Blogging Theologically

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Why I rarely review bad books anymore

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The shocking review (box boy reads a book)

For as long as I’ve been blogging, I’ve been reviewing books. There was a season where I consistently reviewed at least one book every single week. And I’m not talking a few sentences, either. I’m talking a substantive review, digging into the arguments and its effect on me.

But in 2015, my reviewing pace slowed down significantly. (I wrote about this here.)  Since then, I’ve started to get back into reviewing a little more frequently. Right now, I’m averaging two a month, which isn’t too bad. But there’s been one book that has been sitting in my pile for ages, one I’ve been putting off reviewing for at least a year now, because the only thing I could get on paper was, “I don’t even know where to start.”

It was the book that made me want to stop reviewing bad books.

Now, it might not seem like a big deal to most people. In fact, most days it’s not even a thing for me. But whenever I pick up a book that I’m planning to review—especially if it’s a bad one—I have to pause. And I think that’s a good thing. Here’s why:

I know the work that goes into a book.

I’m an author, so I know how difficult it can be to write a book. I also know how to handle a critique of my writing (eat ice cream until I can’t feel my feelings, right?). So whether a book is by someone I respect or someone I find kind of silly, I frequently find myself pausing and remembering that a person is connected to these words I’m reading. Though they are not their books, their books are a part of them, and so I want to be sensitive to that.

I’m tempted to spend a bit too much time being clever and cutting.

At the same time, I can get pretty clever with my mockery because I can be kind of mean that way. And reading bad books does not help me with that even a little bit. I had one book that I was considering reviewing and had to choose not to simply because I found myself spending more time thinking of ways to make fun than to find something worth calling attention to that might be helpful or useful (and yes, it is the same book I referred to at the beginning of this post). And that’s not even remotely close to being okay. I’m not against being clever and witty (or at least what I think is clever and witty), but where I see a big red light flashing about my own attitudes, I need to pay attention.

I want to review what is praiseworthy, not call attention to rubbish.

Frankly, the only thing reviewing bad books does is give them press. At best, it gives you some entertainment. At worst, it makes you want to read the thing for yourself (even if it’s just to mock). And that’s not good, because as both run contrary to what I’m trying to accomplish. When I read and when I review a book, I want to give attention to something I think you’d actually want to read. These don’t have to be books I entirely agree with, of course. They just have to be books that have value.

Of course, none of this means I will never review a bad book ever again. If there were a legitimate need to do so, I would probably do it. But those are few and far between. Instead, I would prefer to focus on books that are good and God-glorifying. And thankfully, there are more than enough of those to go around.

Photo credit: Daniel Glo via Flickr (Creative Commons)

How do we relate to Superman?

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I have long loved superheroes. I’ve been a comic book fan for as long as I can remember. I used to have thousands of comics and graphic novels filling every available nook and cranny of my home. And my two favorites for the longest time? Batman and Superman, naturally.

My parents’ generation remembers these two as being the World’s Finest—comrades-in-arms and trusted friends. The Batman and Superman of my generation—the ’80s and ’90s—were not exactly like that. Their relationship was strained, even antagonistic at first. They were characters in contrast: sharing the same goal, but going about it in vastly different ways.

Superman and the challenge of storytelling

My Batman was ultra-paranoid and hyper-competent, always ready with a contingency plan, and an option for neutralizing any foe (and his friends, too). In contrast, Superman has always been harder to relate to. As much as I love him, he’s always seemed a tough nut to crack, which probably explains why there seem to be so few really great stories about him, as opposed to Batman. In his universe, he is the standard of moral righteousness. He is a beacon of hope; a light in a dark world.

