Jesus the Son of Man

This book by Kahlil Gibran was an absolute treat. Having re-read his most famous work last night, I became curious about his other stuff and found this for 73p on Kindle, so immediately bumped it to the top of my to-read list - and I have not been disappointed.

   It's difficult to decide whether to classify this as poetry or short stories given the style & nature of the content. Basically what the book is constituted of is several dozen vignettes of various people's reactions to, recollections of, and reflections on Jesus of Nazareth; these range from his disciples (eg. James & John, Matthew, Peter, Thomas, Mary Magdalene gets three separate chapters alone) to his erstwhile foes (most notably the high priests Annas & Caiaphas, and Pontius Pilate) to random strangers (eg. a Persian philosopher, a Babylonian astronomer, a Greek poet, and my personal favourite "Ahaz the portly").* The attitudes presented range from worshipful awe to confusion to hostility - there is even one interestingly neutral perspective. Gibran seeks to tread the known and possible ground of the biblically-orthodox Jesus faithfully, making no theological points but as a work of socio-historical imagination driving home the pressing question - "how would you have related to him?"**

   A very readable, vibrant & faithful book. Highly recommended for those curious about what we can say or imagine about Jesus without resorting to outright fancy, be they Christian like Kahlil Gibran was or not.

* A couple of lacunae I would have liked to have seen filled would be Pharisees and the beneficiaries of his miracles, lepers & cripples & demoniacs etc, but I suppose you can't have everything, and admittedly Gibran is already doing a great deal here.

** Indeed, the final chapter, "a man from Lebanon [nineteen centuries later]" is Gibran's own reflections on meeting Jesus himself through the life of faith.

the Cross of Christ

This book is John Stott's magnum opus, diving deep into the titular heart of the Christian faith. It is rigorous but accessible, profound but familiar, consistently biblically-grounded & full of pastoral application. Highly recommended reading for any Christian who wants to more expansively understand the wonderful divine mystery of Christ's substitutionary death for us and what it means. I've been reading through it ten or so pages at a time with my dad, which has led to some incredibly helpfully-edifying & spiritually-provocative conversations, so I would  highly recommend doing something similar to get the most out of this chonky tome - indeed, the edition I've linked here includes a study guide at the back, which we didn't use, but I imagine would be greatly fruitful.

Imagination Manifesto

This book is a collaboration between theologian Ted Turnau & artist Ruth Naomi Floyd; it is a call for Christian creatives to plant "oases of imagination", spaces where those both creative & not can meet & share inspiration. It is a very practical book in many ways, with excellent chapters on how Christian artists must eschew & transcend the temptations to engage in culture wars or retreat into subcultural bubbles; supplemented by more theoretical chapters, such as on the nature of the imagination, or the role of the artist in bearing witness to the brokenness of the world. I found it a very inspiring read & I would like to quietly slip it onto the shelf of every Christian in a pastoral leadership position to help them see the vital value in better supporting the creatives under their care.

Seeing Beauty & Saying Beautifully

This book by John Piper is an exploration of how poetic effort can be utilized in devotion to God; as evangelism, as exhortation, as edification, etc. Drawing on the lives & work of three great Christian communicators (each of whom is afforded a relevant-facts-only potted biography to place their works into their proper contexts, alongside a rough examination of the linguistic arts each employed in their vocation), Piper develops a cogent & compelling discourse on how "putting things into your own words" is a mighty fine tool in the finite individual's spiritual formation & missional impact.

   The contents proceed as follows:

1. a brief introduction theologically justifying the poetic use of language by Christians in the communication of their faith, hope, & love - despite the common assertions in the New Testament that "lofty speech" is NOT the way to best present the gospel
2. George Herbert - the 16th-century rural pastor who posthumously became known as one of the greatest devotional writers this world has seen. Herbert's pastoral career responsibilities & magisterial poetic gifting are both given due examination, with his spiritual humility & technical grandeur given similar weight in discussion
3. George Whitefield - the 18th-century trans-Atlantic preacher (with, if we're being honest, a borderline unbelievable virtually superhuman* capacity for bringing to gospel to people far & wide**) whose modes of dramatic eloquent enunciation brought many thousands to Christ & laid the foundations for the Great Awakenings that followed in the years after his tour of America
4. C.S. Lewis - the 20th-century atheist-turned-Anglican who, alongside his career as a scholar of ancient literature, became the foremost apologist for the Christian faith (despite several decidedly heterodox positions that he held compared to most evangelicals of his & our era) via combination of romantic & rationalistic apprehension of Christianity's truth claims; as expressed in both imaginative & logical means
5. a final concluding chapter which briefly restates everything learned from these three great disciples of Christ & challenges us to follow them in their following of & expression of such - we may not all be poets but we all have the capacity for poetic effort, and handedly manifesting such is a tried & true means of deepening our own grasp of the divine just as much as it does communicate such encountered truth to our audiences

