Reflexive Mercy (Friday Devotional)

 

But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment, and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council, and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.

- Matthew 5:22

There are certain reactions over which you have no control—they are truly reflexive and involuntary. If you step outside of an air-conditioned car on a warm, sunny day, you will sneeze. If a doctor hits your knee with a mallet, your leg will fly up. If someone shines a light in your eye, you will blink. These aren’t decisions you make, they are simply the natural way your body responds to outside stimuli.

But there are other reactions where the ball is in your court, where you get to choose how you will respond. When your child isn’t obeying you, you get to choose between impatient yelling and patient discipline. When your coworker isn’t pulling her weight, you get to choose between immature retaliation and direct dialogue. When your spouse is getting on your last nerve, you get to choose between passive-aggressive needling and sacrificial love.

Anger is an emotion, and so your control over it is limited. Like happiness in the face of good times or sadness in the wake of tragedy, anger is a natural reaction to unmet expectations, a reflexive response when you feel disrespected.

But while the feeling of anger may be involuntary, how you deal with that feeling is entirely up to you. Jesus cautions his followers not to allow inner anger to spill out into outer harm. Instead of responding to mistreatment with retribution, Jesus calls us to meet cruelty with love and violence with peace, to radically respond with mercy when our flesh cries out for justice.

One of the enemy’s great tricks is convincing you that retribution is not only your natural right, but your involuntary reflex. He would have you think that you have no control over how you respond to grievances, that meeting hurt with hurt is “just how it is” in this fallen world. But in the Spirit, you are given power to overcome your flesh and live for Jesus instead, to follow his commands instead of your instincts. Anger may be a human, involuntary reflex—but in Christ, you get to choose what to do with it.

Keep Asking (Friday Devotional)

 

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

- Matthew 7:7

The other night, my family was enjoying dinner with friends and somebody asked my son Andrew, already a world traveler at age 6, where he wants to go next. After thinking for a second, he gave his answer: Antarctica. Chuckling, we explained to him that, because of the harsh conditions, we were pretty sure he was too young to go to Antarctica right now. So his response was perfectly natural: how old do you have to be to go there?

In that moment, I had three choices. One, I could make something up. He wouldn’t know better, whether I said 12 or 20 or 35—any number I pulled out of thin air would be believed. Two, I could try to change the subject; I could avoid betraying my ignorance by redirecting the conversation and leaving his question twisting in the wind. Or three, I could tell the truth: I could say I didn’t know, and then do my best to find out.

The older I get, the more I am confronted by two things: how little I know and how resistant I am to admit it. Something about adulthood and its accompanying responsibilities gives you the impression that you need to have all the answers all the time. So when you don’t know an answer, there’s a constant temptation to invent or distract, to immediately dispel any notion that you’re a fallible human being like everybody else.

Jesus told his disciples—and therefore tells us—that when we have a need, we should simply ask our heavenly Father for it, that we should have the humility and the self-awareness to turn to God for the answers we don’t have. Ask, he said, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

Seems simple, doesn’t it? Maybe too simple? That’s because this is one of those times English translations let us down a bit—in the Greek, the verb tense used here is the present imperative active, a command expected to be followed not once, but as an ongoing process. So what Jesus was saying was that we should ask and keep asking, seek and keep seeking, knock and keep knocking. Discernment doesn’t come as an instantaneous flash, but a slow dawning, the result of repeated, humble inquiry.

In a world where we feel so pressured to have it all together, to know all the answers, Jesus calls us to instead be humble seekers, going to God with our questions and our cares and then trusting him to show us the way. He won’t often do so immediately—after all, what kind of faith would that require? —but if we keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking, then in humility we’ll find something far more powerful than feigned certainty.

So back to the Antarctica question. When Andrew asked his question, I told the truth. I didn’t know, and I said so. And then I pulled out my iPhone, consulted Google, and read in a few places that most Antarctic expeditions won’t bring anyone younger than eight years old. Is that the right answer, the 100% correct, black-and-white, unquestioned truth? Maybe. Maybe not. I’ll keep asking.

All the Stories (Friday Devotional)

 

Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and shield. Our heart is glad in him because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.

- Psalm 33:20-22

A few days ago, I was reading to my daughter from her favorite book, a collection of short stories featuring the popular PBS Kids character Daniel Tiger. I initially flipped to a story about Daniel’s first day of school and asked Katherine if she wanted me to read it. “No, Daddy,” she replied. “That’s a scary one.” Sure enough, the story deals with Daniel’s anxiety about his parents leaving him for the day.

