Free books for the eating

My bookshelf is stuffed like a holiday bird – and everyone knows the only grateful way to steward excess wealth is to eat it, give it away, or burn it spectacularly in true Potlatch fashion.

Of course, the burning of books has fallen out of favor in recent years, so these volumes are yours for the taking. One, ten, twenty, or the whole lot. Just name your titles.

If you’re in Southern California, shoot me a message and you can come pick them up. I’ll even throw in a cuppa coffee and a friendly chat, if you’re so inclined. If you hail from out of town, send me your address and the shipping fee and I’ll hurry them off (sans latté).

Most of these are assorted nonfiction Christian titles (we’re donating the fiction to our local library). Several are course books from my MAGL program at Fuller Theological Seminary, if that sort of thing interests you.

UPDATE: Titles already claimed are listed in strikeout.

General Theology & References

Who Needs Theology? by Stanley Grenz & Roger Olson (John Chandler)

An Introduction To Ecclesiology by Veli-Matti Karkkainen (Josh Hopping)

Portraits of God by Allan Coppedge

Desiring God by John Piper

From Eternity To Here by Frank Viola

Unprotected Texts by Jennifer Wright Knust

Reading Scripture With The Church Fathers by Christopher Hall (Josh Hopping)

Manners and Customs Of The Bible by James Freeman (Josh Hopping)

The New Ungers Bible Handbook

The Gospel of Matthew, Sacra Pagina Volume 1 by Daniel Harrington (Thomas Lyons)

New International Commentary on James by Peter Davids (Thomas Lyons)

Thru The Bible With J Vernon McGee (4 hardcover volumes) (Julie Mnaion)

Missional/Emerging Church

Church Next by Eddie Gibbs

The Good News Of The Kingdom by Van Engen, et al (Aaron Henderson)

The Church Between Gospel And Culture by Hunsberger and Gelder (Geoff Hsu)

The Missionary Congregation, Leadership & Liminality by Alan Roxburgh (Brandon Becker)

The Missional Leader by Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuka (Brandon Becker)

God’s Missionary People by Charles Van Engen (Aaron Henderson)

A Credible Witness by Brenda Salter McNeil (Josh Hopping)

Transforming Power by Robert Linthicum (Jason Evans)

The New Global Mission by Samuel Escobar (Brandon Becker)

The Local Church, Agent of Transformation by Tetsunao Yamammori (Josh Hopping)

Announcing the Kingdom by Arthur Glasser (Josh Hopping)

The Power of Place by Dolores Hayden (Geoff Hsu)

The Continuing Conversion of the Church by Darrell Guder (John Chandler)

The Shaping Of Things To Come by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch

The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch

Exiles by Michael Frost

A Christianity Worth Believing by Doug Pagitt

The New Christians by Tony Jones

Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna

A Theology As Big As The City by Ray Bakke (Brandon Becker)

God So Loves The City by Van Engan, et al (Aaron Henderson)

Treasure in Clay Jars by Lois Barrett, et al (Jason Evans)

Permission Granted by Graham Cooke and Gary Goodell (Julie Mnaion)

Theology & Family

The Family Handbook by Anderson, Browning, et al

Theology and Families by Adrian Thatcher

Authentic Human Sexuality by Judith & Jack Balswick

Men at the Crossroads by Jack Balswick (Josh Kerkoff)

Beyond Sex Roles by Gilbert Bilezikian (Jason Evans)

Marriage and Modernization by Don Browning

Family Ministry by Diana Garland

On Justice

Justice, A Global Adventure by Walter Burghardt (Josh Hopping)

In Pursuit of Justice by James Skillen (Stephanie Struck)

With Justice For All by John Perkins (Josh Hopping)

Churches That Make A Difference by Ron Sider, et al (Thomas Lyons)

Leadership

Character Forged From Conflict by Gary Preston

Barnabas, Encouraging Exhorter by Bobby Clinton (Brandon Becker)

Connecting by Paul Stanley & Robert Clinton (Brandon Becker)

The Foolishness of Preaching by Robert Farrar Capon (Jeff Bassett)

Called to Holy Worldliness by Richard Mouw (Josh Kerkoff)

Lectures To My Students by Charles Spurgeon (Aaron Henderson)

Spiritual Formation

The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard (Thomas Lyons)

