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The Weekly Wrap: December 28-January 3

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The Weekly Wrap: December 28-January 3

Readers as Endangered Species

I suspect you’ve read at least one book this year. It wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve read a book a week. This week, I’ve been seeing everyone’s end of the year posts of all the books they’ve read. However, one of the articles below woke me up to the bubble we are living in.

Less than half of Americans read ONE book this year. And that number is rising. It might be time to declare the reader an endangered species. But the protection of endangered species is itself endangered, so I wouldn’t count on it. And I would hate to be part of a future zoo exhibit titled “the endangered reader” with the mock habitat of a wing chair and a booklined room.

I’ve long pondered what we can do. About all I’ve concluded is that we avoid at all costs “should-ing” over non-readers. I almost wonder if we need to reach a cultural moment where people discover reading as this “cool new thing,” kind of like how the masses seem to have rediscovered vinyl when we all thought vinyl was dead, replaced by shiny discs in cheesy jewel cases.

My sense is that things like this still spread by word of mouth as people simply gossip about the good thing of reading in their lives, and maybe pass along books they’ve loved. In other words, don’t protect booklovers, but rather turn them loose to share the “disease!”

Five Articles Worth Reading

On that note, “Reading Is a Vice” argues against our strategies of arguing the virtues of reading. After all, we “do it for the thrill of staying up late to read under the covers by flashlight, unable to stop and hoping no one finds out.”

Reviewers have positively reviewed Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine in a number of major publications (even at Bob on Books!) In “Against Doom,” Emma Collins challenges Kingsnorth’s anti-technology jeremiad, concluding, “I’m tired of doom, and of doom being passed off as Christianity. Remember this: faith is about life. It’s about joy. It’s about salvation. Don’t get it twisted.”

I’ve been in a number of conversations, the gist of which is “young men are not doing well.” Richard Reeves, in “Making Men,” argues for “rites of passage,” in helping boys make the transition to responsible manhood.

However, some would argue our society as a whole is not doing so well. on one hand, we exalt radical individualism. But then we wring our hands over how to address the loneliness epidemic. Kristin M. Collier, a physician, argues that at the heart of Christian faith is restoring relationships with God, others, and ourselves. She explores the significance of communion as health in “Religio Medici.”

Lastly, this time between the end of one year and the beginning of another lends itself to consider the complexities of time, which we often take for granted. JSTOR posted a great collection of articles, “Keeping Time: A New Year’s Collection,” offering a variety of slants on this mysterious phenomenon we call “time.”

Quote of the Week

Historian John Hope Franklin was born on January 2, 1915. This quote makes the case for why we don’t erase the unhappy episodes of our history:

“If the house is to be set in order, one cannot begin with the present; he must begin with the past.”

Miscellaneous Musings

I wonder if book influencers will remember books published this month when they make their “best of the year” picks for 2026.

I love Ohio history and so I’m enjoying getting into Ann Hagedorn’s Beyond the River. It’s an account of the abolitionist and underground railroad efforts of the residents of the Ohio River town of Ripley. In particular, it focuses on Rev. John Rankin, who coupled prayer, and fighting off fugitive slave hunters with his rifle.

However, I hate cancer, which has killed people I loved and afflicted many who are near and dear. I’ve even had brushes with it in the form of a couple of skin cancers caught early. I’ve liked Siddhartha Mukherjee’s elegant writing and so have picked up his fascinating “biography” of cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies. I’m early my reading, but one striking advance is that a cancer diagnosis is no longer a badge of shame.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

Tuesday: Gerhard Lohfink, Prayer Takes Us Home

Wednesday: Nicole Massie Martin, Nailing It

Thursday: Andrew Hui, The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries

Friday: William F,. Buckley, Marco Polo, If You Can

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap  for December 28-January 3.

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page

Review: Paul and Time

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Cover image of "Paul and Time" by L. Ann Jervis

Paul and Time, L Ann Jervis. Baker Academic (iSBN: 9781540960788), 2023.

Summary: A proposal that believers live, not at the intersection and the age to come, but that we have been delivered from the present evil age to live in Christ, including living in his time.

We understand time in the light of Christ’s saving work. We understand that Christ’s coming inaugurated “the age to come” That age will reach its telos when Christ returns. Some explain it in terms of already and not yet. Others use the analogy of living between D-Day, the decisive battle of World War II and V-Day, the final victory. Those who believe live in an overlap of the ages.

