:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

While I’m happy to help spread the word about a friend’s book release, I realized a few years ago that book reviews are not my thing. There are some bloggers who love writing them. They kind of psych me out. There’s something about HAVING to do a review that makes it less fun to read a book.

I’m a pretty obsessive planner for the blog too, so I usually have a hard time finding one day for a book review. All that to say, I’ve been stalling on some reviews and interviews for some good books. I owe apologies to more authors than I can count on one hand.

This week I’m working through some book reviews. I don’t care about following any kind of format. I just have three things I want to say: what is the author trying to say, who is the audience, and will that audience want to read what that author has written. Without further ado, I’ll begin book review week with Becky Garrison’s Jesus Died for This: A Satirist’s Search for the Risen Lord.

If you took a travel narrative, spiritual memoir, critique of consumer Christianity, and a report on hopeful movements in the church today and blended them together with a heavy dose of sarcasm, you’d have Garrison’s new book.

The book offers a series of snapshots at the spiritually surreal landscape of Christianity—places where skeptics and critics may find Christianity lacking. However, she sheds light on communities and individual Christians who offer a hopeful take on Christianity. Garrison’s faith-based critique also offers positive examples and is a welcome relief from the “we suck” narrative that dominates some Christian circles.

The book has a series of cartoons by artist David Hayward that help drive home Garrison’s words in unexpectedly powerful ways.

Garrison is a writer who pulls no punches, calling it like she sees it with a journalist’s skill and the creds of an MDiv from Yale Divinity school. She refuses to fawn over trends, and poses hard questions when they need to be asked. In fact, personally speaking, if I’m worried about a trend in Christian publishing or Christianity in general, she’s one of the first people I look to for a perspective.

It’s rare to find someone with Garrison’s commitment to relationships, while remaining committed to asking the questions no one seems to be asking—at least out loud. She seeks out fresh expressions of God in our world and learns what she can, while still committing to speak her mind.

This speaking her mind has gotten her into trouble, but then again, it’s why I trust Garrison so much. She doesn’t raise the alarm for the sake of attention or self-justification, but rather asks tough questions as an honest seeker asking what readers may well be wondering on their own. It’s hard to do what she does well, and for that I’m grateful for her perspective in this book.

Jesus Died for This? is a book unlike any other, as it combines a travel narrative with personal reflections on spirituality with lessons from Christians from a number of countries. It’s spiced throughout with Garrison’s whit and wordplay—which will either endear her to readers or confuse them.

If you’re convinced that Christianity is going to hell in a hand basket (even if it’s a Rob Bell hell hand basket that doesn’t last forever), this is a book for you.

If you’re frustrated by Christianity, Garrison both feels your pain and offers some helpful guides to the Christian faith who will not disappoint.

If you’re convinced that every new form of church is awesome and can’t imagine anything going wrong, this book will give you perspective.

If you think Christianity has nothing for you, Garrison will make you think again.

If you aren’t sure you’re up for word-play, alliteration, and a heavy dose of sarcasm, I encourage you to drop by Amazon and read a bit of the book.

Jesus Died for This? cuts through the hype and consumerism and points readers to solid ground. Rather than leaving readers shaking their heads at what a mess we have,  Garrison shares her own doubts, discoveries, and connections by way of pointing out that Jesus Died to create a people committed to him and his Kingdom.

A few years ago I began to wonder what a parody of myself would look like. It was a bit painful to consider at first.

Why would I put myself through such pain?

I felt like I was taking myself and my beliefs way too seriously. I feared that I was losing my balance and not putting enough of my faith into practice. I had shifted from the more conservative (possibly fundamentalist in some ways) end of evangelicalism into the more progressive end, and I sensed myself making the same mistakes under a different banner.

A parody of myself would force me to look at myself in a different light, take some of my beliefs to their extremes, and help me figure out where I needed to change and what needed to stay the same.

