“THINGS JESUS NEVER SAID: ‘My target demographic is . . . ‘ ”

- Don Miller

Don’s not the only one saying stuff like this, of course, and I’m not trying to pick on him – this was just the easiest quote to track down, and I run across statements similar to this on a fairly regular basis.  The assumption, of course, seems to be that it’s possible for churches to reach anyone if we can just stop targeting specific demographics.  Of course, when we’re talking about one-one-one involvement with individuals, this is a perfectly valid point, and I suspect this is what Don’s talking about.  Jesus crossed gender, class, and racial lines when he was talking to people (sometimes all at the same time – see John 4 for the example that is most well known), and although he wasn’t inviting people to church, per se, he was plugging them into a community that was centered around Him.  That’s a pretty good definition of a church.

However, it doesn’t necessarily follow that using Jesus’s model for talking to individuals is the best way to go about church planting.  This isn’t to say that the way that Jesus’s way of reaching people was in any way inadequate, only that it’s possible to misapply the lessons that we can learn from his life into a situation where Jesus’s actions are no longer analogous to what we’re doing.  (There seems to be a general consensus among most theologians, for example, that when Jesus gave us the principle of “turn the other cheek,” He intended for this to be applied in the context of one-on-one relationships, and not, for example, to civil law or international relations.)

I’ve frequently heard it said that since we all think about God, there’s no way to escape being a theologian – the only question is if you’re a good theologian or a bad theologian.  Even if we make an effort not to think about God at all, this position still carries within itself a set of theological assumptions with regards to whether or not God is worth thinking about, at least.  The lesson, perhaps, is that it’s worth examining our assumptions about God.

After reading Stetzer’s thoughts on the benefits of targeting specific demographics, I’m rapidly coming to the same conclusion that a similar point can be made about churches, and the effort that they make (or don’t make) regarding the targeting of specific demographics: the problem is not that some churches are targeting specific demographics, and some are not. The problem is that all churches target a demographic, but some of them do not realize that they are.

Here’s why:  an individual has far less flexibility than does an institution when trying to appeal to a cross section of society.  Jesus, when talking to individuals, could interact with them in a specific way, taking into account their social position, background, and needs.  When visitors walk into a church service, there’s no realistic way that it can be remade to appeal to their specific needs.

When a church makes a decision about anything that your they do, they’re making a decision about who they are positioning themselves to reach.  Where is the church building? Odds are, they’re going to get visitors that are located primarily within a 30 minute drive of their building. Are the services only in English? Then that church is unlikely to be targeting any recent immigrants to the United States.  What kind of music doe the church have in its service?  Odds are,  they’re going to be more attractive to people that already like that kind of music.  Do the cars at a church have bumper stickers extolling NRA membership and conservative political candidates?  If so, that church has likely created an environment where more politically progressive folks aren’t going to want to visit.  They may not even be willing to make it past the parking lot.

The human limitation, here is twofold: (a) people doing outreach feel more comfortable inviting their peers to church, and society being what it is, almost anyone’s peers are very likely to be members of a similar demographic that they are.  Additionally, (b) people that have been invited to church are far more comfortable visiting a church in which the majority of the attendees look and act like they do.

If we’re taking the church’s behavior in Acts as a model for how we do outreach, though, two things stand out:  the church was able to reach diverse groups of people, and these specific demographics were each reached in a way that was took their specific assumptions and life experiences into account:  Peter’s sermon to devout Jews in Acts 2 is completely different from Paul’s sermon to the Greeks on Mars Hill – giving each one of them the same presentation wouldn’t have made sense.

Clearly, having the ability to reach differing demographics is a good goal, but it’s also easy to see that for most of us, being able to reach out to every group may be beyond our skill level.  A good start, perhaps, is just reaching out to our peers.  If the entire church does that, though, there’s a good chance that they’ll be targeting a specific demographic whether they mean to or not.

The lesson, perhaps, is that targeting demographics can be something that results from organic outreach.  It may not be all bad, and it’s certainly worth thinking about.  There is some balance to this, of course, and it’s easy to see how this sort of thinking can be carried too far.  As Stetzer points out, the primary emphasis of church planting – and outreach in general – is driven by deity, not by methodology:  in Matthew 16:18, Jesus says that He’s going to build his church.  He doesn’t say that we do not need his help and can build it ourselves if we’ve got a good marketing campaign,  good coffee and tasty low-fat snacks,  and the latest strategic thinking on reaching influential members of the community.  He’s going to build it.  It should be His church anyway.

Rogers Hornsby famously said that what he did in the winter, when there was no baseball, was to stare out the window and wait for spring.  Hornsby may have been a happier baseball player had he been born a century later – presumably, with that sort of attitude, he would have loved playing winter baseball in the Caribbean.  I’m not up on my Caribbean baseball league history, but I think that may not have existed when he was playing – in any case, I suspect he was one of the first players to report to Spring Training, and judging by the number of fans that now show up for spring training, too, there seems to be a considerable amount of sympathy for ol’ Rog’s point of view.

This is shaping up to be a good year:  whoever owns the Angels has spent enough money that the the AL West probably is going to be interesting.  The Nationals have Strasburg back, and we may see the wunderkid Bryce Harper before the end of the year.  The Red Sox – with their new manager – are going to be interesting to watch, and the Yankees’ pitching rotation looks likely to keep the talking heads at ESPN in an uproar for most of the season.  The Marlins not only have a new stadium, but a new larger-than-life manager, and the spectacle of watching Ozzie bump heads with Carlos Zambrano may well steal the headlines for awhile, too.

The Tigers – the team that I follow most closely – have had what, in normal circumstances, would have been a devastating injury to their DH – Victor Martinez – who injured himself while in the gym.  Fortunately, they’ve signed Prince Fielder as a replacement (or in addition, I think most of the fans are still not sure), which not only gives Detroit two first basemen, but two of the best first basemen in the AL Central.  The story of how they’re both going to get into the lineup has occupied Tigers’ fans for awhile, and will probably do so until well into the season.

It’s a good time to be a Detroit fan, despite last year’s heartbreaking loss in the ALCS to the Texas Rangers.  The Tigers are better this year, and after winning the AL Central for the first time last year, they’re in a pretty good position to win it twice in a row.  (Of course, they were also picked to win the division in 2008, when they finished dead last, and consequently, predictions like this can still make most of the Tiger fans nervous.)

There aren’t really any home and away games in the Grapefruit league – I mean, each team has their own park and training complex, but because most of the stadiums are a 2-hour car trip away from each other, the number of fans is generally split between fairly evenly between the two clubs that are playing.  There were some other Tiger fans at the Orioles game, which was nice.  The opportunity to see what is mostly major league players in the setting of what is a minor-league ballpark was unique, and I wanted to do it again.

“Watching a spring training game is as exciting as watching a tree form its annual ring.”

– Jerry Izenberg

I’m going to have to disagree with Jerry about this one:  I found spring training to be charming, and it has the added benefit of being able to see more teams if you’re only able to catch a couple of games – there aren’t the long series that there are during the regular season, so if you go for two games, odds are that you’ll see the home team take on two different squads.

With that in mind – and ignoring the advice of Jerry Izenberg – my wife and I headed down to Lakeland to catch a couple of Tigers’ games last week.  We were able to find a stretch of three home games in a row where the Tigers were playing the Yankees, the Phillies, and the Marlins – all teams that at least one of us was interested in.

Spring training tickets, thankfully, aren’t as expensive as seeing major league teams in their normal habitat.  On the other hand, though, the stadiums are smaller, so getting last-minute tickets isn’t always as easy as it is when trying to catch a game in Atlanta.  Getting tickets to the Yankees’ game – the first one that we’re scheduled to see – is the most difficult, and as a result, we’re on the outfield berm at Joker Marchant. In comparison to the game that I saw last year at Ed Smith Stadium, there seems to be a preponderance of drunks and little kids.

For those who haven’t been to Joker Marchant, here’s a little necessary background:  there’s a grass-covered berm behind left field to which the Tigers sell general admission tickets, and this is where we are sitting right now due to my inability to find to better seats anywhere else in the stadium.  On the berm, there aren’t any seats – you just pick a spot on the grass – so showing up early and marking a spot with a beach towel is a good idea, as is bringing sunscreen.  Showing up too early, though, means that you’ve arrived in the middle of the visiting team’s batting practice, and this is unfortunately what we have done.

Watching batting practice is usually fun, but this one is not, as a result of the gangs of 8-year olds that are chasing the balls that are hit over the fence.  Most of the kids in the stadium are out here, it seems.  Anytime there’s a ball hit out in our direction, the whole herd of kids charges off in the direction in which they think it’s going to land, running over drunks, retirees, and anyone other members of the general population that’s more inclined to be stationary.  This isn’t relaxing, exactly, but there’s some amount of comfort in knowing that being hit by a baseball is unlikely – there’s no shortage of kids that are trying to put themselves between any batted ball and everyone else, and it’s less painful to be run over by an 8-year-old or two than it is to get hit in the head by a ball that’s been hit 400 feet.  At least, that’s what we’re hoping.

The Tigers are playing the Yankees today, and it won’t surprise anyone that’s followed baseball anytime in the last 50 years to know that quite a few of the Yankees are capable of cranking it over the fence on a regular basis.  The outfield berm stays in a generally upbeat uproar until batting practice stops.

When they announce the starting lineups, I’m not surprised to learn that Max Sherzer is pitching.  Nothing again Sherzer – he’s a great pitcher, when he’s on – but the first three times I’ve attended a Tigers’ game, two things have been true:  (a) Max Sherzer got the start, and (b) the Tigers lost.  To be fair, though, I’ve only seen one bad start from Sherzer – the rest have been due to blown bullpen leads, no run support, or bad defense.  Still, this doesn’t make me feel particularly optimistic.

