Hey everyone! We have chosen the next book. It is Compelled By Love by Ed Stetzer and Philip Nation. The subtitle is The Most Excellent Way to Missional Living.

Over the last few months I have been thinking about what “missional” is and why it would be important. The more I thought about this and wrestled with it in Scripture, the more I came back to what love is. In the very beginning of the book, the authors state that the theme of the book is: “The Love of Christ Should Compel Believers in All Things”. I want to test this thesis and work through it practically. How would the love of Christ impact my every day living? How should it? Where am I in applying the love of Christ every day?

If these are of interest to you, pick up the book and join us for the discussion. The book is broken into three parts and that is how we will read it.

March 5th will be the first post on this book and it will cover pages 1-78. March 19th we will talk about pages 79-158 and on March 29th we will discuss pages 159-211. After that we will have a series of posts that summarize and discuss the application of all that we have read. This gives us a couple weeks in between each post and helps us to read and process what we are learning.

I hope that you will consider reading this with us. It should be a good time and I hope it will stretch each of us in our love motivated by what we have received. Thanks.

Hey everyone!
I wanted to get your thoughts about what the next book pick should be. I am pretty open to suggestions. I have some ideas and will choose one of them if necessary, but wanted to hear your thoughts first. Let me know soon. We will be picking in the next week.
Thanks.

Do you think King wanted to address the global warming issue in this book? I would recommend that you take a look at this interview with King and then come back and comment.

If you read the book, did you think this was covered well? What did you notice? Does it bother you when writers put things like this in?

I am very curious. More later.

Have you ever said something and afterward thought, “That is true, but there is another side to it”? As I thought about the last post for Under the Dome, I focused on the problems of the humility heralded. Now I want to highlight a positive.

Julia and Barbie learning to have humility and come to grips with their “sins” in the past, that is a good message. I applaud anything that brings attention to the sins of the “good” characters. This is something the Bible does really well. “No one does good, not even one.” That is just true and we need to remember it. Barbie and Julia’s “confession” is incomplete in that they do not turn to God with it, but I am thrilled that they see their own wrong. In that sense it is good that Big Jim was not the “sinner” that drew all the attention. He really was insignificant. The story was about Julia and Barbie. Too bad the rest of the book misled us in this way.

So Why the Big Story, Then?

King took us on an expedition that was a bit over the top. It would be like me taking you on a tour of the state of Arizona just so that I could tell you the story of one little cactus in Apache Junction. In King’s story, we are lead to believe that this story is about a variety of people and a few big issues. In reality, the focus is on two people. The rest are extras, most of which are killed.

Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed the story. But I do think this is why many people did not like the ending. It felt forced and trite. It didn’t really fit. The book was a grand epic; the ending was a short story ending. There was just a little disconnect.

I still liked the book. After a thousand pages, I would bet that it is very hard to please people with any ending you choose. I certainly don’t hold it against King. He tells good stories. This book simply should have been shorter and more focused.

King’s longer books like this one feel like real life; they meander and stumble about with no clear indication of what is important and what is not. Most people do not like this in life and hate it when it comes to storytelling. Readers want stories that make sense of life, not ones that mirror it. We want meaning. We want clarity. We want to be able to see what is important because insignificant details are not normally included. King ignores this in his longer works. In Under the Dome, we believe Rusty is important. He is not. The story is about Julia and maybe a little about Barbie. Everyone else is just along for the ride.

What did you think about the ending? Did it satisfy you?

Is there a point or have we wasted hours of our lives reading these thousand pages? It wasn’t a waste for me; was it for you? I saw a point. I may not have liked it, but I saw it.

MAJOR SPOILERS. If you have not finished the book and want to discover the end, do not read below this!

The Point

In the end it was one person, Julia, begging for the lives of the survivors. Some alien child held their lives in the balance, determining if they should live. Most didn’t. Questioning the realness of our characters, the child felt justified in playing this little game. Is this a lesson in spirit verses physical? Interesting.