The Little Flowers of St Francis by Raphael Brown (Josh Hopping)

The Year of Living Like Jesus by Ed Dobson (John Chandler)

The Mystery and the Fullness by Jennifer Abel

Jesus Brand Spirituality by Ken Wilson (Aaron Henderson)

General

Reinventing American Protestantism by Donald Miller

Under The Overpass by Mike Yankowski

Heaven by Lisa Miller

Generation Me by Jean Twenge

People of the Lie by M. Scottt Peck

A View From The Back Pew by Tim O’Donnell

Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters by Meg Meeker

Technorati Tags: Books, Christianity, gifts, Giveaways, Theology

Book Review: Heaven by Lisa Miller

Not long ago I was linking to an article by Lisa Miller in another book review, and now here I am reviewing her own recent book, Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination With the Afterlife (this review represents the recent release of the paperback version). Miller is the editor of religion at Newsweek, where she tends to reap all manner of blessings and curses from a nation polarized about its own religious identity.

She may actually be the person for the job. Miller herself embodies a kind of religious plurality – raised a secular Jew, then later married by a Rabbi and an Episcopal priest in an interfaith ceremony, then finally joining a “progressive, inclusive” Jewish synagogue where she attends regularly with her daughter in order to reconnect with her Jewish heritage.

Given this thoroughly secular Modern pedigree – journalist, theological liberal, and enculturated believer –  Miller would be easy to dismiss by orthodox devotees and she is often the recipient of harsh criticism, particularly from religious fundamentalists. But read this brief article and get to know her just a bit. She is a woman who, every week, weeps during the recital of the Shema. She is a mother who broods over the spiritual development of her daughter, and she is a person whose own religious fears and discomforts are assuaged by a firm belief in “a God who’s love extends beyond the tribe.”

And this, I propose, explains a great deal about Lisa Miller’s book Heaven. In it, she plays the role of spiritual midwife for a culture caught in the terrifying pangs of a pluralistic birthing. Miller has been there, as a daughter, as a wife, a student, a journalist and now as a mother, she has grappled with the tensions of competing religious beliefs that from the inside appear as strangers but from the outside resemble countrymen. She brings this tension to her explorations of the afterlife: “Like so many Americans, then, I approach religion from an uneasy, untraditional place, and like so many, I have struggled with what I believe about heaven” (xxvi).

Miller goes about her task of cultural peacemaking by comparing diverse visions of heaven through a tapestry of traditional teachings, scholarly alternatives, folk reflections, and pop cultural depictions. She writes with the eye of an anthropologist, the mind of a journalist, and the heart of a mother. It is genuinely educational; there is surprising depth of inquiry for a popularly written book and details that most people will find surprising. She wrestles openly and honestly with the influences of outside cultural and cultic beliefs on the development of Judaism, Christianity and even Islam. She places liberal and conservatives in dialogue and uncovers the deep yearnings and affections that feed the comfort that heaven provides.

Yet Miller has a dog in this fight – albeit a reluctant one. Early, while reflecting on research into incipient Judaism, she asks hypothetically, “[If I were an ancient Hebrew] What if my Rabbi’s told me that [the semitic pagan cult of the dead] was forbidden? That these family customs violated God’s law? What would I do? How would I think about my dead?” (36-37). Her proposal is that, in order to find comfort, ancient Hebrews coming to grips with an emerging religion that forbade a daily, imaginary interaction with the souls of dead loved one, the best conceptual alternative might have been the invention of a distant home for dead loved one. For Miller this is more than an honest sympathetic inquiry because it cuts to the heart of her metaphysical assumptions.

The trouble is that Miller, along with most of her theologically liberal cohorts, has more in common with her fundamentalist critics that she realizes – both are Modern foundationalists. Because she believes that a sure knowledge must rest on indubitable foundations, she cannot help but treat mere belief with a kind of paternalism. It’s not just that she handles such beliefs and traditions with skepticism (as we all should), it’s that she never treats these traditions and accounts as potential evidence because, for her, religious beliefs and traditions could never possibly qualify as evidential.

