On Books

Review: Misreading Scripture With Individualist Eyes

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Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes, E. Randolph Richards and Richard James. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2020.

Summary: Shows how we may misread scripture if we do not reckon with the collectivist context in which it is written, and in which many cultures still live.

It was an eyeopener for me when I discovered that the “you” in many of the New Testament letters is often a plural you–“you all” or “y’all” if you are from the American South. It turns out that this was just the tip of the iceberg. So many of the narratives in scripture are understood very differently when understood in collectivist rather than individualist frameworks.

E. Randolph Richards and Richard James have lived in such cultures, and while each culture, including those of scripture, have their own nuances, the authors draw upon these experiences to help us read scripture through a new lens, a collectivist lens. They consider the social structures of kinship, patronage, and brokerage, and the social tools of honor, shame, and boundaries. Finally, they draw conclusions about why it matters, even in an individualist context.

In collective structures, our kinship group tells us who we are–and who we marry. Remember Jacob and Laban? He wants Rachel, but he is given Leah first. That’s the way it is done in family. Then there is patronage. When Paul speaks of being saved by grace through faith, he describes a good patronage situation. God extends grace through Christ, literally charis or gift, and we both trust and are loyal to our patron, God. Finally, there is brokerage, where a third party mediates between two others. What else is Jesus but a broker or mediator between God and humans?

Then there are the social tools that enforce values in collective cultures. One’s honor is one’s greatest asset. Many of the challenges to Jesus are challenges to his honor, and thus his authority to teach. David gained honor in the conflict with Saul, not merely for being a good shot, but for trusting God in the conflict. In the West we consider one who sins guilty. In other cultures, the issue is shame. We have come to think that shame is always bad, but in collectivist societies shame comes with a path to remove it. Confronting a person with whom you have a grievance minimizes shame–allowing the person to remove shame without others knowing about it. Then there are boundaries, ones that define groups, ones that define how men and women relate, or don’t. When we choose a group, we accept their boundaries.

The authors show how each of these collectivist elements function at their best and worst, and explore how they may be engaged redemptively. While there are important insights individualists see in scripture, there is much we learn when we read with collectivist eyes. More than that, we discover dimensions of our collective life in Christ. Our salvation isn’t just about me but we. We are part of a people, a family, with new boundaries and new values. Sometimes our individualist outlook not only leads us to misread the Bible, but also misleads us in our participation in Christian community. At very least, we misunderstand Christians in other cultures. At most, we miss out on dimensions of life in Christ and others miss out on what we bring to the family.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: A Gentleman in Moscow

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A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles. New York: Penguin, 2019.

Summary: Count Rostov has been sentenced to house arrest in Moscow’s Hotel Metropol for life during Stalin’s regime and must find purpose for life within its confines.

Count Alexander Rostov, born to nobility and refinement, has become the enemy in Stalinist Russia. On the pretense of a few lines in a poem, he is tried for his life in 1922, but spared death for a life of house arrest in the place he has made his home, the Hotel Metropol. Not entirely a bad fate. At least he has his luxury suite and all his books and the refinements of life. Not so, he learns, for this, too, has been appropriated by the State. He is confined to a top floor garret, little more than a closet. His life becomes forfeit the day he steps beyond the Metropol’s confines.

How will he face a life confined within the walls of this hotel, the tiny confines of a room? How far will the equanimity and cultured refinement take him when his life is a round of meals, conversations with hotel staff, and long hours in his room? Will he go crazy, or suicidal, or attempt escape? It matters little to Mother Russia, for whom he has become a non-person.

A Gentleman in Moscow traces the next 32 years of his life. We see him in the depths and at his most unpretentious, romping with nine year-old Nina of the yellow outfits, exploring the hidden corridors of the hotels, splitting out the seat of his pants to be repaired over and over by the seamstress, Marina. He becomes the trusted friend to whom she entrusts her daughter Sophia, supposedly for a few weeks which turn into forever. By then he has taken a position as waiter at the Boyarsky, rising to headwaiter, with Andrey the maitre d’ and Emile the chef, the triumvirate of the Boyarsky. He coaches a rising Russian party figure on the ins and outs of western culture, a man whose business is to know everything about people like Rostov. He encounters an American operative at the bar. He lives under the jealous eye of the Bishop (Leplevsky) who has it out for him.

