The Pixar Touch

After getting this book from the library less than two weeks ago, I finished its' 262 pages on the same day as the 132-page challenge I've owned since late August. I know that says something about me but I'll worry about that later.

I enjoyed this look at the people and stories behind entertainment-giant Pixar. Two things impressed me: 1) passionate people can hang onto their vision in spite of crummy circumstances and 2) many types of people (computer geeks, accountants, story-tellers, CEOs, etc) can be driven more by the pursuit of significance/uniqueness than by the love of money.

My favorite Pixar movie is The Incredibles, followed closely by Toy Story 2 and Finding Nemo; everything else is nice but not in the same category. What's yours?

Book burning

I was so frustrated with how long it was taking me to finish reading Trinity & Triunity, I wanted to either finish it or burn it. But I finally reached the end! It'll actually stay on my shelf for awhile. Here is one paragraph that touched the driving idea of the entire book:

'The interrelationships that become evident in the study of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity shed light on the interrelationships of other Scriptural doctrines. This pattern of interrelationships is important in understanding many doctrines of Scripture. In the simple analogy of space (height, width, and length), each dimension is all of space, but without all three there is no space...Likewise, any concept of salvation that lacks the triune aspect of grace, faith, and good works is a denial of the truth' (p.77)

Earlier in the book, Heinze said something I totally agree with. While we may study aspects of salvation, or members of the Triunity, separately, they do not exist separately. These items must be taught, and thought about, in the light/context of each other; just as teaching of the New Testament must be in light of the Old Testament. Narrow doctrinal studies have their place but cannot be the end of doctrinal studies.

I bought the book for $1 and I wouldn't recommend it to everyone looking to learn more about the Trinity. But while it was tough to get through I appreciated the author's thoughts and I know that time looking at God's mysterious, supernatural and distinct nature is not time wasted. I am inspired by the uniqueness of our God! His nature/essence is beyond our comprehension and, yet, is woven into, and often visible, in all that he does.

it

To me, this book started slowly and didn't really say anything new but had a solid ending.

I appreciated Groeschel's transparency and, most of the time, his humor. The inclusion of other voices in the form of pastors sharing their stories was a nice touch and helped break up the book.

The 11th chapter about having 'it' was convicting. When Jesus is more important than anything else, you have 'it'. That's a challenging truth to stare at and can be a tough one to work on.

Free of Charge

For quite awhile, I've been wanting to read a book by Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge. I don't know what drew me to it: the cover? the subtitle (Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stirpped of Grace)? the author? I really don't know. But I found a used copy while we were on vacation, and I snatched it right up. Although I'm not immersed in it, I am enjoying what I read. I think this paragraph on page 21 (which made it's way into a recent sermon) is eloquent, simple and very true.

'There is God. And there are images of God. And some people don't see any difference between the two.'

I look forward to reading and sharing more of the book as time allows.

Seth Godin

Seth Godin is a highly regarded guru in the advertising/marketing arena. He is, allegedly, the most popular marketing blogger on the web and I recently picked up three of his books at my local library. No, I'm not looking for a career change, I simply believe that marketers tend to have a good read on culture at large. And studying our culture, by borrowing from their insights, is an okay thing for ministers.

The three books I picked up were Purple Cow, the dip and Meatball Sundae.

I really enjoyed Purple Cow and will share some thoughts from it. It was published in 2002 and the subtitle is Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. The first 20-25 pages are excellent layouts of some past and present cultural distinctives; I strongly encourage you to read them. What follows are page #s and quotes:

p.4 "This is a book about why you need to put a Purple Cow into everything you build, why TV and mass media are no longer your secret weapons, and why the profession of marketing has been changed forever. Stop advertising and start innovating."

p.6 Here he shares Geoff Moore's idea diffusion curve (innovators, early adopters...) and I had never seen it in print, it's helpful.

p.7 "Instead of accepting that the old ways are fading away (fast), most companies with a product to market are treating these proven new techniques as interesting fads - worth another look but not worth using as the center of their strategy."

p.10 "The world has changed. There are far more choices, but there is less and less time to sort them out."

