Enjoy your Prayer Life

This book by Michael Reeves (same great author as this) does what it says on the tin: it is a hearty and helpful guide to diagnosing whether and why one's life of relational prayer with God may, or may not, be flourishing at any particular time in your life. Readers of this blog will not be surprised that maintaining a strong lifestyle element of prayerfulness is, I think - fundamental to my personal flourishing and joy.

   It's a very short book, in fourteen bitesize chapters: I finished it over a single coffee. Any normal reader could likely do the same, were they not taking the time-outs to think over what they've read - as I didn't feel much need to, as it rather just revivified in affirmation of my actual IRL views on prayer anyway, grounded well in Scriptural theology as you'd expect. Helpful reminders from this book include:

• Prayer is not a magical formulaic means of "getting summat" from God
• It is merely asking God for help with that which we cannot resolve
• Our prayers to the Father are conducted through and by Jesus
• Intentionality of resting in Christ's name gives our prayers a "pleasing fragrance" when the words reach the heavens; and all prayers are answered, though we might not always recognize these when they come as God's wisdom exceeds our own understanding of right and Need
• Ideally, prayer should be done constantly - that is, in that it becomes an added layer of consciousness to those practicing it, in all things; not just ritual verbiage
• Total dependence on God through Jesus's accomplished work is the best method for achieving constancy of prayerful mindfulness; it is the antithesis of "independence"
• Obviously, the Holy Spirit guides much of all the inner workings herein
• So be honest - for God sees you as you truly are
• And trust in Christ's promises - that as we pray in and with Him we will be brought ever deeper into God's bosom; in joy, understanding and obedient love

   And so on.

   Hardly the kind of book that would be necessarily enticing to someone who doesn't think God is real or good or whatever - but as a Christian pilgrim, this is worth a read. If you're able to afford it - it's probably worth buying a few dozen copies and handing them out to all your Christian mates/acquaintances. In any case, I have left my (somewhat dog-eared, soz) copy in the Trewan Hall bookswap library.

Freedom Movement: 500 Years of Reformation

This book by Michael Reeves is a very short discussion about the sheer historical potency of the Protestant Revolution, the first tinder-strike of which flew half a millennium ago. While this may be one of the most fascinating and powerfully-long-reaching threads in the whole of Western intellectual, social, political and moral history (and I do hope to read more on the subject, especially given [somewhat dangerously given my book addiction] that my new workplace is also home to South Yorkshire's largest library of Christian theological and historical texts - hence the relative shortness of this post), the book's aim is not to explore this in much depth. to remind us of the profoundness of the gospel truth which the Reformation was key in effectively democratising: before Wittenberg and Gutenberg the Roman Catholic Church was of unparalled power in controlling public understanding of the religion to which an entire continent was almost forcibly adhered; Luther's rediscovery of biblical grace was a radical return to the church's proclamation and effective witness of actual good news. Reeves plumbs the depths of the mysteries of the gospel for all people in all ages, and thereby shows the revolutionary brilliance of the Reformation in provoking and facilitating individual responses to biblical truth. It made me reflect with deep gratitude for the historical currents that birthed Protestantism (and more roundaboutly, dozens of gigantic and profoundly impactful ideas emergent from post-Catholic-hegemony European thought - the Reformation changed everything), as this heavily shaped our modern world and continues to do so - for better or worse, given the fractal-like nature of its spiralling influences and responses to these, but the fundamental change that sought to establish access to the gospel for all men and women and so helped rediscover the incredible paradigm-shattering truth that salvation is by faith alone: this is worth remembering with celebration. Martin Luther said, "I have done nothing by myself", and he's kind of right - God used him in history to challenge corruption in the church that had grown up to protect itself above proclaiming truth, and kickstart an immense process of rediscovery and reformation.

* Why should it? There's a very thorough wikipedia page, not to mention a pretty good documentary-drama on Netflix about Luther and his upstart protestance's impact. 

The Good God

This book, by Michael Reeves, was another from the UCCF bookstall but which had sat neglected for some months. I took to reading it over the past week because of revision - it's exam season so I've not had much time to read and this book is quite short - but the genuine timeliness of its content to my week deepened its considerable impact, for reasons I'll explain further shortly.