   After the concluding section on how each of these very different dudes drew upon the fountain of inspiration that is God*** to make more of their faith, and how each has lessons to teach us about ongoing contemporary ministry in ways fruitful both to writer & reader (or speaker & hearer, as in Whitefield's case) - well, that's the book. I found this a hugely edifying & instructive read as a poet myself, so would highly recommend it to Christians curious about the more daring aspects of expression as a fantastic source of real-life Example in How-To-Do... I dare say even non-Christians who already have a creative bent will find much in here to make them think deeply & feel seenly about Truth.

* Dude preached roughly a thousand sermons a year for thirty years. Which, even given his barely-existent social life outside of itinerant gospel proclamation, must have left him with minimal time for the actual preparation of said sermons - I choose thus to believe that even two centuries before Red Bull was available he must have been largely, especially, winging it.

** An interesting knot of historical biography is that Whitefield was a slave-owner who also dedicated huge amounts of effort in evangelising slaves, who he saw as >potentially< spiritually equal to whites. While there were no doubt abolitionists who pre-dated him, and he was it's fair to say never even one of these, it is also true that he was chiefly mourned by the Blacks in America following his death, given his commitment to & massive success in bringing them the gospel.

*** Having learned much more about George Herbert from this book that I didn't from reading him directly, I do have to confess that I still find William Blake a more compelling Christian voice in poetry's form; were I the staff manager of the Historical Church, yes I may well happily let Herbert write liturgy, and Lewis would have free rein on producing apologetic tracts for non-believers, and obviously Whitefield would be among those on the regular pulpit roster - but it would be Blake's outrageously inclusive imagination that I would most like to lead Sunday school.

Humility and the Elevation of the Mind to God

This book by Thomas á Kempis was something of a disappointment (unlike the author's more famous work). Don't get me wrong, it's a classic of western Christian spiritual education, and fully deserves to be read as such - but it's essentially an elongated series of urgent commendations for the reader to discipline themselves in holy obedience, offering very little practical insight of substance or originality in its coverage of humility as a virtue to be cultivated (thankfully other accessible short books exist that do) nor consideration of the via contemplativa, which I assumed from the title this book would at least deal with in some detail (again). So yeah, I didn't get much from reading this, but that doesn't mean that nobody will - if you're yourself exploring Christian spirituality and want to go deeper then the advices and admonishments herein will likely be useful to you. And even if you find after all that they're not so much, it's a very short text (I read it in a single ninety-minute sitting) so you won't be investing wasted time.

10 Second Sermons

This book by comedian Milton Jones is a collection of (as the title implies) very short reflections on various dimensions of Christian life and faith. Most are at least chuckle-worthy and more than a few are laugh-out-loud funny; despite being so entertaining it is also quite consistently thought-provoking, offering sharp sideways insight into Christianity that can be quite disarming. I'd heartily recommend this book as a gift to a Christian friend who you know likes to laugh and think at the same time.

Enjoying God

This book is another straight-up easy-to-read edifying banger from Tim Chester, who has made a habit of writing that kind of book. I've just binged it in more or less one sitting, which is particularly impressive at it's Christmas Day so to find such an uninterrupted run of free time is frankly shocking* - I'm staying back at my family's house for the holidays and this book was on the shelves of the absent lodger whose room (which is technically my old room anyway) I am temporarily occupying, so I decided to borrow** it as it's been a while since I read a theology book by myself.

   The book is organised in an extremely straightforward and helpful way. The first couple of chapters are largely introductory, initially opening a broad discussion of what we mean when we say or feel that we want more of God, before conducting a brief examination of what we mean when we say or feel that we're experiencing joy. Then the meat of the book is arranged into nine chapters, three for each Person of the Trinity, walking attentively through ways in which God breaks into our lives in the everyday and thus can be enjoyably related to therein. We enjoy the Father's generosity in every pleasure, His formation in every hardship, His welcome in every prayer; we enjoy Christ's grace in every failure, his presence in every pain, his touch in every supper; we enjoy the Holy Spirit's life in every temptation, her hope in every groan, her voice in every word. Following this, before a perfunctory concluding chapter, are a final pair discussing how we can enjoy God's love through one another and enjoy God's freedom through daily repentance and faith.

