The Old Man and The Sea

For a long time now I have felt that it might be a good idea not only to review Christian books on this blog but any book from a Christian perspective. I'm often aware of my own lack of culture, both Gaelic and English, and wish to do something about it. Travel often broadens the mind.

For the past six days I've been in Paris with my good friend Jason Lewallen. Ernest Hemingway came up a lot in discussion with Jason and other Americans I met, as well as his appearing in the film Midnight in Paris. So, when I was in Shakespeare and Company book store I purchased the book which won him the Pulitzer Prize, The Old Man and The Sea.

I read it within three days and I was really surprised at the sort of book it was. I had expected difficult prose with articulate language that would tickle the fancy of the intellectuals and academics among us and be lost on a simple lad from Lewis. What I got was a simple but graphic tale of a sad old man down on his luck and fishing alone when suddenly he has the adventure of a lifetime, and we with him, on his boat catching his biggest ever fish. The story is filled with love (of a young boy who cares for the old man who taught him how to fish), mystery, intelligence and experience, and tragedy. We are swept along the ocean given details most mundane but in such a way as that we are gripped and our interest held firmly until finally we reach the end of the tale where our man survives a hero in a humble community.

Try Hemingway. Tolle Lege.

My God is True!

Paul D Wolfe is a Presbyterian Pastor in Virginia, USA. When he was 28 years old and studying in Seminary he was diagnosed with dreaded cancer. This was a great trial for he and his new wife, Christy. They had been married less than a year. This book is his account of what he went through and how his understanding of the word of God challenged and helped him through it.

Having recently had a loved one going through cancer treatment this book really does consider the real trial that cancer brings into the lives of families. But it brings great comfort to the Christian that knowing who and what God is, and that he is sovereign over all things makes even cancer a trial that 'works together for good to those who love God' (Romans 8:28).

Wolfe writes:

There was a good fight to be fought, the fight against non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and almost as soon as I was diagnosed we strapped on our boxing gloves. But we did so knowing that the outcome of that fight - whether the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat - was in the Lord's hands. We also knew that even if I lost the cancer-fight our heavenly Father would use that defeat to bring about the most thrilling victory of all: my entrance into the presence of my Saviour.

What a difference knowing the Lord makes! Whether in the trials of life or in death the Christian is blessed because of the life and death of Christ.

Wolfe writes in three sections about the diagnoses, the treatment and the aftermath. He gives his story then reflects on his experience through the teaching of scripture and gives great (though very American) illustrations and quotations from old writers like Calvin, Edwards and Dabney among others. The book is a very easy read (I read it in three sittings) with much encouragement and light for those in darkness - whatever the trial.

It really is a blessing for us all that Wolfe survived his cancer to produce this little book subtitled 'Lessons Learned Along Cancer's Dark Road.' Tolle Lege.

Preaching and Preachers

Martin Lloyd-Jones was a highly regarded minister of the gospel in England and Wales in the past century. Prior to entering the ministry he was a medical doctor of repute and often throughout this volume he refers to medical analogies.

Lloyd-Jones is of course a Welshman but he speak with one of those Welsh accents that you are convinced is posh-English. You therefore might expect him to be pretty dry. But this book betrays such an image. It is made up of Lloyd Jones’ mature thoughts (published after he had retired) on the work of the ministry - and particularly preaching. It is actually a transcript of lectures he delivered at Westminster Seminary and was printed in 1971. In the preface he counsels us to read them as his thoughts on preaching after forty-four years in the ministry rather than an authoritative guide on how to preach.

Throughout the book he qualifies much of his advice by saying that there can be no set rule and every preacher must find his own way of doing things. It is a great help if read in such a spirit. He covers most important themes - the primacy of preaching; how to select a text; the form of a sermon; the content of the sermon; the preachers attitude to the word; the preachers love for the people and many other major ideas. He also advises on more minor issues - to the extent of giving architectural advice to those who build churches!

All the lectures are given with a serious aspect where he gives genuine counsel to all in the ministry but there is also a great deal of humour mixed in. The stories from his own experience can be especially poignant and make the book a very warm read.

All in all a good book. A must read for preachers and a tonic for the 21st century pastorate.

On Saturday I read Max Lucado's Out Live Your Life. It's not often I read a book in a day. I wouldn't say I couldn't put it down but I can say I was happy not to put it down.

Lucado has written a lot of books. This is the 2nd one I have read. His style is readable and simple. This book is stimulating and encouraging.

It is about the book of Acts. Lucado wants us to realise that the group who began the work of the Christian Church two Millennia ago were straightforward simple men and women who went forward in faith and performed wonderful works under God. He claims that the Church today must learn lessons from and walk in the ways of these old Christians.