He is the gentleman whose grace wins him the friendship of all, save the Bishop, and the love of his adoptive daughter Sophia, a budding piano prodigy. He discovers that his life is not merely the inner life of equanimity characterized in Montaigne’s words, “The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.” He also learns what it means to belong to his friends, who enrich and guard his life. He remains loyal to his writer friend Mishka, and experiences unexpected loyalty from Osip, the Russian party man, at a moment of extreme need. He lives a life in full in within the confines of his house arrest, exchanging the grand life in society for the pleasures of food well prepared and well served to guests well seated.

It seems that many have been drawn to this book in pandemic times, under the conditions of our own house arrests. We’ve struggled to live and found new ways of living under stay at home orders. Or we’ve chafed at them and put our lives at risk, as the Count would have in departing the Hotel Metropol. As we consider the ways the Count copes and thrives in his house arrest, we’re invited to consider how well we have coped, and how then will we live in the months that remain until our return to whatever new normal follows.

Review: The Four Winds

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The Four Winds, Kristen Hannah. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2021

Summary: Set in the Dust Bowl depression era, Elsa Martinelli grows from a timid girl to a mother whose fight for her children fulfills her grandfather’s exhortation to “be brave.”

Kristin Hannah has done it again. Written a book that gets inside your head, grips your heart and does not let go. In my mind, this one holds its own with The Grapes of Wrath (review), both in capturing the conditions of the Dust Bowl and the migrant camps in California, and in its lead character, Elsa Martinelli, who holds her own with Tom Joad.

Elsa was the sickly sister of two beautiful girls, taken out of school and confined to her home after contracting rheumatic fever. Suppressed by her successful father and overbearing mother, she takes refuge in her books–and dreams of someone who will love her. She also hears the words of her grandfather, a former Texas Ranger: “Be brave.” The rest of this book is Elsa’s struggle against the verdict that she is weak, unloved, and undesirable to be brave.

It begins with sewing and an alluring dress, and setting out to find love–and she does, with Rafe Martinelli, who she ends up having to marry, abandoned by her own family. The Martinellis are farmers in the Texas panhandle. She embraces their way of life, the hard manual labor of a farm, and discovers herself embraced by Rafe’s parents, if not so much by Rafe.

Then comes the drought and the dust storms. The reader feels oneself living through the storms, breathing in the dust, developing hacking coughs, and watching one’s livelihood blown away. We watch the land die, the animals die, and Elsa’s young son, Ant, nearly die of dust pneumonia. Elsa fights for their survival, and that of her in-laws. She fights to hold onto her daughter Loreda, who blames her for Rafe’s abandonment of the family.

Against all that holds her to this family, she reluctantly leaves with her children to save Ant’s health. She calls them the Martinelli Explorers Club, as they drive west, risking the dangers of the road only to find the desperate conditions of the migrant camps, the disdain with which they are all viewed by Californians, and the heartless corruption of growers who use force, credit slavery, and desperation to keep them laboring for ever decreasing wages.

So many see Elsa’s beauty and spirit even when Elsa does not. The Martinelli’s. Eventually Loreda. Jean in the migrant camp. John the Communist. The story centers around Elsa’s awakening to who she really is–her beauty, her voice, and her bravery. We see her struggle against the message that she was unloved and unlovely and what it takes to awaken her to who she is and the lie she had accepted for so many years.

Like the other Hannah works I’ve read, The Nightingale (review) and The Great Alone (review), we observe the development of a strong female character who faces harrowing circumstances, often at the hands of men, with courage and character. Here we have men both abusive, and of great honor. Each of the latter, Elsa’s grandfather, Mr. Martinelli, and John Valen, see and affirm in Elsa far more than a sickly girl, an unchosen daughter-in-law, and a careworn mother. They point us to relationships between men and women that do not require one to be weak for the other to be strong. The strength of these men enable this woman to flourish in her own strength, the strength and the voice of a warrior.

Ten+ Books on Theology of Work

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Photo by Ono Kosuki on Pexels.com

Most of us spend the majority of our waking hours at work, paid or unpaid. Losing work is devastating for most people. Why is work such an important part of being human? How are work, rest, and leisure properly related in our lives? And what does God think of our work? From the work of God in creation in Genesis 1 to Revelation 21 where the kings of the earth will carry their splendor into the new Jerusalem, the heavenly city, work runs through scripture. Yet teaching on our work has often been absent from our churches. Yesterday, I reviewed Workplace Discipleship 101 by David W. Gill, an excellent book on work. I’ve included it again here along with others I’ve found helpful.

Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, Marva J. Dawn. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989. God’s intent for us is not endless work but a rhythm of work and rest. Dawn explores the biblical material on sabbath and practical suggestions for keeping it.

The Common Rule, Justin Whitmel Earley. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2019. Daily and weekly spiritual practices that may be used by people in the workplace, and may become “common” by being practiced in community.

Workplace Discipleship 101, David W. Gill. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2020. Focuses very practically on how we may follow Jesus as we prepare for and engage in our work.

The Fabric of this World, Lee Hardy. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990. One of the early books on this subject, surveying various views of work in classic philosophy and through church history.

Leisure and Spirituality, Paul Heintzman. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015. Using biblical, historical and contemporary leisure studies to look at the relation of work, rest, and leisure, contending that “leisure reaches its fullest potential when our lives are lived in relationship with God.

The Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1951. A Jewish rabbi contends that Judaism is a religion of time, not space and that sabbath represents the sanctification of time.

On Human Work, John Paul II. Washington: United States Catholic Conference, 1981. John Paul II’s encyclical on work addressing what it means to work and be human, the conflict between labor and capital, the right of workers, and the spirituality of work.

Work and Worship, Matthew Kaemingk and Cory B. Wilson. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020. One I’m looking forward to read making the connection between our Sunday worship and our work the other six days.

Every Good Endeavor, Timothy Keller with Katherine Leary Alsdorf. New York: Dutton, 2012. Explores God’s plan for our work, our problems with work and how the gospel transforms work.

After Sunday, Armand Larive. New York: Continuum, 2004. A theology of work grounded in the Trinity.

Kingdom Calling, Amy Sherman. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2011. A theology of vocation, focused on stewarding our faith and work toward righteousness.

Your Work Matters to God, Doug Sherman and William Hendricks. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1987. One of the early books addressing a theology of work.

From my shelves to yours, a good collection of works on work, rest, leisure, and spiritual practices spanning seventy years. Hopefully they will become good friends to you as they have for me, enriching my understanding of these rhythms of work and rest. Work existed before the Fall and is not the curse. Work reflects something of what it means to reflect the image of God, the God who works. It is well worth exploring works like these to enrich our work and our lives!

Review: Workplace Discipleship 101

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Workplace Discipleship 101, David W. Gill. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2020.

Summary: A practical guide to living as a follower in one’s workplace focused on how we get ready for our work, impact our workplace, and beyond our workplace.

As a teenager who had been raised in a Christian home and church, one of the things I struggled with in high school was making the connection between Sunday, and Monday through Saturday. Had it not been for the Jesus movement and later, the collegiate ministry I was involved with, I may have walked away from Christianity. To say Jesus is Lord but then live six days a week as if he has nothing to do with them seemed just a wee bit inconsistent. Atheism seemed more consistent and less hypocritical.

David Gill writes out of a similar conviction. Observing that we spend the largest part of our waking hours at work, Gill contends it only makes sense for those of us who follow Jesus to learn how we may do so during those hours. He then proceeds to give us a book (part of Hendrickson’s “Theology of Work” series) grounded solidly in a theology of both discipleship and work and incredibly practical in its applications.

The book is organized in three parts. The first considers how we might “get ready for our work.” He begins by inviting us to commit to be a workplace disciple and share it with someone else who won’t let us evade that commitment. He then writes about prayer, both crisis prayers and ongoing prayer with models of workplace prayers and even how to use the Lord’s prayer in praying about our work. He addresses the other side of our communication with God in listening to Him in scripture, understanding it as centered around Jesus and God’s mission in the world, and then offers ways to engage the scriptures personally and in groups. He urges us not to go it alone but to have a “posse” of the like-minded and offers helps for forming such a group. Finally, Gill believes we need to be lifelong learners, and particularly commends the importance of reading (I knew there was a reason I liked this guy). He makes extensive suggestions of books to get us started on a theology of work.

Having gotten us ready for work, the second part of the book speaks of our impact as Christians at work. First of all it means aligning our work with God. After looking at God the worker, he makes recommendations about understanding our gifted passions and pursuing them as disciples of Christ. Our model as imitators of Christ is a big part of our impact, living with the qualities of righteousness, peacemaking, and joy. He encourages us to be light in our workplaces, bringing the unique insights and questions that our shaped by our reading of scripture, with humility but without apology. We don’t have to say, “the Bible says,” but simply, “what do you think of this?” As we live in these ways, we will have chances to share our faith. As we listen to others, they will be ready to listen to us. Gill suggests various ways we might initiate but concludes “that the best time to share the gospel is when someone asks you about it and wants to hear your answer” (p. 163). Sometimes we will be confronted with wrongdoing or conflict in the workplace, and the challenge here is to be overcomers. He talks about how to identify serious wrongdoing in the workplace and how to address conflict with humility, courage and prayer.