The end result is that the whole book comes off as a bit patronizing with strong undertones of melancholy – because in it we see Miller herself finally lay down any remnant of a belief in an afterlife. Like any foundationalist of the liberal variety she can only protect her own religious belief by bifurcating epistemology and relegating faith to the path of subjective personal experience. Consequently, it doesn’t matter what millions of people from one generation to the next have discovered about God. What matters is her own experience, and, when it comes to heaven, that experience is empty:

Whenever I have asked myself – over and over – “Do you believe in heaven?” I always think of my grandfather. I try to visualize him. I love him, I was there when he died; I miss him and my grandmother every day of my life. Surely if I believe in heaven, I would see them there in my minds eye. Sadly, I don’t (241).

So, despite having written a book that compiles mountains of evidence that that there may indeed be something beyond the grave, Miller is unable to integrate that knowledge into a holistic worldview that takes faith seriously as a tradition of knowledge. As a result, Heaven, while educational, touching, poignant, and lucid, ultimately comes of as a sad commentary on the impotence of the Modern era to satisfy the deepest longings of humanity. For Miller, this means she believes in some kind of God for goodness’ sake, but can’t seriously accept the notion of God’s present power in human life beyond the immanence of culture.

No wonder she weeps when she hears the Shema.

(I was provided with a copy of this book in return for the review I’ve written. I was in no way required to write either a positive or negative review of the book.)

Technorati Tags: Books, Heaven, Lisa Miller

Book Review: A View From the Back Pew

By all accounts, Tim O’Donnell is the quintessential self-made Modern man. He built his own business, made his own fortune, constructed his own log-cabin in the wilderness to face-down his own private demons, and, subsequently built his very own religion. Now he’s written his own book about the experience (and self-published it too).

Not that A View From the Back Pew isn’t good.

Actually, Tim is a solid writer. He tells engaging and often funny stories about his journey of faith. His prose can get a bit labored at times as he guides the reader through the basics of various religions as he sees it, but that’s just because he wants us to accompany him on his journey.

Tim writes with a missionary zeal, partly because he wants to spare others the demons he wrestled for the better part of forty years. Tim understands that the nuns who so rigorously constrained him as a child in Catholic school were well-meaning, “But mostly fear prevailed. I was afraid of Hell, I was afraid of yardsticks, and I was afraid of nuns.” Tim doesn’t want that fear to be the prevailing spiritual condition for anyone else seeking God.

And let’s face it: he’s right. Fear is often the motivating dynamic in religions of all stripes.

What made this book so interesting for me was that Tim’s message is basically identical to the gospel of American Evangelicalism – “Knowing religion is not the same as knowing God” (xiv) – except Tim jettisons any and all blind allegiance to the authority of the Church (as he was taught as a Catholic) or Christian scripture (as he would have been taught if he were Protestant).

The end result is that Tim crafts a spirituality for himself, governed entirely by himself. Typical of Modernist thinkers, Tim requires a reductionist kernel; an epistemological foundation that can be unimpeachably and universally applied from the bottom-up to serve as the prime mover in a causal-chain that reliably governs his life. For Tim, that foundation ends up being, quite literally, a feeling in his gut – “that trusty vibration in my solar plexus” (233).

Many Christians will scoff that this as nothing more than subjective emotionalism (others will just call it heresy, since Tim is heavily influenced by the gnostic gospels), but, frankly, it’s not all that different from the fundamental rationale I’ve heard from countless other Christians (and leaders) over the years. Tim just has the courage to admit that he really is the final arbiter of truth according to his worldview. In reality, religious fundamentalists are no different; they’re just playing a mental shell-game where Descartes’ cogito ergo sum wears the guise of tradition or scripture (or tradition about scripture, really) and is re-imagined as a delusion of objectivity.

What Tim is lacking is a nuanced view of truth as a tapestry of meaning that weaves together threads of culture, tradition, enquiry,  relationships, and circumstances, etc., as well as personal experiences in a pattern of ever-emerging knowledge and wisdom. My hunch is that Tim would embrace the idea – right up to the point where he had to submit to it in the form of someone else.

Still, although I think he misses the mark theologically and epistemologically, A View From the Back Pew is full of culturally relevant and brutally-honest (and, I think, often true) critiques of religion. If you can read it through a sympathetically critical lens, I recommend it as a window into the world of hyper-modernist spirituality and a partial peek into the landscape of a post-Christian future.

(I received a galley copy of A View From the Back Pew free of charge by the publisher in return for agreeing to review the book. I was not asked to offer either a positive or negative review.)

