Books
Your Personal Conflict with the Great Commission
**Simply fulfilling my promise to write about Radical all week. And don’t miss tomorrow’s post. Got a little surprise.**
Suspend your belief for a moment.
I want to change your view of history.
In January 1703, shortly after graduating and failing an audition for an organist’s post at Sangerhausen in January 1703, Johann Sebastian Bach didn’t take up his post as a court musician in the chapel of Duke Johann Ernst in Weimar…
But instead, while riding away from Sangerhausen, Bach felt a severe call on his life to travel to Tunisia to minster the gospel to the Arabs…
Summarily giving up his ambition to be a composer.
Revision of Van Gogh’s Little Life
Almost two hundred years later, Vincent Van Gogh succeeded in his early vocational aspiration to become a pastor and preached the gospel from 1879 until his death to a small mining town in Belgium…
Neglecting his elegant [but tortured] artistic output that resulted in intoxicating paintings like The Starry Night and Still Life: Vase with Sunflowers?
Naturally, even to conceive of such events means we have to revise history and do some heavy-duty speculating.
But here’s my point–what if every great Christian artist, writer, dramatist, composer or scholar simply shed their vocational ambitions to work strictly as a missionary, preacher, teacher or evangelist?
Would our culture be any less than it is without Bach’s sacred St. John Passion or the sublime chaos of van Gogh’s Irises?
The answer, or course, is “no.”
For one thing, conceiving of history without Bach the composer and his rich legacy of liturgical works or Van Gogh and his dreamy, sad impressionistic paintings is pure fiction.
It’s the stuff of revisionist history best left in the hands of novelists who like to entertain. Here’s what I’m getting at.
The Tension the Great Commission Creates
I get a strong impression after reading David Platt’s Radical that he’d like to see us all abandon our political, social, academic or artistic pursuits and share the gospel.
That, my friends, is radical.
It’s an over-reading of his point, of course, even though he is a pastor and [I think] would be quiet happy if every one in his church–and all the readers of his book–would become evangelists or missionaries.
In fact, after you read the book there’s a small part of you wanders if you should liquidate your 401k and send it to World Vision…
Or sell your suburban home and move your family of four to a grass hut in Bangladesh…
Or scrap your dream of being a veterinarian and take the first flight to Ethiopia to save ten-year-old girls from sexual slavery.
David Platt and his book just might ruin your life in that way.
Extreme, perhaps. But Jesus and his great commission was anything but superficial.
Which brings us to the tension with our cultural mandate: God’s decree that we subdue the earth by building schools, running governments and crafting art.
Questions the Book Will Stir Up
No question: There are those who will read the book and go to the extreme. Who will give it all up and make radical changes to their lifestyle to fulfill the gospel.
David Platt’s got the testimonies to prove it. For the rest of us, we at least re-think how we spend our money.
In reality, all Platt asks you to do is bear your heart before God and ask: What can I do? How can I give it all?
And what does that mean?
Does that mean I remain here in the suburban U. S. and churn out blog posts or novels or paintings or musical scores–for your glory?
Or do you have something more radical for me? Read Platt’s book and, in truth, you will ask yourself those questions. What do you say?
One Final Thought
Sometimes I wonder what Calvin would’ve written if he’d not had his conversion, but instead pursued his ambition to live a leisurely literary life.
I gamble he might have been a French Goethe. To this literary nut job, that sounds appealing.
Don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t trade that history if it meant we gave up the Institutes. I’m just saying: Maybe it’s not so bad to let your imagination wander on occasion.
Who knows: You might stumble upon a brilliant idea. An idea you can offer up to the glory of God.
But maybe that’s enough? We’ll never know, will we?
David Platt Frightens Me
Ever hear anyone complain that academics are divorced from reality?
That theorists would simply collapse in shock if they ever stepped down from their ivory tower into the dirty world of human beings?
That some professors are educated beyond their usefulness?
That scholars are cut off from emotion, compassion and spiritual devotion?
Granted, there’s a lot of truth behind these complaints.
Intellectuals tend to elevate the mind over the heart, making the pursuit of doctorates more important than people.
