Category Archives: Books

Book: The Monkey and the Fish

monkeyandthefish_130.jpgI wrote a review of David Gibbons’s book “The Monkey and the Fish” on the BishopBlog, to which I’m a contributor. It’s a book I highly recommend. Not your typical church growth book. He hits some areas that progressive evangelicals will appreciate, and that more traditional evangelicals need to become better attuned to.

Here, I want to comment on a totally minor, almost incidental part of the book.

davegibbons.jpegGibbons (left) mentions an interesting study. People were shown three pictures: a chicken, a cow, and a bale of hay. Which two pictures were more alike?

American audiences chose the chicken and cow. But Asian audiences chose the cow and hay. Why? Because they looked for relationship. Cows eat hay. They go together. 

Americans value size and categories, so the chicken and cow ended up together. They have no relationship. They just fit the same category–a farm animal. 

Now let me ask: Which of the following are more alike:

  1. A church of 2000 people.
  2. A church of 3000 people.
  3. A church of 150 people.

Most of us would say the two larger churches are more alike. But in reality, the church of 3000 and the church of 150 may be more alike–in philosophy of ministry, in setting, in constituency. Even in organizational structure, perhaps. 

Our tendency, then, is to assume that the church of 150 will eventually become–or should become–a church of 3000. Because we value size–attendance. No matter how many disclaimers we throw at it, in the end we value attendance. It’s simply invalid, in a typical American’s eyes, to think that a church of 150 can stay a church of 150, and still be healthy. Sure, that’s still large for churches in most of the rest of the world, and it was large for most of American history. But America defines how to do church, and we’ve decided that in 2009, 150 just doesn’t cut it. 

The sad truth is, your big and wealthy church in the suburbs and my small, low-income church in the city may have more in common with each other than with the early church of Acts.

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Book: Running Blind

runningblind.jpeg Finally, a Lee Child book that disappointed me. It was still a fun read, and I learned much more about the character of Jack Reacher. But “Running Blind” lacked the action of the other three Reacher novels I read.

Plus, the ending was very unsatisfying. It was like a Raymond Chandler or Ross MacDonald book, where you’re strung along–and enjoying the ride–but not sure where things are headed. Then, in the last few pages, the hero gives a big explanation of what happened and how he pieced together various clues. 

That happened in “Running Blind.” We got to the end, and in a lengthy dialogue at the crime scene, Reacher explained how he already had things figured out, using obscure clues dropped here and there in the book. 

This type of stuff, to me, doesn’t treat the reader fairly. Everything should unfold so that the reader puts things together simultaneously with the lead character. It shouldn’t all be hidden from the reader, and then divulged neatly at the end. That’s how I feel about it.

But nothing will stop me from reading the other Jack Reacher books. He’s a tremendous character, and Lee Child keeps you engaged. I devoured “Running Blind” in a few days, all 460 pages. I just didn’t like the ending (or the relative lack of mayhem).

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Books: Two by Gregory MacDonald

flynnbooks.jpg

I read these Gregory MacDonald books back-to-back. MacDonald also wrote the Fletch books (I’ve read just one), but I’d heard that the Flynn books were even better.

Well, that may not be saying much. I didn’t care much for either of these books, “Flynn’s In” or “The Buck Passes Flynn.” A lot of leaps at cleverness fell short. The writing and the plots just weren’t engaging to me. 

Flynn is a Boston cop who’s also part of a secret organization that sends him on missions to combat world-class bad guys. Whatever.

There are two more Flynn books. I think I’ll pass.

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Book: Blackout

blackout.jpgThis mystery, by John Lawton, is set in London during WW2. As the city undergoes regular bombing, our intrepid policeman, Inspector Frederick Troy, tries to catch what appears to be a serial killer with ties to the American military.

This is a very well-written, evocative book. Lawton’s very good (I’d never read anything by him before).

Plus, I love mysteries set within a context where much larger things are happening. Like Philip Kerr’s “Berlin Noir” trilogy, set in Germany before and after WW2, and Dan Fesperman’s mysteries set in Sarajevo, with the Serb army camped outside the city and snipers picking off people on the streets. In “Blackout,” the murder mystery seems almost trivial compared to the much larger conflict in which the story is set.

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Book: The Dark Side

darkside.jpegTorture is back in the news, big-time, with the release of Bush Administration memos about torture. Obama says that all of this information has already been publicly available, and he’s right. I’ve been reading this stuff for years. Numerous books are available in bookstores (Bob Woodward wrote four books on the subject of “Bush at War”). In the material now being released, I’m seeing very little that is new to me. 