The game, after it gets going, turns rather unexpectedly into a pitching duel, and as much as getting into a pitching duel with the Yankees is a bad idea, the Tigers seem to be at least holding their own.  I normally enjoy pitching duels, but we’re far away enough that it’s difficult to see what’s going on:  the only time everyone in our section is paying attention is when they think that the ball has a chance of hitting them in the face.  Surprisingly, this isn’t all that often, so from where we’re sitting, it’s actually kind of dull.

By the 6th inning, we’re both sunburned, hot, and annoyed with the drunks arguing around us, who have started a loud and increasingly poorly-reasoned argument about which Tigers’ player causes more arguments among Tigers’ fans:  Brandon Inge or Don Kelly.  They can’t even agree on which player they should be arguing about, which strongly suggests that our enjoyment of the game is going to continue to decrease.

Between that and Sherzer’s diminishing control, we’re ready to call it a day.  We’re heading for the exits when the crowd cheers tell us that Raul Ibanez has homered, and the Yankees have taken the lead.  Just as well that we’re leaving.

Rooting for the Yankees, as Adam Morrow put it, is like rooting for the house in blackjack, and no matter who they play, I’ll never be able to bring myself to do it.

Happily, today is also Verlanderday – meaning we’ve got a start by Justin Verlander.  It’s also a split squad game for both teams, so neither manager is in town.  Fortunately, the Tigers seem to have more of their stars in Lakeland than the Phillies do, so it may be a bad sign if the Tigers can’t get the win, here.

Verlander has a rough first inning, and the Phillie fans get pretty excited that they’ve taken an early lead, but the Tigers battle back and the game stays close until the Phillie starter is gone.  They put in a relief pitcher that I’ve never heard of, and he’s got some control problems, and walks two batters in a row.  The catcher comes out to the mound for a conference, and it’s obvious to everyone in the stadium that he’s telling him to just settle down and throw strikes.  Unfortunately for Joe Savery, it’s obvious to the Tyler Collins, too, who sits and waits on a fastball.  When Savery finally throws one down the middle, Collins, to the delight of about 2/3 of the fans, deposits it in to the grove of palm trees that are over the right field fence, and that’s really more or less the game.

Well, thank heavens.  I was beginning to think that I should probably call the Tigers’ front office, and offer to be put on the payroll to not come to games.

Our seats aren’t in the shade today, but they’re fantastic, and we’ve watching to pitchers that I’ve followed for awhile – Rick Porcello for the Tigers (due to his age, he’s known among Tiger fans as “Kid Rick”), and Mark Buehrle – formerly of the Chicago White Sox – who’s now playing for the Miami Marlins.

With as much speed as the Marlins have, you’d think they’d be exciting to watch, but Kid Rick mainly is able to keep them off the bases.  Most of the enthusiasm from crowd seems to exhort Ozzie to fight with the umpires over questionable calls, of which there seem to be many.  I guess it’s spring training for the umpires, too.

Porcello seems to be doing well – with the Tigers’ dicey infield defense, this isn’t always a given for a pitcher whose main strategy is to induce ground balls.  It works for most of today, though, and thanks to a couple of homers off of Buehrle, the game seems evenly matched, but mainly in the Tigers’ capable paws until the bullpens come into play.  Joaquin Benoit, who was so good for the Tigers last year, gives up two doubles in a row, and the Marlins tie the game.

Ozzie never comes into play, and the game ends in a tie:  clearly, neither of these would have happened had this been the regular season.  Still, a good show, and Porcello can keep turning in performances like that, he’s going to have a good year.  Time for us to go home, though, and before too long, it’ll be time for the Tigers to go back to Detroit.

“The strongest thing that baseball has going for it today are its yesterdays.”

– Lawrence Ritter

Well, Lawrence may be onto something, here, but this is the point of the season where its tomorrows – for every team – have the potential to be even better.  It’s going to be a great year.

• Continued negotiations with the threat of sanctions have a chance of solving the problem without any armed conflict.
• We can successfully negotiate with the current Iranian regime.
• The problem of a nuclear Iran can by and large be understood without analyzing the rest of the current situation in the Middle East.

The situation is more complex. Here’s why:

The current Iranian regime is not going to give up nuclear ambitions as a result of sanctions, and to conclude that they will requires assuming that a nuclear program means less to the Iranians than it probably actually does. (The invasion of Iraq, ironically enough, probably has provided the Iranians with the sort of lessons that America would probably prefer that they do not learn: in all probability, from the point of view of the Iranians, Iraq was invaded not because they were trying to get the bomb, but because they didn’t have it already.) The Iranians have been trying to develop a nuclear program for the last two decades, and there is an enormous amount of national prestige that depends on the administration seeing this brought to a successful completion, though there’s still some amount of ambiguity with regards to exactly what “a successful completion” actually means. It’s doubtful that the regime withstand the loss of face that would result from backing down from the western powers that they so frequently demonize. (Between the 2009-2010 protests and the Arab Spring, this is not a completely secure regime.)

Diplomacy without the threat of military action is unlikely to have any effect at all, but this is not to say that sanctions cannot have some sort of effect. Odds are good, though, that sanctions may not have results that anyone can completely anticipate. The largest impact that sanctions could have is that they cause the regime to collapse due to economic collapse or popular revolt: this is, according to some senior members of the Obama administration, is the actual goal of the current sanctions.

Dismantling the regime while preserving the state may be the best goal, but it seems unlikely to happen anytime soon. As Sohrab Ahmari points out, regime change in Iran is going to be made more complex by the large economic clout of the the IRGC and the Basij paramilitary – organizations that are ostensibly military, but which have economic interests in the preservation of the current regime.

This is also not without risk: there’s a fine line between regime change and a civil war, and no one (including the Iranians, we can safely guess) wants to see an Iranian civil war, much less with nuclear weapons in the mix.

*****

As Thomas P. M. Barnett repeatedly points out, national security is far less likely to be tenable in the long run if the American military doesn’t go overseas: both political and economic stability is heavily dependent on America’s ability to export the security that is necessary to make the economics of globalization work. (Here’s a discussion of this point of view, among other things.)

From this point of view, security is, in a sense, a by-product of economic interdependency, in which case it’s easy to see how sanctions – which are effective only in isolating a country – can be harmful in the long run. (As Barnett points out, it’s only the isolated countries that are security threats to anyone, in which case making them more isolated seems as if it could be counterproductive.)

This doesn’t mean, of course, that sanctions can’t be used in some sort of short-term goal: the execution of any long-term political strategy requires short-term pragmatism in addition to long-term strategic plans. What it does mean, though, is that if sanctions don’t work, Iran is likely to end up with nuclear weapons and be completely separated from the rest of the world’s economy.

Barnett’s view – explained in his book Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating – is that if Iran’s going to get the bomb anyway (excepting American boots on the ground, this a virtual certainty), the best long-term strategy is to connect Iran to the global economy as fast as possible. Should the Iranians be given nuclear technology (or allowed to pursue it on their own) in return for renouncing terrorism and recognizing Israel?

This sounds crazy, but it makes a certain amount of sense – especially considering that if current trends continue, they’ll get the bomb with no concessions at all: right now, the Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism, which should be a strong indication that the economy of Iran isn’t dependent on the stability of the global economy. The Iranians are far more likely to behave when it’s in their interest to do so and not when they’re motivated by external carrots and sticks. Increased economic ties with Iran would not only bring additional western influence to the country, but would also serve to help the goals of Iran and the west eventually become closer than they are now.

The weakness in any of these plans, though, is that the amount of time sanctions would take to work, or that increased economic cooperation would take to have an influence, or that it will take the Iranians to develop a nuclear weapon are all relative unknowns, and the order in which all these things happen is vital. If the Iranians are able to develop nuclear weapon while integrating with the rest of the world’s economy – no one’s breathing easier if the nuke shows up first.

I think that most of us would feel better about either one of these options if there was a some sort of contingency plan in place. Right now, it seems that the only people developing a contingency plan are the Israelis.

*****

The worst case senario, though, probably involves an Israeli attempt to act unilaterally – in which case we can all hope that (a) it works, and (b) that it doesn’t explode into a larger conflict with Hamas and/or Syria. It’s difficult to see how it wouldn’t, frankly.

Because of the link between Iran and Syria, the best way to prevent Israel from acting unilaterally against Iran is for the West to remove Assad in Syria. Thomas Barnett explains this better than I can here.

Would that be enough? Probably not, but it would put us in a better situation than we’ve got now, and that’s something.

So far, I don’t think that I really do either (a) or (b) well enough to take myself seriously as a book critic; consequently, I can’t really expect expect anyone else to, either. Regardless, these sorts of limitations aren’t going to keep me from churning out some sort of completely subjective list of my favorite books that I have run across this year, though very few of them are going to be classics or recently released best-sellers.

This is somewhat intentional: if nothing in life (such as, for example, your literature professor in college) has convinced you to read Crime and Punishment, for example, odds are poor that one badly edited article on this blog is going to make any difference in convincing you to do so. (However, just in case it does: please go read Crime and Punishment.) If you’re trying to figure out what classics that you should read, there are better resources than me to find a list of the classics, virtually all of them written by people who fit more easily into the previously mentioned category (a) than I do. Furthermore, I’m still busy enough reading classics (not to mention the books that were recent when I bought them but are still sitting, unread, on my shelf) that I can’t exactly be depended on to review anything that came out recently enough for me to write a review about anything at the same time that you’d see it reviewed in the New Yorker, for example, not that they’re exactly waiting for my contributions, anyway.