The final part of the book moves beyond our workplace with a number of ideas of how we may contribute the gifts and skills we use in the workplace to the benefit of the wider church. His last chapter is on rest and the importance of sabbath in our lives as workers. He contends that intentional efforts to schedule and set aside sabbath, vacations, date nights, and periodically, longer sabbaticals, is crucial to gaining control of our time.

The text is broken up with periodic “chalkboards” summarizing key points and chapters conclude with a “to do” list and questions for reflection and discussion. This makes the book ideal for use in a church or workplace group. It also includes a postscript for pastors, urging them to address the workplace life of a congregation, including visiting people on the job.

What distinguishes this book from many I have read is that it is at once solidly grounded in a theology of work (without the author showing all his work!) and at the same time extremely practical and applicable. The challenge of this book is not figuring out what the author is saying or how to put it into practice. Rather, will one practice and live into the clear steps of discipleship laid out by the author? Again, having a posse will add to the impact of this book as you urge each other on the path of workplace discipleship.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Healing Racial Trauma

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Healing Racial Trauma, Sheila Wise Rowe (Foreword by Soong-Chan Rah). Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2020.

Summary: A counseling psychologist describes the experience of racial trauma in story, drawing upon her own and other clinical experiences, and explores the resources for resilience to face continuing racial struggle.

As a White male, I’ve heard the terminology of racial trauma but have not experienced it in my own person. But I work with Black colleagues who have. One looking up to see a policeman’s gun trained on her for the “crime” of watering a neighbor’s flowers while the neighbor was away. Another and his wife stopped in front of their home after a trip to the grocery store, forced to lay on the pavement while their car was searched, for evidence from a robbery even though they offered to produce a receipt from the grocery confirming their whereabouts when the robbery happened. Their crime? “Fitting the description.” Or Asian-American friends who have faced racial slurs urging them to go “home” when this is the country of their birth and citizenship. Often Blacks and people of color can tell a litany of stories running not only through their lives but the lives of their parents and grandparents. When I see the story of a racial injustice, I may be incensed. When a person of color sees the same story, it opens old wounds and is one more in a series of assaults on their sense of dignity.

Sheila Wise Rowe, a counseling psychologist who grew up in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston helps us understand both from her own experience and those of others the deep wounds of racial trauma, wounds beneath the skin, that many Blacks and people of color struggle with. She begins with types of racism and types of racial trauma. The latter was particularly illuminating as she named:

  • Historical racial trauma: The trauma shared by a group that has faced in its past a traumatizing event such as the forced removal of First Nation tribes that continues to affect these people in the forms of alcoholism, addiction, and elevated rates of suicide.
  • Transgenerational racial trauma: The bodily effects of trauma passed from one generation to the next, possibly manifesting in diabetes, heart disease. An axiom of trauma is that “the body remembers” and this idea suggests that trauma is even remembered across generations. It also can mean the passing of trauma in the stories we tell.
  • Personal racial trauma: The personal experience of abuse for one’s race. Rowe in the book describes the verbal and physical attacks she endured when being bused to white schools.
  • Physical trauma: Attacks upon one’s body that are racially motivated. One thinks of what John Lewis and so many endured at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
  • Vicarious trauma: The wounds opened when one hears reports of violence against others of one’s race. One thinks of the example of mothers and wives who hear reports of a police involved shooting and think of their own husbands and sons.
  • Microaggressions: The small, everyday, thoughtless assaults on dignity. “You’re so articulate.” “Can I touch your hair?”
  • Racial gaslighting: The ways individuals and institutions in power try to recast reality turning an incident of racial injustice into something the victim of injustice must have done wrong and that racism is just something imagined that must be gotten over.

In the chapters that follow Rowe describes the effects of the ongoing experience of racial trauma. She describes the fatigue of racism’s relentlessness, especially pronounced for many Blacks in the summer of 2020 in the cycle of incidents with police, protests, and recriminations. Silence is the swallowing and suppressing of pain, anger, and rage, and the self-destructiveness that occurs when all this is turned inward. Rage is the bitter root that festers until unleashed in destructive acts. Fear is often used to subdue a population, as in lynching. Shame happens when the stories of racial inferiority are internalized and they become the stories that prevent one’s true story from being told. Addiction is a misguided response to relieve the pain of trauma.

