Both-And

Bob on Books Best of 2014

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This is the time of year when every review magazine (and blog!) releases its Best of 2014 book lists. Since I follow a number of these, I’ve seen many of these lists and gotten some interesting ideas of books to read for the future. One of the most amazing is a free download  from Publishers Weekly with all their starred reviews for the year.

Most lists focus around books published in 2014 which makes sense for these outlets. Mine is a little different. I’m a reader first, and at best, an amateur book reviewer. I started writing reviews mostly to remember what was salient in the books I read, and I choose the books to read because of my own interests at the time. So my list includes both books published in the last year, and older books I’ve finally gotten around to reading which I think especially worthwhile to commend. So without further ado, here is the list, not in any particular order since I thought all outstanding. All of these are linked to my full reviews of the book.

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1. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. This best-selling book argues that introverts are simply different, not inferior or superior but rather offering unique gifts to the world that arise from their temperament. Contradicting what I wrote above, this would probably be my “best” book of the year. She nails what it means to be an introvert without being whiny.

2. Journey Toward Justice, by Nicholas Wolterstorff. In short chapters Wolterstorff shares both his own ideas about justice and the personal encounters with victims of injustice in South Africa, Palestine, and the Honduras. And he contends that it was the personal encounters with those whose dignity was impaired and whose inherent rights were denied that informed his theory of justice centering around human dignity and inherent rights.

3. Destiny of the Republic, by Candice Millard. The author renders a fascinating account of the life, assassination attempt against, and subsequent death of James A Garfield, interwoven with sketches of his deluded assassin and benighted physician, James Bliss, whose methods introduced infection and probably were the real cause of Garfield’s death.

4. Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Spiritual Life, by Nancy Koester. Stowe did far more than just write Uncle Tom’s Cabin. She was a pioneer among women authors, the daughter and spouse of New School Calvinist pastors who moved away from these theological roots while not moving away from Christ, and contributed far more to the abolition of slavery than simply her novel. An outstanding biography.

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5. A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, by Samantha Power.  From the story of Rafael Lemkin who gave us the word “genocide” to the tragedy of Rwanda, and our first real steps to intervene in the Balkans, Power tells a story of America’s studied avoidance for the most part, of using its power to prevent genocide, even while piously saying “never again” after the Holocaust.

6. Both-And: Living the Christ-Centered Life in an Either-Or World,  by Rich Nathan with Insoo Kim. Pastors Nathan and Kim describe and narrate the vision of Vineyard Columbus to live as a both-and church that is both evangelical and charismatic, both united and racially diverse, both showing mercy and pursuing justice, and more. I chose this not simply because these were “home town favorites” but because they articulate a “Third Way” vision that transcends the polarities and divisiveness of our society.

7. To Change the World, by James Davison Hunter. Many organizations and movements in Christian circles have used the language of changing the world but have not been cognizant to the deeper dynamics of culture change nor its double-edged character. Hunter explores what is really involved in culture change and thinks Christians best achieve this through “faithful presence” throughout society.

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8. Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri. This Pulitzer Prize winning collection of short stories by Bengali Indian Lahiri explores the intersection of traditional Bengali values with modernity, particularly in negotiating the immigrant experience. A number of the stories are set in Boston, where Lahiri was educated.

9. American Gods, Neil Gaiman. Shadow, a released prisoner gets caught up in a war between the old and new gods with which Gaiman populates the American landscape, and discovers his own identity in the process. This is something of a classic, but one that I think explores well the “gods” (idols?) of the American landscape.

10. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris. This is the first of a three volume biography on the life of Teddy Roosevelt, tracing his adventures from sickly childhood through young rancher, civil servant to the fateful day he learns he has become President at the death of McKinley. All of the volumes of this biography are a delight, but this one most of all in covering a period of Roosevelt’s life that is less familiar to most and which reveals his character in both its strengths and flaws.