L. Ann Jervis argues that this is not Paul’s view of time. For her, there is no overlap. Either we live in this present evil age, what she calls “death-time” or we live in Christ, in the time of the crucified, risen and exalted Son. She calls this “life-time.”

She begins with the two most popular approaches to Paul, the salvation historical or the more recent apocalyptic. While they differ in whether Christ represents fulfillment or he represents an in-breaking, both have in common the two age idea. She challenges this, arguing that believers live exclusively in Christ. They live in a time or temporality distinct from the present evil age, the temporality of Christ.

Christ’s time is different in at least two ways. As risen Lord, it is a time of life without end, that begins for the believer when they believe. Death is only a transition in that life. Hence, she calls this “life-time.” It is also different because it is in God, for whom past, present, and future are not discrete or sequential. Hence we experience both his past sufferings and anticipate resurrection in our present. The future only reveals the present of Christ’s life, already present to us. Jervis demonstrates this in studies of 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 8, showing that what is chronologically future for us is in the present in Christ’s victory and glory.

Finally, she addresses the implications of this idea for how we understand sin, suffering, and death. She argues that for believers, these are not symptoms of a yet to be vanquished evil age, but are transformed by those who are in Christ. She writes:

“This knowledge has an existential power–believers can live in the embrace of transformative hope. Hope for Paul is the capacity through faith to be aware of what is. Believers’ knowledge that God through Christ shares God’s time and life with them means life now is transfused with the God-given capacity to hope and so to see the glory that is and will be forever….Lives lived without fear of physical death, in awareness that sinning is not obligatory and that suffering is in company with Christ, promise to be lives of creative and healing love for all” (p. 163).

Jervis challenges us to not reframe Paul’s “in Christ” language that so dominates his thought into a two age framework. She offers an approach that seems truer to Paul’s language. She denies we are in a battle with Satan or the powers who have been defeated in Christ, a point at which I would differ. I contend that even in her framework, we participate in Christ’s victory through battle, just as we do through suffering.

Jervis offers a fresh paradigm worth consideration and development. She proclaims a liberty and victory for believers in this present life instead of making concessions to the enemy. Jervis reminds us of what a powerful truth it is to say we are “in Christ.” She does this with concision and clarity in writing that is a pleasure to read. I look forward to reading more of this theologian!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Shape of Christian History

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The Shape of Christian History, Scott W. Sunquist. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022.

Summary: An exploration of how Christian history is written and read in an era of “Christianities” proposing three framing concepts that give coherence to the whole arc of Christian history while respecting the diversity of its expressions.

In current scholarship, it has become commonplace to speak of the diverse cultural expressions of Christianity as “Christianities.” While this honors the diversity of global Christianity, it also carries the implication that there is not, and may never have been a common thread that can be traced through the two millenia history of the Christian movement. Scott W. Sunquist, a missiologist and church historian questions this trend and sets out in this work to answer this compound question: “What is Christianity as a historical movement, and how can we best understand and explain Christianity as God’s redemptive work in history?” He argues that this is not a mere academic question of how we teach church history but also how we prepare students and pastors to live as missional participants in the global Christian movement.

Before proposing his response to this question, Sunquist offers us a “brief history of history,” exploring the history of accounts of the Christian movement through history. He begins with James Dennis and his Christian Missions and Social Progress and traces these attempts up to Kenneth Scott Latourette’s A History of Christianity. The narratives are ones not only of geographic advance but also social progress, the bringing of what was thought the best of Western culture from hospitals to schools under the mantel of colonialism. In a post-colonial situation, this narrative no longer works and Sunquist believes only the biblical story, the experience of the global church, and Jesus himself offer coherence. He proposes three framing concepts, or three threads that conform to these criteria and serve to connect the history of the global church: time, cross, and glory.

Time: Two crucial events in time inform the direction of Christian history. Creation emphasizes that the story has a clear beginning, and one of beauty, rather than an endless cycle of birth, growth, decline, and death. It speaks of the goodness of the material creation against religion that denies the goodness of the body and material world. Incarnation tells us that something decisive was done in the past that shapes our present reality and gives us a future hope. All of this addresses the religious and secularist systems that fail to offer hope of redemption on one time, or try to realize heaven on earth in over-realized eschatologies that usually end up violent.