But not all academics fall to this temptation. Take David Platt for example.
Educated to the Hilt
At first glance, you could level those accusations at David Platt.
He earned two undergraduate degrees from the University of Georgia. He followed that up with three advanced degrees.
But he wasn’t finished.
He added a doctor of philosophy from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary [NOBTS] to his curriculum vitae.
He then served as dean of chapel and assistant professor of expository preaching and apologetics at NOBTS.
The man is a highly accomplished academic. [And as an arm-chair intellectual, he scares me.]
Naturally, you’d expect his book Radical to read like a professional journal. But it doesn’t.
Entering the Dirty Business of Human Beings
Here’s what can’t be missed: Platt gets around.
His book is shaped by his overseas mission trips to places like India and Indonesia.
It’s influenced by his time as pastor at the Church at Brook Hills.
And it’s predisposed to sound a lot like John Piper–the quintessential scholar-turned-pastor–who obviously impacted Platt.
All this serves to make Platt firmly grounded in the dirty business of human beings, compassionate to the bone and ridiculously eager to make disciples.
Which in turn makes Radical a book anyone could read.
In fact, it’s almost simplistic. Sometimes redundant. It’s Richard Wurmbrand meets Kevin DeYoung.
You won’t get lost in this book. Neither will you have to re-read any sentences. In fact, you’ll almost get bored.
But at that moment when you’re tempted to close the book, Platt pulls you back in. He does this in a handful of ways.
Radical: Sticky from Experience and Education
He might draw out a beautiful analogy about the church being a troop carrier turned luxury liner.
Or a gripping story about a young, intelligent woman killed in a bizarre bus accident while she served Palestinian refugees in Egypt.
Or a potent scene where believers in China begged him to teach them the Old Testament…and ten days later to teach them the New.
While all these things make for a good read we have to remember that Platt argues from a very simple platform: the gospel of Jesus Christ.
A platform he demonstrates you don’t need a degree to preach. Or a doctorate to understand.
Just a heart that hungers to lose it’s will in the will of God and no longer desires anything for himself–except the glory of God.
And it’s just this kind of heart that drives the hardcore academic David Platt.
David Platt v. the American Dream [Book Review]
David Platt is taking a swing at our long-established national ethos…
The one that says citizens of every rank can achieve a “better, richer and happier life.”
The one that says with hard work and a can-do attitude you can buy the perfect home with a picket fence…two cars in the garage…and a monster flat screen television pinned to the living room wall.
Unfortunately, it’s an ethos at odds with Jesus Christ.
Nasty Side Effect of the American Dream
Originally quoted by James Truslow Adams back in 1931, “The American Dream” is rooted in the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence:
“all men are created equal…endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights including Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
It’s an idea that motivated immigrants of all stripes. That drives our bulldog entrepreneurial spirit. And feeds Olympic-sized dreams.
But it’s got a nasty side effect: conspicuous consumerism.
In other words, it breeds the sense that we are not people until we have the large house in an exclusive subdivision with a 28-foot boat parked at the marina.
In this version of the American dream, material goods and worldly success rule because it provide us with a sense of safety, satisfaction and security.
And unfortunately, Dr. Platt argues in his forthcoming book Radical: Taking Back Our Faith from the American Dream, it’s hijacked the American church.
The Tension Between Building and Mission Budgets
The American church is obsessed with budgets. Building campaigns. Entertainment value. Head count. Comfort level. Presidential hat tips.
A systemic problem considering the church wasn’t built to pamper us. It was built for something completely different.
Platt points out the tension between the American church and its original purpose with two headlines he saw recently in a local newspaper: One headline declared a church spent 1.5 million dollars to build a new sanctuary. On the same page that same church gave $5,000 to missions in the same year.
There’s something very disturbing about that picture. And it says something about us, too: Our American view of the gospel makes much of us.
Jesus’ gospel, on the other hand, makes much of God and his mandate to reach the lost and the poor.
It’s an obsession with missions.
Now, before you think Dr. Platt is a small-town pastor frustrated with larger churches and their enormous budgets and congregations that rival small cities–think again.
