Moving Day

Hello everyone. If you happen to check this blog three months after I came back from Israel, I'm impressed. Nevertheless, if you do see this post, it is either because you were suddenly interested in reading something from this blog, or you just got an email about a new post or something. If the former is true (and I suppose the latter, too), I've moved to Word Press. Feel free to read my musings there. And leave a comment to let me know you're reading.

http://ajwsmith.wordpress.com/

ps- I suppose this means this is my final post. Thanks for reading! It's been fun. Shalom!

On old experiences in light of new ones

Well everyone, there isn't much to say other than the semester is almost over and I'm still trying to keep myself from forgetting everything I've learned. Such a thing can only end in failure, especially for me. I guess it's not completely over yet, but as I take my last final tomorrow and allow God to put the finishing touches on this semester, I can't help but think about how fast everything went. I can't help but remember how much I've learned about Jesus and how much Jesus has shown me about what he demands from the world, and from me.

I realize that some things can't be described in a short piece of writing, and even fewer things can be described in a blog post written at three in the morning. Still, I think it's important for me to meditate a little bit on the end. Not necessarily just the ending to this semester, but endings in general, any ending in the history of endings. Most people's opinions about the end change dramatically the closer they get to it. Usually, when one experiences something stretching and often uncomfortable (like, say, studying in Israel for four months with fourty people they have never met before when they're a homebody from the American Midwest and have never been to another country other than Canada and have this peculiar problem making friends in a short period of time), they generally look forward to the end as some kind of pressure relief, a chance to snuggle back into what feels good. They see proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, and though it may be far off, it's there, and they can see it, wish for it, hope for it, dream about it. They can imagine what it's like to leave the dark, damp shaft and walk back into the comfortable and face-warming sunshine.

Please excuse my platutudes in this post; I know I'm rehashing (ha! another cliche) material that has been used ad nauseum (cliche) by other writers (passive voice) for years (cliche). But after studying a lot of random information about Jewish religion/culture/literature and battles and kings and dynasties of the history of Ancient Israel, and then written papers and essays about said topics, my creative well has not received rain in a couple weeks. My writing suffers after such a period. I wouldn't be surprised if I totally lost my sense of humor soon (assuming I even had one to begin with). Nevertheless, the point remains. People outside the society that they have grown accustomed to long for when they can return to that society. If they realize they can't return (or worse, don't want to), they generally go insane and personify exactly what it means to be depraved (Lord of the Flies, if you missed the allusion). But, that is not the case with me. I knew I would eventually return to America, and I have looked forward to that event for a while.

But a strange thing happens next. Just as this person gets close to the light, they realize that it's different than they remember. No that's not it, they think. It's the same light. The same people, the same places, the same home, the same everything. But something is still different. That's when they realize that they are the thing that is different. Walking through the tunnel did something to them, changed them in some way. Whether it's for the better or not is irrelevant, and it can't be determined then anyway. But they are different. And they've found that this tunnel has become a new kind of comfort zone, they've gotten used to the damp darkness. They've become comfortable in the uncomfortable. And this happens to the point when going back to what is comfortable is a different, new, even uncomfortable experience. The tunnel ain't so bad after all, or maybe that light outside isn't quite as warm and welcoming as it seemed in my head. That's when a two-fold problem arises.

At various times in my brief and wondrous life, I've thought about writing a story about a high school kid who is mature enough to get what he wants but naive enough to not know exactly what that is. I always imagined him dating a girl for a while. She's a nice girl, not alarmingly gorgeous or anything, but simple and classy and smart. She's too good for him, to be honest, but like every generally thoughtless person who has something good, he takes her for granted. I always thought he eventually got bored with her and moved on to the enchanting, smoking hot, even a little promiscuous cheerleader girl (no offense to cheerleaders, this is just what was in my head). Now I know that he moved on to the second, prettier girl because he wanted to try something new, to go for something quite different. But after awhile, he realizes that she isn't really any better than what he had before. In fact, she is a little worse. But he doesn't want to go back to the first girl, but he doesn't really know why. It could be that he doesn't want to embarrass himself, but it could also be that he doesn't want to embarrass her. Furthermore, his tastes in girls has changed significantly. But, at the least, he knows that he's had enough of the edgy girl. So now he's stuck with no girl, and he can't figure out whether that's because he likes both girls or because he doesn't like either.

You can now see why I've never written such a story. But, like Chesterton's English yactsman, I guess I can use it for the sake of illustration. Our friend in the high school dilemma is in the same position as the man at the end of the tunnel. They are both at the end of something different, and they want/don't want to enter the thing that is old. They are both afraid that something will be lost from either, maybe something good from the first experience, maybe a lesson from the second. Either way, there is great ambivalence in both. They don't know what to do.

One lesson I've learned in Israel is that things are never as good as they seem nor are they as bad as they seem. Being in Israel seemed like it would be the experience of a lifetime (which it was, but in a different way), and that I would squeeze every moment out of my time here and be perefectly content in the end. Of course that was fantasy. When I was here for a month, all I wanted was to be home with my family, where everything is comfortable and things are predictable and expected. I don't have to be flexible, I don't have to adjust. Everything is as I like, or want to like. But of course, I was missing out on what truly was a great experience here. By the grace of God, this attitude didn't last long, and officially died in my Apathy post about a month ago (though it was in its final stages well before that). But nothing has been quite at the extreme I expected. The only thing that truly exceeded all extremes I could think of was my brief time with my parents, which is honestly already one of the most treasured experiences of my life. That was the one thing that actually was as good as it seemed. But the rest of the time is marked by a longing for the future and a dissatisfaction with the present. I actually realized this while watching Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Yoda is rebuking Luke, and telling him how he has no patience. "Never his mind on where he was," Yoda says to Obi-Wan's spirit, "what he was doing. Hmpf." This really convicted me, actually. We should definitely show Star Wars clips on a regular basis. There is inspiration in these words.

The two-fold problem I mentioned earlier is this wood between the worlds, where one doesn't feel comfortble where he is because he wants to go home, but doesn't feel completely comfortable at home because of how he has changed where he is. It's the pimply-faced kid without a girlfriend. How does he go back to the society he is comfortable in when he no longer feels comfortable in the comfortable? Or, God forbid, that he goes back to his old, comfortable ways, before he moved into the tunnel. It's a Catch-22 of the highest degree.

If you haven't realized it by now, I am the man. Here I am, at the end of the tunnel. What do I do? How do I return home? Should I be myself? What does that mean? How have I changed? For the better? What if I've changed for the worse? Then what? Then what, smarty-pants?