One of the enjoyable things about putting together a list of books that I like is that exempts me from one of the more unpleasant jobs of criticism, and that is attempting to explain to people why something they enjoy is not very good. (Alas, as the rise of democratic ways of thinking about everything seems to render even serious criticism irrelevant anyway, this doesn’t really seem to accomplish much good, even from professional critics: Twilight, last time I checked, is still not getting very good reviews, and this seems to make no difference to the people that continue to pay money to see or read it.) Certainly, pointing out flaws of a particular book can be a valuable exercise in that it helps those who are actively trying to improve their taste and judgment by giving them a different perspective to consider, but it’s far more likely to just make them mad. Even my limited experience seems to suggest that a better way to help people judge between good literature and bad literature is to encourage them to read good literature carefully. The most important role of a critic, I suspect, isn’t to explain why bad literature is bad, but to explain why good literature (or music, or whatever is being critiqued) is good, what makes it appealing, and why it was enjoyable to read. (Or, perhaps, why it should have been enjoyable to read, in the entirely likely event that everyone’s tastes are still a work in progress.)

With that in mind, here are my favorite books that I ran across over this last year, and a brief description of why I enjoyed them. We’ll start with fiction:

*****

Drew Magary, The Postmortal. Magary is a familiar name for readers of Deadspin (and a couple of other websites that report sports news), but most of the columns that he’s written that I’ve run across have been a bit heavy on the poop jokes, off-color observations on the NFL, and columns that you would, under no circumstances, want to read with your mother. If that’s the impression that you’ve gotten of Magary so far – and, if you are, you’re not alone – you probably aren’t interested in a novel you’re thinking is likely to be 360 pages of poop jokes and juvenile humor. Fortunately, The Postmortal is a departure from Magary’s typical fare.

The Postmortal is the story of society’s discovery of the cure for aging (and, later, disease) as told from the perspective of John Farrell. This sort of development, as you can probably suspect, does not go well, and by the end of the book Farrell is living in a dystopian post-apocalyptic world that’s vaguely reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. If anything, Magary’s take on future dystopian society is more terrifying than McCarthy’s, as it shows a plausible way of society’s journey to get there.

This is not a happy book, and Farrell is not, by the end of it, a happy person, but it makes this list because of its observations about the way people are capable of treating each other, and what sort of catastrophes that can develop if we all get what we think we want. It’s also in the minority of few science fiction novels that I’ve run across in that it portrays certain aspects of technology as something that society would be better off without having. This is, I suspect, rather unusual: science fiction, by its nature, is generally optimistic, and one of the assumptions that most science fiction authors make (along with the rest of our society) is that technology is, in nearly all circumstances, a good thing, and any unpleasant side effects of an existing technology are solvable problems for whatever technology is coming next.

Whether or not future technology will cure the problems that the current technology causes is, of course, at the cornerstone of the current debate about climate change. (See, for example, Lomborg’s arguments in Cool It! explaining why climate change, while a serious problem, isn’t a problem that we need to deal with now.) Excepting debates about climate change, though, faith in technology may still be the current zeitgeist – in which case Magary is to be commended for taking a shot at the prevailing wisdom – or the current zeitgeist may in the process of changing, in which case Magary has his ear closer to the ground than the rest of us do. In either case, it’s a science fiction novel that doesn’t feel much like any other science fiction novel I’ve run across.

*****

Graham Greene, The End of the Affair. I’ve only just started reading Graham Greene’s novels this year, and The End of the Affair was the most recent one that I’ve read. It’s also been the one that I’ve enjoyed the most, but I’m not entirely sure that’s because it’s the best one, or if it’s because it took me a few novels to warm up to Greene’s writing.

Greene was a British novelist (among other things) that happened to be Catholic, and several of his novels deal with explicitly Catholic themes. The End of the Affair is the last of these. The main character – Bendrix – is loosely based on Greene himself, and Bendrix is having an affair with Sarah, the wife of Henry Miles, who is an acquaintance of Bendrix’s. Bendrix is nearly killed when a bomb hits his apartment, and Sarah breaks off the affair without any sort of explanation. Sarah eventually converts to Catholicism, and the contrast between her ways of thinking about the end of the affair as opposed to how Bendrix feels about it makes for the most interesting part of the book.

Greene preferred to be thought of as a novelist who happened to be Catholic, and not a Catholic novelist, and it becomes more clear why after reading something like The End of the Affair. His novels are in no way propaganda for the church, and offended some Catholics. (Members of the Vatican, at one point attempted to censure Greene, before being (incredibly) overridden by Pope Paul VI.

Greene’s novels, in general, seem to involve less action and more internal thought processes than what the average American is likely to want to read. If The End of the Affair sounds tedious, give Greene’s antiwar novel The Quiet American a try before plunging into this one.

*****

Shusaku Endo, Silence. I’ve been meaning to read this for awhile, now, mainly on the recommendation of some family members, but when I picked it up for the first time, there was a reference on the back cover to Endo as “the Japanese Graham Green,” so I took a detour into Green’s novels before starting Endo’s. This may have been worthwhile for other reasons (see the review above), but the detour only really helped me understand the quote on the back of the book. It’s not necessary for understanding Endo’s work: it stands on its own.

Like Green, however, Endo is an introspective Catholic novelist whose works tend towards the darker side of things. Silence, while fictional, is set in a very definite historical time: the end of what is now known as Japan’s Christian century – when the church was forced underground by persecution – and one of the characters (Ferreira) is based on an actual historical figure.

Most of the novel is in the form of letters from Sebastian Rodrigues, who is a Portuguese priest. Rodrigues has learned that Ferreira – one of his former professors and mentors – has renounced his faith while a missionary to Japan. Rodrigues, unable to believe that he would not choose to be martyred, travels to Japan to investigate. He is eventually betrayed to the hostile Japanese authorities by a man he has attempted to befriend, and confronted with a horrible moral choice.

Endo doesn’t finish his books with the happy ending that is so treasured by American readers, but given how he’s telling this story, there’s not really a happy resolution that exists. Endo does not write to show that God will eliminate suffering – a dubious (at best) position that seems so treasured by advocates of prosperity theology – but, as William Cavanaugh noted in his review of Silence, is much more concerned with showing how God, though he may be silent, suffers with us.

*****

And one more novel, this one just for fun:

Charles Portis, True Grit. Given the fame of both movies that bear the same name, the book is a relative unknown. Like most people, I suspect, I didn’t even realize that the movie was based on a book until I sat through the credits of the 2010 remake. When finally was able to procure a copy, I was surprised to find that what I had assumed was quirky dialogue from the Coen brothers was actually not original with them: the style of the dialogue is all Portis, and a pretty high percentage of the memorable lines from the movie have been lifted almost directly from the novel.

The book, like the movie, is recounted from the perspective of Matty Ross, who is recounting the story years after the events take place. In summary: Matty’s father has been murdered, and she hires a U.S. Marshal to apprehend the killer, and the majority of the book is taken up with the resulting adventures. Portis is able to relay this all using a unique balance between a realistic and satirical western – it strikes me as a western that is aware of the genre, if that makes any sense.

Matty makes for an enjoyable and quirky narrator, and the book – like the movie – is genuinely funny. Portis is a master of dialogue, and the humor comes not only front he situations his characters find themselves in, but also the idiosyncrasies of his characters: Matty is the personification of the stereotypical Protestant work ethic with some extra determination (or, as Portis would probably put it, “grit”) on the side, wrapped up in much younger package than anyone would expect. Cogburn is an overweight, one-eyed, hard-drinking Marshal (Jeff Bridges’s portrayal of him is more true to the book than John Wayne’s), and LeBeouf is a Texan in just about every sense of the word.

Portis, it’s been pointed out by multiple commentators, has a lot in common with Cormac McCarthy (think All the Pretty Horses, though, not The Road), and could have more in common with him if he wasn’t too busy being funny. The result, though, is a joy to read.

True Grit is not the only one his five novels to be made into a movie – in 1970, Norwood made it to the big screen, as well. After reading True Grit, I suspect that any one of his novels are probably worth a read.

*****

Continuing onto the non-fiction:

Wilfrid Sheed, The House that George Built. The majority of my favorite books, I’ve noticed, are ones that I’ve had recommended to me as opposed to ones that I’ve just found wandering around a bookstore, and The House that George Built falls into the category of those that someone had to tell me to read. Not only was this one recommended to me by another bibliophile, but in this particular case, it was recommended by someone that was also a music lover, and given both the quality of Sheed’s writing and the obvious love he has for his topic, this isn’t a big surprise.

If the Golden Age of American Song could have been an actual individual, Sheed would have written his (her?) biography. This wasn’t the case, so Sheed settles for brief biographies of most of the major players, and more importantly, perhaps, discussions of their work. The “George” in the title, of course, refers to George Gershwin, and that’s more or less where the book starts. Sheed – via the songwriters and musicians he’s writing about – meanders out from the George’s songs to Broadway, and from there to California, where less famous songwriters were scoring films.

Reading Sheed’s writing, as Garrison Keillor points out in his review of the book, is the literary equivalent of jazz. There are riffs on related topics, and fascinating rabbit trails that are reminiscent (at least to me) of a slightly more in-control version of David Foster Wallace. For those of us – like me – whose knowledge about this era of American music was somewhat dim, this is an ideal place to start. If you don’t want to go investigate the music that Sheed writes about after reading this, it’s probably worth checking to make sure you still have a pulse.

*****

Joseph Ellis, Founding Brothers. I’ve run across a couple of great biographies of some of the founding fathers over the last year – McCullough’s John Adams is every bit as good as you’d expect, as is Hitchens’s much shorter (but perhaps even more beautifully written) biography of Thomas Jefferson. The problem with any singular biography of any of the founding fathers, though, is that their lives are so closely intertwined that their actions, motivations, and lives in general make little to no sense if analyzed in isolation: reading about only one in an attempt to gain a perspective on the American revolution is a bit like trying to appreciate Beethoven Symphonies by listening only to the violin parts. Clearly, there’s much that can be learned from the perspective of one player, but however rich the perspective from that point of view, there are limits to what can be concluded about the overall achievement.

Ellis’s book is the best remedy to this conundrum that I’ve found so far: it’s a summary of the high points of the revolution, with autobiographical background given to whichever founding fathers were involved with the high point that he describes. Covering as many individuals as he does leads to necessarily brief biographical sketches, but I think the book functions beautifully as something designed to whet the readers’ appetite for exploring, in more detail, the lives of the founding fathers. I can’t help but suspect that Ellis probably sees this book in the same light.