Then I turned to a different story, one where Daniel plays with a new friend who has a disability. “How about this one?” I asked. “No, Daddy,” said Katherine, shaking her head. “That’s a sad one.” Indeed, the page I was on showed Daniel’s discomfort when his parents explained that his friend couldn’t walk like he could.

Finally, I turned to a story where Daniel and his family go see a fireworks show. “That’s it!” said Katherine, smiling. “I like this one! This is a happy one!”

If we could choose our life’s journey the way we choose stories, we would probably do it exactly like my three-year-old daughter. We’d avoid the sad parts, we’d skip over the scary parts, and we’d settle in comfortably for the happy parts. No tragedies, no trials—nothing but triumphs.

But of course, life doesn’t work that way. In our fallen world, sometimes the bad and the ugly are just as present as the good and the beautiful. In fact, sometimes we see so much darkness that it feels like light is never going to break through.

In those times, faith in God provides a hope and a comfort that earthly means can’t muster. You can look for an escape in entertainment or vice, but eventually you’ll have to come up for air and life’s cold, cruel realities will still be waiting for you. You can plan and work toward solutions to the world’s problems—and you should!—but even the best ideas and the strongest efforts can’t fix everything.

When you feel like you’re falling apart, faith’s humble response is to trust the one who made you in the first place to put you back together again. Lean on the one who sent his Son to do what you never could—rescue, redeem, reconcile, and resurrect. In a world wracked with confusion, he is the way. In a world led astray by lies, he is the truth. In a world dominated by death, he is the life.

We don’t get to skip the sad or the scary stories; we have to live through them. But if you know the author of salvation, you can persevere through them with the hope that earth has no sorrow that heaven can’t heal.

Faith in the Fetal Position (Friday Devotional)

 

Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer.

- Romans 12:12

Like people, all animals have certain defense mechanisms they employ when they feel threatened. Predators are likely to lash out with their teeth and claws, using their superior strength to engage in a fight they’re sure to win. Animals blessed with great speed are more likely to fly or run away, outpacing whatever is frightening them.

But for a few special animals, neither fight nor flight is the answer—they stay right where they are and simply shut out the world. There’s the snail and the turtle, which retreat into the shells they carry around on their backs. There’s the possum, which enters a state of defensive thanatosis, more popularly known as ‘playing dead.’ And of course, there’s the armadillo, which curls into a tight ball, protected by the armor on its back. For all these animals, the response to danger is not to take on the challenge or escape it, but simply to retreat within yourself.

Sometimes humans share that quality, hoping problems will go away on their own instead of doing something about them. In hard times, we find ourselves praying that God will deliver us out of our difficulties, that if we shut our eyes tight enough and clamp our hands over our ears, he will make our problems vanish into thin air.

But one thing we see in the Bible is that the road to the promised land often comes through hard times, not around them. While God is more than capable of rescuing us every time we struggle, more frequently he redeems that struggle to bring about something beautiful. Just as there’s no empty tomb without a cross, sometimes we must endure before we enjoy.

Whatever the turtle, the possum, and the armadillo may think, shutting out the world is no solution to your problems. Instead, engage the world as a witness to God’s grace and glory: rejoice in hope, be patient in affliction, and persevere in prayer.

April Reading Log

Remember last month when my reading list was pitiful? Fixed that in April. Settle in, because it's a long one this month—8 books, from theology to pop culture and beyond!

PROVIDENCE by John Piper

God is sovereign over everything. He is the Creator and Sustainer of all things, and upholds them by the power of his perfect will. None is saved without being called by his Holy Spirit, and God knew before he laid the foundations of the world who those elect believers would be.

None of what I just said is up for debate in Christian circles. And yet, when the implications are taken to their logical extremities, God becomes a cosmic puppet master and our lives become nothing more than preordained plays in which every "choice" we make was predetermined billions of years ago by the God pulling the strings, including whether or not we would come to faith in Christ and be saved by the grace of God.

In Providence, John Piper lays out his case for why that extreme view of divine providence—the bedrock of Calvinism, a.k.a. Reformed theology—is not only morally acceptable, but inherently biblical. This is the project that, article by article and sermon by sermon and book by book, has been the work of Piper's entire life and ministry. As such, this capstone project is one of the finest works he has ever produced (and that's high praise since, as you may remember, I'm exactly not an unabashed fan of his writing).

For an Arminian like me—someone who believes that God's sovereignty must be held in tension with his love, and as such that he gives human beings free will—this book wasn't enough to make me stop singing "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus" and become a dyed-in-the-wool Calvinist. But he did effectively challenge a lot of my Arminian assumptions and force me to reckon with a LOT of Scripture about God's sovereignty and its implications.