Well. It's now four in the morning. I'm writing this in an e-mail room and I'm getting angsty because I'm already getting worried about the "real world", things like dorm situations next fall and things like that. This whole essay is like an Ernest Hemingway short story. The point is there is no point. Sorry to ruin it for those of you who read it all. There are no answers, at least none that we can see. This is like the greatest parables of Jesus, the ones that have no endings like the Prodigal Son. The ending is not told, but lived out instead. Real life is the ending. The same is for this post. When I return home, how I act is how this essay is answered. Perhaps I haven't changed at all (that's always hard for the person who think's they've changed to gauge). Maybe I'm the same old Andrew Smith who will talk about sports and be sarcastic and make stupid puns and talk about reading and like to annoy people just to see their responses. Maybe none of that will change. It probably won't. But hopefully something changed. Hopefully, I don't come back the same Christian that I was when I left. Hopefully, I have a greater impact on those around me for Christ. Hopefully, I am more than a friend, but a brother. I know this is cliche. Ending posts with Christianese is not only safe, it's almost required. That's why I don't like doing it. But my admission will hopefully underscore its necessity all the more. Some things are more important than good endings in essays or literary allusions. This is one of them. The primacy of the gospel and the kingdom of God. This is what is really important. Hopefully, that's what's changed the most: that I actually live that and don't just write it. Then it won't really matter whether I always feel comfortable (BTW, of course I'll feel comfortable when I'm home), or whether I've really changed. It just won't matter.

But I Don't Speak Egyptian Very Well

So we're leaving for Egypt early tomorrow morning. I'll check back in a week. So long.

Galilee: Where the Stones Cry Out

For evangelical churches, one of the biggest selling points for going to the Holy Land is having the opportunity to “walk where Jesus walked.” The phrase has become cliché—it may have been platitudinal from the beginning—but the idea is significant to most American Christians. The older, more sacramental and iconographic (among other things) Christian branches think the places where Jesus lived and ministered are important, though for fundamentally different reasons. While Protestants glean a more subtle, spiritual significance from experiencing the Holy Land, Catholics and Greek Orthodox see such trips to Holy sites and the churches built over them as meritorious deeds designed to achieve some kind of divine favor. Both views are flawed. “Walking where Jesus walked” doesn’t really make sense, if you think about it. The water Jesus sailed on and walked on and probably even swam in is gone, and the actual soil that Jesus touched is buried beneath two-thousand years’ worth of destruction layers and other debris.

And even if the dirt itself were the same, there’s no way to know the exact spots where anything happened. This can be frustrating to evangelicals; at least those who want to feel like they touched what Jesus touched. As for the more orthodox churches’ sacramental view of the land, there is nothing physically holier or more important about the land of Israel than any other place in the world. When the woman at the well in John 4 asked Jesus whether it was better to worship in Jerusalem—as the Jews did—or to worship on Mount Gerazim—as the Samaritans did—our Lord’s answer was characteristically both unexpected and cryptic. He said that the day will come when “neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father…true worshippers will worship in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.” It doesn’t matter where you worship, but who you worship. It is not better to be baptized where Jesus was—in the Jordan River—than it is to be baptized in a sticker blue plastic children’s swimming pool behind a trailer church in some backwater region of Kentucky. Our prayers are not more valuable when uttered in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher than they are in the dark and smelly loneliness of dorm closets.

On the other hand, being in Israel and seeing the places where Jesus walked and manifested his divine authority does stir a deeper meaning in our hearts to the words Jesus spoke and the things Jesus did. I wanted to get that in there before my parents begin to wonder whether their trip here in a couple weeks is worth it. There is a special spiritual impact that comes with seeing remnants of old Roman roads, touching cracked stones torn down in charred heaps from Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem, in sitting by the Sea of Galilee at night and feeling the waves lick at your ankles as you watch the lights of Tiberias glisten beneath the moon, knowing that Jesus may have done the exact same thing. There is something to be said for walking through the broken streets of Beth Shean, skipping stones on the sea while standing on the scattered ruins of Capernaum, sleeping in Nazareth—the very town where Jesus spent most of his life. There is power there. Certainly not saving power, meritorious power, or even special power that one only experiences when they come to Israel. Christians are not ordered to take pilgrimages. The fact that I've sailed on the Sea of Galilee and John Piper hasn't doesn't make me a better Christian. There isn’t anything particularly holy about Galilee; in fact, selling droplets of water from the sea is the kind of thievery that may have ignited a whip-cracking, table-shoving anger in Jesus.

But there is still power. There is still a spiritual meaning that can be gained from being where Jesus was, and yes, walking where Jesus walked. Galilee provided that. It renewed my mind to the reality of Jesus’ life, scrubbed the rust off the parts of my faith that have grown old and jaded to the specifics of the Gospel. We evangelicals often get caught up in the message of Jesus’ ministry that we forget the means. If the places weren’t important, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John would have never gone to such tedious lengths to record them. If geographical and historical studies of Jesus’ life were meaningless, then Jesus going in the wilderness, or being crucified in Jerusalem, or dying over Passover, or being born in Bethlehem, or going down to Egypt after birth, or experiencing agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, or any of the other things he did would have never been mentioned in such detail. Instead, Jesus came down to earth, came right here, to the very places where those before him failed, and overcame it all to purchase redemption and victory over sin.

Places have memories, and Jesus turned all those memories onto their heads. To stand on those sites—to sleep where Jesus slept, see what Jesus saw, and sweat where Jesus sweated—is to feel and see the truth of what we believe. Our faith is not a lie, it wasn’t made up, it wasn’t conjured by some master storyteller—unless the storyteller is God, of course, who not only wrote the story but orchestrated the flow of history to create it (something modern writers can’t touch; we have to make up our stories). These places—Nazareth, Cana, Capernaum, Mt. of Beatitudes, Tabgha, Tiberias, Bethsaida, Caesarea Philippi, Chorazim and all the rest of Galilee—testify to the truth of what we believe. It is powerful indeed when inanimate nature can speak so loudly and attest so strongly to the truth of what Jesus said and did. It can drown out those who deny Jesus’ claim to deity, as it did when he died and the wind blew and the rocks were split and the tombs were opened. Even when stubborn man doesn’t obey the voice of its creator, nature will. That’s what makes Galilee so special—it declares the glory of God, and validates what we believe. It points to Jesus, and reminds us once again of what makes his so awesome. And anything that does that is worth its weight, even if we don’t exactly walk where Jesus walked.