This may not be the best introduction to the American Revolution that I’ve seen (for that I’d have to give the nod to McCullough’s less choppy but slightly longer 1776), but it is the best introduction that I’ve found to the lives of its participants.

*****

Seth Lipsky, The Citizen’s Constitution. Most Americans seem to agree that the Constitution is, to a certain extent, the Bible of political dialogue in the United States, in the sense that it’s supposed to be the basis of the system it establishes. (Unfortunately, it also resembles the Bible in other ways, namely, that everyone knows about it, is expected to have read it, but the average citizen’s knowledge of its contents is generally lacking.) Lipsky’s book is a great way to remedy this: it’s an annotated guide to the constitution that provides enough historical background to put it in context, and, as a result, make it more meaningful than just reading the original document. As most of us that have tried to read the actual text of the Constitution can attest, it’s not exactly a page-turner, and knowing the historical background helps to answer questions about why a particular part is in there or why it’s phrased the way it is. Lipsky covers both the historical background for why it was written the way it was, and also gives a history of how the law has been applied since then, primarily by discussing the major court cases that reference specific parts of the constitution.

This is, alas, probably the least exciting book on this list, and of all the books here, probably took me the longest to read. That shouldn’t be seen as a strike against it – there’s no way to make this material like this read like a Tom Clancy thriller, and by no means to I mean to imply that it’s poorly written. Lipsky’s book is about the only way you’ll find a copy of the Constitution that’s not either (a) just the actual text, or (b) a multi-volume saga that you’re likely to want to read all the way through only if you are in the process of submitting job applications to the Supreme Court. Not only is this book important because it’s well-researched and nicely written, but it’s also important because there doesn’t seem to be any other book that covers this topic that’s written for a similar audience.

This is also probably the only book on this list that you should keep around your house even if you have no intention of reading it cover to cover: the way the book is organized makes it easy to go look up a specific part of the constitution or any of the amendments to it. All the amendments are included, and they’re all annotated, as well.

*****

Anne Heller, Ayn Rand and the World She Made. Reading Heller’s book was part of a larger pile of books by and about Ayn Rand that I read over the last year as an effort to become more familiar with objectivism. Heller’s book was the only one from that pile to make this list – it’s the best of the books I read about Rand, and is a nice balance of being both a biography of Rand’s life and a summary (and, to an extent, critique) of her philosophy.

Objectivism has been in the news more recently in the last few years than it’s been for awhile, and Heller’s book is one of two new biographies of Rand that’s been released recently, the other being Jennifer Burns’s Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. Heller and Burns follows a similar pattern, but Burns more interested in what sort of impact objectivism has had (and is still having) on American political dialogue.

Burns sees Rand’s philosophy as a gateway drug, as she puts it, to the American conservative movement, which as far as I can tell is an observation that will annoy virtually all objectivists and a pretty large percentage of thoughtful conservatives, in addition. Burns may be onto something, though, as “I am John Galt” signs seem to be a pretty common occurrence at anything related to the Tea Party, not to mention the Tea Party’s willingness to plug the recently released movie version of Atlas Shrugged. For a political movement that purports to encompass mainly religious conservatives, this is something of a surprise. A movement that tries to claim, as its philosophical basis, both Rand’s atheistic objectivism and conservative evangelicalism is going to be, at the very least, interesting to watch. My own suspicion that the inability of anyone to reconcile these diametrically opposed philosophies is at least partly responsible for the seemingly schizophrenic intellectual basis for the Tea Party movement, to the extent that it has any intellectual basis exists at all.

In any case, Heller is a capable biographer, and the book doesn’t lack for detail. Nevertheless, Heller is not a philosopher, and a word of caution is in order: Rand is an original enough thinker that it’s worth reading at least one of her novels to listen to her explanation of objectivism. Her two big novels are The Fountainhead and her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. Of the two, I would recommend Atlas Shrugged, though if you’re concerned about your ability to plow a 1000+ page novel, you may want to opt for Fountainhead if for no other reason than it’s somewhat shorter.

Atlas Shrugged stands out for a few reasons: first, it contains Rand’s clearest presentation of what objectivism is outside of her philosophy books. There are lessons imparted in the narrative and characters arguing with each other, but the most detailed explanation comes in the form of a lengthy speech given by John Galt, one of the heroes of the novel. (Galt’s speech, by itself, is worth a read and can stand apart from the rest of the novel with only cursory background information.) Additionally, Rand’s predictions about American society in Atlas Shrugged seem almost prescient given the events of the last few years: the Occupy Wall Street protests, for example, seem like they could be a scene right out of the book, as does recent “spread the wealth around” political rhetoric. Finally, there’s a (widely panned, admittedly) movie version of Atlas Shrugged that’s been made recently, so there’s always the option of trying to absorb the lessons of the book via a different medium. So far, Part 1 of what was originally planned to be a trilogy has been released. There’s some doubt as to whether or not Parts 2 and 3 will be made due to the fact that Part 1 did not turn a profit.

Pondering the irony of this seems as good a place as any to end our discussion of Anne Heller and Ayn Rand, and move onto the next book.

*****

N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope. This is the second book of a trilogy that N.T. Wright started writing in 2006. The first book – Simply Christian – has largely been seen as something that fills the same role for our generation that Mere Christianity (or perhaps Stott’s Basic Christianity) did for previous generations. Where Lewis and Stott took an approach to explaining Christianity that seemed to be mostly propositional, Wright is willing to be more narrative-driven: there is still systematic theology, here, but the overall picture of the book is written more for people who would find themselves more at home in narrative theology: Wright is not a postmodernist, clearly, but he’s aware that he’s writing in a postmodern era, and consequently he writes for people whose thought has been steeped in postmodernism.

I’m not exactly the the target audience for a book whose aim is to introduce Christianity, but even considering that, Simply Christian didn’t strike me as a particularly remarkable book. Lewis’s and Stott’s introductions to Christianity may not be as sensitive to the preferences of our current generation, but they’re both short enough to be manageable. Simply Christian, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have a clear target audience: it seems to me that anyone that makes it all the way through this book probably has already bought into what Wright is trying to explain.

If you’re already moderately familiar with the basics of theology, I’d recommend skipping to the second and third books of the trilogy, where Wright really hits his stride. Surprised by Hope is the clearest attempt that I have seen to show how the way we think about theology can impact the way we live. Specifically, Wright shows how eschatology impacts how we think about the church, Wright’s way of thinking about eschatology is a welcome change from the lifeboat mentality that seems to result from the premillennialism that is so prominent in evangelical churches.

The third book in the trilogy: After You Believe is just as good, and is primarily on how Christianity should transform our character. Wright sees Jesus’s claim to be able to change hearts as not only the fulfillment of the Jewish religion, but also the fulfillment of the quest for virtue that has long existed outside of purely Judeo-Christian circles. (Those who covered Plato’s Meno in their philosophy classes will recognize Wright’s inclusion of the concept of arete.) This is a fascinating take on the development of character, and I’d like to know how much Wright’s thinking about sanctification influenced by the new perspective on Paul. Alas, I didn’t get to those books this year, so this answer will have to wait for another time.

*****

Gibson, Green, Pattison, Beyond the Bible. A bit of background: In 2003, Don Miller arrived onto the Christian literature scene with the publication of Blue Like Jazz, a collection of semi-autobiographical essays that ended up, due mainly to word-of-mouth, being an unexpected best-seller. (It’s currently being made into a movie that will be released sometime this coming spring.) Miller has stayed pretty busy since then: he’s continued to write books, he has been involved in starting a mentoring project for children with absent fathers, he is currently serving on Obama’s Task Force on Fatherhood, and he started an online magazine called the Burnside Writer’s Collective. While the BWC has been an interesting magazine/blog in its own right, it’s also interesting in that several of the people involved with it have gone on to publish books, and this is where, as far as I’ve been able to tell, Beyond the Bible has at least some of its roots.

Beyond the Bible is a collection of short, easy-to-digest essays that are reviews of 100 books that, as the authors put it, “have, should, or will create Christian culture,” which is, admittedly, a pretty flexible target, and that’s part of the joy of this book. Some items make the list because they should influence evangelical culture more than they have: works of John Piper and Dallas Willard compose this part of the list. Other works make the list because they have influenced evangelical culture so heavily (even if we all wish that they hadn’t) that it’s difficult to understand evangelicals without having been exposed to them. (The Left Behind books and The Shack come to mind.) Some of the works the authors cite fall somewhere in between.

Happily, the authors are not of the school of thought that Christians should only read books that are written for the evangelical subculture: in order to be able to engage society, there has to be some shared culture, and the list of books function not only as a means for the Christian subculture to understand itself, but for those in it to understand what the outside looks like, too. Additionally, there are profound truths to be found outside of the doors of the church. Abraham Kupyer famously argued that all truth is God’s truth, and if that’s true, Christians shouldn’t have any hesitation about embracing truth wherever it is found.

In any book like this, of course, no two people will pick the exact same books, though I was pleased to find how frequently we agreed on the authors: N.T. Wright deserves a place, but I think I would have picked Surprised by Hope over Simply Christian. C.S. Lewis deserves both his spots (no quibble at all with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but I would have picked Mere Christianity (or maybe Miracles) over A Grief Observed, though the essay on A Grief Observed is one of the best in the book. I wish there had been room to include contributions from Jim Wallis (God’s Politics, perhaps), or something from Phillip E. Johnson, who still seems to be in the intellectual godfather of the intelligent design movement.

These are minor quibbles. If you’re looking for a guide to reading, or for insightful comments on books that you’ve already read, this should be in your library.