Technorati Tags: A View From the Back Pew, Books, Christianity, Epistemology, Gnosticism, Religion, Tim O'Donnell

‘Leaving the Church to find God’: an excerpt from Tin House’s conversation with Paul Harding

Former rock-band-drummer-turned-author Paul Harding shocked the hell out of lit-types recently by winning the Pulitzer Prize for his debut novel Tinkers. Published by an indie, non-profit press at the NYU School of Medicine (no joke), Harding’s fictional account of a dying man’s hallucinatory meanderings has become the darling of struggling, art-minded authors everywhere.

My review of the book is on the way. In the meantime, take a moment to enjoy this surprising quote touching on theology, atheism, and quantum mechanics from his recent conversation with Tony Perez from Tin House:

TP: There’s a quiet spirituality to your work that I think is lacking in a lot of contemporary fiction (your old teacher Marilynne Robinson being an obvious exception) and I’ve heard you’re a big reader of theology. I wonder if you could talk about how your work or your thinking is influenced by people like Karl Barth, or Martin Luther. Or even someone like William James?

PH: All the people you’ve just described I think you can sort of line up in parade formation, they all come out of the same tradition—reformed Protestant thinking. I grew up here in Boston kind of a neutral atheist. I read my Nietzsche and what not, but I wasn’t a dogmatic atheist—I wasn’t doctrinaire; I didn’t have anything against religion. And then after having studied with Marilynne Robinson for a number of years, it occurred to me that if I asked her where the source of her aesthetic, and intellectual, and soulful kind of integrity and sophistication came from, she would tell me that it was her religion. She would tell me that it came out of her reading in this tradition. Given that I respect her so much, I would be inclined to respect her answer, her own accounting of herself. So I just started to read these things and I found them to be incredibly beautiful— deeply concerned with narrative and cosmology. It was so much more than the popular sand kicking you hear in the press between Richard Dawkins and Creationists—the crummy little cartoon versions of these things. The more deeply I read into them, the more I realize that if you isolate yourself from these traditions of thinking, you’re isolating yourself from most of Western intellectual history, up until, almost post-World War II thinking. It almost feels like a type of censorship, like “religion’s bad for you, don’t bother looking at theology.” I read someone like Karl Barth and it’s just the most beautiful, aesthetically pleasing human thought I’ve encountered. In Tinkers, since it’s fiction, I’m not under the obligation to engage in apologetics or offer proof, but I can explore things. I can play around with them dramatically and aesthetically, and sort of see how these people account for themselves in terms of spiritual conceptions of who they are in the Universe.

If you look at Emerson, he was a Unitarian minister and he left the church. The common rap about that is, you know, he left the church for greener pastures. But if you look at the tradition out of which he came, there’s a strong argument to be made that he left the church to find God. That’s the Protestant tradition—at least the writing and thinking with which I’m familiar. There’s a built-in anti-authoritarianism, the presumption that the institutional church is a human construction; it’s always going to ossify, and it’s antithetical to truly pious thinking. For them, really what it comes down to, is you and scripture. The Unitarians broke away from the Calvinists; the Calvinists broke away from the Lutherans; the Lutherans broke away from the Catholics; the Catholics broke away from the Jews; the Jews broke away from the Babylonians. That’s a beautiful tradition, and seems hardwired into this understanding of what pursuing religion and that kind of thinking is. The best theologians, for example Karl Barth, view the Bible as a work of literature, and that does not demean its normative or holy authority. He’s a close reader of a text. It’s a much more sophisticated use of the imagination and the intellect, and just makes you think about what we talk about when we talk about God. When you go back to someone like Dawkins, he just perverts all that stuff by saying, “if you believe in God, you believe in an old man with a white beard sitting on a throne.” Of course that’s ridiculous. But then you realize that people like Dawkins have never read a word of theology, they rely on popular prejudice—or all this material positivism that they misheard in their, you know, Wittgenstein 101 class. If everything is made of matter, and there is no such thing as the spirit, then all that means is that we have no idea what the nature of matter is. I’m perfectly willing to grant that everything is made out of stuff, but that just means that we don’t really know what stuff is. To me, theology and poetry and art go hand-in-hand with physics. That version of materialism is totally antiquated, out-dated, Newtonian mechanics. They’re always complaining that it’s not testable, it’s not falsifiable, but the most sophisticated quantum mechanical experiments only make the nature of matter more ambiguous than it ever was before—it’s all observer dependent. If you’re a writer, there’s a very cool anti-realist strain in quantum mechanics. Supraluminal influence and observer dependent reality—all of that speaks to the experiential and participatory nature of human consciousness. When translated into fiction, it’s part of character. There’s a passage in Tinkers where Howard is walking through the woods, and when he turns around to look at his wagon, he’s certain that every time he turns his head, everything behind him disappears or changes. In a way, that’s just fooling around with quantum physics, just in a narrative sense.

