Jesus Wars

 

Jesus Wars – Philip Jenkins

The Jesus Wars was an incredibly satisfying read that managed to suck me deep into the narrative and history.  Strangely, if you were to give me a quiz on all of the people and events after I read this book, I would have failed miserably.  Imagine watching a movie with a lot of action.  Supposed that the movie is very good and well done.  There’s so much action that your inundated with explosions, crashes and other cacophonous elements.  Well, with so much turmoil going on, you the viewer might not be able to distinguish what is happening to whom, but if the story is told well, you’re likely to still be entertained.

That’s a bit how I felt reading this book. Sadly, reading about “Jesus Wars” isn’t necessarily a pleasant subject to read about, but I thought it was fascinating to learn about the times and the people, and how interfaith fighting certainly isn’t anything new.  This book mainly focuses on relevant events in 5^th century Christianity, and how none of the leaders could really agree on anything.  In fact, we see so much conflict that people are killed, alliances are formed and broken, and the church overall becomes weakened to foreign invaders.

We must remember that, unlike today, “Bible reading” wasn’t really in vogue.  Bibles themselves were incredibly rare, the official canon was still being constructed, and the mass majority of people couldn’t even read.  That’s not to say that having more Bible reading would have prevented the bickering.  Those in charge and in the know had the scriptures handy, and just like today, one can unintentionally manipulate the Bible to say whatever we want it to when we perform enough hermeneutical gymnastics.

The biggest conflicts that arise were around the nature of Jesus.  Was Jesus really God?  Or was he just a really neat obedient human?  Was he both? How was that possible?  If both, when did he become God? Was he always God?  If he was God, why did he cry out in pain during his crucifixion?   Now, MOST mainstream Christians today are in agreement on such things, but history shows us this isn’t always the case.  If you want to have some fun, next time you go to church, ask one of the pastors what their thoughts are on “homoousios” vs. “homoiousious”.   My guess is you’ll get a blank, confused stare.

I think this is a shame.  Sometimes I think instead of churches having “small groups” that meet for Bible study, they should meet instead and have “church history” study.  It’s all quite fascinating.  This book would make a great study source.  In fact, I honestly wish I would have spent a careful two months reading this as opposed to two weeks.   It really did warrant a much slower pace with all the people, places, and detail, but I have too many unread books on the shelf that I’m too eager to get to.  In other words, as much as I enjoyed this book, I would have enjoyed it much better with more time to digest the masses of information.  On that note, the author wisely includes a lot of helpful appendices and “casts of characters” to help the reader as they navigate through all the unfamiliarity.

As the subtitle of the book implies, it was several leaders (patriarchs, queens, and emperors) who essentially “decided” what the rest of us all now believe.  Although the author doesn’t spend too much time on the subject, it’s worth serious pondering to ask, does God really care how we look at Jesus?  Let’s say, for example, that Jesus didn’t become fully God until after his baptism as opposed to his birth in the manger.  Should it really matter?   Or was Mary the “mother of God”, or merely the “mother of Christ”.  I mean, Christ IS God; right?   Sadly, as was the case back then, it seems as though there’s too much hair splitting in the church with those pounding their fists insisting they know at all, and not enough love, compassion, and caring, which seems to be the gist of Jesus’s teaching. 

This was a great reading experience, and my hope is that more Christians knew a lot more about their history than what so many of the latter-day pop-culture prophets pontificate about on the various social media platforms.  Christianity really does has a very rich history.

Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: How the Church Needs to Rediscover Her Purpose

 

Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: How the Church Needs to Rediscover Her Purpose – Aimee Byrd

This book is an angry response to “Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood” by John Piper and Wayne Grudem.  In 20^th and 21^st century Christianity, there’s an awful lot of talk out there about what role a woman should have within the church walls and in society in general. To say this is controversial is a huge understatement.  Author Aimee Byrd sets out to make the case that women have been subjugated far too long, and this idea of complementarianism isn’t as biblical as many of today’s evangelical protestants seem to think.  I agree with her argument.  Sadly, though, this really isn’t a good book.   In fact, I though the writing was…well…pretty boring and dreadful.   All of us know how to talk, write, and communicate, yet most of us don’t really do all of them that well. Writing a book that keeps an audience’s attention is not as easy as it sounds.