He was the character Generation X had a hard time relating to because he was too good. And so the creators who wrote and drew his stories were constantly trying to bring him down to our level, to make him relatable: He killed his greatest foe (General Zod), which led to a PTSD-related split of his personality.1 He abandoned Earth to wander space for a season. He grew a beard and became a warrior on an alien world. He came back, had a shave, and was killed. He came back again with a super-mullet. He lost his powers and got married (and got a haircut, too).2 He got them back and turned electric. He stopped being electric and got his real powers back again. He conquered the world, then chilled out. He went grim-dark when he thought Lois was dead. He turned into Christopher Reeve for a while. Then he lost his underoos and went grim-dark again, started dating Wonder Woman, turned into Doomsday, lost his powers, had his secret identity exposed, and…

You get the idea, right?

So I don’t envy Zack Snyder and the screenwriters working on movies like Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Justice League. No matter what you do, you’re more or less in a whole pile of trouble. And the problem always comes back to Superman himself.

A brief word about the movie

This weekend, Emily and I went to see the aforementioned Batman v Superman, the critically shredded yet highly anticipated spectacle featuring a brand-new Batman (played by Ben Affleck) and Henry Cavill in his second go-around as the Man of Steel. I didn’t have high hopes for the film going in, not because I expected the worst, but simply because I firmly believe in checking myself before I wreck myself at the theatre. So going in, I was looking to just have a good time.

And I did, so mission accomplished, right?

The movie itself was what you’d expect—visually stunning, well-acted, but strained in the story department.3  Ben Affleck brings by far the strongest performance to Batman to date (sorry Christian Bale), and Jesse Eisenberg’s spin on Lex Luthor is superb, even if I can understand why some (many?) really hated it.

How do we relate to Superman?

Which brings us back to the “problem” of Superman. And by that, I don’t mean the actor playing him, who actually does a good job bringing him to life. The problem with Superman is this: how do people relate to him? Can they really relate to this character who is so much like them, but not—who is, in many ways, their better? He is not simply more powerful, but more righteous. More humble. More caring. Whose symbol on his chest means hope (at least according to the current films).

Is it even possible to connect with such a being?

It’s no surprise that filmmakers gravitate to imagery that reminds us of Christ when depicting Superman, as was seen throughout Man of Steel, and again in Batman v Superman. This is the closest visual reference point for us. We have no other cultural touchpoint that comes close. But it also explains the problems we have relating to him, doesn’t it? If the closest imagery we can draw from to depict a character like Superman is Jesus Christ, there’s going to be a backlash.

R.C. Sproul4 once shared a story of a man who, one day, was golfing on the same course as Billy Graham. The very sight of Graham stirred something in this man. Graham was just playing golf. He wasn’t evangelizing. He wasn’t preaching. He was just playing his game. But just his presence, his known association with Christ and Christianity, stirred within this man a sense of anger and indignation.

Superman is like that, at least to some degree. He reminds us of how far we fall short of even our own standards—for his standard of righteousness comes from us. And so, he is seen as too good. He is too humble. He is too hopeful. At least, he’s too hopeful for cynical 21st century Westerners. And we hate him for it, even as we love him. We want him to be more like us, but when we try to make him more like us, we’re disappointed because what we need is for him to be unlike us.

And so we’re left with the same difficulty: what do you do with a character like Superman? How do you relate to him? And I think the honest answer is, you relate to him by recognizing him for what he is—a symbol of hope. He is a cultural landmark that draws from his creators’ faith and longing for a rescuer to come.5 Hope is intrinsic to his character, and that aspect of the character needs to be respected.

The comic books have largely lost their way in this regard. They’ve forgotten what Superman is really all about, and it shows. And Snyder’s movies, thus far, have tried to walk the line—showing reverence to the character’s roots while also giving him a meaningful story arc. He is a younger Superman, untested, still figuring out his place in the world. But because of the cultural climate, there is a tendency to shrink back from the optimism of the character. To make him darker along with us, which Snyder and co. have done. But they can’t bring themselves to go all the way on this, and that is something I respect about the choices they’ve made. Despite the grimdark air of these films, Superman still stands as symbol of hope because that is the kind of character we need him to be. He is the character you can count on to do what’s right in the end, even at the cost of his own life.6

But it means we’re always going to struggle to relate to him. He’ll always be too good for us. He’ll always remind us that we’re not as good as we think we are. But really, we wouldn’t have it any other way. Because if it were different, Superman wouldn’t be Superman, would he?