   As is his wont in his depth of distilled wisdom and insight, Chester has stuffed every one of these chapters chock-full of dense complex theological ideas - communicated helpfully in language that a twelve-year old could engage with without difficulty. I always recommend Tim Chester's books and this is no different - if your walk with God has started to feel a bit too austere, too ordinary, too rote, this book could be a great resource to kickstart your heart a bit in the direction of attentively and gratefully enjoying God for who He is more. Highly recommended reading for all Christians but especially if you're going through a bit of a slump.

* To be fair Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was on in the background.

** Cheers Bethan - though you'll likely never know.

Galatians Study

This book (available for free online from that link) is a Bible study by Tim Keller working through Paul's letter to the Galatian church. I've been working through it with my dad over the last few months, and would highly recommend it as a small-group study resource. The Galatian epistle is a potent little depth-charge of a book anyway, but Keller's insightful commentary and selection of passages from other theologians (especially John Stott and Martin Luther) who have written about the letter make this study extremely edifying and fruitful for thinking through Christian discipleship in powerfully provocative and helpful ways.

Luther's Large Catechism

This book (available online for free from that link) is the fuller version* of Luther's catechism (i.e. the basic text for introducing the tenets of a faith), and as such is probably one of the most influential key texts in the history of Protestant thought and practice. Lutheran** readers will likely be intimately familiar with it already but anyone with an interest in Christian history would find a lot to gain by reading it, and Christians of other denominations will discover in it a rich orthodox statement of how we are called, nay, privileged, to live by faith in the clear simple light of truth. I have no substantive theological or ethical bones to pick here - it is, from my perspective, a faithful and trustworthy testament and valuable for introductory teaching. It is consistently scripturally-grounded and remarkably well-written; Luther was not one to mince words and lays out these reflections on the Christian life and basic theological support for them in direct, accessible language.

   Luther kicks the document off with a walk through the Ten Commandments, and here we come to our first quibble - he messes with them a bit for reasons that elude me. He has condensed the first and second commandments into one, so that we end up with it being a total statement of non-idolatrous monotheism, but with no discussion of the "who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery" portion of these lines in the actual Bible (check it out); he has then kept the list counting to ten by separating the tenth commandment into two. Quite what he was doing in this I cannot say... I mean, so much for sola scriptura, right? But his actual reflections on the Ten are thoroughly helpful. A few minor quibbles - in the section on respecting one's mother and father he extends this commandment to political authority, which rankles me as an anarchist. Further on that point in the section on "thou shalt not kill" he seems to make the point that state authority is exempt from this particular moral absolute, which rankled my anarchism-senses even more. He does in this same section say that enabling death by privilege and neglect is just as condemnable as outright murder though, which is a take Peter Unger would heartily approve. In the section on adultery, we have this fascinating and disturbing quote when he is talking about the problematic outcome of Catholic insistence on clerical celibacy: "For no one has so little love and inclination to chastity as just those who because of great sanctity avoid marriage, and either indulge in open and shameless prostitution, or secretly do even worse, so that one dare not speak of it, as has, alas! been learned too fully." [italics mine.] We all know too well the Catholic Church's historical struggles with abusive paedophilia - part of me wonders whether this was already rearing its head five centuries ago to the point that it was unspoken but common knowledge. The section on theft is wonderfully expansive - a full Marxist analysis of this bit would yield some truly spectacular insights, I feel. The section on lying is morally robust but could be made a great deal stronger with the inclusion of some generally-considered epistemology and psychology. And the section[s] on envy take an unexpectedly objective, active view of this particular sin, which I was raised to think was more the mere subjective passive condition of indulging jealousy, but that Luther seems to say is when one makes actual decisive effort to acquire the property of another.

   The sections walking through the Creed I have very little to say about - this is just hardcore solid uplifting theology communicated with a depth and a deftness I have seldom found elsewhere. His linguistic nuances when talking about "churchness" in the bit about the Holy Spirit are helpful, though I found his maintenance of institutional borders in those same paragraphs less so.

   His opening reflections on the Lord's Prayer are just beautiful in style and empowering in substance. The discussion on the request for "our daily bread" furthermore is intriguingly and helpfully ecological and sociological in its scope.