If you’d really like to understand what happened–how the United States backtracked on its ideals and embraced the torture of prisoners–I suggest that you read Jane Mayer’s book “The Dark Side,” an amazing piece of reporting. Mayer is a former Wall Street Journal reporter who, since 1995, has been a contributor to the New Yorker, which to me consistently turns out the best reporting you’ll find anywhere. And New Yorker articles are subjected to their legendary fact-checking department (the acclaimed John McPhee recently wrote about his battles with–and respect for–the unforgiving, relentless, resourceful fact-checkers to whom he regularly submitted all his notes). 

This subject will remain with us for a long time. So if you want to truly understand the subject–the context, details, timelines, etc.–you can’t rely on shallow five-minute segments of TV punditry.

Mayer’s book makes use of the numerous studies and investigations done by the military, congress, and other groups. Plus, plenty of original reporting.

There are many heroes in the book, people who opposed our use of torture and tried to stop it. The FBI emerges with its image clean. They had a great deal of success interviewing prisoners, and did it by the book with the goal of prosecuting. Abu Zubaydah was talking freely to them, and his information was proving accurate. But time after time, the CIA swooped in to take control of the person, sending him to Egypt to be tortured or to a secret facility–at which point the terrorist quit cooperating. Plus, the CIA had no interest in prosecuting–they only wanted information, so methods didn’t matter. And thus, we have the mess we have today. If we had left interrogation to the FBI, we would not only have gained information, but would have been able to prosecute these terrorists. Now, we have a bunch of prisoners, many of them very bad people, who can’t be prosecuted because we tortured them. Plus, damaging information about many of them was gained by torturing other people, so that info is inadmissible. This is the mess Obama inherited.

Mayer’s book goes back to the beginning, to 9/11, and reveals how the whole detention and torture program developed. We meet a variety of principled people within the FBI, the CIA, Congress, the Administration, the Justice Department, and the military. At one point, the JAGs (Judge Advocate Generals) of every armed service jointly opposed a torture initiative. Condi Rice and John Ashcroft have their shining moments (mixed in with some not-so-shining moments).

But in the end, in almost every case, they were unable to challenge the power of Dick Cheney and his merciless chief of staff, David Addington. Any opposition was snuffed out in the Vice President’s office. 

As the book shows, almost everything related to torture and detention went through Dick Cheney’s office. His people (or the people he controlled, like John Yoo) wrote the legal opinions, which he persuaded President Bush to sign. David Addington seems to appear on every other page, and was instrumental in writing some of the legal opinions upon which torture was authorized (opinions considered horribly shoddy by numerous people in the book). Addington, the hardest of hardball players, was the face of the VP’s office, and he ran roughshod over the president’s lawyer, Alberto Gonzales. 

President Bush is practically missing from the book. Yes, he signed executive orders. But invariably, those orders were written by Dick Cheney’s office. Cheney, the book shows, liked to manipulatively play off the President’s self-image as a decider. “This is a tough decision, and only you can make it, Mr. President.” 

“The Dark Side” is not a partisan book (like, for instance, one written by Dick Morris or Ann Coulter or any number of other professional pundits). Mayer is a top-notch reporter, and her book illuminates one of the saddest stories in our history–the betrayal of basic American ideals. It’s the best book I’ve read this year, and I can’t recommend it enough. It will deeply sadden and disturb you, but it will also give you hope, knowing that many good, principled people serve throughout our government and armed forces.

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Book: Pick-up

pickup.jpgThis book seemed so-so right up until the last two sentences, when it blew me away.

“Pick-up,” by Charles Willeford, was published in 1955. I have a Black Lizard edition. 

The book revolves around Harry, a hard-luck loser of sorts who bounces around aimlessly, and of the troubled gal he befriends and romances. We see him in all kinds of contexts–in bars, with friends, with criminals, with the police, at work, with the gal’s mother, in jail–some of everything. Nothing much really happens. There is no mystery to be solved. We just see Harry interacting with a lot of different people in a lot of different situations.

Frankly, it sporadically bored me. As I turned the last page, I was already thinking about the next book I would start. Then I got to the last couple lines:

I left the shelter of the awning and walked up the hill in the rain.
Just a tall, lonely Negro.
Walking in the rain.

Until that point, I didn’t realize Harry was black. Willeford gave no clues. So throughout the book, I had pictured a white guy interacting with people in all of these situations. And since it’s written in first-person, from Harry’s point of view, I thought I was seeing everything through a white man’s eyes.