Rowe addresses these with stories and charts the beginnings of the way out, starting with lament, that cries out to God, that gathers up the hurt and offers it to God. Lament tells the truth without spiritualizing or sugarcoating. She stresses the Christ-centered nature of the healing work that is needed in walking toward freedom, a work that allows Christ to enter in and walk with. It is both internal and external work. Rowe believes that this can lead to a growth in resilience. Racism isn’t going to disappear overnight. Rather, one must develop the resources in Christ who heals our wounds, who helps us practice self-care as his beloved, and calls us into creative engagement with our unique gifts and voices.

For people of color, this may be (and has been from accounts of colleagues) a book that both names what is often felt without words and offers hope and healing. It is an important book for Whites to read as well. It begins with naming the forms of trauma. Then, Rowe’s descriptions of herself as a little girl being bused invited me to imagine what it was like to be on the bus, the walk the gantlet of hateful crowds to enter her school. The other stories, including Nick, her husband’s, invite the same imagining, not as a substitute for what no one should experience, but as at least a very beginning of understanding viscerally as well as cognitively, something of racial trauma. To learn to just sit with and listen to these experiences may open the door to being an ally in Christ’s healing process.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

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How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2021.

Summary: An assessment of what it will take to get to “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050, and the technological breakthroughs we will need to achieve that.

If you do not believe the scientific consensus about our changing climate and the implication of increasing global temperatures for all forms of life on planet earth, you probably want to take a pass on this post. Likewise if you have it out for Bill Gates. I’m not interested in arguments with you. I review books for those who want to know about new books so they may decide whether or not to purchase them and that’s who this review is for.

Bill Gates spent his early adult life building Microsoft as one of the leaders of the personal computer revolution, with the goal of a computer in every home, many of them powered by Microsoft software. He made a massive fortune and has spent the second half of his life giving much of it away, focusing particularly quality healthcare for the impoverished of the world and quality educational opportunities. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has led initiatives for vaccinations to eliminate childhood diseases, and poured money into COVID-19 vaccines, resulting in conspiratorial allegations, a classic example of the axiom that “no good deed goes unpunished.” His travels around the world have brought to his attention how global climate challenge threatens to undo the progress made by the health and education programs the foundation has funded. And in typical Gates fashion, he has researched the problem, read voraciously, and put his own money where his mouth is. His book recommendations at GatesNotes are second only to my own (just kidding!).

This new book makes a very simple contention. We need to go from 51 billion to zero. 51 billion is the amount of pounds of greenhouse gases being emitted into the atmosphere. Zero is zero net emissions, which most climate scientists believe we need to get to by 2050 at the latest if we have any chances of averting the worst consequences of anthropogenic climate change. Gates outlines their case and the consequences, disproportionately hitting the world’s poorest who have contributed the least to the crisis. And probably in the biggest understatement of the whole book, Gates spends the next chapter telling us “this will be hard.” If we ignore it, things will be even worse. We could just say, we have what it takes and we just need to do it. Gates makes the case that this is only partially true at best. To get to zero, there are problems we need to solve for which we do not yet have the solutions. And we hardly have a consensus that we need to lean into this hard work and invest in solutions we don’t even have.

In the chapters that follow, he lays out the challenges. Electricity and the grid that delivers it is an amazing thing. But we get much of it from burning fossil fuels and we have to figure out how to eliminate those emissions, either by capturing the carbon or better, using forms that don’t require burning carbon-based fuels. He reviews all the alternatives, making the argument for solar, wind, and thermal, but also for a new generation of nuclear plants (in which he is investing). We need to figure out how to make things without carbon emissions. Plastic, steel, and concrete all require significant emissions as currently manufactured. We have to deal with how we grow our food. Huge increases in crop yields have fed the world, but require fertilizers that add to our emissions as do the cows that provide for our beef-heavy appetites, through their burps and farts (Gates’ words!). Then there is transportation. Trains, planes, and automobiles (and ships) are most efficiently powered by fossil fuels. Battery technology allows cars to travel up to a few hundred miles, but they are heavy, and the larger the vehicle, the more limited they are as a solution. Finally, there is heating and cooling. Even if there are solutions for all these problems (and for some they don’t yet exist), the Green Premium (the extra cost of the carbon-free alternative) is often prohibitive, especially in poorer countries, and needs to be reduced.