   The final section, dealing with the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, are also highly moving in their depictions of the spiritual realities contained within these ritual practices, and as a Quaker I found these parts rather convicting (Quakers in general do not formally practice either of these sacraments, as we take a more holistic symbolic view of their intent), in ways that bear further consideration on my part.

   Overall this is an incredibly powerful statement of some of the basic tenets of a good Christian life, written by one of the most reputable sources thereupon. Definitely worth a read if that sounds like the kind of thing you'd benefit from. And who wouldn't? God's goodness shines through clearly on every page of this thing; it leaves one hungry for grace.

* Compare with the Small Catechism that I read yesterday. I gave minimal reflections on that as it made more sense to do that here when reading the principal longer document.

** I consider Lutheranism to be the burning bridge between the Catholic and Protestant communions - and this comes across in Luther's own doctrine, attitude and style.

Luther's Small Catechism

This book (available online for free from that link) is the short version of the Lutheran catechism,* specifically designed to be used by a father for the instruction of his children. As such this is a very short and theologically-minimal text** that I was able to breeze through in under half an hour.

   Luther deals with the Ten Commandments (and I really like how his explanatory givens for all of these ground them in our love for God), followed by the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and finally the sacraments of both baptism and the altar. He writes very simply and directly, with a clear strong rooting in the essentials of biblical literacy applied in accessible and helpful terms. If you're a Lutheran you're probably already highly familiar with this text - if you're not and you're curious about Protestant life and teaching, this could be an interesting read.

* Fancy word for the procedural texts by which young and new believers are to be introduced to the teachings of the faith in question; the Didache is a good example of this from early church history.

** It piqued further curiosity though, so I plan to read the Large Catechism next to dive deeper.

American Fascists

This book by Chris Hedges seemed topical for some reason.*

    If you are even halfway familiar with the actual biblical ethic of Jesus Christ and the actual political ethic of modern-day American 'Christianity', you do not need me to tell you how grossly divergent these things are. The roots of this go pretty far into the past but since the latter decades of the 20th century have metastasized into something truly dangerous and that I can only imagine how much God grieves over. Hedges, who studied at Harvard Divinity School before becoming a foreign correspondent, goes into great and granular detail about how the intricacies of personal faith are distorted and manipulated by the nationalist right-wing of American political actors, and just how far so-called 'Christian' leaders have either been complacent or wholeheartedly capitulated to this scheme of outright power-grabbing.

    This is not an easy read for a Christian as it so depressingly and thoroughly shows how the fabric of our faith can be manipulated for truly hateful ends. The lengthy anecdotal passages in this book are just as harrowing as the insightful theoretical explanations of what exactly is going on. I know I am too young and thus too late for a blogpost about this book to have any meaningful impact on future politics, as we have already swung far enough that I genuinely fear there may be no coming back for American democracy. The only way in which I would thus recommend this book is if you want to salve your confusion by knowing a bit more about how exactly the religion of the world's superpower became so co-opted by capitalism, racism, anti-intellectualism and so forth, that we now face ANOTHER FOUR FUCKING YEARS with the "leader of the free world" being a draft-dodging, tax-evading, bigoted rapist who prior to his entry into politics was most famous for telling people on reality TV that they were fired - ugh, but yeh, if you want a fragment more insight into how American Christianity became so horribly un-Christlike, this book would be a good place to start. If only my blog had a large-ish readership and I'd read this when it came out nearly twenty years ago - then at least this post would have maybe had some kind of impact. Now it just feels like a whinge.**

* I actually meant to read it the first time Orange Fraudster Man was running for president, but never quite got round to it. This time however I beasted the whole book in a day out of desperation to understand a bit more about how a country could be so utterly dumb.

** Assuming I have readers - which is a stretch in itself - but assuming any of you are American - if you have them, please take close care of your LGBTQ+ friends and family in the days to come. Their fears are by no means illegitimate. Remember even Hitler came for the trans community well before any concerted attack against the Jews.

the Didache

This book, by anonymous first-century Christian authors, is one of those key texts that were fundamental to the early church and it is thus often asked "why isn't it in the New Testament then?" and I can't answer that. If you're interested it's available as a free online .pdf at the link above and it's very short - I read the whole thing (appendix* included) in fifteen minutes.