  1. During which he became the more violent vigilante Gangbuster ↵
  2. And if that’s not the perfect metaphor for Gen X, I dare you to find something better. ↵
  3. The added burden of setting up this new larger world in which Superman and Batman inhabit also strains the story nearly to its breaking point. This is the same problem I had with 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, which, particularly on a second viewing, appeared to be less about a particular vision or story, and more about setting up the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. ↵
  4. If I remember correctly. ↵
  5. Though they did not realize he had already come. ↵
  6. Yes, that is a bit spoilery, sorry. But it happened 25 years ago, so it’s cool, right? ↵

Liberating King

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I tried to like Christian music.

I really did.

When I was a new believer, I got a whole bunch of Christian CDs from the “if you’re a fan of [insert band name here]” section of the Christian bookstore. I listened to a whole bunch of stuff… but, outside of a few songs here and there, and the odd album, nothing really clicked.

Perhaps it’s helpful to understand my general opinion of the music geared toward Christians (please assume the appropriate caveats are in place):

  1. Much music intended for personal enjoyment tends to try too hard to sound “Christian,” and thus feels dishonest.
  2. The music we sing in many of our churches is even worse. Far too much church music tends to be simplistic, emotionally manipulative, and triumphalist—at best including a few disconnected statements about God, without actually encouraging us to truly know him better.

This is probably the strangest way to start a review of an album by a Christian worship leader, isn’t it?

Now, before you write me off as a “good church music stopped in the 1800s” guy who thinks every song should be a systematic theology lesson, that’s not what I’m advocating here (tho’ I do love me some hymns). As has often been said, the answer to bad church music is not to go back to older songs, but to write better ones. That’s what I love about The Modern Post and Citizens and Saints, The Sing Team and the Gettys. It’s also what I really dig about what Stephen Miller’s doing on his latest album, Liberating King.

Praise music that’s praiseworthy

From track one, it’s pretty clear this is not going to be what you’d hear from, say, Hillsong or even the Vertical Church Band.1 The songs featured on Liberating King teach us about God, even as they direct our praise to him.

This is harder than it sounds. It’s really easy to swing too far, in trying to correct from where much of modern praise music has gone. But Miller doesn’t overcorrect; instead, he maintains a strong balance between the head and the heart. Consider “You Complete All You Begin”, which is probably the standout song of all the original material on the album. Here, Miller takes listeners (and, ideally, congregations) through the story of redemption, from the first glimpse of the gospel to the end:

Completely just and holy God
Who from age to age forbeared
All the blatant acts of evil hearts
Unrelenting in despair
While promising a Son would come
The Messiah from of old
And his bruised heel would crush the head
Of the serpent, cursed and cold

This is powerful stuff. When was the last time you can recall singing about the fact that God promised to send Jesus and that he would triumph over evil? When was the last time you sung something like “When the blood of bulls could not suffice / Christ absorbed it all in him”? This is the kind of gospel rich, hope-inciting words we need to sing more often. These are songs that are directing our starting points and our responses away from us. Our emotions obviously play a role in what we’re singing, but Miller helps us to recognize that while we “could sing of [God’s] love forever”,2 it’s more helpful to do so when we understand what God has done in his love for us.

“It is well”

My favorite song on the album, though, is Miller’s arrangement of Horatio Spafford’s “It Is Well.” This is probably one of the greatest songs ever written for the benefit of the Church—not because it is terribly complicated, but because it communicates profound truth. Spafford wrote the song out of adversity, following the great Chicago fire of 1871, financial ruin, and finally, the death of all four of his daughters in a shipwreck. In other words, this isn’t an ivory tower hymn, written from a place of privilege; it is written from the same place David wrote so many of his psalms—one of grief and trial. And this is what makes it so honest, and enduring. Miller honors the original: the new arrangement “fits”, and he sings with noticeable conviction. Were I to hear this arrangement in our church’s worship gathering, I would be elated.