The final part of the book attempts to chart the course governments, companies, and individuals will need to take to overcome these challenges to get to net zero. First he addresses the fact that adaptation will be part of it. The world will get warmer. It will be particularly critical to address food production, especially in poorer countries. Then Gates argues for the importance of government policies that invest in research and in leveling the playing field so fossil fuel based solutions don’t enjoy an advantage that removes the incentive to develop alternatives, and more. One of the most critical pieces is to invest in research and development and match it to our greatest needs. Finally he focuses on what each of us can do as citizen advocates, as conserving consumers, and as Green employers.

I found myself reflecting as I read all this on whether we have any hope of making it to zero. One thing I appreciate about Gates is his blunt honesty. This is incredibly hard! Even at the height of pandemic lockdowns, carbon emissions only went down 17 percent, according to Gates. Actually the pandemic is a kind of dress rehearsal for what we need to do globally to address climate change. While there are bright spots like the rapidity in which the vaccines and new therapies were developed, or individual countries that managed to balance public health and economic pressures well with high citizen cooperation, the uncoordinated global response and contentiousness within countries have led to a muddled effort at best, far from optimum. Bill Gates does not address how to overcome the resistance to the hard work needed (when many resisted even wearing masks) and what will be needed to engender trust in the science instead of suspicion.

Perhaps the question is whether a critical number of world leaders, business leaders, science leaders, community leaders, and faith leaders will come together in resolute action over a thirty year period. Not all will follow–at least at first. Over time, new norms may just become norms. Bill Gates is hopeful that we will take the measures needed and that we will find and implement the solutions that are necessary. I’m not so sure. But I also agree with him that the alternative is far less desirable. The question is whether we will see it coming before it is here.

Review: Bad Blood

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Bad Blood, John Carreyrou. New York: Vintage, 2020.

Summary: The account of Elizabeth Holmes, the blood testing company Theranos, and the ambition that led to lies upon lies deceiving famous investors, pharmaceutical companies, and business publications until an investigative reporter on a tip discovered the house of cards on which it was all built.

Elizabeth Holmes knew from childhood what she wanted to be. Rich. A billionaire. She broke off one romantic relationship because it hindered her in the single-minded pursuit of a dream.

The dream. To create a device that could perform an array of blood tests from a few drops of blood obtained from a finger stick. Anyone who has regular blood draws understands what a revolutionary idea this is. She dropped out of Stanford after only a year to pursue the dream fueled by repeated rounds of investor fund-raising. She drew luminaries around her–Jim Mattis, Attorney David Boies, George Schulz, Henry Kissinger, Hilary and Chelsea Clinton, Rupert Murdoch. All the time, she managed to conceal a fundamental problem. The devices didn’t work. They gave wildly inaccurate readings on the few tests they could run, and served as collection devices for conventional labs on the tests they couldn’t run.

The problem. Accurate blood tests require a volume of blood drawn from a vein. Finger sticks draw from capillaries and are susceptible to hemolysis, the rupture of red blood cells spilling their contents into the sample, rendering readings inaccurate. The typical lab panels doctors run require various processes. That’s part of why so much blood is needed. All the tech people at Theranos never figured out how to get around that problem.

Holmes could not let go of the idea, or pivot because of the fundamental problems with the machines her company developed. And so began the lies. Wildly optimistic prospectuses for investors. Falsified lab-certification results. She convinced the military, Safeway Stores, Walgreens, and even the prestigious Cleveland Clinic to invest in her machines at points. Business publications like Forbes, Fortune, and Inc. bought Holmes carefully crafted myth, further attracting investor interest. She even suppressed problems when they went “live.” Over 100,000 people were tested on the machines. Meanwhile, she and her second in command (and romantic interest–also problematic) enforced a culture of secrecy and intimidation and confidentiality agreements within the company.

How did this all happen? John Carreyrou was a Wall Street Journal investigative reporter who was contacted by a pharmacy blogger suggesting that all was not as it seemed. Eventually troubled former employees risking lawsuits came forward with key evidence of what went on in Theranos labs to fool inspectors. Careful investigative work while intimidated by high-powered lawyers from David Boies firm led to the story that revealed that the empress had no clothes, a story of massive fraud and deceit from 2003 to 2018.