    As to what this book is - it's essentially a practical guide for early Christians on how to do stuff. All manner of ecclesiastical practice as derived from the habits and insights of the apostles (the book is more widely known as "the teachings of the apostles") - from behavioural ethics, to church organisation, to appropriate liturgies and sacraments, with a final chapter dealing with how one is to think about eschatology (the end times). It's such a short and orthodox text that I don't think I have much to say about it that hasn't already been said many times on this blog in relation to Christianity and its history and practice. Though this is, I will say, a very interesting document if one is interested in delving deeper into the consistency and integrity of the early church.

* By appendix I mean a small collection of early Christian hymns and prayers.

Metanoia

This book by Alan Hirsch and Rob Kelly is, as its subtitle proclaims, a study of "how God radically transforms people, churches and organizations from the inside-out". The book is divided into two sections: why and how.

   The "why" section first deals with the potential problems that any church faces, and the grim apocalypse of failure in the face of such. We then dive into "metanoia" (a Greek word meaning roughly "to go into the Big Mind") as a practice of continually returning oneself to Godward sight and re-tuning our learned habits and ideas to better fit God's moulds. The next chapter looks deeper into the sinful, finite nature of human beings to explicate why this is such a necessary process. Then, a christological consideration of how only by decidedly and intuitively continuing to maintain our union with Christ is the kind of transformation metanoia brings possible. Finally a reflection on the human heart, and how only when in all its parts - mind, soul, and will - it is consciously and deliberatively united with Christ will we see the fruit we desire.

   The "how" section builds off of this seamlessly; after an introductory section emphasising the essentiality of being willing to unlearn and relearn things, we see how communities can be transformed by metanoia on three levels: at core a new paradigm (a fundamental kernel to "blow the collective mind"); built off which are new platforms (structural developments that help reshape and keep "the collective soul"); and lastly embodied in new practices (any practical habitual means of "engaging the collective will"). This section is littered with examples but insistent on its message that no single strategy can work conclusively in any context - our models of church must be Christ-centred and Christ-grounded, but beyond that everything we do that we think of as church must be open for question and evolution.

   I found this book eye-opening and liberating in many ways. Hirsch writes from experience as someone deeply involved in very innovative and effective church-planting/growing organisations - and that experience very much comes through in this text. Anyone involved in Christian leadership would benefit greatly from this profound little book.

Walking on Water

This book by novelist Madeleine l'Engle is a prolonged collection of reflections on the relationship between the creative & spiritual as experienced by the Christian artist. It utterly eschews scholarly support or argument, instead drawing on personal experience, which makes for a personable, compelling read rooted in real-world struggles of nuance. Highly recommended reading for Christians engaged in the arts to any degree; it will refresh, edify & inspire.

Union with Christ

This book is a collection of essays by the Puritan thinker Thomas Boston, on a theme which the title probably makes clear enough. I've been reading this through with my dad and have found the experience soundly edifying and an effective mode of discipleship, intellectually and spiritually. Boston's prose, though old, is not archaic, and thus relatively easy to read and interpret. The points he makes are very gospel-grounded; I don't think anything in this book would be at all controversial to most orthodox Christians, and I do think that much of what is in here would be of great help to those same in the deepening of their conviction as regards their union with Christ, as is the gist of the New Testament.

Signs of the Spirit

This book is an interpretation by Sam Storms of Jonathan Edwards's Religious Affections - part paraphrase, part summary, part commentary, in view of making the old Puritan's immensely dense & hard-to-read ideas in their original text more accessible to the modern layperson. Edwards easily ranks among the most important American theologians in history but he is notoriously difficult, obtuse even, in his writing style, so a book like this that attempts to communicate his arguments in shorter clearer sentences is of much value. The Religious Affections as a text is concerned with establishing biblically and doctrinally sound principles by which we may discern whether the spiritual experiences and outputs of a person's life can be known to be genuinely imparted by the Holy Spirit and thus attest to the authenticity of that person's faith.