Miscellaneous: "It's safer to be risky." People are tuning out. Younger people are just automatically wired to tune out mass media. I think his descriptions and assessments of our culture are 'spot on.' I also appreciate how he uses real-life examples and the fact that he barely uses statistics.

Read Purple Cow! It's only 137 small pages and is very interesting; like I said, the first 20-25 pages are excellent! While this book is about marketing and making money and finding the answers within yourself and your strategies, there are some keen cultural insights for church world.

the dip is a book about knowing when to quit and when to tough it out. I liked his basic disagreement with Vince Lombardi ("Winners never quit.") because it made sense. This book is very short and aesthetically attractive but I'm not gonna buy it or recommend it to anyone.

Meatball Sundae didn't grab me like the other two and I didn't finish it. But I sure like the cover and I see an unforgettable eating contest item in the near future.

Time for Truth

Os Guinness' book, Time For Truth, is a short, pointed, and descriptive work about the cultural and spiritual times we find ourselves in. From the jacket: "In the West today it appears that truth in any objective form is dead. At best it is relative and at worst it is created. Where does that leave us?"

Having heard him a few years ago and having read his well-known book, The Call, I have come to appreciate this intellectual's desire and ability to explain his thoughts and observations and, in turn, to call believers to action. Here are some thoughts that caught my attention:

p.67 "We are told that in the weeks before Thomas Jefferson's death on July 4, 1826, he invited all his grandchildren to Monticello and urged them each to "pursue virtue, be true and truthful." Truth, he ssaw with twilight clarity, was essential to freedom. Yet as one historian observes, Jefferson's belief that "Truth is great and will prevail" (an old Irish saying) is today "more prayer than an axiom."

p.75 "Let me underscore again. I am not countering the postmodern view of truth on behalf of the modern. One is as bad as the other; the postmodern is the direct descendant of the modern and the mirror image of its deficiencies. It is the more dangerous today only because it is more current."

p.115 "...on the one hand the Jewish and Christian faiths join the modern thinker to insist on the objectivity of truth, while on the other they stand with the postmodern thinker to acknowledge the subjectivitity we bring to truth, including our own personal distortions. Within the biblical view, humans are truth-twisters as well as truth-seekers."

p.124 "If we would live free, we must not just know the truth, we must live in truth and we must become people of truth. As Kierkegaard wrote in Training in Christianity: 'The truth consists not of knowing the truth but in being the truth.'"

p.125 "...the biblical...view of truth has the strengths of the modern and postmodern views, the weakness of neither, and just one snag: the cost of its unsparing moral challenge."

I have one more batch of quotes from Guinness' book, Time For Truth, that I'll save for another entry. If any of these jump out at you, positively or negatively, let me know because I'm curious. Have a good one!

Tidbits from The Reason for God #3

Here are some tidbits from chapter 14, The Dance of God.

p. 214 "In self-centeredness we demand that others orbit around us...The inner life of the triune God, however, is utterly different. The life of the Trinity is characterized not by self-centeredness but by mutually self-giving love. When we delight and serve someone else, we enter into a dynamic orbit around him or her, we center on the interests and desires of the other. That creates a dance, particularly if there are three persons, each of whom moves around the other two...Each of the divine persons centers upon the others. None demands that the others revolve around him. Each voluntarily circles the other two...That creates a dynamic, pulsating dance of joy and love."

p.217 "You will nver get a sense of self by standing still, as it were, and making everything revolve around your needs and interests. Unless you are willing to experience the loss of options and the individual limitations that comes from being in committed relationships, you will remain out fo touch with your own nature and the nature of things...We were made for mutually self-giving, other-directed love. Self-centeredness destroys the fabric of what God has made."

p.218 "He has infinite happiness not through self-centeredness, but through self-giving, other-centered love. And the only way we, who have been created in his image, can have this same joy, is if we center our entire lives around him instead of ourselves."

p. 218 Quoting historian George Marsden's summary of Jonathan Edwards' idea: "Why would such an infinitely good, perfect, and eternal being create? The ultimate reason that God creates is not to remedy some lack in God, but to extend that perfect internal communication of the triune God's goodness and love...The universe is an explosion of God's glory."

p.224 "Jesus's life, death, and resurrection was an infinitely costly rescue operation...To be a Christian today is to become part of that same operation..."