Platt is the pastor of Birmingham, Alabama’s 4,000 strong The Church. That means he’s coping with the same ills as most megachurch pastors.
And he’s finding it hard to live with this model, a model that is on a collision course with Jesus.
The Original Purpose of the Church
In Matthew 28:19 Jesus commanded his disciples to go and make disciples of all the nations.
One thing is clear: No one is exempt from this commandment. We are all responsible for spreading the gospel and training believers.
Look around a contemporary American church and what do you see? Not much training. Discipline. Or hardship.
Look at churches overseas, though, and you get quite a different picture. Here’s how Platt described one underground church he visited:
A woman who lived in the city and knew some English shared, “I have a television, and every once in a while I am able to get stations from the United States,” she said. “Some of these stations have church services on them. I see the preachers, and they are dressed in very nice clothes, and they are preaching in very nice buildings. Some of them even tell me that if I have faith, I too can have nice things.”
She paused before continuing. “When I come to our church meetings, I look around, and most of us are very poor, and we are meeting here at great risk to our lives.” The she looked at me and asked, “Does this mean we do not have enough faith?”
Sharp contrast wouldn’t you say? He paints another humbling picture of this contrast when he compares the American church with the history of the SS United States.
Short History of a Luxury Liner
The SS United States was originally designed to carry over 15,000 troops anywhere in the world at speeds of 40 miles per hour or faster.
It was the biggest and fastest combat ship of its kind. However, it never went into combat.
Instead, the Navy used it to carry presidents, heads of state and celebrities to enjoy 695 staterooms, 4 dining rooms, 3 bars, 2 theaters, 5 acres of open deck and heated pool while they sauntered across the Atlantic Ocean.
Platt writes:
“Instead of a vessel used for battle during wartime, the SS United States became a means of indulgence for wealthy patrons who desired to coast peacefully across the Atlantic.”
Replace SS United States with the America church and you have a startlingly real picture of what we’ve become.
This is hot tub religion. Not what Jesus intended.
Jesus Versus the American Dream
Jesus intended the church to prepare Christians for battle. And to actually send them into battle. It’s purpose is to mobilize a people to accomplish a mission.
However, we seem to have turned away from a sense of mission to share the gospel with pagans and alleviate suffering and adopted the gospel of American consumerism dominated by “self-advancement, self-esteem and self-sufficiency.”
It’s our bliss versus their pain.
But the church never should’ve gotten to this point. Long ago Jesus said “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
In essence, Jesus Christ and the American Dream are NOT compatible.
What Platt Isn’t Saying
Understand: This is not a call to abandon abundance. No–it’s a call to rethink how we use it. Scripture clearly teaches that God intends our plenty to supply the needs of others.
And it’s not a question of “What can we spare?” No. It’s a question of “What will it take?”
Over a billion people are headed to a Christless eternity. Over 28,000 children will die of starvation before the day ends.
The implications are huge: We don’t have time to waste our lives on the American Dream. Not if we all have been commanded to take this gospel to them.
In the end, Jesus said we will be betrayed. Tortured. Killed. This is the undeniable truth behind being a follower of Christ.
So if we want a safe, untroubled, comfortable life free from danger, then we should stay away from the biblical Jesus and continue to cling to the American Dream.
Psst…Karr? This Sex Scene Is a Really Bad Idea
What do you do with a memoir that details in four pages a graphic display of child molestation?
What if its the author as a young child that’s the subject…
Does that change the make up of the story from autobiography to something more sinister–like pornography?
Does it matter that this is an event in the past? Does it make it any less real or problematic?
Those were some of the questions I asked myself as I finished reading Mary Karr’s 1995 memoir The Liar’s Club.
The book was Karr’s first memoir [she's since written two more--Cherry and Lit--I've read neither of them] and the idea to write it came from her friend Tobias Wolfe.
In her own words, Carr said it was an agonizing task that involved a mountain of emotional labor–not just to revisit dark places but to merely get the words on the page. Here she is in a Salon interview:
“I would lie down on the floor and go to sleep after about an hour and a half’s work. Literally go to sleep like I had been driving all night. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I went to a shrink and said, ‘Am I repressing something, bah bah bah bah.’ And she said, ‘Well, I think you are just really exhausted by it.’”