When legal investigations opened things up, Carreyrou was able to write the whole narrative of this company. But how did it happen? No small part of this was due to the force of Elizabeth Holmes character–so sincere in her dream as she spoke, so riveting with her large blue eyes, and unnaturally deep voice. So like her idol, Steve Jobs, in her black turtlenecks. The same powers of persuasion were exerted over investors and employees. Sadly, the latter also saw the lies, the coverups, and the Machiavellian use of power that only increased when Sunny Bulwani, romantic interest and second in command showed up. There was an utter lack of corporate governance. Despite the impressive names of Mattis, Boies, Schulz, and Kissinger, they basically gave Elizabeth free reign to do what she wanted, no questions asked. When Tyler Schulz left and tried to plead with his grandfather, his grandfather refused to listen, leading to an alienated relationship.

The story also reveals the critical importance of investigative reporting backed up by editorial oversight and legal support. Where due diligence on the part of investors, corporate governance, and government regulators failed, a reporter given the time and resources and support to tell the story ferreted out the lies that made up the house of cards that is Theranos. What the book also reveals is another aspect of great reporting in the tradition of Ida M. Tarbell who exposed the monopolistic practices of Standard Oil–that unraveling such a story makes for a great read as we wonder whether Holmes will “fake it until she makes it” and will she gets away with her lies. It is a tale both riveting and sad, one every MBA and start-up entrepreneur ought read.

Review: Bury Your Dead

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Bury Your Dead (Chief Inspector Gamache #6), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Books, 2010.

Summary: Gamache and Beauvoir are on leave after an attempt to rescue an agent goes terribly wrong. As each faces their own traumas they get caught up in murder investigations in Quebec City and Three Pines.

Armand Gamache and Jean Guy Beauvoir are wounded and desperately in need of healing in both body and mind. Young Agent Paul Morin, who we met in the previous novel, had been kidnapped while his partner was killed. The kidnapper, on an untraceable phone, tells Gamache that Morin is strapped to a bomb which will detonate in 24 hours, or if he and Gamache stop talking to each other. While Gamache talks, the team, with a critical contribution by Yvette Nichol, discovers both Morin’s location, and a much bigger plot in which this is a diversion. Gamache leads the raid to rescue Morin, which turns out to be an ambush. Agents die, and Beauvoir is wounded as is Gamache, nearly fatally, as he rescues a downed agent. He recovers enough to lead the cortege, but their wounds, their memories of the ambush and the loss of fellow officers remain to be healed. These are among the dead to be grieved and buried and the tale of the kidnapping, desperate investigation, and fatal raid are gradually unfolded over the course of the novel as each remembers fragments and re-tells them.

Gamache has gone to stay in Quebec City with his old Chief, Emile, who had mentored him. It is the time of the Winter Carnival. To distract himself, Gamache and his German shepherd Henri go to the Literary and Historical Library, an archive maintained by the English community amid a sea of French-speaking Quebecois. He spends time investigating a historical battle until–you guessed it–a murder happens in the basement of the library. Augustin Renaud, considered by many an old crank seeking the burial place of Champlain, Quebec’s founder, had asked to speak to the Lit and His (as it was called) board and was refused. The next morning, the phones were out of order, and the repairman found the cause. A dead Renaud had been buried in the basement, cutting the phone line. The local inspector asks Gamache to assist, with the board as prime suspects, and a growing trail of evidence that pointed toward the possible burial place of Champlain. Meanwhile, dead of night walks with Henri and conversations with Emile don’t, of themselves heal Gamache but create the space where he can.

Meanwhile, Beauvoir has returned to Three Pines. He and Gamache had arrested the murderer of a hermit hidden deep in a forest near Three Pines, as told in the previous novel. Yet persistent letters to Gamache of a villager with one question, lead him to ask Beauvoir, ostensibly there to recover, to make sure they had arrested and convicted the right suspect. Beauvoir, initially convinced that they had the right person in custody, begins to uncover evidence and question assumptions, leading to doubts of his own, and the disturbing possibility that the murderer is still in Three Pines. Meanwhile, the most unlikely relationship between him and Ruth Zardo, continues to unfold as Beauvoir processes his own trauma.

Penny masterfully weaves narratives of the search and rescue attempt that went so horribly wrong with the “informal” investigations in Quebec City and Three Pines. Will Gamache find the murderer of the buried Renaud? Will he unravel the mystery that has stumped so many of the burial place of Champlain, and what does the Lit and His have to do with it? Will Beauvoir satisfy the doubts he and Gamache have, or find the real murderer of the hermit? And will any of this help the two of them heal and let the dead lay buried?