The real lesson? Human arrogance is inappropriate; humility is the only way. Julia and Barbie learned that their little lives were not as “big” as they thought. They were insignificant and they needed to learn that.

But this humility is not like the virtue God speaks about in the Bible. Humanity has earned (“paid for” is the way Julia explains it in the book) some of what is coming to them; that should cause us to be more humble. We are not in charge. God’s expectation of humility is more directly related to our sins against Him, but we will save that discussion for another post.

Life is Like a Brown Sweater

Julia’s story gives us help in understanding King’s point. Julia is stranded and vulnerable, but a girl helps by covering her with a sweater. “Wear it home, it’ll look like a dress.” This phrase comes up again as the title of the last “chapter.” It is meant to be the moral, if you can call it that. Covering. Reminds me of Adam and Eve, except “god” in this story doesn’t care. There is no compassion. How sad to think this is the lesson we should all learn. We are not as important as we think we are. (True) We have done things that have “paid” for a response against us later that we need to accept. But if we beg, we may escape some of the really horrible things that could happen. (We can’t make it better. We need the gospel.) Humility is a good thing to learn, but I would suggest this is a meaningful virtue because of the difference between God and us. He creates; we are the created. That means we should be humble.

Having Said All That…

I liked the book. Over the next few days I will post more thoughts on the book and some of the themes. I have several things to discuss, so be watching for them.

Thanks for reading along. I hope you did not see it as a waste of time. We have much to learn, maybe especially from people who disagree with us.

Yesterday I mentioned that God used this movie to convict me. No question about that. Since seeing the movie I have been thinking about how important God’s word is to me daily. Certainly it is not the gospel, but it helps me know the gospel. It is not meant to be an idol, but it is God’s very words that bring me to my greatest Treasure.

Eli tells Solara that before the war people had more than they needed, they threw away things that people would kill for now and that they lost their ability to know what was precious. Hard not to feel that right between the eyes in this country. And for Christians, wow!

“What one thing would you take to a deserted island?” As long as that is not a reality, we like to think about it. God changed that question for me. What do I currently act like is the most precious thing in my life? If God gave you a backpack with one thing in it that you treasured most in the last 6 months, what would be in your pack?

The Bible. Precious. That should be our reality.

Talking about wisdom and understanding, “…if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasure…” Proverbs 2 convicts us too. What about this one: “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” Psalms 119:11

God is the ultimate goal; that is true. But how precious is that book that He gave us to point to Him?

It is easy in this fast paced world to lose our bearings and leave the path. I understand. I live there too. But let’s be thankful that God brings reality crashing back into our lives so we value what truly matters.

I think some meditation and memorization is in order for me. What about you?

What exactly is a “Christian” movie? For those who have read this blog before, that is not a new question. Check out Sitting on my Christian Couch to see one example. The problem is really about what “Christian” means. Is it a point or an agenda? Is it something that is owned by a follower of Jesus? Is it simply the person who follows Jesus? People label things “Christian” all the time. Christian music is probably the biggest example. Is that simply music produced by a Christian? More Christian music exists than we think if that is the case. Typically what people mean is that the idea or point of the movie, music, etc. is a Christian idea or concept. For the sake of discussion, we will accept that for now.

Now that we have that out of the way, does Book of Eli present a Christian message? No.

This is not a movie about Christ or written by Christians, as far as I know. It is simply a movie about the Christian’s book—the Bible. It might be about God, but I doubt it. I think God shows up just to help the story rather than for us to focus on Him. In the movie, the bit parts and the starring roles are reversed. God plays the bit part, and humans will get the Oscars. Although I doubt God would show up to get His Oscar even if He got one.

I think it is a good movie, just not a Christian one.

“Christians” bloggers are asking this same question, but many of them have different reasons for questioning. They want to know how all the violence, hacking and shooting, could possibly be “Christian.” I would just recommend they read their Old Testament again this year and pay attention to the violence. It is not absent. Is Eli any different than Ehud who kills a king in one of the most powerful descriptions of violence I have read? Judges 3:12-30

Certain things in our culture are vitally important; those things that will help humanity become better. That is the point of the movie. If the gospel is what they were trying to preserve at the exclusion of everything else, then it might be a Christian message. Would anything be different in the story if we replaced the Bible with the Koran? I don’t think so. The only difference is that Christians would reject it as non-Christian. The story would make the same point and in the end the Koran would have been placed on the shelf next to the Bible.