*****

Kay Hymowitz, Manning Up. I first ran into Hymowitz’s writing back in 2008 or so, when someone sent me a link to her column Love in the Time of Darwinism, and ever since then, I’ve been a fan of her books and her columns, which seem to be showing up with increasing regularity in the neoconservative journal Commentary, to which I subscribe. Manning Up, Hymowitz’s latest offering, is about how the rise of women has resulted in a society that has required men to be less mature, and – unsurprisingly, perhaps – men have responded by not being as mature.

This isn’t, it’s worth pointing out, the first book that Hymowitz has published that’s worth acquiring: for the same sort of critique that Manning Up presents with regards to the immaturity of the modern man (dude, bro, or guy), Liberation’s Children (2003) does for postmodern childrearing and Marriage and Caste in America (2006) does for, well, marriage and caste. All of these are worth reading, but a book discussing the lack of maturity in men is, of anything that Hymowitz has written, the one that seems the most applicable to my life at this point in time.

Hymowitz’s basic argument is straightforward, and I’ll do my best to summarize it here: the rise of women in the workplace has resulted in changes in gender roles, and this has resulted in some unintended (and somewhat unpleasant) consequences. Hymowitz points out that a 25 year old woman in the year 2011 doesn’t need a man in her life like she would have had she been 25 in 1950. While this was certainly an intended consequence of the rise of women in the workplace (which, in turn, has contributed to the later age at which couples decide to get married), one of the results has been that men that are the same age are no longer expected to support a wife, pay a mortgage, and start a family. This, in turn, has generated two results that are problematic for society: (a) men that have no reason to grow up, and as a result are generally more immature, and (b) career women, in their constant pursuit of the man who is more an alpha male than she is (the title of Hymowitz’s previously mentioned column is significant, perhaps) have unintentionally contributed to the decline of the “nice guy.”

Trying to answer the question “Where have all the good men gone?” by attributing it to the rise of women may seem misogynistic, but Hymowitz is attempting to describe the world here as it is, and not how reasonable people wished it did: occasionally, reality may be sexist, and attempting to describe reality through the lens of political correctness may not do much to enhance anyone’s understanding. Even though Hymowitz explains how the immaturity of the modern man may be a result of the empowerment of women, I don’t see this is as an attempt to excuse men’s behavior by blaming women as much as I suspect Hymowitz is explaining why: in many situations, clearly, the onus is on men to step up and be more mature. Furthermore, I didn’t come away with this book with the impression that Hymowitz thinks that the empowerment of women has been a net loss to society, or something that we should in any way attempt to undo. Neither do I come away from this book with the impression that Hymowitz is attempting to blame one gender over the other, which, among other things, has made this an interesting book to discuss: quite a few people whose reviews I’ve read or that I’ve discussed this book with have felt as though Hymowitz was attacking a particular gender over the other one – though it’s been more or less equally split between those who feel that Hymowitz is giving men the short end of the stick and those who feel that Hymowitz has a vendetta against her own gender.

Hymowitz, while defending the traditional family, does not seem overly beholden to any particular political ideology, though she generally seems to lean towards the emphasis of personal responsibility and understanding and appreciating the unintended consequences of our actions. If that counts as being a conservative in our current political climate, then so be it: I have a feeling that Hymowitz would say it anyway, no matter where it fell on the political spectrum. I’ve had her columns recommend to me by people whose politics are such that they would be horrified to learn that they are recommending the work of someone who’s a regular contributor to a neo-conservative magazine. (This cuts both ways: I think that many conservatives that have recommended Postman’s excellent Amusing Ourselves to Death would likewise be disturbed by the depth of the observations that come from, technically, the other side of the political aisle. Truth is truth, though, wherever it is found.)

If there’s any flaw in Hymowitz’s argument, here, it seems to me that she’s more willing than is warranted to associate the trappings of immaturity (i.e., poop jokes or playing video games, for example) with the inability to be faithful to one’s wife, hold a job, raise a family, or do anything that she considers to be mature. Things may be different where she lives in New York, but down here I’ve met quite a few men that have a pretty good handle both marital fidelity and juvenile humor. One of her examples for male immaturity, for example, is Dave Barry, whose columns were always the cornerstone of entertainment in my parents’ house when I was growing up. My dad – who is one of the most mature and responsible individuals I’ve met in my life – could be reduced to tears of laughter reading Dave Barry’s columns about setting a toilet on fire, for example, but would also routinely take my mother to symphony concerts.

The 24 hour news cycle is built for events like 9/11, the recent Japanese earthquake, and other catastrophes. I suspect that its usefulness for most Americans, when taken outside of disasters or black swan events, is practically nil.

There are good reasons for this: the vast majority of news stories are designed to fit between commercial breaks, and catch your attention when flipping by. This results in news items that cannot, due to time constraints, be put in context. It results in the oversimplification of reality to a sound byte, and then the sound byte being seen as reality. It results in stories that are reported in the most sensational manner possible, to encourage you to keep watching. (“Obama feels his administration is effective” is unlikely is far less likely to make you tune into your evening news than “Obama thinks he is the best president ever.” This is undoubtedly true – perhaps even more true – if you do not like Obama.)

Additionally, CNN, Fox News, et al., are going to continue to show something even if they have nothing newsworthy to show. Fox, for example, seems to have taken to calling everything breaking news now, even if it’s not breaking into anything besides the previous news report. This makes it, at the very least, difficult to figure out what’s important and what’s not. I have a friend who told me once that he doesn’t start taking any disaster seriously until it has its own theme music. (If you think this doesn’t make sense, I’d challenge you to come up with a better way.)

Some of the disadvantages of the 24 hour news cycle are inevitable – the time prevents anyone from being able to step back and see what’s actually going to change things in the world. The tendency, alas, is to emphasize the urgent over the truly important. Profundity and taking time to put events in their proper context takes a back seat to sensationalism. This generally happens less in newspapers – a medium that can publish only once a day – and happens even less in a medium that publishes only once a month.

This is why I suspect that someone who reads a book or two on the history of Israel since World War II, for example, can be far better informed than someone whose only knowledge of the situation comes from listening to sound bytes and cable news reports. Even if they don’t have the most recent knowledge of the situation, they’ve got a context in which to put any recent or future news. The specifics of what happened last week are traded off for more knowledge about why the region functions as it does, and that’s more than a fair trade.

So, with that in mind, it’s not a surprise that I recommend skipping the majority of political news – that will, after all, be irrelevant and out of date by next week.  Here’s a list of political books that, I’d like to suggest, are more worth your time to read than following the latest news about presidential candidates:

• Bandow, Beyond Good Intentions. This is part of a series of books called the “Christian Worldview Series” which are generally worth reading, though some of them are better than others. This is one of the better ones, and is a summary of how Christians should view government, and how Biblical principles should be applied to issues of government, law, morality, etc. Bandow, generally, leans to the right, but he does it without the vitriol that seems so in vogue in political dialogue today.

• Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Nation. Gregory Boyd is, most of the time, a name that generally gives theologically astute evangelicals the willies, as he’s one of the most prominent advocates of open theism. Even if you’re a conservative, don’t let that scare you off: this doesn’t bring in the parts of Boyd’s theology that are more questionable, and the result is a thought-provoking book that explains how the church’s seeking of political power has harmed the church and hindered its true mission. I don’t agree with everything in this book, but it’s worth a read, and it will probably make you think.

• Wallis, God’s Politics. There is no bigger book for people for theological conservatives that want their politics to lean to the left. Wallis is attempting, here, to make our political systems reflect what Jesus was most interested in. According to Wallis, Jesus showed compassion to the poor, so our political systems should show compassion to the poor. Jesus was not interested in going to war, so our political systems shouldn’t be, either. This raises all sorts of interesting points about whether or not it’s a good idea to apply what was probably intended as personal morality to situations involving foreign policy, for example, and coming from the more conservative perspective that I did, Wallis raised far more questions than he answered. Clearly, though, Wallis is writing from a place that is intensely concerned with what was important to Jesus, and that by itself is reason enough to listen to what he has to say.

• Olasky, The Tragedy of American Compassion. Olaksy wrote this book before Wallis wrote God’s Politics, but this isn’t obvious without looking at the dates on their respective copywriter pages: this could easily have been written as a direct rebuttal to Wallis’s thought, if not God’s Politics specifically. Olasky, here, is not concerned with how concerned government programs profess to be about the poor, but only whether or not the programs they have in place actually work. The result is an interesting tour of American history, and a discussion of what has worked and what hasn’t.  Olasky, unsurprisingly (for anyone familiar with his work, anyway) leans to the right, and sees many of the social safety nets as excuses for people to shirk their own personal responsibility.  Given the history that he cites, this point isn’t trivial to rebut.

• Grudem, Politics According to the Bible. I first ran across Wayne Grudem when I got a copy of his Systematic Theology book. Grudem has made his name as a systematic theologian and professor of New Testament, and as far as I know this is his first foray into anything other than theology. His systematic ways of thinking are obvious: this is written in the same sort of systematic style as his Systematic Theology, and I suspect that this is probably an exhaustive (and exhaustively researched) version of Bandow’s Beyond Good Intentions – he seems to write from a similar place on the political spectrum. I hesitate to recommend this book, as it’s the only book on this list that I have not read, but it’s sitting on my shelf looking at me, and I’m planning on picking it up in the next month or so.  Given how thorough his research was for Systematic Theology, though, I suspect this is probably just fine.

Take, for example, the widely publicized conservative opposition to the recent healthcare bill: opposition to the bill seemed to be fairly ubiquitous among conservatives, even though very few people that opposed the bill are currently happy with the way that health insurance in the U.S. operates right now, even assuming they have it. The way of thinking conservatives seemed to advocate – nearly indistinguishable, unfortunately, in all the hysteria surrounding this particular issue – is that even as bad as things are right now, if we do something, odds are good that the unintended consequences we cause as a result may well make it worse. The evil we know may be less evil than the evil we don’t know; if it isn’t, well, at least we know it.