We are all ordinary just like the fishermen and tax-collectors of Jerusalem. We have to work together as a united group against the powers of darkness. We may be asked to give up much, even our lives, for the cause and kingdom of Christ. Stephen is a great example for the many throughout the world today whose lives are threatened because they believe in Jesus. What are we giving up for him? Compassion, humility, prayer and many other issues are shown from the Acts and examples are given of modern-day examples of the work and faith of individuals all over the world who try to fulfil the great commission of Jesus.

We need reminders of these things. We need to be encouraged to continue in the faith. We need to see that these men of God of old had the same faith the church of today has. God is still at work. The Church continues to grow after that initial explosion at Pentecost.

Let's see God in everyday life. Let's serve God in our lives.

The book concludes with the following:

None of us can help everyone. But all of us can help someone. And when we help them, we serve Jesus.
Who would want to miss a chance to do that?

Unity & Diversity

Unity and Diversity: The Founders of the Free Church of Scotland is a set of mini-biographies by Sandy Finlayson and is published by Christian Focus.

I've just finished reading this book after borrowing it from William Gibson. It is very easy reading and a straightforward topic and Sandy Finlayson writes very sympathetically of the Fathers of the Free Church. His purpose is to provide a modern, honest appreciation of some of the men who stood on principle in the mid-nineteenth century against the interference of government in the affairs of the Church and walked away from manses and stipends not knowing what the future held (but knowing who held the future!).

The selection of men he chose to study is eclectic. The diversity of men who stood together in the Free Church is notable. They all held to a Biblical Conservatism yet some were tight confessionalists whilst others held loosely to some confessional teachings. Some were influenced by their own local culture and heritage whilst others were interested in high culture and wished to better society through music and art and science. Some had a burden for their home city, whilst others took the message of the cross to foreign lands. Some were highly concerned with the social troubles of their congregations while others were not so much but all were concerned for the welfare of the souls of their congregations. They had a passion to get the gospel spread at home and abroad. They saw the gospel as having a spiritual application and being for the eternal welfare of body and soul. They had rejected a worldly attitude to ministry and a cold attitude to the Scriptures whilst retaining a warmth and love for people and for evangelical fellowship with all who loved the Lord Jesus in sincerity.

Thomas Chalmers, Robert Candlish, William Cunningham, Hugh Miller, Thomas Guthrie, James Begg, Andrew Bonar, Rabbi Duncan, Alexander Duff and John Kennedy are all given a brief chapter of biography.

The Scottish Church could do with taking an interest in her forefathers. If we would have this kind of Christianity perhaps we could be used to win back the lost land of Scotland to Jesus. That that would be our passion and aim.

Oneself as Another

An Abbreviated Review of Oneself as Another by Paul Ricoeur

This is all too brief, composed in haste, and unfair to the author. Hey, that makes it kind of like sermon prep, right?

The question 'how people change?' assumes that we know the 'what' and the 'who' of people. In other words, it assumes a tacit understanding of the nature of identity. This is precisely the topic reconsidered by Paul Ricoeur in his both cryptic and brilliant study Oneself as Another. The title summarizes the thesis of the book: "the selfhood of oneself implies otherness to such an intimate degree that one cannot be thought of without the other" (3). One could paraphrase this remark by saying that no individual defines or discovers himself. Ricoeur begins his argument by distinguishing between 'idem' and 'ipse' identity (idem meaning 'same' in Latin and ipse, 'oneself') Thus idem refers to identity as sameness. It replies to the question "what am I?". Ipse is identity as selfhood, the response to "who?". There is no doubt that our culture tends in varying degrees to conflate or isolate these two forms of identity. On the one hand, the corporate drone measuring his life by overtime hours and cigarette breaks may have lost sight of "who" he is. His identity has been reduced to 'whatness'. On the other, the American Idol contestant is so secure in "who" she is that the facts of pear-shaped hips and a squawking voice are irrelevant. So how then do we find out who we are?

Ricoeur starts by criticizing any approach that begins by positing the subject as 'I'. A notion of self only emerges by considering the self in relation "to the I-you of interlocution, to the identity of a historical person, to the self of responsibility" (11). In other words, there is not direct access to self-identity. We only know ourselves reflexively, only by relating to other persons, within a community, and in the mode of responsibility. All of this fits well in a covenant framework. Moreover, Ricoeur resists any attempt to ground oneself on epistemic certainty. The means of identity is attestation, a word Ricoeur tells us belongs to the grammar of "I believe-in" rather than "I believe-that." Attestation is supported by testimony "inasmuch as it is in the speech of the one giving testimony that one believes" (21). This point is significant and worth unpacking. Ricoeur admits that attestation is vulnerable and fragile: "there is no "true" testimony without "false" testimony" (22). Truth about oneself is not guaranteed as the apostle John is so vehement to iterate. Only one recourse exists against false testimony: another testimony "that is more credible" (22). To gloss with theological application - extraneous to the text - a person identifies himself by the testimony of the Holy Spirit and the communion of the Spirit within the church. These are the faithful witnesses through which--in terms of our union with Christ--we gain "the assurance of being oneself acting and suffering" (22).