Songs worth singing

Liberating King did something that hasn’t happened in quite a while with any praise songs—it actually made me want to sing. And with good reason: this is an album that is worth singing because it’s an album that is clearly about Jesus, our Lord and King. And if he’s not worth singing about, what is? Definitely check out the album; I have no doubt you will be blessed in your hearing of it.

Title: Liberating King
Artist: Stephen Miller

Buy it at: Bandcamp | Amazon | iTunes

Today, I’m giving away three copies of Liberating King. To enter, all you’ve got to do is tell me about your favorite church music. What’s the song you really love to sing at church (or wish you did), and why? I’ll choose the winners at random on Wednesday, and they’ll be notified by email (followed by an announcement in the comments on this post).

  1. No offense to those who really like either of these groups; I’m just not a big fan of much of what I’ve heard from either. ↵
  2. Okay, I’m not apologizing for that one. ↵

Links I like

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Watch T4G live without being in Louisville

Head over to live.t4g.org today and register for the livestream to this year’s T4G conference. The broadcast begins Tuesday at 1 pm (EDT).

Why Do We Major in the Minors?

R.C. Sproul:

Why do we have a perpetual tendency to major in minors? As Christians, we want to be recognized for our growth in sanctification and for our righteousness. Which is easier to achieve, maturity in showing mercy or in the paying of tithes? To pay my tithes certainly involves a financial sacrifice of sorts, but there is a real sense in which it is cheaper for me to drop my money into the plate than it is for me to invest my life in the pursuit of justice and mercy. We tend to give God the cheapest gifts. Which is easier, to develop the fruit of the Spirit, conquering pride, covetousness, greed, and impatience, or to avoid going to movie theaters or dancing? We also yearn for clearly observable measuring rods of growth. How do we measure our growth in patience or in compassion? It is much more difficult to measure the disposition of our hearts than it is to measure the number of movies we attend.

We’re All Over-Protected Now

Owen Strachan:

I think many of us evangelicals have our own “safety complex.” We’ve been trained to live life fearfully, to damp down any sense of risk at all costs, and to believe that failure is the worst possible fate on this earth. I think we’ve got it wrong.

It’s hard to pinpoint how many of us have been indoctrinated into safety-hunger and inoculated against adventure. We surely have, though. Here are some factors.

Kindle deals for Christian readers

10 Reasons Big Easter Giveaways are Unwise

Jared Wilson:

Every year some churches seek to outdo themselves — and their local competition — by luring unbelievers (and I suppose interested believers) to their Easter service(s) with the promise of big shows and in some cases big giveaways.… I think this is profoundly unwise and in many cases very, very silly. I want to offer ten general reasons why, but first some caveats: I’m not talking about a church giving out gifts to visitors. Gift cards, books, etc. to guests can be a sweet form of church hospitality. What I’m criticizing is the advertised promise of “cash and prizes” to attract people to the church service. Secondly, I know the folks doing these sorts of things are, for the most part, sincere believers who want people to know Jesus. But I don’t think good intentions authorizes bad methods.

Honest Toddler reviews Frozen

How did I miss this?!?

One thing about infant siblings is that they are constantly after you. You can push them down over and over but they’ll just keep getting up slowly like a diaper zombie and try to follow you everywhere. Anna doesn’t know how to take a hint and chases Elsa up the mountain with the help of a bounty hunter.

Anna:”Come back home! I miss people telling me how cute I am and saying nothing to you even though you’re standing right there!”

Elsa: “I’m at a place in my life where I just want to be alone and focus on my witchcraft.”

Anna keeps bothering her and won’t stop. Elsa has had enough and decides to ruin one of Anna’s vital organs a little.

Anna is really messed up but at least she understands and goes home.