Apathy and Anxiety

One of the great difficulties of this trip has been the constant fight against becoming passive to the experience. It’s so easy to fall into a kind of glazed, un-engaging state of mind—especially after everyone told me how it was an amazing opportunity or such an incredible experience or pressed upon me how it would be life-changing. After hearing that so often, it was almost natural to slip into this jaded mindset. Of course it’s going to be life-changing, I thought. You don’t need to tell me over and over again.

Of course such a thing is natural. My friends and family were always going to be excited for me, and they were always going to remind me about how it was going to be so amazing and awesome and life-changing and all that. That was always going to happen because it’s all true. It’s true because people around me have experienced it and returned with glowing reports—people like my grandparents and Katie Slusher and Preston Sprinkle. These are people who have been where I am, lived where I live, seen the things I’ve seen, talked to the people I’ve talked to, and encouraged me to go in the first place. The latter two stayed in the same dorms, learned in the same classroom, ate the same potatoes and rice and crusty pita bread (well, not the exact same obviously, but you get the idea), hung out in the same miklat, exchanged money with the same Shaban and listened to the same Bill Schlegel talk about the same Kiriat Jearim and insist that he is not a tour guide. They know the trip, they know how it changed their lives. Therefore it’s going to change mine too.

But that’s the trap. Their great experience doesn’t guarantee one for me; it doesn’t give me any kind of “earnest of success” or any degree of certainty. There are bad stories too. Granted, there may be one bad IBEX experience for every twenty good ones, but who’s to say I’m not the unlucky one? Who’s to say that I’m better than the person who took it for granted? Who’s to say that I’m shrewder than the person who listened to everybody talk about how awesome and life-changing the experience was going to be and took it all in stride, but got to the end and realized that they wasted the whole time?

No, the greatest fear of IBEX is not bombs or terrorists or Hamas. The greatest threat to IBEX, or my experience at IBEX to be more to the point, is myself. It’s my apathy; my jaded, uncaring personality. I may not be like Katie Slusher or Preston Sprikle. I may not engage the land and culture the same way they did, and I may not glean the same enjoyment from the trip.

The great trap is the feeling that it’s going to affect me no matter what. It’s not. I have to engage the moment, live in the present, live with a “wherever you are, be all there” mindset. That’s the only way Israel is going to affect me. Otherwise, I’ll miss it all, like a lazy person sleeping on a sunny day. This is why, in our first day on the Moshav, when the forty of us sat wide-eyed and excited in the IBEX classroom, Abner told us to believe it. Believe what everyone has been telling us, believe the experience, to not let ourselves be jaded by the sweet talk of others who have had or wish for a similar experience, just believe it. If you believe it, he said, it will change your life. But if you don’t, you’ll head back to America the same person you were before—and that is a real tragedy. He told us stories about former IBEX-ers who email him and say: tell the students this semester to take advantage of it all, because I wasted it.

What is it that can possibly make us apathetic to Israel? What is it that could freeze my imagination and block my mind from the blessings right in front of me? 

I love home. I love my family. I love Cedarville. I love my friends, I love Chuck’s, I love the lake on a very warm spring day, I love the comfort of my own bed, I love watching the Mets on television, I love smelling the griddle on a lazy morning and running downstairs to see the table set and the pancakes ready to be eaten. I love playing golf beneath the warm yellow blanket of the sun, playing baseball with my brothers in the backyard, curling in a chair and reading a good book. I love the new comfort of the BTS, the ridiculous drawn-out theological conversations with Jon and Kyle, and the quiet intensity of playing mini-cornhole after quiet hour in Lawlor. I love basking in summer optimism about Michigan football with my Papa, talking to my Dad about the new way the Mets are going to fail, convincing my Mom how amazing some book is, and telling my sister how often she’s wrong. I love the feeling of orange juice going all the way down my throat in the morning, fresh strawberries, cold grapes, chocolate chip cookies just pulled out of the oven with the soft dough and melted chocolate, cheeseburgers and pepperoni pizza.

But if I dwell on these things too long, if I long for these things, if I wish and wish how I could enjoy my family or taste that pepperoni pizza, I stop living in the present. If I’m always thinking about how great it would be to be home, I’m no longer considering how great it is to be here. And that is the elusive, hard-to-pin-down and even harder to admit danger of IBEX, or any trip abroad in college. If you’re anxious for the future, if you long for where you’re going and don’t focus on where you are, you can miss it. You can miss it all.

It doesn’t take bad people to miss their opportunities. It just takes anxious—and by extension apathetic—ones. Staying in the present is difficult and draining, but in the end, it’s more rewarding.

So may I live in the moment, be someone who is “all there”, consecrate this chance and sanctify my attitude—so that in the end I can enjoy my family and friends and all those other things as a person changed and captivated by a renewed awe for Christ. And that, of course, is why I came at all.

 

 

Meditation on the significance of the parables

Story is one the most powerful and globally recognized ways of communicating. In the context of the Bible, it is different than propositional truth because instead of listing facts and theologies that inform us about who God is and how he works as revealed in Scripture, it uses the raw material of real life and presents it directly and often literarily—using strong metaphors, imagery and irony which appeal both to the emotions and the intellect. Before we get too far into talking exclusively about stories, it is important to note that the parables are not always complete stories, like the Lost Son, for example. Many parables—like New Wine in New Wineskines, the Mustard Seen, the Leaven, the Hidden Treasure, and the Pearl of Great Price—are simply metaphors or images of a theological truth, instead of actual tales.

It must be noted that stories don’t stand in opposition to propositions; they instead help to illuminate the propositions and induce responses drawn from every element of the human consciousness. Propositions tend to exercise only the intellect, while stories help us to respond emotionally and even physically. For example, as powerful as Romans is, the Bible would be incomplete if we were to only be told about Jesus indirectly, in theological jargon. To be sure, Paul’s theological handling of sin and redemption through Jesus is essential, but there needs to be more. The Gospels provide that, through carefully constructed (and divinely inspired) narratives of Jesus’ life. This larger approach to the life of Christ can help us understand the smaller significance of why Jesus told parables at all, instead of just telling us things about God directly (which he also did).

The great story of life is the Story of redemption, as revealed in the Old and New Testaments. This Story finds its crux (both literally and figuratively) in the life of its greatest protagonist—Jesus Christ, the promised and foretold messiah who will destroy the power of sin, redeem people to himself, and rebuild what God had built in the Garden of Eden but man had polluted. One of the beautiful things about Jesus’ ministry is that he often used parables to tell truths about himself and his Kingdom—stories within the Story. The parables themselves serve, I believe, a two-pronged purpose. First, Jesus often told them to puzzle and confuse the listeners. This happened often with the disciples, exemplified in the story surrounding his parable of the Sower. When he told the parable, he deliberately told it in a cryptic, difficult-to-understand way, and the disciples didn’t know what he was talking about. But Jesus didn’t hide the meaning forever, as he later explicated his own short story (of sorts, this phrase is admittedly pushing the terminology). But now the story was clarified to the disciples, and they understood its deeper theological meaning. Jesus’ parables are not propositions, just as the gospels themselves are not propositions. But just because they are not theologically presented does not mean they are insignificant, and more to the point, also does not mean that they don’t present theological truths. I don’t know if I can prove this textually because I am not a theologian nor a biblical scholar, but I think the parables are literary spotlights into theological truths.