Love, love, love that bit about Wittgenstein 101. So funny. Seriously, read the whole article. And the book.

Technorati Tags: art, Church, Culture, Paul Harding, Physics, Theology, Tinkers

James Smith roughs up Brett McCracken a bit for lacking a theology of culture

There’s a reason James K.A. Smith (right) is a rising star in the Christian intellectual world: Aside from being brilliant – which isn’t all that noteworthy in academia – he’s an immensely effective and even entertaining communicator – a quality that is frustratingly rare in academia. Smith brandishes these gifts ferociously in recent books like Desiring the Kingdom and Thinking in Tongues.

It hardly seems fair, then, when Smith turns his critical attention to populist fare like Hipster Christianity by Brett McCracken, concluding he “lacks a theology of culture.” It’s nothing less than brutal.

I link to it, and quote from it, here because the mindless bashing of Christian movements en masse that continues to flow from from the conservative evangelical camp has swelled to such a ridiculous volume that it nearly deserves it’s own niche publishing category. I think Smith does a fine job of calling McCracken out for his lack of depth and thoughtfulness.

That Smith has at least one foot solidly in the Reformed camp makes his critique all the more refreshing. Here are my favorite parts:

While McCracken’s analysis perhaps pertains to a bunch of suburban kids who have adopted hipster as a style—just as they might have adopted “urban” as a style—his analysis doesn’t even touch those students I know who, from Christian convictions, have intentionally pursued a lifestyle that rejects the bourgeois consumerism of mass, commercialized culture. They shop at Goodwill and Salvation Army because they have concerns about the injustice of the mass-market clothing industry, because they believe recycling is good stewardship of God’s creation, and frankly, because they’re relatively poor. They’re relatively poor because they’re pursuing work that is meaningful and just and creative and won’t eat them alive, and such work, although not lucrative, gives them time to spend on the things that really matter: community, friendship, service, and creative collaboration. And despite McCracken’s misguided claims about autonomy and independence (192-193), the Christian hipsters I know are actually willing to sacrifice the American sacred cow of privacy and independence, living in intentional communities as families and singles, working through all the difficulties and blessings of “life together” as Bonhoeffer describes it. In short, the lives of the Christian hipsters I know are a gazillion miles away from being worried about image or trendiness; they live the way they do because they are pursuing the good life characterized by well-ordered culture-making that is just and conducive to flourishing—and this requires resisting the mass-produced, mass-marketed, and mass-consumed banalities of the corporate ladder, the suburban veneer of so-called success, as well as the irresponsibility of perpetual adolescence that characterizes so many twentysomethings who imagine life as one big frat house.

And:

The Christian hipsters I know are pursuing a way of life that they (rightly) believe better jives with the picture of flourishing sketched in the biblical visions of the coming kingdom. They have simply discovered a bigger gospel: they have come to appreciate that the good news is an announcement with implications not only for individual souls but also for the very shape of social institutions and creational flourishing.

Also:

If McCracken is lamenting the fact that Christian colleges are producing alumni that are smart and discerning with good taste and deep passions about justice, then we’re happy to live with his ire. The fact that young evangelicals, when immersed in a thoughtful liberal arts education, turn out to value what really matters and look critically on the way of life that has been extolled to them in both mass media and mass Christian media—well, we’ll wear that as a badge of honor.

And last, but not least:

It turns out [McCracken is] just worried that young Christians might be (gasp!) smoking and drinking a bit too much and have not sufficiently considered injunctions about dress in 1 Peter 3. Well, yes, indeed: those do seem like quite pressing matters for Christian witness in our postsecular world. By all means, let’s get our personal pieties in line. For as McCracken sums it up, “the Christian hipster lifestyle has become far too accommodating and accepting of sin” (200)—and by this, he means a pretty standard litany of evangelical taboos (did I mention sex?). It’s funny: my Christian hipster friends think conservative evangelicals have also become too accommodating and accepting of sin, but they tend to have a different inventory in mind—things like the Christian endorsement of torture and wars of aggression, evangelical energies devoted to policies of fiscal selfishness, and lifestyles of persistent, banal greed.