 

Book Review: The Gospel Commission by Michael Horton

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What is the mission of the Church? Depending on who you ask, you’re likely to hear answers that address various aspects of social and personal transformation. Some will say that we as Christians are to care for the poor, to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to be salt and light in the world.

And all of these are true. But what is the mission of the Church specifically?

Before He ascended into heaven, Jesus provided the answer to this question when he said to His followers, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:18-20).

The mission of the Church is to make disciples. But is it possible that we’ve gotten a bit off-track? Are we actually making disciples—or are we doing something else? In his new book, The Gospel Commission: Recovering God’s Strategy for Making Disciples, Michael Horton offers a careful biblical and pastoral examination of the Great Commission, offering many helpful insights into how the Church can move forward in its role.

Two Promises

This book marks the culmination of a work that Horton began with Christless Christianity and The Gospel-Driven Life. Where those books necessarily spent a great deal of time dealing with the very serious errors that have crept into the Church, the vast majority of The Gospel Commission is decidedly more positive. Following the structure of Matt. 28:18-20, Horton bookends this work with the two great promises of this verse:

  1. Jesus’ absolute authority over all things in heaven and on earth given to Him through His death and resurrection; and
  2. Christ’s assurance that the Great Commission will not fail.

These two promises are essential to the Church fulfilling its mission. Without the assurance of Christ’s authority, we have no hope, nor any reason, for making disciples. “The early Christians were not fed to wild beasts or dipped in wax and set ablaze as lamps in Nero’s garden because they thought Jesus was a helpful life coach or role model but because they witnessed to him as the only Lord and Savior of the world.” (p. 33). His authority strips away ideas of private religion because He is not simply a “personal Lord and Savior,” He is the Creator, Sustainer, Ruler, Redeemer and Judge of all the earth. In light of this, the call to make disciples is not a “nice to have,”—it’s an urgent imperative for all churches.

Additionally, because Christ is Lord—because He is decisively in authority over all things—disciples will be made. We cannot fail in the task to which He has appointed His Church. It also relieves us of a great deal of pressure. Horton explains:

Jesus is not waiting for us to fulfill the Great Commission before he returns in glory; rather, he is fulfilling the Great Commission by his Word and Spirit and will return on the day that the Father has set. This relieves us of an impossible burden, liberating us to participate in the missionary movement in which the Triune God has been engaged from the beginning of the world. (p. 294)

The return of Christ does not depend on you.

Disciple-making does not depend on you.

It all rests on the sufficiency of the gospel and His authority. Is that not good news for the weary believer? [Read more…]

Book Review: The Next Story by Tim Challies

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About a year and a half ago, work issued me my first iPhone. My wife and I to that point had been trying to avoid having a cellphone and were at a point where we couldn’t really do so much longer, simply because if I wasn’t at the office, she’d have no way to reach me (nor would anyone at work unless I was near a wi-fi connection).

Then the iPhone came home. And in some ways, it was glorious. We were able to communicate when necessary. Work could always find me when they needed me… Then we started to see the downside of this new device in that we became very, very aware of the connected-ness in a way that we hadn’t been before. Then there was the distraction. I’m naturally a fidgeter and began to find myself almost unconsciously grabbing my phone and begin fiddling with it. Before long, I found myself asking, “Who is in control here—my phone or me?”

Tim Challies gets this question. As a web developer and longtime blogger (in addition to being a pastor and author), Challies sees and interacts with digital technology on a regular basis—so much so that he’s found himself asking the same kinds of questions:

Am I giving up control of my life? Is it possible that these technologies are changing me? Am I becoming a tool of the very tools that are supposed to serve me?

These motivated him to write The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion, where he seeks to help readers build not only a theoretical and experiential understanding of technology, but a theological one as well.

The first three chapters of the book are spent dealing with the theological, theoretical and experiential background of technology. On the theological side, Challies is quick to note that God’s command to the first man that he subdue the earth and have dominion over it (cf. Gen. 1:28) implicitly commands us to create technology, whether it’s a hammer or a computer, and this creative impulse is glorifying to God: [Read more…]

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