As noted before (and this is the second point), Jesus used parables to tell the hearers something important about his Father (the Lost Coin and the Lost Son), his Kingdom (The Good Samaritan and the Pharisee and the Tax Collector), and himself (New Wines and New Wineskins). He used stories—replete with characters (obvious protagonists and antagonists), plot, juxtaposition, irony, and all kinds of other traditional literary devices—to show theological truth. This word show is significant. Any literature professor will tell you that good writing (whether fiction or non-fiction) doesn’t tell as much as it shows. Jesus used parables to show theological truths in action. Again, it is important to remember that he also told people truths directly, in order to be precise and clear. He even sometimes told his hearers what he had shown in the story, so that the theological significance will be obvious and unmistakable. And don’t forget that sometimes Jesus doesn’t tell a story, but instead simply uses a metaphor for the same purpose—to illustrate a theological truth.

Jesus used parables—stories and metaphors—to demonstrate theology about his new kingdom, not only in ways the people could relate to and understand (drawing on contemporary culture—in this case Jewish—to do so, like any good story), but also in ways that are true to the reality of it all. 

*I know I said like two hours ago that I was really busy and didn't have time to write anything, but this was just begging to get written. We talked about the parables in class today, and stories are something that I'm always thinking about (especially our mutual master story), so this just kind of came together and I wanted to put it somewhere. I'm writing a paper on literary criticism, and my thinking for that inspired a lot of the stuff in this.

Busy-ness

Sorry I haven't posted recently. I've been rather occupied of late. There are a lot of things that have to get done in the next few weeks, especially in light of the news that my parents are coming to Israel in the middle of April (!) As such, I need to get all my work done before they get here, which actually means before Travel Study to Egypt because when I get back, they will be in the country. That's about three and-a-weeks away. And we spend a week in Galilee during that time. I have to write two fifteen-page papers (one on literary criticism of the gospels and the other on Ancient Egypt in the Old Testament) and like seven 300-pagers for Jewish Thought and Culture. 

So that's my life right now. Throw in this book I wanted to write for Tyler's birthday and all the little things we do during the week like work days, Old City trips, bonfires and archeological excavations and it gets kind of frustrating. Still, it's all worth it. 

So I guess it's possible that I don't write on this until the end of the semester. But don't count on that because I'm going to have to write something for fun. Might as well be this blog. At least here I have an audience. I think. 

Shakespeare at Purim

Dressing up as Shakespeare for the Jewish holiday of Purim. I thought it was too funny to not post.

Things of the Negev variety

In this post, I hope to chronicle all the things we did on our four-day excursion through the Negev. In all, the trip was simultaneously enjoyable and humbling. It was exciting and interesting because of all the things we learned and all the places we saw. The Negev is mostly barren desert, but even the dusty, dry hills and tells and the pounding sun provide their own kind of sublime beauty. No, wandering through Wilderness of Paran may not feel as good as snorkeling in Elat or feeling the warm Egyptian air rush from the south, but I feel there’s something to be said for feeling cold, clean water rush down your parched throat as you stand in the midst of a vast wasteland. The dark land of brown and tan brings pain and testing, yes, but coming through all that and feeling relief  is, as I said before, a shade of the sublime.

Because of its dry climate, it is difficult to support an invading force. Only the best prepared forces with plenty of water can survive an extended campaign in the Negev, and even then, their conquests must be done quickly before their supplies run out. One can observe this at Masada, where in 73 A.D. the Romans were faced with a difficult siege of the giant Herodian fortress because they lacked the means to sustain a drawn-out starve-out of the Jewish revolts. Armies never invaded from the south because of this, and even the Egyptian campains hugged the coastline to the Mediterranean. With this in mind, it is easy to see why the Moses’ Israelites had to march across the rift valley and, because of Edom’s stubbornness, further south before getting on the Way of the Wilderness before stopping near Mt. Nebo on the eastern side of the Jordan River. It is impossible to sustain a long-lasting government in the Negev without extending north, or at least having a strong ally in the Judean Hill Country who is able to provide assistance during drought and protection from invading enemies and raiders.

The Negev provides a special kind of uncertainty, something Bill calls a “maybe-you-can-make-it-and-maybe-you-can’t” mentality. There is climatic instability; you are never sure if there’s going to be enough water to sustain life. One can only trust in God for provision. This is significant for understanding why God brought the Israelites into the wilderness in the first place. They could only rely on God’s provision and wisdom to lead them through the wilderness, the treacherous terrain and the “fiery serpents and scorpions”. This way, the people could not take pride in their own strength or wisdom to deliver them, but only God’s. This is a message that the Israelites learned very slowly, and it even took an entire generation to die out in the barren wasteland, but eventually they learned to trust in the Lord and not their own strength, and so the Lord raised up Joshua to lead them into the land. This trip colored and added dimension to just a sliver of what was so terrible and difficult about living and wandering in the Wilderness for forty years as the Israelites did, and also gave us a glimpse of the power and faithfulness of God for bringing them through it all kicking and screaming.

Our first stop on the first day of our four-day Negev trip was in Beersheba—a site Abraham named when he lived there in the 3^rd Century B.C. It is located in the central basin of the Negev, and it is where Abraham lived for much of his life in the Lord’s service. Jacob lived there for several years like his grandfather, and Samuel’s sons were involved with it also—as described in I Sam. 7:2. Abraham, Lot and Sarah traveled to Beersheba for the first time in Gen. 12:9-13:2, but were forced to travel to Egypt because of famine.

Sarah probably took ownership of Hagar when the Pharaoh forced them to leave. In Gen. 21, Hagar and Ishmael were expelled into the “wilderness of Beersheba”, and Ishmael lived in the wilderness of Paran and started his family there. Later in Gen. 21, Abraham and Abimelech settled on property and water rights at Beersheba, which leads to Beersheba receiving it’s name—“well of the oath.” When we were in Beersheba, we simply looked around at wells and cisterns and other ruins in the excavations. One of the most interesting things was the horned alter replica., which is based on the design of the replica they found dismantled in Beersheva. It is possible that Hezekiah destroyed it during his religious purging as recorded in II Kings.

