2011 Book Briefs Part 1

Just where has the time gone? While I am overcoming my writers' block, I thought it might be fruitful to discuss the reading I've done this year and offer some recommendations. I think that great leaders and writers are first and foremost readers. In fact, one of the books on this list is a book about reading and (as we shall soon see) how reading and feeling are intimately connected in a sort of holistic well-being. So what have I read this year and would recommend to you? Here we go:

Decision Points by George W. Bush

I have met almost no one neutral on Bush 43. This is unsurprising, as holding the most powerful office in the world has a tendency to energize your base and embitter your dissidents. Only a casual reading of the comments on Amazon will make it clear that many readers are having difficulty trying to rate only Decision Points and not the man himself. That said, I will confess up front that I actually liked George W. Bush as a political ruler. He was ineffective at some very key points, but I rarely doubted his sincerity. I believe he also has a healthy pre-modern belief in transcendent, absolute Truth that is a good inoculation to modernist and postmodernist skepticism and materialism so rampant in every echelon of American life. I mention this because I want to be open and honestly admit that my review may be colored by my positive opinion of him. Still, I will strive for objectivity.

Unlike his presidency, there ought to be very little dispute about how Bush rates as a storyteller. He organizes his work into topical chapters dealing with the major choices made both leading into and during his term in office. From the brief sketches of childhood to the day he passed out of the Oval Office for the last time, we are painted the picture of a very human being and the characters who inhabit the White House. I was surprised to see a very different Dick Cheney, portrayed not as the maniacal tyrant cursing of the floor of the Senate nor the greedy mastermind passing crony-istic contracts to his minions at Halliburton. Bush writes that Cheney was aware of his chilly media image and offered to step down in 2004, afraid that he was a liability to the re-election campaign. The Cheney we see in Decision Points is a man characterized by loyalty more than anything else—loyalty which unfortunately manifests as cutting and icy remarks to Bush's critics. Another interesting portrait is that painted of George H.W. Bush and former First Lady Barbara. While during his presidency Bush 43 was portrayed as trying to repair his father's failures, he writes that his father instead offered supportive advice. His version of events has mother Barbara as the truly opinionated and stubborn parent, teasing her son and rarely withholding her views. The book also has some fascinating anecdotes about other world leaders like Hamid Karzai, Vladimir Putin, and Jacques Chirac.

The enduring lesson I took from Decision Points is one I learned in my American History and Government courses: Politics is dramatic and transient. Every new political scandal, legislation, and crisis is hyped in the media as the keystone event of our age. Few really are. As Bush discussed his critics and media reports from as far back as 2002, I remembered hearing those things on the lips of reporters and liberal critics all over the radio, television, and newspaper. They were all wrong. Life goes on. This is a good lesson to remember when judging the Obama presidency; we don't really know what policy decisions have a lasting impact on history. It's still too soon to judge the presidencies of Bush or Obama positively or negatively, and this book is proof of that. Bush wrote this to give historians of the future a primary source—insight into how the first president of the 21^st century saw himself. Maybe most of all, it's just cool to reflect that this book represents a unique kind of history for this twenty-something reader: history I remember.

Think: The Life of the Mind and the Mind of God by John Piper

Being a young Evangelical and saying you like John Piper is tantamount to saying you have a mouth and like ice cream. Many people have Desiring God in their top five Christian books, right alongside C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity or Augustine's Confessions. That said, I was surprised at how muted the response seemed to be to this book. I heard no negative press... instead, I heard almost nothing at all. That is unfortunate because this book is a challenge and a manifesto for Evangelical Christians, so often maligned as Bible-thumping fundamentalists or dogmatically ignorant, to become better students.