This movie is about what matters—about what is precious. That is a good discussion. I enjoyed the film. It convicted me of many things that I needed right then and there. Let’s talk about that.

Tomorrow we will look at what does matter. See you then.

Here is the latest letter from James to Tim. Check out the others by clicking on The Shack Letters in Categories to the right.

Tim,

Great to hear from you so quickly. It is so hard to know how quickly we will hear back since all our mail comes through our captors. They are not mean about things, but they don’t seem to be willing to let us go. I am not sure how to even explain what this captivity looks like other than it is similar to when Paul was being held under house arrest. He was able to do so many things and even have visitors and yet he was being held prisoner. It is similar to that, but we are not allowed visitors. They obviously let us send mail, which seems strange to me, but we are thankful for it since there would be no other way to keep in contact with you. We are constantly reflecting on 1 Peter 2:23 where Peter talks about Jesus. Just like Jesus, Lily and I want to entrust ourselves to Him who judges justly. God is in control. We struggle to do this day-by-day, but we see how it can be done. God is so loving and inviting.

I am so sorry that I was not as clear about the whole Papa thing. I fear that is one of the limitations of writing letters like this and a good reason I prefer face-to-face communication. I cannot gauge where you are and what you understand or how clear I am being. Everything I write is so clear in my mind that even when I read it over again, it makes perfect sense. I don’t think you have to call God “Papa” or “Abba” in order to remember that He is that close. I think the issue is more about what is in your heart. When you think of God, do you think of Him as being that close? Most of us do not think of Him this way and need help along these lines. That is why words like this can be helpful. But this is not another rule to follow. We Christians are so good at making lists of things to do in order to be closer to God. How foolish this must seem from God’s perspective! We are already able to enter into His perfect presence because of Jesus’ death on the cross (check out Hebrews 4:16 and 10:19-22) and yet we feel like we are so far away from Him.

About the whole “myth” question… I too felt very uncomfortable with this idea—calling the Bible a myth. In our culture it is assumed that myths are fictional accounts of things to give weight to a lesson we want to teach. We want to be clear that the Bible is true and so often we stay away from this terminology. But C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien used “myth” in a different way. They called God’s story “the one true myth.” The way they thought about it was that the Bible was the one story that was true behind all the other stories that we tell. I think they used the word “myth” to describe a grand story that sought to explain how things came to be. If this is the case, then the Bible could be called a myth, as long as we understand it is a true myth. This may be confusing, but it helps to clarify our terms. In the story, I think Mac was simply trying to capitalize on a story that his daughter already liked to help. Mac does say that the death of Jesus was true. He is not trying to back down. He just seems to raise the other story up to that same level. You can decide what you want about that.

Personally I am intrigued by myth. I am still not sure how to think about it, but I want to read more about the purpose of myth and how it works with the Bible. I tend to agree with Lewis and Tolkien about this myth stuff, even though there are some things by both of them that I struggle with.

I am not sure if the reason Christians have a problem with this book is Mac himself. It might be. I think Christians tend to select a few key problems (which are clearly there and need to be dealt with) and skip over some things we can learn from. It is unfortunate, but we all do it. I understand your struggle with Mac. I think we need to understand where he is in his life. He is on a path, but struggles with doubts and pain. He is flawed, that is sure, but so are we. Give him some grace right now as we get into the book and wait to see if there is a change in him as the book progresses. I love movies and one of the best things that I have learned from watching them is that stories, good stories, are enhanced when the main character has to learn and grow. He or she is changed by the end. I call this the character arc. See if that is the case with Mac and we can talk about it more later.

We are continuing to pray for you. Keep us updated on how you are doing.

We love you very much.

In Him the true Hero of every story,

James