Our second stop was the Iron Age city of Arad, where we visited some fortifications that included a Jewish temple dating back to that time period. Beneath us, there were ruins from an earlier version of Arad, one that dated back to the Early Bronze Age, meaning that it is very likely that Abraham and Lot would have walked through the very streets we did.

After visiting David Ben Gurion’s home in Sedeh Boker, we drove to Ain Avdat and took a hike through the Nahal Zin. Part of what made this hike so interesting is what had happened just a couple days before. Earlier that week and especially the weekend before, it had rained quite a bit in both that area and most of Israel, so there was a long, serpentine rivulet worming through the canyon. We walked along the stream, which caused problems for some—including me—who stepped in the water or slipped in the mud, smearing it down one side of their bodies. It was unusually cool for that area, as it was unusually cool for most of the week. But the temperate air made the trip that much more pleasant, as we didn’t have to deal with the scorching heat that most IBEX teams do. Our next stop was Avadat, a city built by Naboteans—copper miners from Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula. The ruins were rather well-maintained and the area was a neat place to walk around. Our final stop of the day was Mactesh Ramon, a giant crater in the middle of the Negev, likely formed by the Flood. We stayed in a hostel that night in Mitzpeh Ramon. And the evening and the morning was the first day.

The second day began with some wandering alone through the wilderness of Paran, and personal meditation on Deuteronomy 8. As I noted before, this trip helped me realize how dependant the Israelites were on God, and this trip to the wilderness brought that to focus. On a practical and personal level, the passage and the wilderness made me think about how sometimes we don’t think about how we’re a knife’s edge away from disaster or personal tragedy, and only the power and love of God keeps us from such fates. This small detour renewed my mind in God’s faithfulness and providence. Later, we hiked through the Red Canyons, followed by our trip to the modern city of Elat on the Gulf of Aqaba, replete with snorkeling and staying at a hotel with strange postmodern designs and billions of irritating junior high-age kids who played in the elevators at midnight with cans of Mountain Dew in thei hands, bouncing around and banging on doors. Besides that, our time in Elat was some of the best of the trip.

The next day was a trip to Timnah, then a walk through the Egyptian copper mines and the sandstone that surrounded the area. We visited a tabernacle model inside the park, and a Messianic Jewish woman took us around the tent and showed us how she thought each element pointed to Jesus. While her literal interpretations and application of the tabernacle’s elements to Jesus’ life may not have been legitimate, her overall point was. The tabernacle itself points to Jesus, and can only point to Jesus, as the true Jewish messiah. More on that later. Following a visit to the Hai Bar Desert Zoo where we looked at native predators and scavengers, we drove to Masada. That night, we hiked through the soft, powdery, moon-like Marl Canyons outside the Masada complex.

The next morning, I got up at 5 AM and hiked to the top of Masada in about an 40 minutes or so. It was winding, but worth it (ha. alliteration is awesome. hey!) After the hike up Masada, we drove to Qumran and looked at some of the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered before heading back to Yad Hashmonah. 

One last thing. I know many of you are reading this blog, and a lot of you can't write anything, but for those of you that can, I would love it if you dropped a comment here and there. It's very hard on a writer to get no responses. Makes him feel lonely. Which I kind of am, I guess. The poem is a good example. That was my first and very tenative toe-dip into the Wasteland of poetry (if you understand why I capitalized "Wasteland" in context of poetry, you get a star. And you must also comment in order to claim the star). Anyway, Shalom y'all.

Shameless Plug

My mini-essay on our visit to the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem was put (I'm trying to think of the right word. Featured? That sounds too conceited. Anyway...) on the Jerusalem Post website. You can see it here: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1236269355095&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

It was featured (there, I gave in) not because it was good, but simply because I sent it. Still, I thought it was interesting.

It has a 5.0 out of 5.0 average rating too! Woo!

i see water and buildings

   i am so full of grief

   my heart is

   absolutely shattered

 he used to call me every day

 i’m just waiting

   absolutely shattered

 

it was a beautiful day

 i’m just waiting

   my heart is

 just waiting

   absolutely shattered

 

 he used to call me every day

cantor fitzgerald

105^th floor

please call

 

my son

 he used to call every day

 i’m just

 waiting

 

please call

we love you

please call

we miss you

 

  it was a beautiful day

the smoke

an act of war

     casualties

i see water and buildings

   absolutely shattered

     more than most of us can bear

 

we miss you

   i am

we love you

   so full of grief

 

  it was a beautiful day

the smoke

     the towers

windows on the World

     are gone

i see water and buildings

 

she had a voice like an angel

   my heart is

shared it with everyone

   shattered

in good times

   absolutely shattered

and bad

she looks so full of life in that picture

 

 he used to call every day

 i’m just waiting

she had

voice

like

angel

 

i loved him from the start

   absolutely shattered

i wanted to dig him out

i know just

where he is

 

he used to call every day

 waiting

i wanted to dig him out

i know just where he is

   absolutely shattered

 

tomorrow

   beautiful

will be three months

but it feels like yester-

   day

since i saw your face

i love you

to the moon and back

    forever

 

  he used to call

voice like an angel

  everyday

shared it with everyone

  i’m just waiting

good times and bad

 

an act of war

the smoke

billows

terror in the streets

     more than

   absolutely shattered

     most of us can bear

  it was a beautiful day

smoke

 

  it was a beautiful day

  i am

love you

  so full of grief

to the moon and back

    forever

 

i loved him from from the start

   my heart is

i wanted to dig him out

   so full of grief

i know just

where he is

 

the smoke

act of war

billowing

the second tower

it was a beautiful day

     gone

A poem inspired by John Adams' On the Transmigration of Souls. Like his amazing work, this is a memory space, composed entirely of quotes from victims and media of September 11. Every word is a tribute from the family member about their loved one. The title, "I see water and buildings" is taken from the last words of a stewardess on Flight 11, just before it crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Comments and questions welcome.

Back from the Wilderness

Just got back from the Negev today. I'll write more later, but I'll leave you with a couple pictures for now.

Early Bronze Age town of Arad. This is near Hebron and Sodom, so it is possible--even likely-- that Abraham and Lot walked in these very streets. And yes, I walked through them.

"Solomon's Pillars" in the Negev, formed by rainwater. They call it Solomon's because in Israel, they have to name things after famous men like Solomon and David even if they have nothing to do with either. 

Beach at Eilat, where we snorkled.

David Ben Gurion's office. 