The truth that this book reminded me of is that the path to salvation is a beautiful paradox: to be saved, the Lord must call us and we must answer the call; we are saved by grace through faith. Working out the mechanics of that is a puzzle we're never going to fully solve this side of eternity, but Piper's effort to do so in Providence is a worthy enterprise.

THE LOST SYMBOL by Dan Brown

Fun fact that's utterly irrelevant to my thoughts on this book: this was the first audiobook I ever listened to. Checked it out from the Waco public library my sophomore year of college and would listen to it when I was walking to and from class. If you're curious, this is the kind of book—fast-paced, easy to follow, not exactly a masterwork of prose—that works really well in that format.

The Lost Symbol is the third novel featuring Robert Langdon, the globe-trotting symbologist (note: not a real job) who's equal parts Indiana Jones and National Treasure's Nic Cage. Following the much-ballyhooed controversy of The Da Vinci Code, author Dan Brown veers away from religion in this book, leaning instead into the mysteries of the Freemasons for his hook.

I don't want to be too critical, because it's a perfectly fun romp; Brown has a Hollywood scriptwriter's feel for pacing and manages to end almost every chapter (and there are more than a hundred, some as short as two pages) with a cliffhanger. But with that being said, this is the book where you start to realize that the Langdon novels have a paint-by-numbers ingredients list: a murder at the book's outset, a zealot antagonist, a wise professorial friend, a female companion for some under-the-surface sexual tension, a mysterious organization shrouded in mystery, a series of riddles, and a weird sci-fi element that never quite pays off. Throw them all together, with Langdon at the center of the action, and you've got a 500+ page book.

This one is fine, though definitely weaker than Angels and Demons or The Da Vinci Code. Some days it was captivating, other days its predictability was a chore to plow through. But hey, if you're looking for a thriller with a thin veneer of Discovery Channel-style historical conspiracy to it, Dan Brown's your man. As beach reads go, this one will get the job done.

THE LIBRARY BOOK by Susan Orlean

On April 29, 1986, the Los Angeles Central Library caught fire, destroying more than 400,000 books before the blaze was extinguished. While an arson suspect was apprehended, the evidence was flimsy and he was never convicted. 

With that meager foundation, Susan Orlean tells the story of the fire, the Los Angeles library system, and public libraries in general. Addressing everything from the histories of legendary libraries like Alexandria's to the daily issue of welcoming the homeless without disturbing other patrons, Orlean hits seemingly every angle, with the 1989 fire as home base for every inquiry. A magazine writer by trade, Orlean does a masterful job moving from the specific to the general, offering broad historical overviews and individual character profiles all in the same book.

This book, ultimately, is a love letter to public libraries, an institution that is both dearly loved and completely taken for granted by almost everyone (current drummed-up controversies notwithstanding). For anyone who considers their library card a ticket to wonder, The Library Book is an absolute must-read. One of the finest books I've read in some time.

And no, I didn't check it out from the library. Some books are worth paying for.

THE NINETIES by Chuck Klosterman

Every decade has its own identity, its own vibe, its own legacy. In The Nineties, Chuck Klosterman seeks to mine the moments and memories of the 1990s to see how the things we thought then line up with what we think today.

His central point is that the Nineties were an in-between decade (much like the Seventies)—post-Cold War and pre-9/11, it was a time of peace and prosperity, when privileged young people looked inward and didn't always like what they saw. It was the decade when "selling out" was the worst crime imaginable, when cynicism was in and earnestness was out, when being cool was infinitely more important than being right.

From Nirvana to Zima to Bill Clinton, Klosterman surveys numerous corners of the pop culture landscape, and his insights are constantly competing with your own nostalgia as you read—I lost count of the number of times he'd reference something and I'd say, "oh yeeeeeah, I remember that!" But while the memories are half the fun, it's Klosterman's takes that keep you reading, his way of affirming some of the things we believed then while also poking holes where they're deserved.

Klosterman is a compelling thinker and writer, and following him through the decade is a trip worth taking, especially for Gen X'ers and older Millenials. If you're looking for an easy read about a time that feels way longer ago than it should, check out The Nineties.

KINGDOM COME by Mark Waid and Alex Ross

What would it look like if superheroes ran the world?

That's the basic pitch for Kingdom Come, the epochal 1996 miniseries from Mark Waid and Alex Ross, one that sought to recapture what made DC's traditional heroes special in an era where things were starting to go off the rails in the comics industry. Darker in tone than you'd expect from those two collaborators but ultimately triumphant, this is considered by many one of the finest DC stories of all time.

