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Brian Zahnd, from a January 29, 2016 message titled “Silence”:

The church is not a special interest group that has to make its demands known. We don’t have to fight for our rights. That is the exact opposite of the Jesus way. The church is the new temple that is sustained by the Spirit and by lives of faith, and the church can afford to be quiet and trust because it is not dependent on anything other than the Holy Spirit. The church doesn’t have to make things happen. It can simply be that part of the world living under the peaceable reign of Christ. In fact I would highly advocate we reduce the hyperbole when we talk about ‘changing the world’. That just wears me out. ‘Change the world’? Wow, who do you think I am? I think I am far more content just to say ’let us be that part of the world that has been changed by Christ.’ Instead of changing the world, let’s just be the part of the world that is changed. And think that maybe people might notice a difference and say ‘I like that world of Christ better!’ For if there is no marked distinction between the world and us then what would be the point anyway? That’s when ‘changing the world’ becomes a euphemism for ‘getting my way’. Christ doesn’t call His church to go into the world and get its way; Christ calls His church to simply be His people in the midst of the world and living presently under the peaceable reign of Christ. So in a world that must surely be growing weary of the endless noise of ideological anger, the church is to be a haven of quietness and trust, a quiet refuge of peace, even at times an oasis of silence. The sound of the church is the sound of mustard seeds growing, and of bread rising, of lost children coming home, and what noise there is a joyful noise, not an angry noise.

I love it. Really looking forward to attending Brian’s prayer conference in April.

This one was kinda hidden in those photos I posted yesterday. But after wading through Heim I was ready for a shorter, easy read, and Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People by Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber was just the ticket.

It’s more of Nadia at her best, telling stories about her little parish in Denver and how she has experienced God at work in her life.

Nadia is a polarizing figure. Sure, you may have concerns about her attitude, language, and bits of her theology. Regardless, every time I hear or read her, I come away wishing that my faith, embrace of the Gospel, and walk with Jesus looked a little more like hers. That’s enough for me.

I don’t remember when this book came onto my radar, but it was already on my Amazon wishlist when my friend Daniel’s recommendation pushed it to the top of that list.

Saved From Sacrifice: A Theology of the Cross by S. Mark Heim is a long-ish volume that rather thoroughly summarizes the arguments for the ‘scapegoat’ theory of the atonement as proposed by René Girard. My knowledge of atonement theories has been relatively limited up to this point; aside from knowing “penal substitionary atonement” (PSA) (and remembering a Desiring God pastor’s conference where Mark Driscoll declared it one of the fundamental truths of the faith that was a hill to die on), I’ve not dug into any. So Saved by Sacrifice was an eye-opening entry into a differing view of Christ’s death.

As an aside, here’s my summary of the condensed Wikipedia summary of Girard’s position:

it is humankind, not God, who has need for various forms of atoning violence. Humans are driven by desire for that which another has or wants. This desire increases to a point where society is at risk; it is at this point that the scapegoat mechanism is triggered. This is the point where one person is singled out as the cause of the trouble and is expelled or killed by the group. This person is the scapegoat. Social order is restored as people are contented that they have solved the cause of their problems by removing the scapegoated individual, and the cycle begins again. The keyword here is “content”. Scapegoating serves as a psychological relief for a group of people. Girard contends that this is what happened in the narrative of Jesus. The difference between the scapegoating of Jesus and others, Girard believes, is that in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, he is shown to be an innocent victim; humanity is thus made aware of its violent tendencies and the cycle is broken.

I also quoted a paragraph from Heim’s book in a previous blog post that was a key bit of explanation in helping me get my head around the idea.

Heim spends a good chunk at the beginning of the book explaining the theory and how representations of Jesus’ death from the very early church might support this scapegoat perspective. He then overviews how the scapegoat theory fits into readings of other books - including a really interesting perspective on Job - and then ties things up by addressing the key PSA texts (think Romans 3 - 5 and most of Hebrews) and how they might be read from a scapegoating perspective.