Christian Faith and Practice: A Response to Mudhouse Sabbath

So, that long-awaited response to Mudhouse Sabbath is finally done. I don’t expect you to read it, but I would appreciate it if you did, and especially if you engaged in some conversation about it. I would hate to spend so much time on this and not hear back from anyone about it. So yeah. Let me know.

 Christian Faith and Practice[i]

A response to Mudhouse Sabbath

 

A.J.W. Smith

Lauren Winner was sitting in a red velvet chair with a cup of hot chai one Sunday afternoon in her favorite coffee roaster—Mudhouse—when she realized that while she somewhat observed the Sabbath (Shabbat), she did not take it nearly as seriously as she did while she was still a Jew, before she converted to Christianity. Her Sabbath was peaceful, more laid back (who wouldn’t love a coffeehouse for peace and silence?), but “it wasn’t Shabbat.” Why don’t Christians take spiritual discipline as seriously as Jews? Are Christians missing the benefits Jews enjoy in their religious practices? She quotes Madeline L’Engle, a near-goddess to fans of children’s fantasy (myself included), who said spiritual discipline was like piano etudes: “you do not necessarily enjoy the etudes—you want to skip right ahead to the sonatas and concertos—but if you don’t work through the etudes you will arrive at the sonatas and not know what to do.”

Before we get too far, let me quickly note something about this article. It is a response to Lauren Winner’s book—it is not a review. Although I think this piece can help you understand the heart of Mudhouse, it is not an exhaustive evaluation of the book. If you want a summary of the book, I would first suggest that summaries are basically useless because if you want to know what the book says—you should read the thing so you understand the context of what is written. Second, I would point out that Amazon.com has generally reliable book reviews. All this to say, this essay is a personal application of the things I read. I rarely quote Ms. Winner directly, but the ideas and concepts of her work are throughout, with words and phrases she uses sprinkled throughout and duly noted. I think you can enjoy this without reading the book, and you can enjoy this if you have read it too. Hopefully, this makes you want to read the book yourself. But, in essence, this is a meditation on thoughts Lauren Winner has stimulated in my mind through her book. So if I raise questions and concerns, you can either ask me about them, or just read her book. It’s not long; I read it in a short plane ride.[i]

Lauren Winner is no longer Jewish, but she thinks that Christians have quite a bit to learn from her former religion. Ms. Winner was raised Jewish in the United State, but she met Jesus and converted to Christianity during college. In her book, Mudhouse Sabbath, she thinks that Christians have made their faith too mushy, too feely, too emotional, and suggests that we could benefit from a more disciplined, even religious (gasp!) lifestyle. Of course, she’s sure to note that “practicing spiritual disciplines does not make us Christians,” as opposed to the Jews who, according to Rabbi Hayim Halevy Donin, are defined by Torah—Jewish law. It is “what makes a Jew a Jew.” Christians do not look to these practices for salvation, instead, these practices “teach us what it means to live as Christians…discipline is related to the word disciple.”

I think Ms. Winner is right to point out that we Christians (among whom she would include herself) could learn much from Judaism’s strict discipline. When discussing the purposes of the book in the introduction, she says as much:

This book is about the things I miss [about Judaism]…It is also about the paths to the God of Israel that both Jews and Christians travel. It is, to be blunt, about spiritual practices Jews do better. It is, to be blunter, about Christian practices that would be enriched, that would be thicker and more vibrant, if we took a few lessons from Judaism. It is ultimately about places where Christians have some things to learn.” (pp. ix of the Introduction, Mudhouse Sabbath).

And why not? If there’s one lesson contemporary Christianity could afford to learn (and we all know there’s not just one), it’s personal, regular spiritual discipline. How many times do we hear people talk about “carnal Christians” as if such a thing normal, or okay? After all, they tell us (perhaps not directly) that even a carnal Christian is still a Christian, they just won’t get as big a mansion in heaven and won’t get quite as many crowns to lay before Jesus’ feet. It represents, unfortunately, the typical American Christian— a Christian on Sundays and carnal the other six—and it seems that they are getting, quite literally, the best of both worlds. Redemptive fire insurance (because no one wants to go to Hell), and orgies of pleasure in this one.

Of course, this is extreme for most Christians. We want to live lives crucified with Christ, in newness of life, but we stay an arm’s length away from practices or rituals or liturgy because they seem too rote or mechanical to be truly Christian. We think that such things are too Lutheran, too Anglican, too Catholic, or as this book points out, too Jewish. We are terrified of that word “religion” because it has been reduced to modern shorthand for works-based justification. Pastor Mark Driscoll, a Reformed evangelical whose ministry and preaching style I greatly respect, does this often, saying religion is the sin of Pharisees, and even titling one of his messages “Why I Hate Religion.”[ii]

This kind of attitude toward religion comes from good intentions, especially in Driscoll’s case, because Protestants have been rightly trained to embrace Pauline/Lutheran justification by faith. This rich theological truth teaches that we are not save by “works of righteousness which we have done,” but by the grace and forgiveness of God, purchased by the rich and atoning blood of Jesus and applied to the sinner through faith from the Holy Spirit. We’re heard this story all our lives, we know all this, in fact you probably just skimmed over because you’ve read it, or something similar, so many times.

But religion isn’t a bad word at all. Some say that they don’t use the word “religion” because they want to make a meaningful impact on our world, not just sit in their studies or bedrooms memorizing scripture, reciting prayers, pondering theology or fasting. That’s all just religion. I want to do something that matters, they say. Semantically, “religion” isn’t quite the catchphrase we generally assume it to be. Most think of the Pharisees’ overly ritualistic lives as the typical Biblical definition of the word, but there are a couple things wrong with this.

First, the Pharisees aren’t the bad guys we make it out to be. The Pharisees were the good Bible teachers of their day, the literalists trained in conservative seminaries. Even their rules were not thought to be legalistic, just safe. This sounds no different than the fundamentalist communities we grew up in. The Pharisee’s religion was not all bad, they just took it too far at times, and worst of all, rejected Jesus in favor of it. Anything that someone holds on to in Jesus’ stead is probably being misused. So if this is true, religion for the Pharisees is hardly evil, just overextended. They try to make it do too much.[iii] Second, James points out that such misuse is not the full meaning of the word, as he defines religion as visiting orphans and widows in affliction. He calls such acts “religion pure and undefiled pure and undefiled before God” (James 1:27).