I certainly enjoyed the book and will be reaching for it regularly. Let me know if anything stuck out to you.

New Books!

After abstaining from book-buying for what seemed like a looooong time, I made a 7-book purchase on July 3rd from Westminster Books (http://www.wtsbooks.com/) and they just arrived (July 8!). Here they are:

God's Big Picture - Vaughn Roberts
the enemy within - Kris Lundgaard
When Sinners Say "I Do" - Dave Harvey
Heaven and Hell - Edward Donnelly
Self-Image - Lou Priolo
Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin - Cornelius Plantinga Jr.
Esther & Ruth: Reformed Expository Commentary - Iain Duguid

Since blogging seems to be a good way for me to process or reprocess a book, I'm sure something about these will appear in the near future. So which one's first?!

Tidbits from The Reason for God #2

Part 2 of Keller's book deals with 'The Reasons for Faith'. The seven topics are:

8 - The Clues of God
9 - The Knowledge of God
10 - The Problem of Sin
11 - Religion and the Gospel
12 - The (True) Story of the Cross
13 - The Reality of the Resurrection
14 - The Dance of God

As with Part 1 I really enjoyed Keller's style - quick and substantive; he gives you alot to chew on and talk about. Here are some tidbits from chapters 8-13 that caught my eye; they are listed by chapter #, page # and then the tidbit.

8, p.129 Quoting Francis Collins "I can't imagine how nature, in this case the universe, could have created itself."

8, p.132 "There is something about nature that is much more striking and inexplicable than its design. All scientific, inductive reasoning is based on the assumption of the regularity (the "laws") of nature...Most people find that normal and untroubling...science cannot prove the continued regularity of nature, it can only take it on faith...As a proof for the existence of God, the regularity of nature is escapable. You can always say, "We don't know why things are as they are." As a clue for God, however, it is helpful."

9, p.153 "If there is no god, then there is no way to say any action is "moral" and another "immoral" but only "I like this."...if there is no God, then all moral statements are arbitrary, all moral valuations are subjective and internal, and there can be no external moral standard by which a person's feeling and values are judged."

9, p.156 "If a premise ("There is no God") leads to a conclusion you know isn't true ("Napalming babies is culturally relative") then why not change the premise?"

11, p. 177 "If you are avoiding sin and living morally so that God will have to bless and save you, then ironically, you may be looking to Jesus as a teacher, model, and helper but you are avoiding him as Savior...That, ironically, is a rejection of the gospel of Jesus. It is a Christianized form of religion. It is possible to avoid Jesus as Savior as much by keeping all the Biblical rules as by breaking them."

11, p.177 "Both religion (in which you build your identity on your moral achievements) and irreligion (in which you build your identity on some other secular pursuit or relationship) are, ultimately, spiritually identical courses to take. Both are "sin.""

12, p.187 "...the cost of the damage must be borne by someone. Either you or he absorbs the cost for the deed, but the debt does not somehow vanish into thin air."

12, p.189 "She went through the suffering of costly forgiveness, which at first always feels far worse than before it can be felt, but it does come eventually. It leads to a new peace, a resurrection. It is the only way to stop the spread of the evil."

13, p.205 "If there had been only an empty tomb and no sighting, no one would have concluded it was a resurrection. They would have assumed that the body had been stolen. Yet if there had been only eyewitness sightings of Jesus and no empty tomb, no one would have concluded it was a resurrection, because people's accounts of seeing departed loved ones happen all the time. Only if the two factors were both true together would anyone have concluded that Jesus was raised from the dead."