This is a book that I found so boring that it took me forever to finish (I tend to put down the boring ones for “later” and then start newer books.  I kept forcing myself to pick this one back up and trudge forward and longer and longer intervals), so there’s a lot of it I really don’t even remember. Not only that, but when I WAS reading it, it was hard to stay focused and keep my mind from wandering.  Some of this book (well, a LOT of this book), I had to simply skim some of the chapters.  In fact, it’s even painful as I write this review; I just can’t really even remember much about the book to give specific examples nor heartfelt reflections.

As I recall, she starts this thing with some sort of analogy about a subjugated woman who lived in the 19^th century.  She resided in a room that had yellow wallpaper. Eventually the woman went so bonkers that she ended up pealing and tearing the yellow wallpaper off the walls.  Note the cover of this book.  So the author is always making references to “having to tear down yellow wallpaper” throughout the entire book.  It was quite monotonous and annoying.  I was never tempted to tear yellow wallpaper while reading this book, but I was tempted the throw my Kindle across the room.

She then plods through some of the Biblical accounts to make her point, which aren’t necessarily bad, they’re just boring.  I seem to remember one of the chapters was a rather long expository on the book of Ruth.   Remember those boring professors you had back in college that couldn’t keep the students awake 10 minutes into a lecture?  This is what we have here.  I’ve often complained about boring books by making a comparison of reading a Wikipedia article.  This book was worse. This book was like reading the footnotes (many pages of them) to a boring Wikipedia article.

She then drones on about the church, and how important the church is. She talks about the rise of the “para church” and how embracing a concept doesn’t achieve a church’s true goals.  It’s again, mightily boring, and she seems to have strayed from the supposed topic, which is how women should be revered and treated in the church.

She just doesn’t seem to know how to hold a reader’s attention.  None of her stories are particularly riveting, and she doesn’t seem to understand that loads and loads of facts presented on page after page doesn’t quite cut it.  She needs more feeling. She needs more emotion.  What she really needed was a co-author.

For a much better book around the same subject, I would recommend Beth Allison Barr’s book “The Making of Biblical Womanhood”.

An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford

  

An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford - Richard Norton Smith

In the past 10 years or so, I've read and posted reviews of close to 600 books. Of those books, probably 20% of them have been about U.S. Presidents or other influential world leaders, and I find myself repeating myself when writing my reflections.  What I thought I would do for this review, is to take a slight detour and explain why I tend to state what I do when I review many of these offerings.  If you don't care to read my reflections and simply want to quickly know how this book was, I'll summarize by saying this book was good overall, but could have been better.  If you want elaboration, read on; but first, some explanation about my reflections is necessary.

For most of my life I have been employed as a professional trainer. A big part of my job is classroom training, and I have spend many days in the past 25 years standing in front of a group of people and talking to them for 8 straight hours.  Let me give you some helpful advice if you're ever asked to do this: People get bored very quickly.  A big challenge I have is keeping people engaged.  I need to present my material to where people feel they haven't wasted an 8-hour day listening to a speaker drone on all day while pretending to read sloppy PowerPoint slides.   It's not an easy gig, and most people, even some that do it for a living, simply aren't very good.

Oftentimes I'm asked to coach presenters who don't do such a thing regularly.  A big mistake I see people make over an over again is that they see how much time they have on the agenda, and they think they need to completely fill their time slot. So if they have a 30-minute time slot and they only have 20 minutes of material, they think they have to "pad their material", "add more PowerPoint slides", or worse "talk slower".   They are often amazed when I tell them that none of this is necessary.  If you have a 30-minute slot and you finish in 20 minutes, your audience will LOVE you!

So what does all of this have to do with a biography about the 38th U.S. President?  Well, it seems as though the author, sadly, does just what I instruct novice speakers not to do.  It seems as though he had a "page commitment" and had trouble filling his book with relevant material, so he pads the book.  Sadly, it doesn't work to the reader's favor.

Gerald R. Ford. If there was ever an "ordinary man" to hold the office of President, Ford fits the bill almost better than we all wish.  He's the only president who was never "elected". He didn't get elected to the office, nor was he an elected President's Vice-President on a ticket.  In the midst of the turbulent Nixon administration, Ford was pushed into the role of Vice President after the current office holder Spiro Agnew was indicted for taking bribes and forced to resign.  Then, about a year later: Watergate.

It's plain to see that Ford probably never could have been elected for such a visible office as President had he ever decided to run. He was simply too ordinary.  Not that this is a bad thing. Sometimes we need a lot more substance and far less style when choosing a Commander in Chief, but voters are fickle and we're not programmed to think quite so rationally. But....well.....an "ordinary" man probably  shouldn't warrant an 800-page retrospective, which is what we sadly have with this biography. 