As I grew more comfortable with the concept of a parody, I began to experiment with a series of posts called “Sarcastic Saturday.” It was quite hard to do, and it didn’t quite pack the punch I wanted as a parody of myself.

So I sat on the idea for a while.

In the midst of the Rob Bell “HellGate” debate, the wheels began to turn.

I began thinking of a parody that would hopefully help all sides step back, laugh a bit at themselves, and hopefully cool things off a bit. At the very least, a parody helps us step back and take ourselves less seriously for a moment. That has done me a world of good in making me a more loving and open conversation partner.

Out of the ideas swirling in my mind, I mashed together a parody of Bell’s book Love Wins with a parody of Twilight and all of the other vampire TV shows and books in pop culture and wrote a novella e-book that I titled Love Bites (you can still download the whole 15,600 word e-book). I didn’t have an agenda other than helping us step back from the angry debates, laugh a bit, and hopefully returning to our conversations with a little less… well… bite.

I want to make it clear that I really like Rob Bell. His book Velvet Elvis echoed many of the things I’ve been thinking (you could say it’s a more accessible take on some of the stuff I say in Coffeehouse Theology).

Hopefully everyone who reads the book noticed another character: Ned Ciwinski. Ned is a parody of myself: a bumbling, dorky writer obsessed with being relevant with theology and culture. One of my friends thought he was the hero of the story, but that was purely a mistake on my part if anyone thought that. I really wanted Ned to just provide comic relief, to get lucky at a few key points with his half-witted ideas, and to provide that parody of myself that I’ve longed to put together.

Ned Ciwinskiy reminds me that I can get lost in my theology and isolate myself to the point that I end up forgetting how to relate to others. To a certain degree, Ned was my round-about way of getting to the excellent point made by Don Miller that Jesus doesn’t need theology experts to advance his Kingdom. Sometimes the theology experts can lose their way.

I currently have a book proposal that I’m sending around that examines what we can learn from the people who rejected Jesus. The majority of those who rejected Jesus were the theology experts of his time. I’ve often written on this blog that the New Testament reads like a horror story for seminary students.

I have a feeling that Ned wouldn’t want to read a book like that, which is why I needed to write a silly story about our theology debates with vampires and a self-absorbed and self-proclaimed theology and culture expert named Ned fumbling his way through the story.

Ricky Gervais once said to Steve Carrell (who plays Michael Scott on The Office), “If you don’t know someone like Michael Scott, then you are Michael Scott.” Along similar lines, if I couldn’t write that story with Ned in it, then the truth is that I could very well become just like Ned—without the vampires I hope.

It has been a busy week in the Cyzewski household. No, we’re not training our rabbits for the House Rabbit Olympics.

That’s in the summer.

I’m approaching a couple of deadlines and so is my wife. Everything is a bit more hands on deck. And then last night I had this idea that sort of took over my mind. I don’t know if this ever happens to you, but when I have an idea for something I want to write, it becomes almost impossible to think about anything else.

It’s like, “Oh man, I could write about this hilarious situation, and then there’s ANOTHER hilarious thing that could happen after that!”

I need to scratch it all down or I’ll forget my ideas and spend the following day hating myself.

So I spent a good deal of yesterday brainstorming when I wasn’t working on my typical daily writing load. I stayed up late.

And you know what, today, I don’t have it. I don’t hate myself for squandering a few ideas, but I certainly don’t have it in me to write the kind of blog post I usually want to share.

Some days that’s OK.

I mean, if one post every week was an explanation for why I wasn’t posting, that would be super lame. I don’t want to make this a trend.

However, I think this is important to discuss at least once because if you’re hoping to do any kind of regular writing you’ll have these days where everything comes gushing out and you need to catch it all before you lose it. However, you can’t have a gusher every day.

So today I’m feeling a bit spent. It’s like my brain is recovering from a marathon.

As writers we spend so much time fearing that we’ll lose the magic. It’s like we fear that moment when we sit down and nothing comes out. “Have I lost it?”