Like most of Piper's work, this book reads like a sermon. It would be very easy to imagine Dr. Piper preaching each chapter or two on a Sunday morning. That morning's thesis? "[A] plea to embrace serious thinking as a means of loving God and people [....] to reject either-or thinking when it comes to the head and heart, thinking and feeling, reason and faith, theology and doxology, mental labor and the ministry of love" (p. 15). For Piper, the head and heart are not so much in opposition as master-servant. The head is the servant of the heart. The intrinsic human craving to learn is a heart-driven quest to know God more fully through meditation on His Word and His words through other sources—history, biology, philosophy, mathematics, fiction, etc. Piper also equates reading with thinking, since reading is a complex process which involves recognizing symbols, interpreting them, stringing them into coherent thoughts, analyzing those thoughts, connecting them with other thoughts and experiences, and applying them to our lives. He is also very honest about anti-intellectualistic strands in the church, specifically from D.L. Moody and Billy Sunday (among others). This demonstrates not snobbish sniping, but honesty to a world which rightly sees a defensive, "batten-down-the-hatches" sort of attitude in Evangelical learning (see Pensacola Christian College, Creationist theme parks).

I think the true benefit of this book is in destroying the false and divisive notion we have in our churches and culture which says that there are basically "heart" and "head" people. Heart people are compassionate servants, often tangible instead of abstract and value good intentions over academic precision. They're commonly seen as naive and even ditzy. Head people are sarcastic or sardonic people who obsess over discovering deeper mysteries . They take stands and contend for truth. They are regarded as wise and instructive, but can be cold and unforgiving to those they don't respect. Piper says this whole mess is nonsense and he's right. True, people are gifted in different ways. Some are just plain better at reading and footnoting while others have a knack for creativity and acts of service. But the truth is that we must all live as people who strive after truth in all its complexity and difficulty while also letting that truth translate to loving, selfless work for others.

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham

Anyone who has allowed me to steer a casual conversation into a history lessons knows how I feel about Andrew Jackson. He was a hard-fighting, smoking, drinking, dueling, cussing general—the epitome of the manly president. I find him not only fascinating but in many ways admirable. He is many things I wish men still were: particularly courageous and honorable. Yet even a cursory study of Jackson has to reveal those very damning flaws: a racist and adulterous scoundrel who is single-handedly responsible for the Trail of Tears. And you thought George W. Bush was polarizing.

Jon Meacham won a Pulitzer in 2009 for this biography and his hard work shows throughout. His notes show meticulous combing through diaries and personal letters. He manages to string these various sources from very distinct and often contrary people into a layered portrait of America's fierce seventh president. Like Decision Points, the book focuses mainly on the presidency itself. Unlike it, American Lion takes a chronological approach. This allows the reader to see how the different threads of intrigue and policy develop throughout the sundry circumstances of the late 1820s and 1830s.

Jackson as a character steals the show throughout the book, just as he did throughout his presidency. He is a man who won't be defied and believes in his ideals, even if they may sometimes be inconsistent (and whose aren't?). Meacham's treatment is sympathetic but honest. He does not excuse Jackson's violation of the Constitution nor justify the Indian Removal Act. Still, what must impress the modern reader is how the author makes this decision understandable. Knowing Jackson, it makes sense why he would do such a deplorable thing and why he really didn't see it that way. And as easy as it is to throw stones at the dead for the cannot defend themselves, I would hope that my progeny afford me some amount of sympathy when they look back at the inconsistent ideals and evil decision in my life. The "rustic frontiersman" image is tackled as well, Meacham attributing our view of him as oafish and provincial largely to his opponents like Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams. It turns out that Jackson was a shrewd, well-read, and religious politician. He would often use his fierce reputation as a tool, feigning a tantrum to keep his critics and opponents afraid to undermine him... only to light his pipe and laugh at their terror once they left the room. Like a boss.

More to come!

You Only Think I'm Kidding Chapter 4

MANY WOMEN BORN AFTER 1980 ARE PEDOPHILES (AND DON'T EVEN KNOW IT)

Or proto-cougars, if that is more palatable.

I want to take you back to the 1970s again. It was a dark era of stagflation, disco, crooked politics, and the El Camino. More positively, it was a time when rock and country music were in the midst of a passionate love affair. Guitar solos were shameless. Flannel was prevalent. Jeans were tight yet still somehow masculine. Most importantly, men the popular media were men (besides Sir Elton John). As an example of the desirable man, behold 1970s heartthrob Burt Reynolds:

Reproduced for scientific purposes from celebrityroast.com. Copyright not mine.