   Storms (or perhaps Edwards, I have no means of telling what the original text's chapter division scheme is like) opens with a brief introduction on the nature of true spirituality - that is, a life of faith characterised by love for and joy in Jesus Christ - and that such a life will manifest spiritual affections, experiences of mind & heart that lift one into cognizant fellowship with the divine. He then establishes the biblical foundations for this concept, and briefly discusses its utility in prayer, praise & preaching. Then we get to the list of twenty-four affections at the core of the book: the first twelve are "signs of nothing", i.e. spiritual or psychological or emotional experiences that, however much they may feel or appear to be religious at face value, are actually inconclusive in determining whether they are genuine signs of saving faith; the subsequent twelve however are, according to Edwards, sure signifiers that the person experiencing the affection is numbered among God's children. Thus:

1. Affections that are truly spiritual and gracious arise from influences and operations on the heart that are supernatural and divine.
2. The first objective ground of gracious affections is the transcendently excellent and amiable nature of divine things as they are in themselves, and not in any conceived relation to self-interest.
3. Those affections that are truly holy are primarily founded on the loveliness of the moral excellence of divine things.
4. Gracious affections arise from the mind being enlightened rightly and spiritually to understand or apprehend divine things.
5. Truly gracious affections are attended with a reasonable and spiritual conviction of the judgement, reality and certainty of divine things.
6. Gracious affections are attended with evangelical humiliation [that is, authentic humility in Christ's service].
7. Gracious affections are distinguished from those that are false in that they are accompanied by a change of nature.
8. True religious affections reflect the character of Christ; they produce and promote the same love, humility, forgiveness & mercy that we see in him.
9. Authentic affections soften the heart and produce a tenderness of spirit and sensitivity toward sin.
10. Godly & gracious affections differ from those that are false in their beautiful symmetry and proportion.
11. When genuine gracious affections are experienced in high degree, it serves to intensify one's longing for more.
12. Gracious affections always bear the fruit of holiness of life.

   I haven't read nor have any plan to read Edwards's original work, so I can't say to what degree the unpacking of each of these does justice to the spiritual depth or intellectual integrity of the arguments presented in simplified summary, but Storms certainly doesn't come across as being less thorough than he should be.

   Alongside the interpretation of the Religious Affections, this book includes a second part - again part paraphrase, part summary, part commentary (and part lengthy direct quote) of another work by Edwards, his testimony as originally told in a short autobiographical text called the Personal Narrative; I found this part of the book extremely edifying and challenging as a subjective story of coming into and growing in relationship with God - it deals in considerable depth the religious affections of Edwards himself (chiefly sorrow at the vileness of his own sin & sweet joy at the beauty of God's holiness) as he walked his spiritual path, and thus complements the main bulk of this book perfectly in a less abstract, more applicable manner.

   Ultimately though I don't think this is a book I would recommend much. Its subject matter is theologically, spiritually and psychologically interesting, but as things stand we as humans can never attain a God's-eye-view of the true heart of another, and with experiences and expressions of affection in word and deed being often distorted by the muddy mixture of sin and liberation from it in the hearts of even true believers, it is impossible for us as creatures to perfectly discern the spiritual health of anyone, including ourselves. Such judgement is ineffable, God's alone, and only He knows the full roster of his elect. So though Edwards's system for ascertaining whether one's faith is authentic is coherent and hard to find much to argue with in terms of its orthodox grounding, it isn't particularly practical for either individual or corporate spiritual instruction. "You shall know them by their fruits," says Jesus, but again sinners may by common grace produce good fruit and the redeemed may still harbour fleshly inclinations, so any hope of us being able to properly categorise people as elected for salvation or not evaporates on contact with a creation that still groans in its wait for renewal.

Accidental Saints

This book by Denver's most famous Lutheran pastor, Nadia Bolz-Weber, is a collection of searingly honest autobiographical vignettes of the complexities and difficulties of the real rough Christian life as experienced through her pastoral career. People are broken and messy - they will disappoint you, confuse you, sin against you, requiring love and forgiveness in amounts that do not come naturally to humans outside the activity of the Holy Spirit. In this book Nadia skips through a series of problematic encounters that she's had, wrestling with God over how best to encourage or rebuke others as much as wrestling with God over how much we might need an encouragement or a rebuke that we're unwilling to currently hear. She writes with shockingly frank vulnerability, and a down-to-earth lucidity that is extremely readable, and her way of discussing both practical and spiritual matters is so deft that one easily gets a sense of the shapes of situations discussed. It is a book that makes you deeply grateful for God's grace, as it reminds us just how much all of us need it. Reminding me somewhat of Dave Tomlinson's How to be a Bad Christian, though with more emphasis on pastoral care than on individual behaviours and attitudes. I'd recommend this a solid resource for any Christians feeling somewhat stultified in their faith and relationships, as it makes a powerful wake-up call to the boundary-pushing certainty-defying modus operandi of our God's grace.