   It's about God, basically; who he is in his unified tri-personal character of Father, Son and Spirit, and why this is a good thing for a great many reasons. The book points us to look at our own conceptions of "God", which generally fall far short of what we would consider perfect. We think all too often of a lonely omnipotent puppeteer who created a populated universe to serve him, imposing laws and judgments upon it when its denizens fail to meet his arbitrary standards - one God in one person, a sort of Omnibeing. If you have been put off faith because your conception of God was sort of like this I would encourage you to read this book and reconsider who you think he is, and then reread the Bible to meet the God described here in context and see how much more sense it makes. I'd also recommend this book enormously to Christians - it's a delightful reminder of who our God is and how good he is in the Father, Son and Spirit, and how we can approach him in those persons and delight in them. The book is quite short and in quite simple prose but very theologically dense - it's remarkable how so much complexity and meaning is packed into accessible sentences, and because of this it's very easy to read and a deeply encouraging and warming little book.

   The God described in The Good God is so much more agreeable, beautiful, and frankly plausible than the Omnibeing; the God of biblical theology as one Lord in three persons. It is the Trinity that forms the centre of his essential character, defining who he is and how he can relate to things; because he is in eternal loving community (of Father, Spirit and Son) it is intrinsic to his nature to be overflowing with self-giving love. This speaks immense volumes into almost every avenue of doctrine (of which I will have to skip several and the rest glaze over somewhat, the book is so tightly written that it's really hard to summarise chapters effectively), such as:

• Creation - an Omnibeing would have spent eternity alone and so have no need for a created world other than pure self-indulgence. God in Trinity however has spent eternity loving one another in such abundance that it seems natural that such a god would seek to create a world populated by beings made "in our own image", that the creatures (i.e. humans) could enjoy similar states of self-giving love in community in a world that had been created by the Father to be good in every conceivable way.
• Free Will - even if an Omnibeing had created people, their purpose would be more to the fulfilment of any whims of their maker, leaving them little more than automata. Creatures of the Trinitarian God are granted their own part of real existence with which to think and act independently, otherwise the "love" they are being shown in meaningless and they cannot respond meaningfully to it. To join their loving creator in genuine fellowship they need to be able to choose, though why one would choose to direct life by one's own terms rather than the perfect terms of the perfect Father who created them is another question.
• Sin, Judgment, Grace & Salvation - even if an Omnibeing had created people with genuine freedom of choice and they had rejected its rulership and moral decrees (which frankly is reasonable, such a God would be effectively just a grumpy dictator with substantive metaphysical DIY know-how) then it would have little reason to show mercy or forgiveness to its subjects and may as well start again from scratch. God in Trinity though takes the exact opposite tack; sin is the type of actions that occur when not God but ourselves are the object of our primary love, and this is not the way we were made to be. We were made in God's image of outpouring selfless love, and this is shown in Jesus' summary of the law as loving God and loving others wholeheartedly. Even if we fail to retain this character of perfect altruism however, it is intrinsic to God's nature, and so he will go to any lengths to keep his loved created ones near to him even when they have turned away - even if his willingness to forgive them requires someone else to take the blame and the only person spotless enough to do so being his Son himself in human form as Jesus. Only a God with eternal experience of loving relationships could have the potential for mercy and grace, and by this through the substitution of the Son we are saved and welcomed back into the eternal perfect community with the Trinity for which we were made.

So yeh, the fact that God is the Father, Son and Spirit in one is a fundamental and gloriously good truth. It was refreshing to me especially this week, as I said earlier, because I've been fairly snowed under by revision for philosophy exams. The latter (and harder) of the two exams concerns the Rationalist school (particularly Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant - they're all extremely clever and their ideas sound both scarily possibleish and utterly mental) and their ideas regarding epistemology and metaphysics, of which the philosophical concept "God" plays a huge role in determining truth, necessary existence and such. I don't want to go into details; this is my recreational book-blog, not excess revision - anyway, it's thoroughly interesting but quite dry, especially when one is used to considering God as the character expressed in this book rather than the abstract concept wangled about by various odd systems of armchair-reasoning. To leave behind ontological arguments and possible worlds and trademarks for a spell and reengage with a God whom I know not as concept but as loving personal Trinity was like a hot bath for the soul. He is more than just a necessary being or an infinite substance, he is a good Father who made me and knows me, has saved and adopted me through his Son and continually blesses me through his Spirit: he is my Lord and my God.

   Quite aside from how much I needed and enjoyed this book though, I would suggest anyone read it; even if you've never fondled a religious belief in your life it will provoke some interesting ideas about the kind of God you do or don't believe in, and if you are a Christian then it's a pretty sweet (uplifting? nice? any broad positive adjective) read.