It’s not an accident that this way of looking at politics and, presumably, life in general sounds vaguely like something out of Lake Wobegon, and it’s not difficult to see why this sort of philosophy would appeal to, say, a farming community: if the community exists at all, it’s likely been successful enough to know that farming techniques that work, and betting a year’s harvest on an attempt to make things better carries a certain amount of risk. Consequently, this way of life means that change for change’s sake isn’t generally embraced with the same degree of enthusiasm it would be in the English or Philosophy department of a university, where there generally aren’t life-threatening consequences if changes don’t work as anticipated. In a similar vein, the town that I’m from has a large population of aeronautical engineers, who by nature tend to be conservative for related but probably equally obvious reasons.

Whether or not this principle of conservatism is worth applying to more than just farmers or aeronautical engineers, we’ll have to leave to the larger brains to discuss at some other time. Sadly, though, it’s difficult to critique this principle on the results that it has brought in the political realm, as it seems to be only inconsistently applied: to take one example, as I’ve argued elsewhere, this principle should result in more of a willingness to protect the environment than is typically demonstrated. Sadly, this sort of inconsistency seems to be rampant with regards to many positions: unlike the previous administration would have us believe, traditional conservative thought doesn’t have much to do with excessive military intervention overseas, and (at least in recent years) the GOP seems far more interested in reducing the federal deficit when they’re a minority party. Of course, this sort of behavior isn’t limited to just Republicans: Democrats, it’s worth pointing out, seem more anti-war when there’s a Republican president responsible for it.

It’s ironic, then, that it’s conservatives that are looking to drop Federal funding for NPR, although, to be fair, in doing so, they’re embracing another conservative principle that is very much in vogue at the moment: the government shouldn’t interfere in the free market. Still, it’s interesting to note that – as far as I know, anyway – none of the politicians that are advocating dropping the funding from NPR are proposing doing the same thing for, say, Voice of America. Apparently broadcasting news internationally is more of a justifiable public good than broadcasting news to Americans.

Unsurprisingly, most of the criticism of NPR seems to be from conservative politicians who feel that their viewpoint is not adequately represented on NPR, and I’ve always gotten the impression that their actual goal has not been to save money balancing the budget, but rather to shut NPR down if they possibly can. (If they really wanted to balance the budget or go after government interference in the free market, I’m wondering why they don’t attempt to take on farm subsidies.)

My suspicion, though, is that making a change like this will result in some unintended consequences. Admittedly, this is just speculation, but perhaps it’s worth thinking about what those changes would be:

First of all, because of the way that NPR’s business model operates, the loss of Federal funding is probably not going to shut NPR down. However, it would result in the loss of individual member stations in some smaller cities. NPR’s business model is a bit complex, and the much maligned federal funding composes a higher percentage of the budget of the individual member stations that it does NPR in general.

In general, the way the business model works is that the individual member stations distribute various NPR shows that are produced either at NPR or from other NPR stations, although individual member stations are given considerable leeway in deciding which shows they’d like to run.

(Digression: if you’ve ever listened to NPR during their week of pledge drives, you’ve probably heard – about 30,000 times per day – that they’d like you to come down and tell them what shows that you like, and if you make a donation, you’re encouraged – or at least allowed – to make a contribution to the show that you like the most. The broadcasting, in other words, is determined by people at the local station based directly on feedback from the listeners. In other words, it seems to be more directly based on what people like, and not necessarily just what people listen to, as is typically the model for commercial television stations. These seem similar, but there’s a difference: witness, recently, the lack of a response from anyone when Two and a Half Men went off the air, and keep in mind that it was the most popular sitcom on television.)

The individual member stations pay NPR for that programming or come up with their own content, but the budgets of the individual stations are separate from the budget of NPR itself. The majority of federal funding goes to the individual member stations, and if Congress cuts NPR’s budget, it’s those stations – and not the national organization – that’s going to go under.

However, it’s worth noting that the NPR board (the board that fired Vivian Schiller, in what was almost certainly an attempt to keep Congress from pulling NPR’s funding) is actually controlled by the member stations . . . those same stations that need Federal funding.

There’s a conflict of interest here, though, because with the advent of podcasts, iTunes, etc., the national organization of NPR is becoming less and less dependent on its member stations. If you’ve listened to podcasts of Prairie Home Companion or downloaded the CarTalk app for your iPhone, you’re getting content directly from NPR, and you’re not supporting your local station.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing from NPR’s perspective, although if this is how the majority of their content will be distributed in the future, something of an organizational shakeup should probably be in the works: currently, it seems that, given the people on the NPR Board of Directors, the board is understandably more concerned with the needs of the member stations than with the entire organization.

What may be more clear at this point is that the budget concerns of the local stations is probably what led to Schiller’s resignation, and not the budget concerns of NPR as a whole. I suspect this also helps to explain why some people (for example, the fund-raiser that O’Keefe filmed) can claim NPR doesn’t need Federal funding, and the insistence of the local stations that they do.

Secondly, it seems that the Federal government has a long and occasionally contentious record of funding things that are perceived as a public good. It’s a given that there’s substantial disagreement about what exactly constitutes the public good, and exactly just how much the government should fund, but very few excepting Jeffersonian libertarians seem to think the entire idea of public good should be tossed out the window.

One of the basic prerequisites for a democracy to function well is an educated citizenry, and if public education doesn’t qualify as a public good, it’s unlikely that anything else will, either. As Churchill memorably put it, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter,” and to the extent that NPR contributes to the education of the American public, it’s helping to allay Churchill’s concerns, here, and the education of the citizenry seems to be an obvious public good.

I don’t think it’s difficult to categorize NPR as educational, especially given that most other news coverage is something of a race to the bottom: cable news is, just by virtue of its medium, in direct competition with a large number of shows that are pure entertainment. As a result, CNN or Fox News generally have a tendency to be sensationalist in order to attract casual viewers that would otherwise be watching, oh, Two and a Half Men, perhaps. The stories that they cover seem to be driven by what will cause most people to tune in, and the format and presentation of the following “news” is just as much indebted to the entertainment that it competes with than it is any serious analysis of the issues. Otherwise, frankly, we’d be getting more coverage of how the Egyptian army is beating protesters, and probably a bit less coverage of Charlie Sheen.

Quite a bit of the difference between cable news and NPR is due to the difference in the medium in which they’re presented: a cable news show that demands no more of its viewers than does a sitcom is not likely to present anything other than a superficial examination of the issues: complex issues take time to explain. A show on the radio like All Things Considered can take the time to report the story thoroughly. The average listener (judging by my own admittedly limited experience) is likely sitting in their car listening to it, or listening to it while they’re cooking dinner, or listening to it while sitting in bed while deciding whether or not to get up and go to work; consequently, they’re less likely to change the channel. (Channel surfing may be an American institution while watching television, but it seems that radio is largely exempt from this phenomenon.) If the same program was on television, your average viewer might be less inclined to listen to a show that doesn’t deliver news stories in sound bytes.

Lastly, it’s not entirely clear that receiving Federal funds doesn’t keep NPR more to the center than where they would be otherwise, and if this is true, it’s possible that cutting Federal funding would give more leeway to the fundraisers for which O’Keefe has such an affinity.

To explain: NPR’s individual journalists in the field, by most accounts that I’ve seen, seem to be more concerned with removing bias and reporting as objectively as possible as just about anyone else out there: keep in mind that NPR, more than any other network, gave all the presidential candidates a fair hearing back in 2008. However diligently individual reporters can guard against bias, though, it can still creep into the news as a result of which stories you’re reporting, and those decisions are likely not in the hands of the individual journalists.

For all of the negative publicity that NPR has seen recently, it’s worth pointing out that none of it has been a critique of individual reporters or their ability to convey the news. Instead, it’s been the higher-ups and fundraisers, who may actually be more concerned about receiving Federal funding than they’ve let on. While I don’t see any reason why Federal funding makes the individual reporters feel an added sense of duty to be as objective as possible, I can’t help but wonder if Federal funding doesn’t have some sort of influence that draws some programming closer to the center than it would be otherwise.

One of the most valuable contributions of postmodernism is the observation that it’s impossible for anyone to be completely objective: whether we like it or not, we all are speaking from within the narratives that we have been raised and from which we understand the world. While this may be true, it’s a tragic result that most news outlets have by and large abandoned any attempt to be objective. NPR – it seems to me – at least still tries, and even if they haven’t found complete objectivity, it seems that they’ve at least found a middle ground that gets them equal amounts of both hate mail and complements from both sides of the aisle.

(Bit of a digression and/or disclaimer: it’s worth pointing out, though, that this may not be true of individual shows that aren’t part of NPR news, proper, but are produced for NPR by member stations or who knows what else: for example, if you’re a conservative – or even a moderate anything – that has tried to listen to Democracy Now!, the resulting frustration of listening to far-left descriptions of world events may have caused you to put your fist through your car stereo. Still, they’ve had some good interviews on there, and Amy Goodman, regardless of her political affiliation, is an unusually good interviewer. In fact, Goodman’s interview of Andrew Bacevich was my introduction to Bacevich’s paleoconservative way of looking at foreign policy, and I’d highly recommend his books. Not all the shows are like this, though, and my own experience has been that Democracy Now! is more the exception than the rule.)

*****

So what can we conclude from all this? I’m not entirely sure: I’d like to live in a world that NPR could exist in its current form without having to get funding from the Federal government, but so far, I don’t think we’re there. Similarly, it would be nice if there was enough of a market for art that the National Endowment for the Arts wouldn’t be necessary, but I’m pretty sure we’re not there, either.

I’m somewhat skeptical of politicians who claim that they’re de-funding NPR in an attempt to balance the budget, but don’t have the courage to take on more popular programs that actually absorb the weight of that budget: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, National Defense, farm subsidies, and the like. The list goes on and on, and frankly, arguing over cutting funding for any programs the size of NPR – given how small NPR is and how large the current deficit is – seems like a waste of time.