These books afforded hours of good reading this year that amused, informed, and challenged me. I hope one or more of these might do the same for you. And if you missed these books when I first reviewed them, I’d encourage you to follow me either on WordPress or via emails delivered to your inbox whenever I post.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year’s from Bob on Books!

 

I Am Bipolar

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No, I am not speaking of a psychological condition of mood swings from manic to depressive. (I should also say that I do not want to make light of an illness with which I’ve know talented and high-functioning friends of mine to live.) It’s simply that I am bipolar (although I’d like to come up with a different term) when it comes to many questions of truth and practice, particular around my faith. I draw this term from an insight of a long-time friend who observed on numerous occasions that I was with him that truth is bipolar and that orthodoxy is the idea of living in the tension of bipolar truths. I’ve found this to be so.

I believe:

  • in a God who is both Three and One.
  • in a Jesus who is both fully God and fully human in one person.
  • both that God is sovereign, and that our choices matter
  • both that we are saved by grace through faith and that we are God’s workmanship created for good works in Christ (these two ideas appear in consecutive verses in Ephesians 2:8-10).

Historically, Christians have gotten into problems when they’ve been uncomfortable with those tensions and emphasized one pole at the expense of the other. I can understand the temptation. While I can articulate to a certain degree how each of these pairs relate to each other, I cannot fully logically reconcile them. Heresy often is the emphasis of one end of the polarity at the expense of the other rather than a complete rejection Christian conviction.

Now, for some of my atheist and other skeptical friends, this all seems crazy and irrational. Yet I would observe that there are a number examples from science to every day life of bipolar truths. We understand light as both wave and particle. For Americans, we have the motto of e pluribus unum–out of the many, one. Every society wrestles with the tension of individual rights and social responsibility.

Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” I’m convinced that as infuriating as these tensions can be, when we try to eliminate them by emphasizing one pole of a truth at the expense of another, or one position in a debate while demonizing one’s opponent, we not only make the world simpler, but smaller and lose something of the richness and wonder that pervades life, as puzzling as it can be.

I’ve been considering this quite a bit recently as I’ve reflected on Rich Nathan’s recent book Both-And, which attempts to articulate a vision for life that reconciles many apparent opposites in an either-or world of polarized discourse . Here are some of the other tensions of belief and practice in which I think we are called to live:

  • we both welcome all people as they are and invite them into the transformational journey of discipleship following the wise and gracious leadership of Jesus.
  • we are to live both in the world and not be of the world.
  • we both believe in revealed truth and use our minds to understand the world in which God has place us.
  • we both form communities centered around unchanging truths and welcome the exploration, questioning, and inquiry that enlarge our understanding of these truths and their relevance for our day.
  • we both pursue in word and deed heralding the presence of the rule of Jesus, and realize that the only universal fulfillment of that rule can be in his personal return when “the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ” as we love to sing in the Hallelujah Chorus.

The question some might raise is whether this leads to a kind of relativism or shifting ideas about truth. And here I would say that the idea of truths in tension, or bipolar truth, is different from either believing truths that are in utter contradiction (such as that there is both a God and there is no god) or a type of syncretism, that attempts to blend ideas from different and ultimately contrary systems of belief or thought. Both poles find their sense is the character of God, the person of Christ, and the way God has created and ordered his world and church.

I’ve often despaired at the either-or options served up to us in our society, and even more when Christians side up on one side or the other of these polarities and try to get me to join them. Why must I choose between mothers and babies? Why must I choose between free enterprise and the environment? That doesn’t mean that I think Christians will always have the best answers to reconciling these polarities. But I do think that if we see living in tensions like these as an extension of living in the polar tensions of our faith, we might have something to contribute to a society that hungers for peace but struggles to surmount the divide between the various things that polarize us.

Thanks to those of you who have walked with me through this post, which represents an effort to think out something that I think is important both for our faith communities, and for our engagement with the wider world that may not share our convictions. I’d deeply value your thoughts and challenges to this thinking!