Or take 1960s dreamboat Sean Connery:

Reproduced for social commentary purposes from... the Internet somewhere. Copyright not mine.

Or even this dashing fellow randomly found on a renowned social-networking site:

Reproduced for anonymous exploitation purposes from facebook.com. All rights reserved.

Each of these men was considered wildly attractive in his day. Even the uncritical reader will notice certain commonalities between them. All of them are fair-skinned, dark-haired and of Scottish ancestry, true, but that is only to further emphasize the real point. They have copious amounts of body hair. And they are d**n fine with it.

Body hair is God's way of distinguishing men from boys and women. He gave it to men all over the world so that you would never have to ask awkward questions like, "Is that a boy with malfunctioning glands or a man with no pride?" Instead, casual observers are able by natural design to ask awesome questions like, "Is that a gorilla reading Shakespeare or a raging man-brute with the soul of a poet?" This delicate balance went for thousands of years without being confused or even much questioned. A man was a man, most women were attracted to men, and men were easily distinguished by their musk, their volumes of philosophical discourses, the scent of well-aged pipe tobacco, and well-groomed yet impressive follicles of tangible masculinity. The greater the volume of any category just mentioned, the more impressive a man such a woman could be said to have netted.

But something strange happened after sometime after 1980; hairless men became the preference of women. Movies and media began to tout the superiority of the hairless man. Perhaps the root is reactionary--that hairless men felt under-appreciated for what is truly the whims of biology--and the response was to give them a few decades as the ideal. Maybe it was meant simply to reflect changing preferences. Nothing is that simple of Artery Bloggage, though. I see it as a sinister plot, poisoning the minds of today's women against real men in all their boisterous, fiery, hairy glory.

It's true. No one can deny the emasculating effect of the last few decades on the men in this country. Unlike many, I don't blame it all on the radical feminists. No, in fact I blame it on crafty, weak men who piggy-backed on their weasely agendas on theirs. After all, wouldn't competitive and assertive women be attracted to equally competitive, assertive men? "Birds of a feather" and all that. The man-boys have won the dreamboat wars and we have let them.

See how culture changed in just a few short years:

Reproduced for irrational hatred purposes from the Internet. Copyright gladly not mine.

This 1990s hunk is everything the old dreamboats weren't. He's hairy, true, but it's all concentrated on his head like a girl. Also, his chest is oddly hairless like a little boy. True, he has tone to his muscles, but what specifically masculine trait does this man have? The jaw is perhaps the only part of him left which is distinguishable at all from a young boy or a woman.

Even a cursory investigation will yield that the average woman born after 1980 would prefer her man this way. Body hair--established earlier to be the mark of a warrior and a gentleman--became something gross and disgusting. His body is not smooth and soft, it is said, and this is repulsive. His muscles should be rock-hard, but his skin gentle and warm. But shouldn't a man be rough and rugged even more so than gentle? Should not his body resemble the beasts of the field he slays to feast on their hides and save those he loves?

Reproduced from twilightsaga.wikia.com to prove what is wrong with everything in the world. I hate you freakish man-children so friggin' much. Copyright not mine, but may belong to Satanic Minions Inc.

Now, readers, we have a problem in America. Frankly, I can only conceive of three kinds of men who don't have body hair. Let's run through each of them briefly.

1. Boys. Boys are men who have not attained unto maturity. Ladies, dating men of this age is frowned upon. I believe the term now used is "pulling a Letourneau."
2. Biologically hairless. The biologically hairless are men who are naturally lacking in body hair, either with little or sometimes even none at all (even eyebrows). These are not the object of criticism per se. They can make up for the lack in other areas (pipe-smoking, scotch, reading philosophy, bear-punching, etc.). However, they ought not to glory in their lack of body hair just as this author does not glory in the number of bears he hasn't punched.
3. "Ken dolls". This is the term I have coined for those empty shells of so-called "men" who would shave or wax themselves because a woman or societal forces have called them to do so. The reader may object that there is nothing wrong with a man waxing and oiling his whole form for a woman. But if we may all be honest, no true man would allow a woman to pressure him into being what he's not. Yes, a woman should call him to be a better man, but some other kind of man who violates what God has brought forth from the earth? No. Such a man who would deign to this is a Ken doll--a plastic, Barbie-like imitation of a man prancing about for the amusement others.