Lost is too strong a word. Some days you have it, some days you don’t, and some days you need to work hard to find it.

If you want to write regularly without losing your mind, recognizing each of these three scenarios is vital in maintaining your sanity. I could try to push through today and write what I had planned, but some days you just need to wave the white flag of surrender.

It’s just one day. I’ll be back tomorrow, even if I need to push through to make it there.

How do you know when to give yourself a free pass and when to push through in your writing?

One of my greatest concerns with Christianity is our tendency to argue without grace and compassion to the point that we sometimes slander one another and even divide. In Mere Christianity Lewis provided me with my first refreshing taste of ecumenical Christianity worked to find common ground.

Much has been said about Lewis’ notion of a common room in a large house where all residents can identify with one another, the core dogmas of mere Christianity, even if everyone eats their meals and sleeps in separate rooms, the particular denominations and doctrines we have adopted over time.

As I considered going to seminary in order to figure out what was important in Christianity and how to sort out the many voices clamoring to be heard, Lewis grounded me both in his content and in his approach.

It’s tough to write about theology in a conversational style, while not cheapening one’s content. Lewis was a master of weaving metaphors and apt illustrations into his work. I am not only a better Christian and theologian for having read his work, but a better writer.

There is no doubt in my mind that Ed Dobson, a former pastor and author of The Year of Living Like Jesus, has some tremendous insights for the church today. Who can’t respect someone with a few years to live because of ALS who devotes a year to live like Jesus?

The simple fact that Dobson has set out on this project is reason enough to admire him. In addition, his attitude throughout the book is one of both compassion for others and a personal passion for the Gospel. Dobson has so much to teach us, and yet I was disappointed by this book because it promised far more than it delivered.

The Absurdly Short Review

Do you believe Christians should only vote for Republicans? Read this book. Did that question strike you as a silly one? Then read Shane Claiborn’s Irresistable Revolution and Jesus for President instead of this book. Not sure yet? Then read this:

The Long Review

While I can’t give this book a positive review, I can’t say enough good things about Dobson. The book reads like a personal journal, and therefore I don’t want to take away from the gains he made in his one-year project. A lot of good stuff happens in this book, but to put it bluntly, the book’s presentation as a year of living like Jesus doesn’t work. Perhaps he could have just listed a few lessons learned after immersing himself in the Gospels rather than claiming he was “living like Jesus.”

The first sixty five pages alone drag on with insignificant details and fretting over silly things like whether to use electronics during a plane’s take off or whether he should eat shrimp. Such passages zeroing in on minutiae are far too common throughout the book. In addition, any project like this needs parameters and Dobson doesn’t really set up hard and fast ones to follow, which could have saved a lot of ink and paper later in the book as he confronts the limitations of his ALS.

Was he going to follow all of the Old Testament? Was he going to live like Jesus in light of Acts 15? He doesn’t really tell us, and so he does a little of each, spending a lot of time worrying about what to do and talking about the Jewish customs he picked up along the way.

In addition, while Dobson wants to focus on praying more so he can be like Jesus, I can’t quite figure out why he’d pick up the Rosary and the prayer beads of the Eastern Orthodox. While his openness to these things is admirable, it’s hard to see how they fit in this book, which brings us back to his project’s parameters and the way it has been marketed.

The book’s main problem is that it still presents living like Jesus in a fairly tame form where we have to think a little harder about how we vote, make ourselves a little bit uncomfortable by picking up hitchhikers, give away a few things, and read the Bible more. These are all good steps that I want to honor, but when I read about the folks  living sacrificially in the communities of folks such as Shane Claiborn and Mark Scandrette, I can’t help but feel this project didn’t quite go far enough.

Though Dobson is careful to set his own course in order to distinguish himself from A. J. Jacob’s The Year of Living Biblically, I think the book would have benefited by interacting with some other Christian leaders beyond the few clergy he sought out. Wouldn’t it have been amazing for a former assistant to Jerry Falwell to sit down for a chat with someone like Jim Wallis or Shane Claiborn?