Tidbits from The Reason for God #1

Part 1 of Keller's book deals with common questions/doubts/reasons that skeptics and unbelievers raise in regards to Christianity. Here are the seven thoughts he deals with:

1 - There Can't Be Just One True Religion
2 - How Could a Good God Allow Suffering?
3 - Christianity is a Straitjacket
4 - The Church is Responsible for So Much Injustice
5 - How Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?
6 - Science Has Disproved Christianity
7 - You Can't Take the Bible Literally

Here are some bits that I marked in my copy. The chapter # comes first, followed by the page # and then the quote.

2, p.25 "If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn't stopped evil and suffering in the world, then you have (at the same moment) a God great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you can't know. Indeed, you can't have it both ways."

3, p.39 "The idea of a totally inclusive community is, therefore, an illusion. Every human community holds in common some beliefs that necessarily create boundaries..."

3, p.44 Quoting historian Andrew Walls, "Cultural diversity was built into the Christian faith...There is no "Christian culture" the way there is an "Islamic culture" which you can recognize from Pakistan to Tunisia to Morocco..."

3, p.46 "A fish is only free if it is restricted and limited to water. If we put it out on the grass, its freedom to move and even live is not enhanced, but destroyed. The fish dies if we do not honor the reality of its nature."

4, p.59 "The tendency of religious people, however, is to use spiritual and ethical observance as a lever to gain power over others and over God, appeasing him through ritual and good works."

4, p.61 "The shortcomings of the church can be understood historically as the imperfect adoption and practice of the principles of the Christian gospel."

4, p.67 "When people have done injustice in the name of Christ they are not being true to the spirit of the one who himself died as a victim of injustice and who called for the forgiveness of his enemies."

Overview of Keller's The Reason for God

This book has been enormously popular in certain circles and, imho, for good reason. It's very intelligent and very readable; whatta combo! It is first and foremost an apologetic book for today. While Josh McDowell's Evidence That Demands A Verdict is very factual, aggressive and almost confrontational, Keller's is much more persuasive. There is a gentle tone that strikes me as being much truer to the idea of reasoning with someone, while McDowell's is more argumentative. Granted, there will always be a place for McDowell's factual/historical apologetics but I believe that philosophical apologetics are the sharper sword in today's society.

What convinced me to purchase the book 'hot off the press' and read through it with a friend? The gospel-centeredness and sound reasoning of the author. Keller has only published one other book, Ministries of Mercy, in his pastoral career. But he has written great articles for various publications and his NYC church, Redeemer Presbyterian. And there's a good batch of his free online sermons available at http://sermons.redeemer.com/store/index.cfm. His writings and sermons and the church all seem to have a gospel-centered outlook; it's crazy beautiful! There are some people you read and re-read because it so resonates with your heart and mind. Well, the gospel-centeredness definitely touches my heart and I hope that the repeated exposure will help train my mind and instincts to be gospel-centered.

Well that's enough gushing for one post. I'll move on to some specifics in the next post.

2008 Book List

I made a list of 8 or so books I wanted to read in 2008. Some books I selected because they were good the first time and some because I need to think about their subjects. Also, I selected most because I own them and there's not alot of book money floating around this year. Although I'm not reading them in any particular order, I've finished the first two on this list. In my next post I'll share some things I like in one of them. Here's the list:

The Reason for God by Tim Keller
Fields of Gold by Andy Stanley
Time for Truth by Os Guinness
Creative Marriage by Ed Young
a book by Alistair Begg
a book by John Stott
a book about preaching by Andy Stanley or Bryan Chapell
The Goldsworthy Trilogy by Graeme Goldsworthy
Him We Proclaim by Dennis Johnson
authors I'd like to check out: Francis Bacon, Sidney Griedanus, Reggie McNeal and Bruce Ware.

I'll share some of the stuff I liked, and still do, in Keller's book in the next post.