I’ve recently been reading a biography of Theodore Roosevelt that pays special attention to his zealous protection of forests, birds, and National Parks. It’s profoundly unsettling to realize that without the executive orders that he (and other presidents) issued, there would be huge commercial mines in the Grand Canyon, and the Mariposa Grove (not to mention the floor of Yosemite Valley) would have been clearcut by the timber industry. When TR declared the Grand Canyon a National Park, there were howls of protest from westerners who resented the Federal intrusion (they saw it as a land grab), charges of socialism, and complaints that the president was abusing his authority. To anyone paying attention to politics now, these critiques probably sound eerily familiar.

At the time, of course, this was a predictable reaction, but now – a century later, after the Grand Canyon and Yosemite have become two of our most treasured National Parks – it’s somewhat more difficult to see how this was ever seriously debated. I think that you’d be hard pressed to find too many Americans that would like to see the Grand Canyon opened up to commercial mining. This should probably give us pause.

A century from now, the politicians of our current day may be admired if they’re able to reign in Federal spending and balance the budget, but it’s obvious that they’re not going to get to that point by going after NPR. If the same politicians that are going after NPR were willing to make the cuts, across the board, to balance the budget, I’m not sure I could complain. NPR, by and large, would still be very likely to thrive – unlike the National Endowment for the Arts, NASA, the National Park Service, and (likely) the U.S. Postal Service.

Regardless, either way this develops, it sounds like I need to go ahead and send in my pledge.

The new theme is fairly easy to explain: for awhile now, I’ve been looking for a wordpress theme that was simple, easy to read, and good enough at displaying large blocks of text that it would be able to hide my complete inability to write concisely to the extent that’s physically possible. I’ve recently run across what you’re looking at now – Benoit Burgener’s “Vermillion,” and that’s what will be up here for awhile.

I’ve also switched the blogroll around a little bit – it’s now composed of blogs that I actually read on a regular basis; additionally, I went back and cleared out some of the dead links. Quite a few of the new additions to the blogroll up there are the personal blogs of folks that contribute to the Burnside Writers, and there’s some good stuff there.

The change in title requires more explanation: he original title of this blog (A Postmodern Orthodoxy) was a not-too-subtle nod to Brian McLaren’s book A Generous Orthodoxy, for the fairly straightforward reason that it was more or less the first book that I ran across that attempted any sort of comprehensive explanation of the theology of the emergent church. When I started writing this all out, I was attending a emerging church (emerging in the style of Mark Driscoll and the Acts29 Network, not emergent in the style of Brian McLaren), the emergent way of thinking was appealing to me, and working through the issues raised by emergents seemed to be a significant part of what I was writing about.

After a couple years of reading and thinking about it (and less writing about it than I had anticipated), this isn’t true anymore. I’m going to a church that makes no attempt to be “cool” in any sort of cutting-edge cultural sense of the word – Dan Kimball would likely run screaming from the room. We don’t have a lot of members that sit around in coffee shops, or read books by Rob Bell, or that know enough about postmodernism to be able to work quotes from Foucault or Derrada into conversations about narrative theology and their personal journey. Truth be told, I’m weak on some of that, too. (I do better with quotes from C.S. Lewis.) We don’t meet anywhere especially trendy, and a pretty high percentage of the church gatherings involve casseroles. Honestly, outside of the Minnesota weather, we’d all probably be pretty much at home in Lake Wobegone.

Even though I’m not writing about it as much any more, I still read the occasional book from McLaren or Rob Bell, in addition to reading the occasional critique of the emergent movement, and I’m beginning to feel as if I understand the movement better, even if my feelings about it are still ambiguous.

In an attempt to explain this ambiguity, take, just as an example, DeYoung and Kluck’s Why We’re Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be. DeYoung and Kluck fit the demographic for emergents (Gen-X, live in a college town, grew up in a conservative evangelical church), and yet they’re strongly critical of the emergent movement – unlike virtually every emergent out there, they didn’t feel a need to leave or even seriously question an institution that is (according to emergents, anyway) modernist-influenced, and has systematic ways of looking at theology behind it.

For those unfamiliar with the emergent movement, the authors thoughtfully included a section that described what sort of things were important to those in the movement: if you think that the evangelical church is too beholden to conservative political interests, or if you think that the church should be more concerned about building community and comparatively less concerned about building institutions, or if you’re concerned about social justice, or if you feel that people, in general, should all be doing more to protect the environment, then, according to the authors, you’re probably emergent. DeYoung and Kluck’s list goes on and on, but the point is that it’s uncanny how well it described me, despite the fact that I agree with a majority of their critiques of emergent theology. According to the stereotypes, I should be emergent, too.  Like DeYoung and Kluck, I’m not.

What follows is something of what’s likely an incomplete list of the objections that have kept me from more deeply embracing what emergent leaders have taught.

>> One of the main claims that emergent theology makes is that traditional conservative theology is inadequate for our current needs, as it has been corrupted by the influence of modernism, and presenting Christianity through a modernist lens while attempting to reach a demographic that embraces postmodernism is counterproductive. While it’s certainly worth investigating how much this actually taken place, at the same time, emergent theology hasn’t seemed to make any attempts to find out what historic (as in “pre-corrupted-by-modernism”) Christianity claims. Generally, its adherents are more interested in crafting a way in which theology can be seen through the lens of postmodern philosophers. Clearly, even if this is successful, it’s only going to generate a view of theology that is only as accurate as postmodernism accurately describes reality. If postmodernism isn’t better than modernism (a claim that’s oddly absent from emergent thought), then it seems as if this isn’t going to last much longer than until we get to the next philosophical era. Postpostmodernism? I don’t think anyone knows what it’ll be called, because it’s not here yet. But tying something so closely to the zeitgeist guarantees that it will be out of date as soon as the zeitgeist changes.

>> Many of the valid critiques that the emergents level at the institutional church are possible to fix without such a radical overhaul of theology. Take a few examples: evangelicalism has been too beholden to conservative political interests. The church should be better at building communities and relationships. The church should be more willing to present its beliefs as historic. Hypocrisy in the church is a problem, as is dead liturgy, power-hungry pastors, lack of concern for the poor, and failure to properly care for God’s creation. None of these, as far as I’m aware, require embracing postmodernism. Most of them would be served just as well by embracing orthodox – as opposed to re-invented – Christianity.

>> If emergents are correct in their assessment that modern theology has been corrupted by modernism, I would expect that a theology that has been fortified (in their view, anyway) by postmodernism wouldn’t look so similar to something that has already been developed, but it does: the theology that has come out of the emerging church bears more than a passing resemblance to the liberalism that began to develop in the early 1900’s and which is still embraced in some of the more liberal denominations in the United States. The easiest explanation for this (and the only one that I can think of) was that traditional evangelicalism wasn’t corrupted by modernism to the extent that most of the emergents think that it was. If anything was, it was 1900’s liberalism.

>> Emergents seem to think that it’s not possible to take what positive lessons can be gained from postmodernism and apply those to theology while still embracing the traditional tenants of Christian orthodoxy. The more I look at it, the more I’m convinced that this becomes necessary only after buying into substantially more postmodernism thought than is probably a good idea. Most emergents seem to imply that there’s no middle ground where some may actually exist.

>> In addition, it seems that throwing “postmodernism” into the title of anything – book, blog post, name of the blog – has been done enough now that it’s lost any sort of effect outside of cheap rhetoric. Besides, trying to learn postmodern philosophy by reading mainly the writings of pastors hasn’t, for me, shed lots of light on the subject. I may have something of value to say, I hope, but my suspicion is that if I do, it’s not likely to be about postmodernism. Anyone that has come here looking for light to be shed on postmodernism was, I’m sure, disappointed.

*****

Hence the name change: for whatever it’s worth, this blog is now Stumbling back to Orthodoxy, which is hopefully a more accurate title of what I’ve actually been doing.  If it’s a reference to anything, is a reference to a book that I ran across back when I was in college: Chesterton’s 1908 Orthodoxy, in which he details his journey towards (re)accepting Christianity. Here’s a summary of the basic idea behind it, excerpted from the Wikipedia page:

. . . Chesterton likens this discovery to a man setting off from the south coast of England, journeying for many days, only to arrive at the point from which he had left. He does not at first recognize it, and thinks he has discovered something new — only to find that it has been found by many before him. Such a man, he proposes, would see the wondrous place he grew up in with newly appreciative eyes.

That’s more or less where I feel that I am right now, after what was admittedly a much shorter journey than Chesterton probably endured.

*****

All that to say: I’m still writing stuff here, off and on, and I’ll still be writing the same sort of gasbag essays on politics, theology, and culture that I have been for awhile. As time goes on, I’m guessing that there will be more about theology and probably less about the emerging church, specifically, but I’m sure it’ll still crop up from time to time.

Lessons from the Dawn Treader

We may eventually learn that one (or, given Loughner’s questionable mental stability, possibly both) of these explanations have some merit, but for anyone to attempt to claim that his motive is clear – and, furthermore, that it gives validity to one’s own political biases – seems, at this point, premature to the point of irresponsibility, and biased to the point that anyone should be skeptical.

A certain amount of debate is a necessary part of American society, government, and political discourse, and to blame the actions of one unstable person on inflammatory political rhetoric is to paint with a brush that is, in all likelihood, far too broad. Still, I suspect that majority of Americans, and hopefully a majority of Christians, see a profound problem with the incendiary levels of political debate to which we have become accustomed. Alas, the recognition of this as a problem hasn’t led to the improvement of political dialogue; furthermore, this sort of rancor seems to exist nearly as frequently inside Christian circles as it does outside of them.

This problem was raised by Os Guinness in 2008 when he published The Case for Civility. Political dialogue in 2008, if it was remembered for anything at all, was certainly not remembered for its civility; disturbingly, the book may even be more timely today.