Dobson is honest about some of his failings, such as not visiting someone in prison or giving up more of his possessions, but at the same time there is a failure throughout the book to tackle some of the teachings of Jesus that many American Christians would find most difficult to stomach. If the publisher knew Dobson hadn’t done these things, then why not present the material in a slightly different light?

It was nice that Dobson gave away some suits and even sacrificed his preaching gig at his gated community in Florida, but his example of trusting his wealthy friends to buy him dinner didn’t exactly strike me as the kind of thing worth recording in a book about living like Jesus.

Dobson takes admirable risks at times and reaches out in wonderful ways to those outside the church, but there are plenty of awkward moments where he uncritically mentions his corvette and his gated community without wondering how the story of the rich young man could apply to them. He very well could have justified either of them, but his lack of attention to them makes them a glaring oversight that makes this book a bit difficult to digest at times.

I have really struggled to review this book because it does some things well, but also has some glaring weak points in light of the way the material is presented: a year of living like Jesus. The bar has no doubt been set high, but in reality we have a series of journal entries from a gracious and compassionate brother who benefits greatly by devoting more time to prayer, scripture reading, and attempts to live like Jesus.

As far as the benefits of this book, pastor Dan Kimball notes that Dobson has a passion for those outside of the church and has a lot of great stories to share from his year of trying to live like Jesus. Just taking a gander at the comments on Kimball’s blog you can see how some Christian brothers and sisters can’t stomach a discussion in politics beyond abortion, and to the extent that Dobson helps broaden the pro-life agenda and add nuance to our discussions, his book has made a valuable contribution to Christianity.

This book was reviewed as part of Zondervan’s blog tour.

Before summer hits I’m extending a special offer to pastors and small group leaders who are considering which book to use for their small groups and Sunday School classes coming up this Fall. I thought I should help you plan ahead and suggest my book Coffeehouse Theology.

I should first of all state that using my book for a Sunday school class or small group isn’t my idea alone. Here are a few reviews/endorsements:

"This is the ideal text for adult Sunday school classes and home discussion groups." -William Dyrness, Fuller Theological Seminary

“Cyzewski navigates hefty topics with care and, in the process, shows why our language about God must include a wide understanding of the world we inhabit. I would recommend the book to almost any member of my church.”- David Swanson in Leadership Magazine

The Offer…

I have a limited number of copies of Coffeehouse Theology available to send out to pastors and small group leaders who are willing to consider using it for a small group or Sunday School for a free 15-day review. My friends read the whole book in two hours, so you can just read it and send it back. No hard feelings—you just need to chip in $1.40 for media mail.

However, if you want to keep it, just send me a check for $10, which means you got a great deal on a $15 book with free shipping.

You can also pick up either of the book’s two discussion guides. The Bible Study Guide walks readers through the theological method presented in the book with a series of reflections on scripture. The Contemporary Issues Guide applies theology to many of today’s pressing issues.

NavPress offers bulk shipping for Coffeehouse Theology, The Bible Study Guide, and The Contemporary Issues Discussion Guide, so it should be a breeze to get a good deal on books for your class or group.

Sample chapters of each book are available on their respective pages at the NavPress web site.

The Bonus…

I wrote Coffeehouse Theology in order to start conversations, and so your class is welcome to chime in here on my blog while you’re processing the book, and to even drop me a question. We’ve tried out some interaction with classes, and anything more than a few questions is a bit much to handle. But so far as I’m able, I welcome interaction on my web site as I continue to develop the ideas presented in my books.

To Sign Up…

Drop me an e-mail at edcyzewski (at) gmail (dot) com with “Pastor/Small Group Offer” in the subject line. Include your mailing address and name. If I have enough copies, I’ll drop it in the mail for you pronto with a note telling you when the book is due back if you don’t want to cough up the ten bucks.

Happy Reading!