Kingdom Come is set in a near future where Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and their comrades have retired, replaced by entitled upstart "heroes" who aren't living up to their predecessors' example. Coaxed out of retirement, Superman reestablishes the Justice League to set the world aright, only to be opposed by Batman and a hodgepodge of lesser heroes and supervillains who reject Superman's authority. As the battles escalate, it becomes clear that when things come to a head it will be cataclysmic—and that's ultimately what happens when Superman and Captain Marvel face off in a battle of mythic proportions.

As you may have gathered, the story between the lines is arguably more interesting than the story on the page. With Kingdom Come, Waid and Ross were presenting DC's heroes as gods walking among men, showing why they were relevant in a time when it wasn't clear if comics would still be around much longer. Ross' art is perfect for the task, just as it was in the thematically similar Marvels, and Waid is the ideal writer for this kind of story.

Still influential today, Kingdom Come is a classic DC story that reestablished the importance of the company's legacy characters. A must-read for any comics reader.

FANTASTIC FOUR: FULL CIRCLE by Alex Ross

This will be a short review. Alex Ross is a legendary artist, best known for his painterly style on Marvels, Kingdom Come, and more variant covers than you can possibly imagine. He is not renowned for his writing.

Well, in Fantastic Four: Full Circle, an original graphic novel, he does the writing and the art. And the art, instead of his familiar, distinctive style, is a more traditional look. So it's Alex Ross not doing what he does best, and on two different fronts. The result is a book that's not bad per se, but is certainly forgettable. My proof of that is that I'm writing this review 2 weeks after finishing the book and I have literally no recollection of the plot.

My advice? Find it in a comic shop, flip through it to see the pretty pictures, and then put it back on the shelf.

V FOR VENDETTA by Alan Moore and David Lloyd

Because Alan Moore wrote this series, an ongoing serial published in Warrior magazine from 1982 to 1985, it is often considered to be a work of genius. Its popular film adaptation in 2005 and the subsequent adoption of the Guy Fawkes mask by the hacker group Anonymous furthered the assumption that this book was important. The reality? It's an occasionally excellent but ultimately inconsistent narrative which the movie wisely deviated from at the end in the name of telling a complete story.

V for Vendetta tells the tale of Evey Hammond, a poor girl who encounters an anarchist revolutionary named V seeking to topple the 1984-style authoritarian government of a dystopian England. V, whose true identity is never fully revealed, has a dark past associated with the government's rise to power and is now seeking to burn it all down and allow the common people to start from scratch. Over the course of the story, Evey goes from a curious acquaintance to a true believer, even as V inches closer and closer to being captured by the investigators hot on his trail.

As with any story glorifying anarchism, V for Vendetta has at least a hint of satire at its core—it should surprise no one that the book was written during the Thatcher era—though it presents itself as a serious, even tragic tale. The point of the book, that governments should be afraid of their people and not the other way around, is far from subtle as you read, and V serves more as a cipher for the point than a well-rounded character.

Therein lies the problem with this book—it's a point with a story around it instead of a story making a point. Panel to panel, Alan Moore is the genius who would go on to write Watchmen, but when you zoom out, the book is missing the cohesive storytelling that made that book a masterpiece. A victim of its serialized format, V for Vendetta never quite hits its stride; every time a chapter gains some momentum it's time for a new character perspective.

This is a good graphic novel, but not a great one; it shows flashes of Moore's genius, but that genius is not yet fully realized. For comics historians, it's a necessary read—but if you just want to take in the story, watch the movie instead.

HUMAN TORCH: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION by Karl Kesel and Skottie Young

This 12-issue series is probably best remembered as the launching pad for artist Skottie Young, famous for his variant covers featuring superheroes as babies and his independent series I Hate Fairyland. There's good reason for that; he brings a cartoony dynamism capable of turning a C-list book into at least a B-list book. Indeed, it becomes apparent in this volume's final two issues, when veteran Howard Porter has to fill in for him, how much Marvel was relying on Young's talents to make this book sing.

That's not meant as an indictment of writer Karl Kesel, who delivers fun stories issue after issue with the same retro feel he offered in various Fantastic Four fill-in issues and backup stories. But his undeniable status as a utility player for Marvel matches the ambition of this book. Let's face it, a book like Human Torch is inherently limited, in much the same way that a Star Wars TV show or novel is, because nothing "important" is allowed to happen within its pages. Fun, inconsequential romps are fine, but all big character development is reserved for Fantastic Four.

So with that limitation in place, it's up to a young Skottie Young to shine. And while his talent still needed a little honing at this stage, he does bring an undeniable verve to the proceedings. The art in this book doesn't set the world on fire (pun intended), but it does elevate the book. If you're an FF fan, this book is far from essential reading, but Young's art makes it worth the ride.