Let us return to men the glory of their body hair, America. Do it for Burt Reynolds.

Food Miscellany

(No science was done in the writing of this entry.)

I wish I could say that I had taken this month-long hiatus to refuel my creative reserves. A skilled author would do this. I, on the other hand, just managed my time poorly and let things get away from me. Still, here I return with an extra-long post with a few issues that have chaffed me for some time. I couldn't think of a good way to string these into one cohesive, pithy entry. I also have way too many series going on as it is. So, I just threw them all together here.

Eating is one of God's gifts to men. C.S. Lewis said that God is the ultimate hedonist because He could easily have made something so debase and common very droll and boring. But instead, He made it awesome for us. Any even casually acquainted with me know how passionate I am about food. Not so much the preparation of food, but more the eating of it. Yet the world is fallen due to Original Sin and eating is no different. But what could be wrong in the world of eating, you ask. Behold just a few with fear and trembling.

Napkins

Stuff spills. As much as we like to pretend that we are full-grown adults, most of us demonstrate the motor prowess of toddlers. The fancier your outfit, the more obvious this fact becomes. Man's desire for neatness in eating is one of the things that separates us from the beasts¹. It's inefficient, true, since you'll just spill even more Caesar salad and nacho cheese all over that expensive formal wear through the course of your meal. Nevertheless, our undying quest for culinary cleanliness (in addition to dead trees and man's ingenuity) has brought us the napkin. And while some readers may wonder why I dress formally and eat nachos for hypothetical examples, I wonder why we even bother to use napkins when they are so obsolete.

Napkins are perhaps the most dated and backwards invention at your dinner table. Imagine buying a High-Def 40" 3-D LCD screen TV. Upfront. In cash. Then you celebrate and christen your purchase by inviting your friends over to gather 'round the radio for another exciting episode of The Lone Ranger. Such is the napkin on your table. I ask you in all frankness, America, why do we continue to use napkins when a far superior creation is eager to meet all of your spillage needs.

I do not need to belabor the obviously superior performance of the paper towel... but I will. Paper towels have increased absorbency. Paper towers are larger in size; easily the size of an adult lap without being thin. Paper towels are not as easily rent asunder by water. Paper towels are roughly the same price for quadruple the performance. Ever wonder why good Southern barbecue or wing restaurants have a huge roll of paper towels at every table? It's because no simple napkin can handle drippy sauce of that magnitude.

But maybe most importantly at all, paper towels are always there for you when you need them. The napkin, meanwhile, is the most emotionally distant of all tabletop ware.

Tongs

I remember during my sophomore year of college that the college dining hall staff began to vociferously demand that students use tongs at the dessert table. The tyranny of the dining hall staff on this tong issue may well have come from Georgia state health codes, but the power-hunger came from the depths of their dark hearts. Injustice in the regime was rampant. It could not be allowed to stand. My Tuesday-Thursday lunch club formed an underground resistance. Whenever any of those the middle-aged generalissimos turned their backs, we would snatch succulent snacks from the front lines. The Revolution became more brazen with time. I started to grab cookies off the table in plain view of the staff. I could barely hear their shrill shouts of "Use the tongs, please!" over the sound of both my logical and tactical superiority.

Here's what bugs me about tongs. I confess that I am not a scientist². Still, I know a thing or two about germs and plenty more about tongs. The idea behind the tongs are to keep the greasy, disease-ridden hands of the masses from touching the cookie predestined for someone else's mouth. You can rest assured that no one has touched your cookie except you thanks to the tongs, stainless steel saviors of dinner. I know lots of foolish hypochondriacs who relish the idea of tongs, alongside anti-bacterial soap and gratuitous amounts of alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

I hate to destroy your faith in man, clean-freaks, but tongs are actually inferior to just grabbing the cookies yourself! Think about it; most people are only going to accidentally brush perhaps one or two other cookies on the way to their fated cookie, and even then only occasionally. Very few (though not few enough) are the idiots/villains who would runs their hands over all the cookies after forgetting/intentionally neglecting to wash their hands in the bathroom. But EVERYONE TOUCHES THE TONGS. Everyone! Instead of possibly one other person, you and everyone else in the room--idiots, villains, cold-sufferers, and all in between--touches the metal tongs. And then your hands, which have effectively rubbed against every other hand in the room, go right to the cookie. Which goes right into your mouth. Not only are tongs obnoxious appendages to the hands God Himself created, they're also not any safer for avoiding germs.