The religion is “pure”, implying that it can be defiled or corrupted. Without going into too much detail on a subject you all understand, there is a delicate balance between the next chapter of James (the one that says “faith without works is dead”) and Ephesians 2, the one we all memorize in Awana (“for by grace you have been saved…not of works”). The only way to reconcile these two passages while remaining true to their respective contexts is to say that works (which includes, but is certainly not limited to, rituals, practices, liturgy, spiritual discipline, etc.) do not save—grace through faith does that—but our faith is empty and meaningless without them. Works are the outworkings of our faith. To borrow an oft-used but accurate phrase, good things we do and worshipful things we do for God are not faith through works, but faith that works. I think this includes how we choose to worship God, and rituals and spiritual discipline are solid, reliable ways to stay true to the Lord. I hope to demonstrate this through the following points—to show how our faith can be enriched by adopting Jewish ideas, not the practices themselves which ignore the true Messiah, but the concepts and reasons behind the practices. I think this can make our Christianity, as Lauren Winner put it, “thicker and more vibrant” and eventually lead to a deeper understanding of and appreciation for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

            Isn’t liturgy just something Catholics do?

Over break, I met with my former teacher and (not former) friend Chris Pluger. We met at Stony Creek Roasters in Cedarville, and as I drank my Columbian Roast we chatted about Holy Communion, literature, the church, theology (per usual) and Israel, among other things. One of the things we discussed was liturgy and Christian discipline. I think we talked about it when he was telling me about Mudhouse, but I don’t remember for sure. One of the things we noticed was that some form of liturgy exists even in non-liturgical churches. Everyone lives by pattern, that’s how we’re wired. We have our routine, and we stick to it. We all struggle with intentional habits, but the unintentional ones are the easiest to start and the hardest to break.

Think about it. What do you do when you get up in the morning? Invariably, you take a shower, always putting the shampoo in first—lather, rinse, repeat—then the conditioner, then you soap up your body, rinse off, use face wash if you have it. Turn off the shower, towel down, choose clothes to wear—taking great care to make sure they match—get a bowl of cereal for breakfast, fill your bowl halfway (give or take) with 2% milk and eat while you read the newspaper, do your devotions, or catch up on some studying for that really hard class. And it’s definitely 2% milk. Always 2%.

See? Pattern. Routine. The same thing every time, with minor variations. Our churches are the same way. The same song-style every morning, the same music pastor, the same “good morning and welcome to ______ Church. Could you please fill out the information card if you’re a visitor? I know there are some of you out there…” The choir sings, then the pastor’s 50-minute sermon with shiny powerpoint, invitation to follow.[iv]

I’m not saying this is necessarily bad, but this is a sort of liturgy. It’s a routine, performed roughly the same every week. I’ve heard people criticize traditional liturgy for several reasons. They say liturgical prayers, which are written-out and designed, aren’t good enough because they don’t come from the heart. Now, I have no problem with extemporaneous praying—I think it has its place—but have you ever encountered a situation in your life when you wanted to pray and articulate your feelings, but for whatever reason (relationship trouble, financial trouble, academic trouble, you just lost your job, whatever—essentially human weakness and effects of sin) you had no words to say? Your heart was full, but your mind was empty. This happens to me all the time. It happens to Lauren Winner too, and that’s why she values her Jewish prayer book, even though she’s a Christian. It gives her the words to pray when she can’t conjure them up herself. This is why some people use the Psalms to pray. Deeper, richer prayers come from the page into our hearts, and we give them to God.

I was a senior in high school when I was first introduced to the Valley of Vision. The book is a collection of Puritan prayers, laden with theological truth and practical application within that doctrinal framework. They are uniquely Christian, penned by giants of the faith like Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, and David Brainard. When I first started reading it, I fell in love with the theological language of the prayers, which have titles like “God The All,” “God Enjoyed,” “Christ Alone,” “Spiritus Sanctus,” and “God All-Sufficient.” Since then, while the doctrine is still just as true, it has given me an opportunity for beneficial Christian meditation for my spirit while providing theological boundaries for my mind. It’s become a source of spiritual vitality within the walls of sound Biblical truth. It’s not a replacement of the Bible. The Scriptures are still the living, inspired word of God—and no other Christian books or creeds or documents can provide that. But reading the Valley of Vision, even a “liturgical”, meditative recitation can make a Christian’s spiritual life more vibrant and full and rich.[v]

Critics of liturgy say that it will make our faith dull, boring or religious. But aren’t there always times in our lives when we don’t feel like worshipping or praying or singing praise? Aren’t there times when those spontaneous prayers we love just don’t flow? Liturgical, pre-written prayers composed by more eloquent people can be the crutch we use to get back on our feet when we are in spiritual need. It is also important to remember that we shouldn’t dismiss an idea altogether simply because it can be misapplied or wrongly practiced. This is a fallacy committed all-too often by Christians of every category.  

The Jews are sensitive about this issue, probably because people outside their tradition (such as, say, evangelicals) condemn the Jewish way of Halakha—what Rabbi Donin, whose book I am reading for a class, defines as the application and implementation of the mitzvot (Jewish commandments), or as he puts it, the “concretization” of Torah. It’s the religious, works-driven part of their faith, a kind of spiritual obligation. Critics of Jewish practice say that such structure will drain their worship of heartfelt faith and feeling, make it automatous and empty. Donin responds by writing “because and act may be taken to an undesirable extreme does not justify its abrogation [cancellation].” A careless overstatement of this lifestyle makes Christians miss an opportunity for a richer spiritual life. As a side note, I would argue that Christians have even more reason for a disciplined, intentional spiritual life than the Jews. While Jews ultimately live their spiritual lives as efforts to achieve salvation, Christians would live such disciplined lives as an act of gratitude for what Jesus achieved in our salvation. As for an even deeper point in support of pre-written prayers, Jesus himself wrote them, including the most famous prayer in history—which he offered as the model for all Christian prayers: “Our Father who is in heaven, hollowed be your Name.”

Another excuse for avoiding liturgy is that it’s too difficult to memorize and while this may be true, it is just another facet of the complex idea of Christian discipline. Perhaps memorization is another thing we can do to learn to live a more sacramental, devoted life. Perhaps good memorization is good for our spiritual lives (Awana can’t be that worthless, after all). Finally, I’ve often heard people complain that liturgy is too repetitive. I have a hard time understanding this argument. Have you ever sung “I’m Trading My Sorrows” or “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever” (which they can, apparently)?

Yes Lord yes Lord yes yes Lord, Yes Lord yes Lord yes yes Lord, Yes Lord yes Lord yes yes Lord Amen.

I could sing of your love forever, I could sing of your love forever, I could sing of your love forever, I could sing of your love forevermore.

Yeah, those look pretty ridiculous written out. If we’re going to use repetition anyway, why not use songs and hymns that have theological depth and meaning, not to mention words that have been spoken by two-thousand years’ worth of Christians?