Unapologetic

This book by Francis Spufford is, despite his claims that it isn't an apologetic as it makes zero effort to engage with classic philosophical arguments for or against any particular theological claims, by far and away the best Christian apologetic I've ever read. I've literally just read the whole book in a single sitting* it's that good. The subtitle proclaims it as an exploration of "why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense" - and to say it achieves the goal of making a case for this with aplomb would be a grand disservice to the word aplomb. It runs its course over eight perfectly-structured chapters:

1. a general introduction; statement of intent for the book
2. the existential experience of sin, or as he translates it the Human Propensity to Fuck Things Up
3. the frustrating ineffability of God in light of people's recurrent sense of needing, if not Him, then something to fill that gap
4. the confounding problem of suffering
5. the personality, teachings, mission and passion of one Yeshua from Nazareth
6. the historically improbable paradoxes surrounding the emergence of Christianity as a coherent religion
7. the complicated legacy and situational state of the Church
8. the subjective feeling entailed in having faith that one is forgiven, and the challenges and opportunity implied herein

   It's deeply insightfully clever without being scholarly**, bewilderingly matter-of-fact in what it says and completely down-to-earth in how it says it, balancing common-sense public presumption with personal but universally recognisable experiences and dazzlingly original points that lead him into compelling conclusions without ever making anything that so much as looks like a rational argument. Spufford not only doesn't avoid the prickly areas of conversation around Christianity in its contemporary context but actively leans into them and tries to give them as much benefit of the doubt as possible, and somehow still manages to wrangle cogent and meaningful ways of sidestepping or outright neutering them. He writes with a disarming simplicity and a refreshing honesty that if such style was wider emulated by Christian authors (and indeed everyday evangelising believers) I hazard to expect that we would see a great many more folks showing interest in the faith.

   Overall, this is a more-or-less perfect example of communicating Christianity effectively in a postmodern culture. If we are presumed by the world around us to be irrational, then give up on trying to convince people by reason - and talk about what it feels like to have one's messy spiritual life wrapped up in what never has been and never will be scientifically verifiable but is indisputably salient in its psychological cohesion to those who try to believe it. If you're a Christian, read this and be inspired to draw on your own emotional experience to communicate your own faith more fluidly, with less intellectual trumps and more confounding expressivity. If you're not a Christian - this book won't convince you to become one, but it may very well provoke you to give it a bloody good consideration.

* With minor breaks only to piss, smoke, and make more coffee.

** Spufford humbly boasts in a note at the end of the book that aside from checking to ensure the accuracy of certain factual claims and quotations used, he conducted exactly no research whatsoever throughout his writing process.

George Herbert - the Complete Works

This book is, as you probably inferred from the title, a complete collection of the works of the 17th-century poet George Herbert. I've been reading this very slowly for the past four years, having been gifted it by my second-eldest brother when he was very concerned about me (as I was having a psychotic episode at the time) and thought some archaic Christian poetry would break through to me, which it *kind of* did - I heavily annotated the first thirty or so pages of it in purple biro, emerged from the psychotic episode (after about a week) and then finished reading it bit by gratitude-debt bit in the time since then. It's a hard book to binge, being 17th-century poetry and so rather archaic and (sorry Josiah) stuffy in tone while also being deeply overtly deliberatively Christian in content, theme and message, which makes every poem, no matter how artful (and they are artful - the majority of the poems in this book are as technically well-constructed as their theology is orthodox-Anglican), feel somewhat like you're being sermonised at.

   The poetry is all lumped together in one big collection called The Church, with poems (mostly rather short, and often sonnets, which seem to be a particular specialty of Herbert's) unsurprisingly centring thematically around classic weighty Christian concepts, such as consciousness of one's own sin, prayer, confession, hope, grace, forgiveness, love, joy, peace, etc. This bulk of the book is prologued by a longer poem called The Church Porch which is much meatier in terms of a challenging mental/spiritual engagement as it explores the inner dynamics of a person weighing themselves up before entering a church (in both a day-to-day instance and in the lifelong sense), and epilogued by another longer poem called The Church Militant which is a triumphal hearty toot on the eschatological trumpet of what God's people look like from an eternal perspective.