I always sprinkle botulism cultures on buffet tables.

Black coffee

In the 1970s, retired Master Sergeant Charles Helms stepped into a familiar Selma, Alabama diner with his children. Some twenty years prior, a much younger Helms had frequented the place while off-duty as a young army medic. Now he was back with his young children. Helms took his old seat in the diner. Several regulars remembered "Mr. Charlie", warmly reminisced with him, and fawned over his kids. A waitress took their drink orders. Sergeant Helms ordered coffee, his usual order at any restaurant all the time since and even before his time here as a regular here. The waitress asked if Helms wanted cream and sugar. It was a set-up. Her ears already anticipated his familiar yet-long-unheard reply. Helms took that cue with a winsome air of nostalgia.

"Why ruin a good cup of coffee?"

Grandpa made black coffee into a ritual for as long as I could remember. If family folklore like I just shared can be trusted, it was like that for even longer. So imagine my shame when I couldn't stomach the stuff. After all, I grew up thinking coffee was a drink for men and that was why boys like me couldn't stand it. By the 2000s, trendy Starbucks coffee had made inroads into the South and I was hooked. I could drink their creamy, sugary "coffee-flavored" beverages. But how could I sit at the kitchen table with Grandpa and pretend to drink coffee? My drink was cool, hip, and tasty. His drink put hair on your chest and defeated Communism. I knew that I wasn't really a man until I could drink that sacred black brew without flinching³.

I finally got there in college. I finished my first cup at a Waffle House in Tyrone. I took that manly sense of accomplishment back to Rome. There I shamed many in my dormitory by scoffing at their creamy, sugar-laden mockeries of the black brew. You may not understand, reader, how a drink can make you more of a man. No big deal.

It merely means you aren't a man.

A good cup of coffee ought to make you suffer. You know you have made your coffee strong enough when your first hot, bitter sip makes you angry at the world. That anger inspires you to not just seize the day, but to clutch it by the ears, knee it in the face, take a baseball bat to it, and relent only when it calls you "master". I have no quarrel with lesser, trendier beverages which feed the sweet tooth while rotting all the other teeth. I even enjoy these "lattes", "frappechinos", and "macciatos" on occasion. I really only get angry when these Italian milkshakes are allowed to masquerade as coffee. And don't even get me started on latté art. Dessert can be an art. Coffee is rage fuel.

Coffee, black as sin and hot as hell, tore down the Berlin Wall. Show it some respect.

¹ Except cats unfortunately.
² "But Thomas, you're a lover!" you loudly reply. But, friend, love is not a science; it's an art.
³ I really miss getting to footnote things. I hope it doesn't show.

Because I Was Evil: Why I Am Reformed Part 3

When I was a teenager, I learned what it was to be powerless.

To make a long story short, my father was diagnosed with a terminal illness and died just over three years after the doctor's message. In that time, he deteriorated slowly until finally his lungs could no longer function. That meant that I spent the better part of my early adolescence being an in-home hospice nurse. It involved the sort of inglorious and undignified necessities in which no boy ever expects to aid. I slowly came to a realization I was too timid to speak. No matter how much I toiled, no matter how many hours I slept, no matter how many horrible humiliations I endured, and even no matter how much guilt I heaped upon myself--all was in vain because he would still die. I wasn't powerful enough to save him.

My next exposure to Reformed theology came after he died. I was under the sway of a couple of teachers and friends who were wrestling their way through thee tenets of Calvinism. I was honestly rather uncomfortable with it. I had never met anyone who very seriously entertained predestination at all. I knew where I was and what I believed, firmly entrenched in the Baptist Arminian position. Still, as they persisted on their journeys I was learning about Reformed theology and the simple five-points to which it has been reduced: the TULIP.