I’d definitely recommend this one as worthwhile reading if the topic is of interest. It was thick, but not dense - a very helpful read.

Being a recently new manager at work, and having a definite Type B personality, I saw The Type B Manager on the shelf and thought, hey, why not?

Now, books on management, in general, are a tough sell for me. After a lifetime of reading thick engineering, physics, history, and theology, management books seem relatively thin books and mostly a collection of platitudes and “well, duh” principles. But in an attempt to become a good manager, I keep giving them a try. 

The Type B Manager was an exemplary specimen of this sort of thin platitude. Even in  trying to address Type B personalities, the book tends to describe the management challenge, what a Type A manager would do, and then how a Type B manager might handle it differently - a strategy that made the Type B personality seem like the poorer option. 

Maybe I just need to give up management books in general and spend more time reading Rands instead.

I didn’t get as much read on this business trip as I’d thought I might - French schedules have you eating dinner late with little time left for recreational reading before bed - but I did manage to finish All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. This novel, set in WWII, tells the parallel stories of a blind French girl and a German boy with a precocious engineering streak.

It’s a beautifully told story, capturing a smaller slice of life than you often get from a World War II novel. The intersections between the two main characters become clear by about half-way through the book, and I spent the rest of the time hoping against hope that the ending would be satisfactory. It was.

All the Light We Cannot See won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and while I haven’t read that much 2014/2015 fiction yet, I can understand why this one took the prize. Highly recommended.

I picked up David Thomson’s How to Watch a Movie on a whim from my local library shelf knowing nothing about it or Thomson. You can’t really call me a movie buff - I just don’t have time to watch many movies - but I really enjoy watching them when I get the chance, and I love listening to smart people talk about movies. (The Filmspotting podcast has been at the top of my must-listen list for at least the past 5 years.)

So for my interest in movies, I haven’t (to my recollection) read any books about them.

And, (spoiler alert?) if you’re in my shoes, I wouldn’t recommend this one.

Maybe it’s brilliant and I just need to read 10 other books to get ready for it, but I don’t think so. In 200 pages Thomson talks about different aspects of film-making and film-watching and manages to come across as a pompous snob. I pushed on through because it was short and I wasn’t ready to start my “nope” list on Goodreads quite yet.

So, I need to find some better books on film. Which jogs my memory - the Filmspotting guys did an episode recently where they listed their top 5 film books. Guess I should’ve paid more attention. Maybe I’ll give it another listen.

I hadn’t heard of this one prior to listening to an Incomparable podcast episode last year - for the life of me I can’t figure out which one - but it stocked my Amazon wish list with several tech history books, which my mother-in-law then generously gave me for Christmas.

In Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, Levy tells the story of software hackers who for the most part aren’t household names. Sure, there are quick mentions of Jobs, Wozniak, and Gates, but there are a dozen others you’ve never heard of who are similarly fascinating.

Levy talks quite a bit about the hacker ethos and principles that were pervasive from the early 1960s until, well, business and money got significantly involved in the late 1970s. It was a fun read for me since I recognize my own potential to become one of these heads-down, computer-obsessed hackers who barely notices when the sun rises or sets. (A course I have thankfully avoided thus far… for which my wife is both thankful and probably largely responsible.)

Yes, I’m shamelessly picking up John Halton’s habit of blogging reading progress this year, if for no other reason than it gives me 60+ additional posts a year… and maybe give a reader a good recommendation for a book to read. (Or to stay away from!)

So here’s an idea: a sci-fi novel written by somebody who can actually write, with the physics and science worked out by a real nerd sidekick. That’s what you get from [Saturn Run](Saturn Run www.amazon.com/dp/039917…) by novelist John Sanford with help from sci-if nerd Ctein.  Saturn Run is the book The Martian wishes it could be if Andy Weir had a talent for prose. Great way to wind up my year of reading.