   Alongside the poetry which forms the core backbone of the collected works, there is a 37 chapter prose piece called The Country Parson which is half essay, half sermon, half manual on how to be an effective parish priest (I will freely admit I somewhat skimmed this - it has a good deal of wisdom in it but nothing particularly groundbreaking), and a compiled list of 1,024 "Outlandish Proverbs", which initially I was rather excited by as I assumed George had come up with them all himself - however it seems more that he simply collected folksy wisdom from all over the place and put it all together in one big wodge (some of which is retained in proverb and idiom to this day, some of which is mere tautology or common-sensical to the point of banality, and some of which is downright impenetrable). Finally there is a small array of letters, lectures, translations, and his will, none of which I bothered to read at all.

   Christian readers who enjoy neatly-constructed if somewhat repetitive and decidedly unadventurous poetry will find a lot of edifying stuff in this book. Non-Christian poetry enjoyers will probably find it coming on far too strong a moralising and proselytising voice to read past. And non-Christian non-poetry enjoyers probably have no reason whatsoever to engage with the works of George Herbert unless it's part of your current academic syllabus to whatever extent. All that said, receiving this book four years ago was a significant moment in helping me claw me way back to sanity, so I will forever owe it that at least.

What Would Jesus Post?

This book by David Robertson takes that classic wristband acronym WWJD* and transplants it into the chaotic modern context of social media - hence the title. It's a good question. Were history's most famous Nazarene to have accounts on one of those half-dozen websites that constitute today's internet, what kind of content would he be putting out? Would he be a TikTok influencer? Instagram inspirer? YouTube video essayist? Twitter rage-debater? Reddit helper-outer of strangers lost in Google searches? Verbose blogger? Tumblr sharer of unprompted unhinged angles on stuff? Facebook shitposter? Some combination of any or all of the above? We simply don't know.**

   That doesn't mean we can't take the lessons learned from him and try our best to apply them to the communications landscape in which we find ourselves today, and I think Robertson has done a pretty solid job in this book of applying 2000ish-year-old meta-ethical precepts to Very New Paradigms of Possibility. It's far from a comprehensive*** manual, but as a starting point offers some healthy and biblical broad principles we can bear in mind as we engage with online communities as Christians. I think this is a very helpful and well thought-out book, and I would highly recommend it as a resource - most especially for older generations who have immigrated to the internet after an analogue life, and so aren't as adept as The Youth at navigating the psychosocial turbulence that all online society entails.

   Before concluding this post, I will give a special mention to the format of the chapters in this book, as they're all broken down into the same sections that help lend flow and intentionality to the reading process. We open with an introductory overview of "the way it is", before digging deeper into some relevant theological concepts, then having a "pause for thought" in which what's just been discussed is thrown over to us to particularly consider, after which in a "joining the dots" section we consider contextual or social elements that apply what we've just read to the realities of contemporary internet use, then "a way forward" points us toward particular behaviours or attitudes that help us maintain Christian consistency on these issues, a Bible verse or two with an explanation of how it helps us navigate this, "wisdom from the Psalms" as far as I can tell being simply a nice balm to the soul to concentrate on the spiritual side of life rather than being prompted to relate everything back to the online, and finally a few questions to prompt further thought. The length and order of these sections varies chapter to chapter but overall they are consistent throughout the book and make it a much more engaging discipleship experience as a reader.

* "What Would Jesus Do?" for you heathens unfamiliar.

** My money's split between Facebook shitposting and completely out-of-left-field Tumblr dumps, both of which would be essentially parables converted to fit the format. If ministry responsibilities left him with enough free time he'd probably have a YouTube channel with over 10,000,000 views but only 372 subscribers, on which the Tumblr parables are delivered vocally (as you'd expect, the comments sections are full of confusion, people who only watched the first ten seconds, and a minority of people saying "this changed my life"). He'd probably have Twitter, but unless he had something that absolutely HAD to be said there and then, he'd only use it for ironically retweeting Pharisees and Roman officials. If anyone in Jesus's orbit has a blog it's probably Matthew, and Peter and John would have competing Instagram and TikTok accounts documenting the day-to-day doings of the disciples.

*** There are chapters on: the internet as a public arena, prayer, porn, confession, sowing seeds, our digital tongue, dwelling in God's presence, wisdom and discernment, humility, hospitality and generosity, the Sabbath, spiritual gifts, spiritual fruit, gossip, persecution, the footprints we leave, and community. For a pretty short book it covers a lot of ground, but with Christianity and the internet both being as diversely complexly themselves as they are, one can easily imagine entire books being written about any of these chapters. Which is what I mean when I say this is more of an introductory provocation text.