Emphasis most definitely added.

Technorati Tags: Brett McCracken, Culture, Hipster Christianity, James K.A. Smith, Theology

My Interview With Anne Jackson

Technorati Tags: Anne Jackson, Author Sketches, authors, Books, christianaudio, Interviews, Permission To Speak Freely

Between Emerging & Traditional: My Interview With Jim Belcher

One of my favorite things about working at christianaudio is that I get to conduct author interviews. In was in this capacity that I was fortunate enough to speak with Jim Belcher, author of the recent book, Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional:

In this edition of “Author Sketches” we talk to Jim Belcher, author of the recent popular book Deep Church, A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional. Jim talked to us about his own struggle to find a “third way” as a pastor and church-planter, his motivation for “theological peacemaking” and revealed how his friend Rob Bell became the catalyst for writing this book in the first place.

You can download the interview for free at christianaudio.com by clicking here (registration is required). You can also read my review of Deep Church by clicking here.

Technorati Tags: christianaudio, Deep Church, Emerging Church, Interviews, Jim Belcher

Love Has Many Stages

Here’s an inspiring and jolting quote:

Love has many stages. The highest level is when you cannot decide whether to love or not love because there is no room for hatred. The love of your neighbors comes naturally in response to obeying Jesus and God. Loving the neighbor is proof that you heart is full of love. When we say neighbors, we mean all of humanity. All people are brothers because we all come from God.

~ Sheik Nabil, The #2 leader in Hezbollah, excerpted from Tea With Hezbollah by Ted Dekker and Carl Medearis

Technorati Tags: Hezbollah, Jesus, Love

What About God As The Monster? An Open Letter To Brian McLaren

Dear Brian,

I just finished reading your book, A New Kind of Christianity and I wanted to accept your invitation (in the prelude) to reply.

I really appreciated this book. First, I found your proposal that we shift our scripture-reading paradigm from a “constitutional” approach to that of a “portable library” of ancient Jewish sources to be both a compelling and accurate way of characterizing a key hermeneutical difference. As I’ve worked in recent months to birth a fresh expression of church in my area, I’ve become convinced this is one of the most important shifts I need to model for others.

I also appreciated your perspective of Christ as the lens through which we read scripture. Of course, lots of folks from a diversity of traditions have affirmed this, but I think you’ve articulated it in a way that presents Christ as more than just the atoning incarnation of God, but also as God’s powerful and practical means of bringing peace-making and justice to the world. That, to me, seems like a high Christology and a much needed correction to foundationalist reductions.

I do have a few questions. Have you seen “The Answer Man” (originally titled “Arlen Faber” in 2009)? I loved this film and your book reminded me of a particular scene. The main character, Arlen Faber (played superbly by Jeff Daniels) is considered the world’s leading authority on God. But he bears a terrible secret: He hasn’t “heard” from God in twenty years. One of his only joys in life is old classic Hollywood monster films (like The Wolfman, Dracula, and Frankenstein) and he collects model figures of these monsters. Anyway, there’s a scene where Arlen is talking to a troubled younger man named Kris, who is asking him about God:

Kris: So what’s the deal with heaven and hell anyway?

Arlen: I’ve seen hell, and it’s name is Reno, Nevada.

Kris: I can’t believe God would punish people for not believing in him.

Arlen: Ah, the rapture.

Kris: What’s that?

Arlen: Well, I like to think of it as a monster movie. The monster destroys some people and spares others.

Kris: So who is the monster?

Arlen: God. God is the monster.

While Arlen is clearly mocking the very “soul sort” narrative you condemn, Jeff Daniels plays it more beautifully nuanced than that. He also seems to have a deeply ambivalent frustration and affection for God as “the monster” that echoes his affection for those classic monster films. It immediately made me think of the refrain in The Chronicles of Narnia that Aslan is “not a tame lion.” Likewise, I think there is a sense in which God is the “monster” for us. Much is made these days of our intimacy with God, particularly as an inevitable consequence of God’s own internal Trinitarian intimacy and his subsequent mission to reach out to the “other” – and I agree with that characterization wholeheartedly. However it also seems to me that there must remain, for eternity, an ontological “otherness” to God that keeps Godself at an inscrutable distance.