Cross: The cross and resurrection are central to the redemptive work of God throughout human history. This is true not only in what was accomplished through suffering and vindicated in the resurrection, but also serves as a pattern for the mission of the church. The church in its mission is to be cruciform, sharing in the sufferings of Christ. Sunquist shares case studies, particularly of the Moravians and how their suffering brought life as well as generations of mission work in China, often with great persecution, only to eventuate in what may be the largest Christian movement in the world today. Sunquist challenges the versions of a Christianity of success and conquest from the Inquisition to “prosperity” Christianity.

Glory: The glory in view here is the splendor of God and the honor due God for who God is. It is what motivates mission, not in a quest for personal glory but a zeal that this be acknowledged to the ends of the earth. Sunquist traces stories of those who suffer unto glory, including that of Julia Mateer and the school she began for Chinese boys. It moves us to hope, humility, and hospitality, the “little glories” that point to the greater glory.

Having discussed the writing of history and laid out his three framing ideas of Christian history, Sunquist concludes with a marvelous chapter on the reading of Christian history and how this may be transformative for students and for the church. He urges that we:

  • Read history looking for little glories.
  • Read history for biographies.
  • Read history for the influence of ideas (theology).
  • Read history for our local churches.
  • Read history to meditate on the ambiguities of history.
  • Read history for our missionary involvement.
  • Read to have a greater awareness of evil.
  • Read history to understand the relationship between the kingdom of God and earthly kingdoms.
  • Read history to learn unity and love.

What a great apologetic for reading Christian history! He particularly encourages the reading the discovers the unsung heroes of the faith. I research and write local history and I can attest that so much of it is about people, people who often have acted with courage, character, compassion, and competence, and whose stories have been lost to their home towns. How much more for the history of the church! I’m also keenly aware as I look at the landscape of the American church that this transformative reading of church history seems greatly lacking. This raises questions for me about what happens in the training of pastors in our seminaries.

More foundationally, Sunquist reminds us of the only threads that can tie together the diverse global movements that identify as Christian: time, cross, and glory. We all believe God has acted in time to create and to incarnate his saving work in his Son, extending that through his people. We all believe in the centrality of the cross and the resurrection, and that these central events ought shape our lives. We all belief that our greatest end is God’s glory. What a fascinating study Christian history can be when given to seeing how this thread plays out, even in the darkest times, when we are at our worst and occasionally, at our best.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Carpe Diem Redeemed

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carpe diem.jpg

Carpe Diem Redeemed, Os Guinness. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2019.

Summary: A consideration of how, in our present day, we ought make the most of the time, to properly seize the day.

The collection of epigraphs alone may be a reason to acquire this book. The book opens with fourteen pages of epigraphs on the subject of time spanning the gamut from Lao Tzu to Richard Branson.  The epigraphs explore various perspectives on time and our relation to time, and how we live within it. The one thing all of us recognize in our most reflective moments is the brevity of our life span and how rapidly it passes. As the author of this work, it is “the dash between the two dates on our gravestones.” The perennial question is what the meaning of this transient existence is and how we might make the most of it.

Guinness interacts with a similarly titled book, Carpe Diem Regained, by Roman Krznaric, who believes there is no transcendent source of meaning, that we must create that meaning for ourselves, and then “seize the day” Guinness argues that carpe diem requires a vision of life that makes sense of time and history, and roots this in the Judeo-Christian account found in the Bible.

He contends for a covenantal perspective on time in contrast to cyclical or mere chronological views of time. Time has a telos that is shaped by the relation between a sovereign God committed to his creation including human beings created with real freedom to respond in love or rebellion. This freedom involves both real risk and the possibility of redemption. Our lives are neither determined nor part of an endless cycle.

We exist in an era in which the precision and coordination of our time-keeping eventuates in a life of constant pressure. At a deeper level, our modern understanding of time is shaped by a narrative of progress, a presumption that the latest is the greatest, and the paradox of the avant garde becoming the rear guard, an inevitable fatality of progress.

How then does he propose we seize the day within these contemporary dynamics of time. The beginning is not an idea, but a “walk,” daily, with God, the daily rhythms of trust and obedience that shape a life and not just an ideology. Secondly, this means discerning the times, understanding what is really happening in them and how God is working in them. Then it means serving God’s purpose in that time. Christians practice a kind of prophetic untimeliness or “resistance thinking” against the ways that the culture distorts past, present, and future.