To be fair, the last 100 pages are indexes, footnotes, etc. but still, 700 pages is way too much page space devoted to an "ordinary" man never elected to the presidency, who essentially served 1/2 of a 4-year term. Literally half the volume is devoted to Ford's presidency, and this is the half that the reader struggles to remain conscious while reading.  This is a shame because the "other" half is quite rewarding. Even though Gerald Ford is ordinary, it's at least interesting to read about his life, and had the author shaved 150 pages off the 'presidential' portion, the overall book would have been far more rewarding.

It's ironic because when Gerald Ford was running for re-election against Governor Jimmy Carter in 1976, many voters were asked to list one thing that Ford had accomplished during his short tenure in the oval office.  Many couldn't.  That's not surprising.  I doubt they could have had they read.....or attempted to read....the accounts in this book.  It's simply unbearably boring.

So, yes, the highlights are told very well here.  Most notably is the reason why he was chosen to be Vice-President in the first place. (Those who were intelligent on Capitol Hill knew Richard Nixon's career was on borrowed time.) So the politics involved in his selection and confirmation are well told here.  The biggest thing that Ford is remembered for is his pardoning of Richard Nixon. Again, the detail in this book is well told, and although most argued that this decision doomed Ford's political career, hindsight many years in the future indicate that it the move was probably for the best.

There was also an entire chapter on Ford's participation the Warren Commission in 1964 after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and although interesting, the book seemed to wander a tad, and it times I felt as though I was reading a book about conspiracy theories and speculation about what really happened in Dallas as opposed to reading about the intended subject matter.  Still, it made for interesting reading which, sadly, wasn't always the case as I've mentioned.

Once 1976 arrives and Ford is replaced by the voters, we read very little about the remainder of Ford's life.  I guess it felt as though the author should have taken his time with Ford's pre and post presidency and not so much laborious thick detail during his short tenure.  This book was rewarding but definitely had its limitations.

I have to also state that I thought James Cannon's biography of Gerald Ford (written about 10 years prior) was much better.  In fact, when I saw that this book had been written, my first thought was "Do we really need another one? Especially so soon after the last one?"   Well, sadly, we really didn't.   I can't imagine many people wanting to read a biography of Gerald Ford, and if you're one of those people, I would go with The James Cannon one.

The Last Storyteller

  

The Last Storyteller - Frank Delaney

A rather disappointing effort.  I’ve read a few books by this author, and I’ve enjoyed his works, but this one was substantially subpar.  The author, from what I can tell, writes about Ireland; exclusively Ireland. Although natives of the country probably would enjoy reading anything about their homeland, past or present, the rest of us, well, you really need to make it something special for a dense native tale to really sink in. 

Part of the problem with this book is that it’s a story about a storyteller who tells us stories. And within these stories are other stories.  Now, I confess that I’m one of those readers who prefers reading a straightforward tale. This effort, though, seems to really want to focus on the "storyteller" part and thinks that it is an advantage to have several stories overlapping each other within the main tale.  All this did was confuse and distract me.  Again, part of the issue is that "main" story really wasn't that interesting.  The author seemed to want to emphasize key features indigenous to his homeland rather than tell an engaging narrative.

Now, all of us have a special bond with our upbringing, our surroundings and our struggles as they relate to the world overall.  If we're honest, though, the rest of the world doesn't really care that much.  Think about a very special family vacation that you once journeyed.  If you were to tell someone else about your experience, I would recommend limiting your reflections to about 5 minutes.  If you talk about your holiday for several hours to anyone, you'll probably bore them to tears.  Sadly, this is exactly what this book did to me.  It was the equivalent of a neighbor forcing me to watch several hours of mundane home videos.

As I stated, I've read a few other books by this author (one, unsurprisingly, called "Ireland") and I've enjoyed them.  This one, though, is too personal.  If an author is going to spend so much page space devoted to anything other than an interesting story (such as a geography and its history) the real challenge is making the reader fall in love with such a place.  This is isn't easy, but it is possible. Think of James Michener or Edward Rutherford.   Sadly, this book fails in this effort.  It was a relief to finally finish the thing.  I think this book was one of his earlier efforts.  Perhaps he simply got better over time?  If so, I haven't been turned off by him just yet.  I would recommend this author; just not his particular book.