The "T" of the TULIP stands for Total Depravity. I was initially uncomfortable with this. Total Depravity is a doctrine which essentially states that man is totally depraved--wicked throughout in his natural condition. My first impressions were not accurate though; I wish that someone would develop some other acronym that didn't use it. I thought it meant that all unsaved people (and all saved ones before receiving Jesus) were as nasty and wretched as Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin.

This is not a fair picture and I have come to a better understanding of what John Calvin meant since then. "Total Depravity" would better understood as "thorough sinfulness" or "powerlessly enslaved to sin". It's not that unsaved people are incapable of friendliness, kindness, or even civic good, but that they are incapable of doing any good warranting salvation.

There was nothing in me worth saving. Every wicked and evil thought and deed in my heart doomed me justly to Hell. For as much conversation as there has been recently about whether or not Hell is real and literal, it seems that most people are thinking about the fate of other people. Few think about how they themselves deserve hell. I know that I am not Hitler, but I have wronged God greatly. I was powerless in my sin, addicted to evil, and enthralled with darkness. I was God's enemy and stood justly under His wrath. It's not because I don't have enough self-confidence or because I am a guilt-ridden person. It's because I spit in the face of God--the ultimate victim for He has never done anyone wrong yet has been wronged by everyone.

An uncharitable reader may think that I have reached the conclusion of Reformed theology based upon a jarring experience in my past. This is a risk I must take in order to have fidelity and heartfelt connection with my readers. But to that uncharitable reader--one who would credit my conclusion to my psychological experiences and nothing more--I must point to an example from history. A psychological approach would say that the Jewish historians ought not be taken seriously because they have great reasons to exaggerate the horrors of Nazism. Yet no group has done a better, honest job of documenting and archiving the Holocaust than the Jews. No one with credibility can suggest that the Jews have distorted the facts in doing so. On the contrary, they have done the best job because of their experiences. In that same spirit, I argue that my experiences have made me more sensitive to the nuances of human depravity.

God saves me from my filth and unites me to Himself. I don't have to save myself or save others. I can't anyway. Only God can save the world, save my father, and save me. We are totally depraved because we are incapable and fallen. We're stuck and only the Savior can save.

Hell's Bells!

Several years ago I had the supreme misfortune of reading Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith. I do the best I can to remain a critical, neutral reader of everything I read. I prefer to test everything and hold onto the good without being too sore about the chaff I rubbed off. This one was different. Maybe it has to do with the circumstances surrounding my first run-through of the book. Maybe it was because I watched that first Nooma video four times in one summer at youth service ("We're gonna make it, buddy! Daddy knows the way!" Ugh...) Maybe I was just a little puffed up after my freshman year of college.



Or maybe the way he writes like this.



All the time.



And how a guy who wants to appear environmentally-sensitive wastes huge swaths of the page to appear profound while dooming hundreds of innocent trees to the slaughter. That with every.



Drawn-out.



Thought.



Ultimately it's probably Bell's trendy, artsy way of carrying himself and churning out videos that makes him more popular than I'll ever be. Or how he never seems particularly cranky, unlike me. In the end, I may be unable to stand him because I'll never be that cool.

Anyway you slice it, one thing I hated about Velvet Elvis was that I suspected that Bell was way more theologically liberal than he would have us believe. Yet the more I would raise these concerns, the more people around we would say that I was probably over-reacting. Some would hear what I said and reply, "I don't think that's what he meant." When I asked them why then Bell had said it that way, folks would reply, "He's just trying to be thought-provoking." I would then cite sermons he had preached and footnotes he'd left. I even attacked him for the teaching method he used, craving shock factor over solid Truth. Some around me still seemed eager to grant him the benefit of the doubt, maintaining that I must have misread him. Maybe they were right. I bet Rob Bell meant the total opposite of that stuff he wrote, had edited, finalized, then publicly defended against criticism.