There are still a few Protestant denominations which practice liturgy in their services, but it is disappearing very quickly. Baptists, Pentecostals, and non-denominationalists (whatever that means) don’t use it at all. Anglicans and Episcopalians still do, but most evangelicals consider them too theologically liberal.[vi] The Reformed have their own kind of liturgy, but Lutherans are probably (and correct me if I’m wrong, Chris) the most conservative denomination that still uses liturgy.[vii] Perhaps we Baptists have skipped over to praise songs, hand-raising worship time and innovative preaching styles a bit too quickly. I’m not just talking about music, but I have cited music as an example to help illustrate my point. We sing cutting-edge praise choruses with repeated bridges while our hymnbooks gather dust in the shelves behind the pews. Why not sing songs, composed by our theological ancestors, that have stood the test of time, instead of new tunes written by what’s-his-name-just a few years ago?

Liturgy helps provide a rhythm to our worship, a regular heartbeat to our church services (both in the present and with the past) and our personal devotions. It can get us into a habit of praying, reciting scripture, and living out Paul’s command to be living sacrifices to God.

Living and looking like a Christian

As Ms. Winner points out, Christians are missing out. These disciplines, and others, could help us live much more vibrant, meaningful Christian lives if we apply them properly. Imagine what a better view of the Sabbath (Shabbat) could give us—it’s not merely a rest day, or a day to indulge ourselves with, as she says, an extra-long bubble bath or another cup of coffee. It is a day truly holy—literally “set apart”—when we are to settle down and focus on God, both “giving a gift to God and imitating him.” The Jews do this better than we do. That’s just a fact. Think about all the Pharisee’s Shabbat laws—you’ve heard them because you’ve gone to church—or the modern Jewish laws. You can’t make a spark (which means start a fire, turn on any electronic device, start a car, etc.) or do any work or engrave anything (so no writing). The fact that Jews are so much better at observing this is to our shame, I think. Of course, none of this should be viewed as necessary for salvation. Jesus made that very clear. But shouldn’t we Christians observe and celebrate Shabbat better? How much more reason do we have to celebrate Shabbat, in light of the resurrected Christ?

How would our Christian lives be enriched by a more intentional—dare I say sacramental—view of hospitality, prayer, mourning, or fasting? Maybe we should make a more dedicated effort to place signs and reminders of our faith—like the Jewish mezuzah—on ourselves and our houses as reminders of our faith. Perhaps it would help us live more like Jesus if we did things to remind ourselves of our identity as not only followers of Christ, but also part of the world-wide, historical religious movement of Christianity, therefore uniting us with every other follower of Jesus in the world.[viii] Why don’t we put a cross—the most horrible symbol of punishment and death turned into the most glorious symbol of redemption and forgiveness—on our doors or lockers or jewelry? Why are we so afraid to identify ourselves as followers of Jesus to everyone we meet? And if you don’t want to use the cross because of its secularization (and I think that’s a legitimate reason), why not use a fish, or a chi-rho, or a framed copy of the Apostles Creed to hang on your wall? Not only should we do these things to remind ourselves of our faith, but also to inform others of it too. On the Apostles Creed—imagine how cool it would be for everyone to walk into your house and read not only “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord” but also “I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” That is so awesomely specific that I think it might offend just about every group that isn’t Christian.

The point is that Lauren Winner thinks, and I agree with her, that Christians would benefit from a consistent, intentional, ritualistic perspective on their faith. In an age when Christian beliefs have been replaced with Christian ethics—when we need both—and Christian liturgy has been abandoned altogether because it’s too rote and mystical, perhaps a little discipline could go a long way. If we think of it biblically, it certainly couldn’t hurt.

Afterword

            I am the first to admit that I have mostly neglected spiritual discipline in my own life. It’s not easy to embrace such an idea. We are so concerned with our Christian liberty and freedom that we tend to recoil from rituals. This is a Western/American mindset, and though it’s certainly not bad in itself, we need to work to see our faith without the lenses of our culture.[ix] I’m still in the process of implementing spiritual discipline in my own life, and it’s a difficult process. But I think, at the very least, it’s worth considering. Our Christian lives are, in large part, not what they should be. Perhaps engaging in a disciplined lifestyle would benefit us as it benefits the Jews. It cannot provide salvation—absolutely not—but it can help us live more appreciatively and more deliberately in the shadow of the cross.

            The subtitle of Mudhouse is “An invitation to Spiritual Discipline.” That is exactly what this essay is as well. Come walk with me through this new territory, a different and sometimes uncomfortable new land of Christian living. But though the work may be hard and sometimes seemingly needless and worthless, in the end, I believe it can reap deeper, richer meaning. Not for eternity, but for today. Though the etudes may not be fun, perhaps one day we can play sonatas together, and make sweet and pleasant music for our Father.

 

---

[i] I am not a fast reader by any stretch of the imagination. So this really isn’t that amazing. If I can read a book in a short plane ride—especially one as small as this (156 small pages)—you definitely can too.

[ii]I realize that I’m playing with fire here by mentioning Mark Driscoll, as he tends to be a pretty polarizing figure in evangelical circles. While I understand your apprehension, there is no question that he is an influential figure in both theological and ecclesiastical (church-related) contexts, so his views on this issue are important. This also shows you readers that though I respect Driscoll, I can be critical of him. I can not only thoughtfully analyze how he does his ministry, but also of his most redeeming quality—his preaching. A balanced, thoughtful essay on Mark Driscoll is in the works right now; I hope to have it finished by sometime in mid-April.

[iii] Much like their use of the Law (Torah), which Paul points out in the book of Romans.

[iv] I designed this particular section around my church, but I’m sure your churches do similar things in similar ways. And I’m sure they do it basically the same way every time, which is the point.

[v] As great as reading Valley of Vision is, it’s even better when you listen to it read by Max Mclean, a member of Tim Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan and owner of the most amazing set of pipes I’m aware of—outside James Earl Jones, perhaps. It’s worth a listen.

[vi] This is generally true, but Lauren Winner attends an Episcopalian Church in North Carolina. I’m not sure if she would necessarily consider herself an Episcopalian, but it’s still interesting.

[vii] This is the second time Chris Pluger has made it into this article. I guess this is what happens when you suggest good books to friends.

[viii] This is something that really annoys me. Why are so many Christians so unwilling to align themselves with all the other Christians? I know they aren’t all perfect, but neither are you so get over it.

[ix] This can never fully happen, of course. But we can try as hard as we can, and with the Spirit’s help, maybe we can begin to achieve it.