One glimpses in Penny’s account what post-traumatic stress can be like for peace officers when their worst nightmare comes true. Penny portrays the wisdom of friends (or whatever you might call it with Ruth) who create the safety where trauma can be faced without trying to pry it open. And we glimpse two men struggling and willing to face the possibility that they had subjected the wrong person to the pain of arrest, trial, and imprisonment. Having survived an ordeal that went terribly wrong, we see a remarkable quality in these two men, the facing of mistakes and the growing and learning from them.

Review: Institutional Intelligence

/ rtrube54 / 3 Comments

Institutional Intelligence: How to Build an Effective Organization, Gordon T. Smith. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2017.

Summary: Believing that institutions are essential to human flourishing, unpacks the intelligence necessary to work effectively within organizations, and the different elements of organizational life that must be navigated wisely.

Institutional intelligence. On first hearing, some would think this is an oxymoron. Institutions have gotten a bad name. One thinks of words like bloated, hidebound, unfeeling, and corrupt. Gordon T. Smith, president of Ambrose University, thinks differently:

“But is there another way to think about institutions? Can we perhaps actually recognize that institutions are essential to human flourishing? Rather than see them as a problem or as a necessary evil, can we appreciate instead that institutions are the very means by which communities thrive, individual vocations are fulfilled, and society is changed for the good? Can we consider that we are all enriched and we all flourish when we invest in sustainable institutions? And more, could it not be that we can view this capacity as a good thing–as vital part of our personal development? Could it be that institutional intelligence–the wisdom of working effectively within an organization–is an essential vocational capacity for each of us?”

Gordon T. Smith, p.3.

Gordon T. Smith would answer all these questions in the affirmative, and after his apologetic for the importance of institutions, he addresses how we might work effectively within them, exercising institutional intelligence.

He does this by addressing the key elements of institutions we must learn to navigate intelligently:

  • Missional clarity and understanding how our role in the organization relates to its mission.
  • Governance processes and how to engage these constructively
  • Recruiting, hiring and developing top notch talent, and managing transitions out of the organization constructively and gracefully.
  • An institutional culture of hopeful realism fostered by all connected with the institution.
  • Financial health and resilience to which all are committed.
  • Built spaces that enhance the flourishing of those who work within them.
  • Strategic partnerships and collaborations consistent with the organization’s mission

Smith delineates in great detail the intelligence needed with each of these elements with examples drawn particularly from churches, non-profits, and educational institutions, but also relevant to for-profit enterprises.

This is a surprising book from an author whose other publications focus around one’s spiritual formation. Yet on further consideration, this makes sense for someone who cares for such matters but also leads significant organizations, like a Christian university. While one finds many of the same issues addressed here that one would find in many business texts, the attention throughout is on the formation of an institutional character, as well as of the persons working within it or served by it.

One of the places, early in the book, where this stood out was his discussion of institutional charisms. He admits that this is much like discussions of “brand” but distinguishes it as the distinctive gift God is giving the world through a particular organization, that extends through the organizational history to the present. Understanding this charism and stewarding it under God is critical for those who work in institutions and it elevates an organization’s vision. I appreciated the attention to governance structures and the recognition that organizations cannot be leaderless in some “we are all servants” ideal. Likewise, the cultivation of an organizational culture of hopeful realism recognizes both the flawed nature of all human efforts and the redemptive element of hope that fosters joy, laughter, and esprit de corps among people in an organization.

Most fascinating to me was the attention given to built spaces. Implicit in his discussion is a theology of built spaces reflecting how physical space reflects identity, is hospitable to people, enabling them to flourish, and aesthetically and environmentally is sustainable in its physical setting. In so doing, he invites us to look beyond building construction and maintenance to who and what is served by our built spaces, considerations at once both noble and practical.

Don’t skip the appendices. The first contains valuable wisdom about the relation of boards and presidents and their executive leadership and the tasks of each and avoiding confusion. The second more specifically addresses the spiritual dynamics of organizations. The last is a bibliography of essential works on the matters covered here.

Lack of trust in our institutions and the people who lead them is endemic in our time. Perhaps one of the reasons people so question truth is that its purveyors are perceived to front for toxic organizations, and perhaps embody hypocrisy themselves. Might part of fostering a culture of truth amid a world of lies consist of building institutions like those described in this book, where an institution’s messaging is simply reflective of its mission, and its truth is reflected in the flourishing of both the employees and clients of the organization? This book serves as an excellent primer for this good and godly work.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.