I forgot about the issue for a while. Four years later, I logged onto facebook to find a friend had posted a link. I had not long before essentially figured that the Bell bandwagon had run out of steam. After all, by now most people I knew talked about the much-superior Mark Driscoll's Mars Hill over Rob Bell's. Seemingly out of the blue, here was Bell marketing his new book as a "questioning" of the doctrine of Hell. "Is Hell real? Will Ghandi really burn there forever? Does God intend for Jesus to save us from Himself?" he asks during the video. Before I could fully react, it looked as though the entire Reformed blogosphere had already been lit ablaze with criticism of a book which had yet to be released. I was briefly comforted to see that teachers I deeply respected could finally call this false teacher for who he was. Bell had slipped up and overplayed his trendy little hands. Now no one could deny what I had seen all along.

Yet the more I thought about it, the more I realized I may be far guiltier than Rob Bell ever will be. True, I haven't denied a fundamental teaching of the Christian church. (I am a Calvinist though, and to freewill folks that is almost the same.) No, I have affirmed all the right doctrines and could probably explain them better than most. I could probably be really entertaining about it too.

A rare opportunity to please both Yahweh AND Dionysus!

Rob Bell (might) deny Hell by the words in his forthcoming book. I'm afraid that I deny Hell by the way I live everyday. I have to ask if I live as though Hell is a conscious, eternal torment for the unrepentant. Do I evangelize share the gospel as though people will writhe in God's just fury forever? Do I serve as though those who see me might catch a glimpse of the Savior who can deliver them from Hell? I fear that the answer is no.

I wish John Piper, Kevin DeYoung, Justin Taylor, and others had waited for Rob Bell's book to come out before crying heresy. That said, it honestly does look like Bell will crossover into heresy--probably in the unassuming, falsely-humble way he does everything else. Still, I ought to hold my tongue for I fear I have denied Hell in a far more significant way than Bell has. He might (or might not) be misleading people with his trendy videos and falsely-humble questioning. I might be misleading people with the life I live, tacitly watching their ignorant blustering into the flames.

Forgive Us Our Debts

Roughly one month ago, a reader known only as Anonymous posted on my Why I Am Reformed entry. Mr. Nymous posted, "quick question - Matt. 18:23-25". I immediately shifted into the mindset of the critical historian, puzzling over the scrawling like an archeologist over a piece of papyrus. I carefully noted the lack of capitalization on all but the Scripture. I cataloged the oddly-placed hyphen. But most obvious to the critical reader is this fact--this was not a question. Written questions in English usually begin with interrogative pronouns or helping verbs and end with a mark something like this: "?".

So because this wasn't actually a question, I will answer the question I think the commenter was asking, "What is your take on Matthew 18:23-25?" I read it. Since again no actual question was left, I must guess at what the controversial nature of the text was. I assume that it isn't that the Kingdom of Heaven is a monarchy as opposed to a democracy. I assume it isn't that the king lent money, though there was a time when usury was thought un-Christian. It could even be assumed that Mr. Nymous is objecting to the use of political similes for theological concepts. However, I think that the objection must be thus: the Kingdom of Heaven is compared to a king who orders a debtor and his entire family sold into slavery.

(The reader may think I am being altogether dismissive of Mr. Nymous by introducing all the possible objections one may have to these three verses. Rather, I am trying to prove that any of these could be considered offensive to various observers. Slavery is uniquely offensive to a twenty-first century American; the fifteenth century Reformer or the fourth century Roman would not have regarded this.)

This might be a fair complaint had my charitable reader been as charitable to the Scripture as he has been to me. However, I think he has not been fair. In context, we see a much different story. Peter has asked Jesus how many times he must forgive those who transgress against him, offering the number seven. The Lord responds seventy times seven. Those fools who suppose themselves clever shall take this to mean the may keep a running ledger of offenses and cease to grant mercy at the 490th infraction. The humble reader will see Jesus' point for the hyperbole it is--forgiveness must be unlimited. After all, Peter thinks he is being generous because in ancient Hebrew culture three was the number of times a person was supposed to forgive. Jesus denies this, saying that forgiveness is as abundant as grace.