Fortunately, her herculean effort paid off.
The Essence of The Liar’s Club
She wrote a compelling, hilarious and haunting autobiography about growing up as a child in Leechfield, Texas–oil refinery country–raised by a hard-working, hard-drinking, but sturdy and surprisingly gentle father who managed to marry a displaced New Yorker living on the outskirts of madness.
The book ended up being a runaway bestseller–a justified judgment given the quality of the writing and a decent payoff for the task of exposing herself.
But the question is–did she go too far?
In Carr’s defense, as a child she played the hand she was dealt–and as a child that’s sometimes all you can do.
What you get is a gritty, foul-mouthed eight-year-old girl who fought hard for survival and security, revenge and love–things hard to come by when you have a mother who’s head is in a perennial cloud of vodka, methamphetamine diet pills, suspect men, brooding jazz and fatalistic literature.
So it comes as no surprise when I tell you that Karr’s mother lacked a woeful amount of judgment, most clearly seen in her decision to allow questionable men to babysit her daughters.
The scene was terrible. And you saw it like a dark storm slowly sweeping in from the sea. At one point I wondered if Carr was going to actually go there. Or would she pull out early enough to avoid the explicit?
I had hope she’d pull out. Earlier in the book Carr handled a case of rape very sympathetically without giving an uncomfortable amount of detail.
That’s why it surprised me that she dove into this particular scene with no holds barred.
Where I’d Like to Have Not Gone
At least that’s my guess because the moment I saw where she was going and had no intention of stopping, I bailed and counted the pages before the scene was over.
Four pages.
Granted, as I quickly skimmed the pages looking for the end (it came, by the way, when the chapter ended) the scene covered mostly emotional territory, like her mental activity during the event.
And I’m glad to say she never revisited the topic again.
But here’s the deal: This scene would NEVER make it to the movie screen. In fact, if you owned a video of this event, you’d be arrested.
Why, then, is it okay in a book? I argue it’s not. It permits us to go to dark places we should never visit.
Naturally, this uncorks a litany of problems, namely censorship. But should the world thank Mary Carr for “going there” on this particular topic and being candid about it?
No.
All this does is allow us to inch our moral boundaries back, calibrated by our sense of appropriate indiscretion–and that’s, unfortunately, what you get when you don’t have absolute boundaries.
Gore Vidal–who defended cannabis laws–once said that some people should be told not to do drugs.
I agree. And the same goes for morality. Mary Karr’s book would’ve been a runaway bestseller without this scene.
A curious–if not disturbing–side note about the The Liar’s Club is it’s viewed as the book that jump-started the memoir explosion. Naturally, in it’s wake we have self-expression without guardrails.
One has to wonder where this will take us if we don’t provide those boundaries.
5 Posts to Make You Wise [A Reading Primer]
Reading is the cheapest and easiest way to grow your brain.
Cheap because you can get most books at your local library–or at Google Books.
And easy because you can learn about the history of gravity…
The political career of George Washington…
Or Augustine’s view of free will from your favorite reading chair.
That’s why I put such a high premium on reading. And spend a smidgen of time here writing about reading.
With that in mind, here are five posts on how to get the most out of your reading routine.
How to Absorb a Book into Your Bloodstream
One of the most important rules when it comes to reading.
How to Abandon a Book
You probably didn’t know this, but there’s an instinct to abandoning a book. An instinct you can develop.
How Do You Read?
Narrow, wide or something completely different? Share your reading style with me.
How to Read a 291-Page Book in 2 Hours
Want to read more books in less time–and even catch up on the classics you’ve missed? Try chapter pacing.
Drop-Dead Easy Guide on How to Journal
Twenty cool and easy tricks on how to get started with your journal. [A guide for those who don't want to spoil the pages of their books with a pencil.]
Granted, reading alone won’t make you wise. But it’s a start. By the way, do you have any reading tips? Please share.
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