how they shape our attitude toward sin and toward others. I’m only about 20% of the way in so far, but this paragraph caught my eye:

These dynamics [feelings leading to reasons, rather than vice versa] make conversations about God inherently difficult because our experience of the divine is being regulated by emotion rather than logic, affect rather than theology. I think people in churches have always known this, and felt that people in conflict within the church were generally talking past each other. One reason for this is now clear. Very often, arguments and the warrants found within them are secondary to the felt experience. Argument is offered to justify the felt judgment of the sacred or profane. And as self-justifications these arguments often fail as acts of persuasion or forms of consensus-building.

I’m looking forward to reading more.

A couple more knocked off the list

I had a business trip last week which gave me extra reading time, so… two more knocked off the list.

First, Merton: A Biography by Monica Furlong. This one underwhelmed me. The first part of the story (up to the point where Merton joins the Trappists) is told in a much more interesting fashion by Merton himself in The Seven Storey Mountain (which I read a couple years back). The second half of the story mostly exists to make you repeatedly ask why anyone in their right mind would join the Trappists.

Second (and much more highly recommended): The Pastor: A Memoir by Eugene Peterson. Peterson is a hero among pastors to me - a man planted a church and stayed there for 30 years, who focused not on numeric growth but on spiritual growth, who made it his goal to simply consistently pastor (an active verb) the flock that God brought him… Peterson recounts his childhood, his call to ministry, and the lessons learned from decades of pastoring in his usual winsome way. Well worth the read.

I’m now cheating a bit - I found a novel that looked interesting at the library and I’m reading it this week. Then I’ll be back to something off my pile.

The book pile:

  • Surprised by Scripture, NT Wright
  • Merton: A Biography, Monica Furlong
  • Meditative Prayer, Thomas Merton
  • Resurrection and Moral Order, Oliver O’Donavan
  • Paul and the Faithfulness of God, NT Wright
  • A Severe Mercy, Shelden Vanauken
  • From Bible Belt to Sun Belt, Darren Dochuk
  • Parables of Judgment, Robert Capon
  • Theodore Rex, Edmund Morris
  • Evangelical Theology, Karl Barth
  • Confessions of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton
  • The Wounded Healer, Henri J. M. Nouwen
  • The Monster in the Hollows, Andrew Peterson

Books I’ve started but not yet finished:

  • The Kingdom of Christ, Russell Moore
  • Jesus Manifesto, Frank Viola & Leonard Sweet
  • The Fiddler’s Green, A. S. Peterson

Books I wanna re-read:

  • The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, David Dark
  • When I Was a Child I Read Books, Marilynne Robinson
  • Between Noon and Three, Robert Capon

Unread on my Kindle:

  • Barefoot Church: Serving the Least in a Consumer Culture, Brandon Hatmaker
  • Center Church, Tim Keller
  • The Pastor: A Memoir, Eugene Peterson
  • Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity, Frank Viola
  • Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures from the Nazis, Robert Edsel
  • Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality, Richard Beck
  • Why Holiness Matters: We’ve Lost Our Way–But We Can Find it Again, Tyler Braun

The pile keeps shrinking...

I’m slowly whittling down my bedside book pile, completing Darren Dochuk’s From Bible Belt to Sun Belt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism last week. This was a fantastic book. Dochuk traces the history of evangelicalism from the early days of the Depression, as evangelicals migrated west from Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and the like, to California. As a child of evangelicalism in the 80s and 90s, it was very enlightening to read about J. Vernon McGee, Billy Graham, E. V. Hill, Bill Bright, Tim LaHaye, and others. It was a bit slow going through the 1920s and 30s, but from the 1940s onward it was a wonderful, interesting read. I owe Brian Auten bigtime for recommending it.

I’m now a few chapters in to a biography of Thomas Merton which I’m not real excited about yet, but I’ll give it some time.

The book pile:

  • Surprised by Scripture, NT Wright
  • Merton: A Biography, Monica Furlong
  • Meditative Prayer, Thomas Merton
  • Resurrection and Moral Order, Oliver O’Donavan
  • Paul and the Faithfulness of God, NT Wright
  • A Severe Mercy, Shelden Vanauken
  • From Bible Belt to Sun Belt, Darren Dochuk
  • Parables of Judgment, Robert Capon
  • Theodore Rex, Edmund Morris
  • Evangelical Theology, Karl Barth
  • Confessions of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton
  • The Wounded Healer, Henri J. M. Nouwen
  • The Monster in the Hollows, Andrew Peterson

Books I’ve started but not yet finished:

  • The Kingdom of Christ, Russell Moore
  • Jesus Manifesto, Frank Viola & Leonard Sweet
  • The Fiddler’s Green, A. S. Peterson

Books I wanna re-read:

  • The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, David Dark
  • When I Was a Child I Read Books, Marilynne Robinson
  • Between Noon and Three, Robert Capon

Unread on my Kindle:

  • Barefoot Church: Serving the Least in a Consumer Culture, Brandon Hatmaker
  • Center Church, Tim Keller
  • The Pastor: A Memoir, Eugene Peterson
  • Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity, Frank Viola
  • Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures from the Nazis, Robert Edsel
  • Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality, Richard Beck
  • Why Holiness Matters: We’ve Lost Our Way–But We Can Find it Again, Tyler Braun

One down, 25 to go

I finished up NT Wright’s Surprised by Scripture the other night. A nice short form of several of his arguments, some will be very familiar to those who have read his other popular works. There were a couple chapters, though, on politics and on women leading in the church that were new to me and quite good.

For review, here’s the list of books piled next to my bed that I’ve yet to read but want to before I buy any more. I think the next one I’ll be reading is From the Bible Belt to the Sun Belt by Darren Dochuk.

The ones I’ve not read yet:

  • Surprised by Scripture, NT Wright
  • Merton: A Biography, Monica Furlong
  • Meditative Prayer, Thomas Merton
  • Resurrection and Moral Order, Oliver O’Donavan
  • Paul and the Faithfulness of God, NT Wright
  • A Severe Mercy, Shelden Vanauken
  • From the Bible Belt to the Sun Belt, Darren Dochuk
  • Parables of Judgment, Robert Capon
  • Theodore Rex, Edmund Morris
  • Evangelical Theology, Karl Barth
  • Confessions of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton
  • The Wounded Healer, Henri J. M. Nouwen
  • The Monster in the Hollows, Andrew Peterson

Books I’ve started but not yet finished:

  • The Kingdom of Christ, Russell Moore
  • Jesus Manifesto, Frank Viola & Leonard Sweet
  • The Fiddler’s Green, A. S. Peterson

Books I wanna re-read:

  • The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, David Dark
  • When I Was a Child I Read Books, Marilynne Robinson
  • Between Noon and Three, Robert Capon

Unread on my Kindle:

  • Barefoot Church: Serving the Least in a Consumer Culture, Brandon Hatmaker
  • Center Church, Tim Keller
  • The Pastor: A Memoir, Eugene Peterson
  • Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity, Frank Viola
  • Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures from the Nazis, Robert Edsel
  • Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality, Richard Beck
  • Why Holiness Matters: We’ve Lost Our Way–But We Can Find it Again, Tyler Braun

No More Buying Until I Do Some Reading

…that’s the promise I’m making myself. The book pile next to my bed is just too high, and I keep accumulating without making much progress. So, it’s time to whittle down the pile.

In no particular order, here’s what I’ve got piled up.

First, the ones I’ve not read yet:

  • Surprised by Scripture, NT Wright
  • Merton: A Biography, Monica Furlong
  • Meditative Prayer, Thomas Merton
  • Resurrection and Moral Order, Oliver O’Donavan
  • Paul and the Faithfulness of God, NT Wright
  • A Severe Mercy, Shelden Vanauken
  • From the Bible Belt to the Sun Belt, Darren Dochuk
  • Parables of Judgment, Robert Capon
  • Theodore Rex, Edmund Morris
  • Evangelical Theology, Karl Barth
  • Confessions of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton
  • The Wounded Healer, Henri J. M. Nouwen
  • The Monster in the Hollows, Andrew Peterson

Books I’ve started but not yet finished:

  • The Kingdom of Christ, Russell Moore
  • Jesus Manifesto, Frank Viola & Leonard Sweet
  • The Fiddler’s Green, A. S. Peterson

Books I wanna re-read:

  • The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, David Dark
  • When I Was a Child I Read Books, Marilynne Robinson
  • Between Noon and Three, Robert Capon

Unread on my Kindle:

  • Barefoot Church: Serving the Least in a Consumer Culture, Brandon Hatmaker
  • Center Church, Tim Keller
  • The Pastor: A Memoir, Eugene Peterson
  • Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity, Frank Viola
  • Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures from the Nazis, Robert Edsel
  • Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality, Richard Beck
  • Why Holiness Matters: We’ve Lost Our Way–But We Can Find it Again, Tyler Braun

By my count, that’s 26 books. At my current rate, I might finish them by the end of the year.

Unless I hit the Half Price Books or the library again and find another pile of reading material. But I’m gonna try not to.