Then the Lord tells a story to emphasize His point. He tells of a king who has servant owing him a great sum. According to the ESV Study Bible, the sum in today's dollars would be somewhere around $6 billion (ten thousand talents was about twenty years' wages). The king prepares to sell the servant and his family into slavery. This was a common way to pay off debt in the ancient world. I can prove it without a textbook. Instead he forgives the servant his debt. The servant then goes to another servant who owes him about $12,000 in modern money (again according to the ESV Study Bible) and throws him into prison until he pays it. The king, upon hearing this, has that first servant also imprisoned for his wickedness.

We often read the Bible to find endorsements for our twenty-first century Western notions of equality and freedom and social justice. The truth is that the Bible stands outside of and above all cultures and human philosophy. This does not mean that the Bible contradicts everything about our society. It means that some of the things we find really offensive are not offensive unto the Lord. Much more humbling should be the fact that many things we don't find offensive--like being unmerciful to a debtor--inflame the wrath of the Lord. So how is the kingdom of Heaven like a king who threatens to sell a servant into slavery? Because we Christians have been forgiven of a far greater debt than $12,000 or even $6,000,000,000. We have been forgiven the penalty of Hell by the death of Jesus Christ--God Himself--on the Cross. Love keeps no record of wrongs, nor should the Christian.

Pessimism

"What is the matter with the pessimist? [...] I think it can be stated, without undue bitterness, by saying that he is the candid friend. And what is the matter with the candid friend? [...] I venture to say that what is bad in the candid friend is simply that he is not candid. He is keeping something back -- his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. [...] [H]e is the uncandid candid friend; the man who says, 'I am sorry to say we are ruined,' and is not sorry at all." -G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

I recently read a book passed on to me by a wise friend concerning the topic of intrinsic motivation. The thesis was that the typical "carrot-and-stick" method of discipline was rather soul-crushing. The author instead advocated granting a level of ownership and freedom to employees or students and letting their natural creativity take hold. The basic conclusion was that rewarding and punitive motivators for rudimentary tasks such as assembling fast food or stacking papers was effective. For tasks requiring more originality or flair, they became a dismal failure. The take-home for me as an educator was that children are intrinsically motivated to learn. They really do want to learn. Therefore, do not lord over them with deadlines, tests, or projects. Give them as much ownership of the material as possible and they will astound you. It all sounds like the premise for a made-for-TV movie about some Teacher of the Year in a drastically under-performing school.

Would that it were true.

The unfortunate reality both in the classroom and in life is that there are genuinely people who crave failure, not success. I most eagerly believe that at some point everyone was intrinsically motivated to success and not failure. I also grant that most likely at some point a soul-crushing instructor or an over-bearing employer or a cruel coach quenched any lingering thirst for achievement. Perhaps they learn to anticipate failure and find it a twisted form of success to assure all listeners of a disappointing performance and bend over backwards to deliver. Diagnose as you please; the honest observer must admit that there are people in the world who really do relish failure.

They are those truly toxic people in the world. They predict heinous outcomes to all ventures. Should the endeavor prove fruitful, they shall shrug and chalk it up to the Law of Averages while already yearning for the next triumph of the Law of Murphy. The very next iniquitous try (no matter how far separated from their last failed dire prediction) is a private triumph. In layman's terms, I think the optimist's favorite phrase is, "It's not so bad." The pessimist's is, "I told you so."

It will always be true that there are small men who enlarge themselves in their own minds by casting the first stones. I find the modern sophisticated, urbanite, twenty-something to be the best example of the classic pessimist. They live lives chock full of irony. They make snarky remarks about Bush and Obama on the same issue in the same breath. There are only a few movies they enjoy, mostly the ones by nihilistic or European directors with an equally jaded outlook as theirs. No book is as good as Catcher in the Rye or some nonsense by Foucault. They believe in Nothing. It's not that they don't believe in anything, it's that they put their stock in Nothing. They love the Nothing. They stared into the Abyss and found something wonderful in all the horror. And the more movies and politicians and songs and ideas and heartfelt yearnings they can reduce to Nothing, the happier they will be.

In the end, the pessimist sees all too well that misery loves company. Nevertheless, he is blind to the fact that company can hardly stand him.