This kind of life may be costly. Guinness relates some of the cost to his own family, former missionaries in China. He lost a brother and sister to starvation during World War 2 and his parents suffered arrest under the communists for several years. It was tempting to wonder what they accomplished, yet there hope was that “the end is not the end,” that our hope is in the coming of Jesus.

He summarizes his argument as follows:

   Those with the greatest view of time are those best able to use and enjoy the time they have. Life is short, but we are called to rise to our full potential, making the most of it and seizing each day. Within the biblical view of time and history, life offers meaning and opens prospects whose significance far outstrips its shortness. (p. 136)

This is classic Guinness, down to the three alliterated points in many chapters! But there is also something different. There is a personal character to this work as well. Guinness shares more of himself than I’ve observed in many of his books, and we have the sense of one who has been long at this journey imparting vital wisdom. He speaks into our time-pressured and experience-oriented culture of a vision of carpe diem that is far more than filling one’s life with as much experience as we can cram into the brief space of our lives. He reminds us of the biblical wisdom that understands life within our covenantal relationship with a transcendent and yet loving God who makes sense of the flow of time and its ultimate end. This is a God who invites us to walk with Him, to see our times with his eyes and serve his purposes in our generation, and trust that this is enough. We also seize the day, not in a self-fabricated purpose or an endless cycle, but in the faith that the employment of all our energies toward the purposes of God will bring joy and our time and matter for eternity.

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

 

Passages

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We just returned from a family vacation in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, staying in a cabin at a conference center owned by the organization for which I work. The trip itself was kind of a passage, back into winter, or the very beginnings of spring. The bay on which the cabin is located is still completely frozen and snow still covered many areas although we were told that two feet of snow had thawed in the four days before our arrival. If you think we’ve had it bad this winter, folks in the U.P. have most of us beat! And after several warm days, we had one more blast of winter, shared by much of the Midwest as 2-3 inches of new snow fell. Temperatures were at 16 degrees the morning we left!

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This trip was a kind of journey into the past in some ways that reminded us of the passage of time, and the many rich memories that have filled those years. This began when we paged through the guestbook in the cabin, which we have stayed in as a family four other times. One of our entries was from June of 1985, and we remarked on this being our son’s first visit to this conference center at a month and a half old. Now, it is nearly twenty nine years later, and it was fun for his wife for whom this was a first visit, to read this entry and to realize some of the family history wrapped up in this place.

As we showed our daughter-in-law around, memories unbidden returned of programs I had led or participated in, in just about every room. Seeing a recently built lounge area named after the founder of our organization in the US, I was reminded of hearing him speak at this site in 1977 during my Orientation of New Staff. Walking into another room in the same building I remembered a crazy and delightful time of suddenly assuming the direction of a program I was attending for the first time when the director was ill. It was a scramble and yet God met us in wonderful ways as we improvised and stayed maybe a half-step ahead of the students.

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I looked out on the frozen bay from some of the same spots where I sat enjoying the summer sun and spending personal times in prayer, reflection, and reading at a student leadership training program I was attending in July and August of 1974, my first visit to this site. I remembered a TV being brought into the meeting house so we could watch the resignation of President Nixon at the end of Watergate. And I thought, could nearly 40 years have passed so quickly?

Indeed they have, and yet as I thought of all this, my mood was not so much wistful as thankful. I mention in the “About ” page to this blog of how I live at the intersection of the love of learning and the love of God. So much of my passion for these was cultivated in this place. So much of life over the past 40 years has involved sharing with successive generations of students and faculty at a number of universities as well as at programs at this site how these two things walk hand in hand and how loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-39) is not only the greatest of the commands but central to a life well-lived.

How well-lived my own life has been is ultimately a matter for God to judge. But as I look at things so far, I have to say that my own sense is one of having no regrets and great thankfulness. We’ve shared as a family in so many of these ventures. It was rich to share our memories together, as well as make new ones, like evenings in the cabin playing hearts or Scrabble and laughing at the turns of the game, usually against me–I didn’t win even once!

As we departed, both we, and our son and daughter-in-law left new entries in the guestbook. While none of us knows what the future holds, perhaps it will be that at some future date, we and/or they will mark yet further passages of time and hopefully have new and rich memories to share.

Teach us to number our days,
    that we may gain a heart of wisdom. (Psalm 90:12, NIV)