But after learning that he was black, it changed the whole book. Now I had to insert a black man into all of those interactions in 1950s Los Angeles. And that made it a whole different story. I found myself retracing the various scenes of the book, replacing my white guy with a black guy. And I realized how brilliant the book was.

Imagine the extra impact this would have had when it was published in 1955. (Sorry I ruined the ending, but I figured this isn’t a book you would ever come across.)

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Books: Three by Robert Parker

parker_3books.jpgDuring the past week I finished three Robert Parker novels. I can make pretty quick work of his books. They’re short, fast-paced, and interesting.

I started with the first Jesse Stone novel. Parker started this series in 1997 about a former LA homicide cop who becomes police chief of Paradise, Mass. I’d read all of them–except for the very first one, Night Passage. Not sure how that happened. Anyway, I finally got caught up (though a new Jesse Stone novel just emerged in paperback). Unlike his other series, Parker writes the Jesse Stone novels in third person. 

Next came Spare Change, about private investigator Sunny Randall. Parker started this series in 1999, and there are six books so far. I’ve read them all. 

Finally, I read Now and Then, the latest Spenser novel. It did a lot of harking back to a book from 20 years ago, when gal-pal Susan married a baddy and required rescuing.

The three series share a number of characters–good, standup cops and noble cons–who started out in Spenser stories. Stone’s captain in LA was Cronjager, whom I’m sure surfaces in several Spenser books. State cop Healy and shooter Vinnie Morris make appearances. In Spare Change, we encounter Martin Quirk, Belson, Healy, and a few other persons we Parker fans already know well. 

Jesse Stone played a big role in Back Story, a Spenser novel from 2003. And the previous Sunny Randall book featured she and Stone solving a crime together, when they aren’t, uh, getting it on. So there’s plenty of cross-pollination, and it makes the books more interesting. Parker has created a lot of fascinating characters. Might as well get more mileage out of them.

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Book: Finally Finished “The Audacity of Hope”

AudacityofHope.jpeg

Today I finished–finally–Barack Obama’s book, “The Audacity of Hope.” I mentioned earlier that I was reading it, and found it very good. Having arrived now at the end, I can say it was a resoundingly good read. It puts into perspective, and shines illuminating light on, so many aspects of our President and decisions he has made. 

He is also quite self-deprecating, not impressed with himself. That comes through especially in his final chapter, “Family.” I loved what I read about his role as a husband and father and how he tries to balance those roles with a very public career. He present himself not as a person who has it all together, but as a highly flawed guy still trying to figure it out. It’s not the type of stuff a campaign advisor would want him to publish.

The chapter deals with various policy issues affecting the family, and you catch glimpses of things–including some excellent ideas–he feels strongly about (though these issues haven’t arisen yet). But mostly, he talks about Michelle, his daughters, and his journey as a husband and parent.

He tells of his courtship with Michelle, and how she repeatedly refused his requests for a date. They met at a law firm where he came as an intern and Michelle, having already worked there three years, was assigned as his advisor.

When he launched his first Congressional run (and lost), “Michelle put up no pretense of being happy with the decision. My failure to clean up the kitchen suddenly became less endearing.”

The burdens of parenthood increasingly fell on Michelle. “No matter how liberated I liked to see myself as–no matter how much I told myself that Michelle and I were equal partners, and that her dreams and ambitions were as important as my own–the fact was that when children showed up, it was Michelle and not I who was expected to make the necessary adjustments. Sure, I helped, but it was always on my terms, on my schedule. Meanwhile, she was the one who had to put her career on hold.” 

He is very honest, and self-critical, about how his ambitions affected Michelle. He writes at one point that Michelle told him, “You only think about yourself. I never thought I’d have to raise a family alone.” Phew! Harsh stuff.

“I determined that my father’s irresponsibility toward his children, my stepfather’s remoteness, and my grandfather’s failures would all become object lessons for me, and that my own children would have a father they could count on. In the most basic sense, I’ve succeeded….And yet, of all the areas of my life, it is in my capacities as a husband and father that I entertain the most doubt.”

“I have chosen a life with a ridiculous schedule, a life that requires me to be gone from Michelle and the girls for long stretches of time and that exposes Michelle to all sorts of stress….[My rationalizations] seem feeble and painfully abstract when I’m missing one of the girls’ school potlucks because of a vote….My recent success in politics does little to assuage the guilt….And so I do my best to answer the accusation that floats around in my mind–that I am selfish, that I do what I do to feed my own ego or fill a void in my heart.”