Ricoeur confronts the paradox of sameness and selfhood from numerous angles. Sameness is a question of reidentification. We tend to think of it as a substance. Therefore, in terms of identity, the substance of a person is the sedimentation of habits and traits that become one's character. Ricoeur says, "By character I understand the distinctive marks which permit the reidentification of a human individual as being the same" (119). Yet, is character the only way of conceiving of selfhood? If so, "who" we are is simply a function of "what" we are. At this point Ricoeur introduces the concept of promise-keeping. The fact that a person can make and keep a promise tells us that he is irreducible to substance. A promise-maker is a "who", and the quality of this identity is manifest only in the context of trust. I think this point is worth emphasizing because of its application for believers. I take Paul's teaching to indicate the "who" of Christian identity is more important than the "what." The gospel is Christ making a promise for us that defines our identity in spite of our whatness. What are we? Sinners. Who are we? Christ. (Just so you know, Ricoeur specifically avoids any theological applications in the text, though he was a faithful 'reformed' believer in the broad sense. Look to Vanhoozer for theological application.)

I'll pull one final topic from Ricoeur. He devotes two studies to narrative identity. First of all, he asserts, "Self-understanding is an interpretation" (114). This interpretation occurs in the context of a community that identifies itself within a story. Ricoeur is earnest is saying that there are "imaginative variations" of any given narrative. Each of us finds ourselves active and passive as life unfolds. One of the paradoxes of our narrative identity is that naturally our lives have no conscious beginning or end. We do not remember our birth and we cannot foresee our death. Therefore, making sense of a life-plot depends on appropriating the stories we hear and read. This makes self-understanding a delicate issue. Ricoeur provocatively remarks, "To the loss of the identity of the character thus corresponds the loss of the configuration of the narrative and, in particular, a crisis of the closure of the narrative" (149). I think in terms of ministry this comment is pregnant with meaning. Is not the moment of crisis in faith - the unexpected death of a loved one, the discovery of a malignant illness, the frustration of encountering injustice - the loss of identity within a governing narrative and, more deeply, unanticipated skepticism about closure. The questions we ask prove this to be true: is God just? How could a good God allow this to happen? Why me? If this is true, part of how people change is growing to trust in the testimony of their story. The answer for pain is not finally belief about Providence or sovereignty. The balm of Gilead is a Person we believe-in.

Love Beyond Reason

Once I had read the DaVinci Code I had to read the rest of Dan Brown's books. I read the three of Sam Bourne's books one after the other in a month. It was similar once I read Faith and Doubt by John Ortberg I had to read more of his work. It is unusual to have felt this with a Christian author!

Love Beyond Reason is a fabulous title for a book. When we think about the love of God we are in danger of making it so like our love that we demeen it or as Calvinist, we can be in danger of elevating to such a height that we cannot experience it. John Ortberg wants to show that God's love, whilst being far from unreasonable, is above and beyond human comprehension.

Why does God love us? Why was Jesus willing to humble himself and appear in fashion as a man and to be convicted and cruelly put to death on the cross for sinners?

Ortberg does not answer these questions but he does help us to delve more deeply into them.

His illustration all the way through the book is that of his sister's rag-doll. It did not matter how ragged the doll became, she continued to love it. We are all rag-dolls he says. We all have our faults and our failings. We are all full of sin. Yet God loves us.

He begins the book addressing the nature of love. What it is and what it does. That it is caring and kind. That it is observant and willing to be inconvenienced for it's object.

Then he considers God and who and what God is. God's love has the holy Father of heaven caring for and touching this hideous world that has been marred by sin. His love changes lives and hearts. We see it in the New Testament where God the Son enters human suffering and experience. He lives a life different to any other human life. He displays a perfect example of human love. He'll even touch a leper.

Ortberg illustrates the Christian experience, as he does in his other books, with story after story from his own life and the lives of others. He shows how tough the Christian life can be but how the love of God meaning, and perhaps understanding, to all that we suffer in this present world.

The book is honest and humorous. His style is winsome and very entertaining. I think the only criticism I can make is that he becomes a little repetitive. One of the stories he tells here at length also appears in another of his books.

Why God loves his people is an impossible question to answer. That he loves us is a wonderful truth to proclaim and I found myself prticularly stirred and excited as Ortberg attempts to meditate on this deep topic. The impressive thing about his style is that he doesn't come across as the teacher wanting to show the ignorant what they do not already know. He comes across as the brother who wants to talk to us about God. Here is a conversation about God's love that we could all do with having. Tolle Lege.