In other words, Arlen was right. God is the monster.

I can’t help but wonder if you’ve dismissed this aspect of God. For example, when you discuss the long questioning of Job by God toward the end of the central poem in the book, you interpret this to be a demonstration of God’s openness, but you ignore the dramatic climax of those very questions:

“Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who accuses God answer him!” (Job 40:2)

In other words, God’s answer to Job is exactly the “might makes right” argument you later condemn in your book (p178). Furthermore, this interpretation doesn’t come from a “constitutional” reading; rather, it respects the very dramatic literary reading of the poem and even echoes the central conclusion of Job’s Babylonian predecessor, “The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer.” Frankly, I don’t see how this harsh, “might makes right” argument can be dismissed as an evolutionary vestigial tail (so to speak) from the Old Testament because it is also the exact argument Paul uses in his very disconcerting “vessels of wrath” illustration from Romans 9:

“But who are you, O man, to talk back to God?” (Rom 9:20)

This represents my main concern with your book, and, specifically, with your proposal that we embrace an evolutionary reading of scripture. I have no problem with an evolutionary paradigm per sé, but you seem to apply it selectively and without any specific method – other than to use Jesus as the plumb line. Yet, even then, you remain silent on the difficult, and even violent, elements of judgment in many of Jesus’ own parables. The overall affect of this silence is that it really does appear you’ve merely used this evolutionary approach to dismiss the distasteful characteristics of God in accordance with contemporary tastes and sensibilities.

As I survey the biblical characterizations of God I find God’s mercy right alongside a willingness to judge with violence (be that hardship, exile, physical death, or the eternal judgment of being discarded in a cosmic trash heap). This appears from the first book to the last and everywhere in between, with no apparent evolutionary pattern. Moreover, Jesus seems to be the chief expositor of both characteristics. Personally, I don’t think we need to turn theological cartwheels in order to abstain from human appropriations of God’s own violence (this is clearly your motivation, and, as a pacifist myself, it’s a motivation I sympathize with). In fact, I think Jesus demonstrates that we can embrace God as the monster while abdicating violence ourselves.

I hate to toss around the word “orthodoxy” – which is often used as a blunt rhetorical object – but it seems to me that a defining feature of orthodoxy is the refusal to resolve the tension of seemingly opposing concepts. The irony of your theology, which strives to be thoroughly postmodern (and I mean that as a sincere compliment), is that you seem fall into the thoroughly Modern trap of attempting to resolve the biblical tension between God as lover and God as monster.

What do you think?

Some questions for you (or anyone else who cares to pitch in):

1. If God is God and I am not, shouldn’t I expect to find some of God’s attributes to be personally objectionable?
2. Closely related to #1: Isn’t there some sense in which God must always be “the monster” or else cease to be God?
3. Is there room in your theology for God as “the monster” alongside God as the merciful liberator? If so, how?

Post Script: This letter – in a much shorter form – was part of an assignment for my Fuller Seminary class “MC 535: Emerging Churches.” You can read my classmates letters to Brian by visiting dearbrianmclaren.wordpress.com.

Technorati Tags: A New Kind of Christianity, Brian McLaren, God as monster, peace-making, Violence

On Spending Easter With a Porn Star: My Interview With Craig Gross

As the Production Manager for christianaudio, I sometimes conduct audio interviews with Christian authors. I recently spoke with Craig Gross, co-founder of XXXChurch.com and co-author, along with Jason Harper, of the recent book, Jesus Loves You…This I Know:

In this edition of Author Sketches we talk to speaker and pastor Craig Gross, whose latest book Jesus Loves Me This I Know, was co-authored with Jason Harper and continues the outward-focused themes explored in his previous books like Starving Jesus and The Gutter: Where Life Is Meant To Be Lived. In this interview Craig talked to us about touring the country with Porn stars, sharing Easter with Ron Jeremy, and learning to be less judgmental through his visit with Fred Phelps and the people of Westboro Baptist Church.

You can download the interview for free at christianaudio.com by clicking here (registration is required).

Technorati Tags: Books, christianaudio, Christianity, Craig Gross, Interviews, Jason Harper, Jesus Christ