Amidst these self-critical statements, he tells some wonderful stories from his family life, especially regarding the girls, that show he’s really trying to figure it out–how to be a really good husband and father. You see two girls who are bright, fun-loving, and well-adjusted, and he freely gives Michelle credit for that. But he’s more part of the equation than he gives himself credit for.

The chapter contains some very vulnerable stuff. How many politicians write about their short-comings? Throughout the campaign, we saw this picture of a wonderful family–and that seems to be the case. It’s the type of picture a political image consultant would try to paint. But in this book, Barack Obama pulls back the curtain and says, “Here’s what none of you see. It’s not always pretty.”

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Still More from “Jesus for President”

Two previous posts talked about Shane Claiborne’s book “Jesus for President.” Those posts focused on what Claiborne says about nonviolence. But that was only one theme of the book. Here are some other worthwhile quotes:

Christianity is at its best when it is peculiar, marginalized, suffering–and it is at its worst when it is popular, credible, triumphal, and powerful.

Constantine flung open the doors of the church to the rich and powerful, but it was at a great cost. Repentance, rebirth, and conversion were exchanged for cheap grace, and the integrity of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus faded. People joined the church in droves, but Christian disciples were hard to come by.

The basis for living out the ethics of Jesus in this world is not that it works, but that this is the way God is. We are not promised that everything is going to turn out perfect.

I’ve learned from conservatives and liberals that you can be politically correct and still be mean.

We must be cautious not to abuse the idea of “bearing our cross.” … The cross is the execution tool of the state that killed Jesus and countless insurgents. And it is the place where Jesus faced and overcame violence with love. How ironic when someone gets a tattoo of Jesus on the cross but has no problem with religiously condoning violence….There are plenty of biblical motifs to counsel, soothe, and care for people in their troubles, but the cross is not one of them.

Paul warns that it is a desecration of the unity of the body when the well-fed come to the communion table with the hungry.

The best way to defeat the kingdom of God is to empower the church to rule the world with the sword.

Perhaps there is no more dangerous place for a Christian to be than in safety and comfort, detached from the suffering of others.

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More from “Jesus for President”

Yesterday I talked about “Jesus for President” and focused on what Shane Claiborne wrote about pacifism. Here are some more quotes along that line.

When we talk about peacemaking and the “third way of Jesus,” people inevitably ask bizarre situational questions like, “If someone broke into your house and was raping your grandmother, what would you do?” We can’t exhaustively troubleshoot every situation with a nonviolent “strategy,” but what we can do is internalize the character and spirit of Jesus. We can meditate daily on the fruit of the Spirit and pray that they take root in us. Then we can trust that when we encounter a bad situation, we will act like Jesus.

The bloodstained pages of history are filled with people doing terrible wrong out of a deep sense of right.

Without a doubt, protecting the innocent is one of the strongest arguments for redemptive violence….[But] Jesus didn’t say, “Greater love has no one that this, to kill to protect the innocent.”

Jesus knew that his followers would face threats to their lives. But nowhere did Jesus teach that his followers should turn into wolves when they run into other scary wolves. He himself was killed like a sheep by wolves. By freely accepting crucifixion, he demonstrated what a sheep among wolves looks like. Refusing to become like the wolves to defeat the wolves, Jesus revealed that God, being love, chooses a different path–to suffer evil to overcome it.

Jesus was detestable to the state in his day, and he is detestable to our state today. His teachings are impossible for the state to ever follow. What state would ever say, “Do not resist the evil person,” or “Turn the other cheek”?….Considering that history has recently called the US to execute disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians, we can know that this is not the voice of the shepherd who calls his sheep to love their enemies.

President Bush’s speech promoted the popular goal of ridding the world of evil. This goal is not new. The ostensibly good intention to rid the world of evil, ironically, is associated with some of the most evil and tragic events in history. Even Osama bin Laden’s stated goal, more or less, was to rid the world of evil. Three thousand people were killed in the tragedies of 9/11 in the hope of destroying evil….Jesus understood the destruction of evil to be not in human hands but in God’s hands.

Instead of trusting the command to love our enemies, we insist that having the right people take office to direct the right bombs to fall in the right places is a more effective way to deal with evil. We can’t be peaceful now, we say. So give us time to rid the world of evil; eventually, it will work. After thousands of years, we haven’t learned that violence begets only violence. Peace begins not with nations, but with the people of God.

I’m just trying to make you think, just as Claiborne has made me think. I’m not a pacifist, as least not now. I’m just exploring with an open mind. Trying to understand the truth about Jesus is never a bad thing, even when it contradicts everything American Christianity tells you.

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