In it, Guinness makes the case that civil political dialogue is an essential part of the American political system, and if we continue to lose our ability to practice it successfully, the American political system will not be able to survive the loss. Even more fundamentally, perhaps, is Guinness’s observation that if there’s any group of people that should treat their opponents with the respect that should be accorded those made in the image of God, it should Christians – regardless of their political affiliations. The onus of restoring civil dialogue, in our society, falls largely to the church: regardless of external circumstances, it’s the right way to treat people, and it’s what those who follow Jesus should be doing anyway.

For those of us who were raised in households where politeness was emphasized (and occasionally enforced with punishments that, to a child, didn’t seem very polite), it’s important to understand exactly what Guinness means by civility:

“Genuine civility is more than decorous public manners, or squeamishness about differences, or a form of freshman sensitivity training. It is substantive before it is formal. It is not a rhetoric of niceness, or a psychological of adjustment, or a form of conflict prevention. It is a republican virtue that is a matter of principle and a habit of the heart. It is a style of public discourse shaped by respect for the humanity and dignity of individuals, as well as for truth and the common good – and also, in this case, by the American constitutional tradition.”

As Guinness points out, for a Christian involved in the political realm, how we debate is just as important what we’re debating, even if the attention paid to the two questions is vastly out of proportion. “How would Jesus vote?” is likely less important than the amount of airtime dedicated to discussing it seems to suggest. By comparison, honest questions about how well we as Christians are doing treating those on the opposite side of the political aisle are infrequently discussed by comparison, but it’s hardly because the question is less important.

Guinness has no easy answers for how to solve this problem; there are no boilerplate solutions that are likely to lead to any solution. In order for civility to be the lingua franca of American political dialogue, it’s going to take a majority of people being willing to treat their opponents with dignity and respect at the expense of insulting, snappy riposte. In our sound-bite oriented culture, there’s no reason to believe that this will result in more votes. It will have to be done because our leaders see it as the right thing to do. So far, anyway, the rejection of ends-before-means political maneuvering hasn’t been something that is characteristic of anyone in Washington. Hopefully, that will change.

It remains to be seen if the attempts to pin the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords on the tone of political dialogue are ultimately misguided. Jared Loughner’s statements have a chance of providing an understanding of the motive, although, frankly, there’s no guarantee that his agenda will ever be clear. However, concluding that our political dialogue is fine in the state that it’s in is most likely an exercise in missing the point. If, God forbid, we ever do get to the point where the dialogue in our political debates is convincing impressionable people to assassinate political leaders, it will most likely be all too clear, and at least for the American political system, it will just as likely be far too late.

None of this, it’s worth pointing out, worked very well for me when I was a student, as it amounts to starting some things over in the middle of the school year. The natural new beginning of the year, when I was in school, was always the fall.

Not that any of this really makes any difference: it’s now the third day of the year, and the New Year’s Resolutions, such as they are, are already in shambles. For me this isn’t much of a surprise as self-discipline has never been my strong suit. Still, some sort of effort must be made, so here’s what we’re looking for this year:

1. One main (already broken) goal for the year is to write 1,000 words each day, of which this post is part of Day 3’s total. (Depending on how long it ends up being and how fast I can type, it may contribute to the goal for a few more days, as well.) The idea behind this goal, at this point, is to get better at writing and to get used to doing it, and hopefully pick up a bit of speed when trying to put words to the page. Right now, if anything that I have written looks as if it was even briefly in the room with a proofreader, it’s because it’s on draft, oh, 37 or so. Right now, constant revising is necessary and first drafts (which, thankfully, you do not have to see) are frequently so bad that I have to drink a glass of wine just so my subconsciousness gives me permission to actually type out something so horrible.

In any case, this is a skill that I’m going to need: graduate school of some sort may be on the horizon, and given my tendencies and what I like to do, trying to transform myself into some sort of writer, even part-time, seems like a good career goal. We’ll see how it goes.

Incidentally, I’ve run across a fantastic little program called “FocusWriter,” which, if you do any sort of writing at all, I recommend that you download immediately. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like right now, when I’m doing what I’m doing as of a few minutes ago:

Seriously, that's it.

The main appeal is what it doesn’t have, and that is much of anything that could possibly be a distraction. If you’re anything like me, when you sit down to write, you may not actually be sitting down to write in that there is another window in the background – email, Facebook chat, or something featuring constantly updating football scores – that is, subliminally more fun than writing another essay about the worldview portrayed in movies, for example. Focuswriter blacks out practically everything that you’re not working on, and if you’re actually trying to write, instead of play Solitaire while staring at a Microsoft Word, this is a great way to do that. Plus, you’ve got a little counter at the bottom that tells you how close you have gotten to your daily goal. (So far, in this column: 50%)

2. Closely related to the previous item on the list: get more stuff published on the Burnside Writers Collective. They published one of my columns a month ago, and I’d like to keep getting stuff up there, which means that not only do I have to write more, I’ll have to write better, as well. The long meandering rabbit-trail laden sort of blog posts that frequently find their way up here won’t fly on the BWC site, I’m sure, and I’ll have to be more concise and limit essays to a handful of thoughts instead of what they have a tendency to turn into when someone doesn’t have any editorial control over me. (If you’ve read any of my stuff, you know what this is: stream of consciousness commentary on whatever books I’ve been reading lately, which may or may not be related, in a column that may or may not have an actual point.) In any case, if you’d like to follow my adventures with the Burnside folks, the page to check is here, that has, so far, a total of one thing I’ve written on it.

3. Read the Bible all the way through. I tried to do this last year, and got through May. Here, I do not mean that I did it faithfully up until the month of May, and then stopped. What happened is it took me until the beginning of November to get to the part of the reading schedule titled “May,” at which point I gave up and started reading Tim Keller books. (These are also helpful, by the way.)

In any case, I’ve tried doing this in various forms – I started a few years ago with a little reading schedule that could be printed and carried around, and then I started inadvertently (sort of) collecting various forms of the One Year Bible. For those not familiar with this particular oddity of publishers making money off of evangelicals: the One Year Bible the entire content of the Bible divided into 365 daily readings in various ways, depending on the version that you’ve purchased. There are various forms of these, and two years ago I tried to make it through the “Chronological” version, which is exactly what it sounds like, and that didn’t really work very well. The entire thing is (not surprisingly) reordered, and it’s unfortunate that quite a bit of the dry spots, if you know what I mean, seem to happen at more or less the same time.

This year, the one I’m using has a bit of the Old Testament, New Testament, and Psalms and Proverbs for each day, the idea behind which (though the marketers haven’t said it out loud, as far as I can tell) is probably that with this approach, there’s more of a guarantee that you won’t pass any days stuck entirely in the book of Numbers, for example. It also has the rather unfortunate side effect that this copy of the Bible is extraordinarily difficult to use if you’re trying to use it for anything other than daily readings. Looking up something in the book of Malachi, for example, may take most of the afternoon.

4. Read more books than I buy, hopefully by at least a factor of three. This sounds like an extremely stupid goal that would easily be accomplished by giving my wife the checkbook, but if you read a bunch of non-fiction, this can actually be something of a challenge. Most non-fiction books worth reading generally quote or has some sort of reference to at least a couple other books, so even if I attack the reading pile diligently, I end up with a list of books that I’d like to read that look just as interesting as the books that I just finished. It’s a never-ending cycle. Most of the book recommendations that I get are from other books. (The best thing about Velvet Elvis is that it contained a recommendation for Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy, which was so good that I went out and bought four more books by Dallas Willard, only one of which I have read. Probably at this point, you’re beginning to see the problem.)

Even this can be under control – if I allow myself to pick only one book per book that I read, in theory the reading list doesn’t get any longer. Then along comes a book like Besides the Bible, to take a recent example, and as it’s pretty much just a discussion of a bunch 100 books that have (or should have, or will) influence evangelical subculture in some way. Sure, I’ve read some of them, but for me there’s no realistic way to read something like this and not come away with, oh, another 20 books that I didn’t know existed previously, but now I find it urgent to read (or at least own) immediately.

Fortunately, there are also some specific books on the “you need to read this” list that I already own: I’ve told myself before that I need to read the Patrick O’Brian novels before I start graduate school, and it’s about time for me to take another pass through Lord of the Rings, Lewis’s Space Trilogy, and the previously mentioned Dallas Willard books. I’ve got a few Ayn Rand novels, biographies, and a few critiques of her work that have been piling up on my shelf, too, and sooner or later I’ll actually make some sort of detailed investigation of objectivism, hopefully before I lose interest in it entirely. There’s a similar book-accumulation problem with regards to Niebhur’s Christ and Culture – I saw it quoted in various books, so awhile back, I got a copy. A few months later, I saw a book about Christ and Culture by another D. A. Carson, so I bought that, too, and then this part of the story repeats a few times with various authors and critiques of Niebhur’s thoughts. Now I have a pile of Christ and Culture-related books that I probably shouldn’t read until I read the original, and, well, at this point you can probably see why this is a good goal for me this year.

5. Fit into all the pants in my closet. I’ve been steadily putting on weight for the last few years, and when I go to the gym on a regular basis and don’t have a nightly martini right before going to bed (a bad idea, I know), I generally maintain my weight or lose the excess. When I’m on the road for work (with the inevitable eating out that this entails), or I don’t have access to a gym, or I just don’t go, then I put on weight. This is pretty basic stuff, and as far as I can tell doesn’t call for any expensive exercise machines or weird diets. I just need to eat healthier and/or less, and exercise more.

Part of the goal, here, is economy: I’ve refused to get rid of any of the pants that I used to be able to get into, even though I cannot get into them currently without the help of a roll of duct tape, most of a jar of Vaseline, and a bare minimum of 45 feet of medical tubing. Trust me, it’s not a fun process, but if I keep going to the gym and eat more salads, this should get easier.

*****

In any case, this blog is probably going to get a few more updates if I can stick to writing as much as I’d like, so hopefully it’ll be worth your time to come around . . . at least in the sense that there will be more frequent updates. It remains to be seen if the writing gets any better.