February Reading Log

It was a short month, but I managed to get plenty of reading in. Take a look!

5 Articles I Like This Month

"The Month of Giving Dangerously" by Elizabeth Greenwood, Longreads. 25 minutes.

The author of this piece, seeking some mixture of purpose, connection with humanity, and empathy, spent a month saying "yes" to every opportunity she had to give. Whether it was tossing a few bucks to a panhandler, picking up the dinner check with friends, or giving an obnoxious stranger the benefit of the doubt, her goal was to give constantly instead of making excuses for not doing so. The experiment makes for a fun read, with some interesting insights sprinkled throughout.

"Touching Death: The Turbulent Life of One of America's Last Snake-Handling Preachers" by Jordan Ritter Conn, The Ringer. 26 minutes.

In the hills of Appalachia, the worship services of some Pentecostal churches are marked by singing, preaching, speaking in tongues...and, if the Spirit moves them, picking up venomous snakes and drinking poison. Based on an application of Mark 16:18 (a verse that is questionable to begin with, since it's not found in the earliest manuscripts of Mark's gospel), this practice is a uniquely American tradition, and one that alternately fascinates and horrifies outsiders. This profile of one of the those snake handlers does not disappoint in either regard.

"What Teenagers Are Learning from Online Porn" by Maggie Jones, The New York Times Magazine. 31 minutes.


A fascinating, horrifying examination of how watching pornography skews teenagers' understanding about male-female dynamics, dating, and sex. Worth reading for its statistics alone, it helps that it's extremely well-written. Nobody, from hair-on-fire moralists to lax libertines, likes to talk about porn, but this article will convince you it's time to start the conversation.

"America's Future Is Texas" by Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker. 77 minutes.

I know, I know--who wants to read the New Yorker take on Texas politics? Have no fear, Lawrence Wright is a Texas Monthly veteran, so he knows what he's talking about. And what he's talking about here is the sharp right turn Texas politics have taken in the last generation, as well as the long predicted (but still illusory) blue wave to come. Equal parts history lesson, legislative reporting, and political analysis, anyone who takes the time to read this article (it took me months to finally get to it; the article came out in July of 2017) will be rewarded.

"The Boys Are Not All Right" by Michael Ian Black, The New York Times. 4 minutes.

This short op-ed, written in the days following the Parkland shooting, goes deeper than the tired, circular arguments about gun control and mental health, arguing that a root issue behind the regularity of mass shootings is a national confusion about what it means to be masculine. This confusion, he argues (prompted mainly by the positive strides feminism has taken in the last generation), moves insecure boys and young men toward either withdrawal or rage, and rage leads to violence. Whether you agree with everything in this piece, readers of any political persuasion will likely find a kernel of truth somewhere--and walk away from it with questions and concerns.

JESUS THROUGH MIDDLE EASTERN EYES: CULTURAL STUDIES IN THE GOSPELS by Kenneth E. Bailey

Whether you realize it or not, your understanding of Christianity is fused with the conditions, values, and assumptions of Western civilization...this despite Christianity's originating in ancient Palestine. The West has given Christianity an abundance of incredible theology and hermeneutics, but so has the East. And if we take time to listen to those who live and breathe and have their being in the region where Jesus did the same, we might surprised what we learn about parts of the Bible we thought we knew forwards and backwards.

That's the idea behind this tome by Kenneth E. Bailey, the late New Testament scholar who boasted roots in both the East and the West (he was born and raised in the United States, but lived and taught for 40 years in Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and Cyprus.) Using the wisdom of Middle Eastern commentaries only available in Arabic, historical research, and his own observations of life in the Middle East, Bailey walks through nearly 30 different gospel passages, from Jesus's miracles to his parables, offering fresh perspectives from a different point of view than the traditional western interpretations.

In most chapters, I walked away with at least an interesting exegetical tidbit I'd never read elsewhere; in some I was given an entirely new understanding of a passage I thought I had all figured out. This book, which I had been putting off reading for years, intimidated by its size (436 pages) and academic heft, is an invaluable reference tool, and one that was a pleasure to dive in every day over the last month. Highly recommended for preachers, teachers, and academicians.

HOW TO BE A PERFECT CHRISTIAN: YOUR COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO FLAWLESS SPIRITUAL LIVING by The Babylon Bee

*I wrote a brief review of this book for the Baptist Standard. So as to neither plagiarize nor repeat myself, allow me to simply link to that review here.*

9 INNINGS: THE ANATOMY OF A BASEBALL GAME by Daniel Okrent

When you think of a good baseball game, there's a good chance your mind immediately goes to the postseason, when the lights are bright, the air is crisp, and every moment matters. It's a period of intensity, suspense, and and drama. But before that month of adrenaline, every fan first must endure the slow, methodical, and yes, sometimes boring games of midsummer, when the season is no longer new but still nowhere near its finish line. And in truth, those lazy Sunday afternoon games may say more about a player, a team, and the sport itself than the World Series ever does.

That's the premise of 9 Innings, a classic baseball book by writer (and creator of fantasy baseball) Daniel Okrent. Using a random June game between the Milwaukee Brewers and Baltimore Orioles as a framing device, Okrent tells the stories of everyone from the groundskeepers to the players to the managers to the owners, all while narrating the flow of the game. Featuring everyone from future Hall of Famers (Rollie Fingers, Robin Yount, Paul Molitor) to a future commissioner (Bud Selig) to players and executives long since forgotten, Okrent does a deep dive into what makes a team tick on and off the field.

Unfortunately, while I appreciated this book--it's objectively well written and meticulously constructed--I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd assumed I would. I can't quite put my finger on why, but Okrent's writing style never clicked with me, and at times reading this book was, for me, akin to the fifth inning of a blowout--lots of checking my watch and calculating how much longer this might last.

Nevertheless, reading 9 Innings did what I expected it to do: it made me wish for baseball's speedy return. Spring training is underway, which means the real season is close at hand...and with it those slow June day games. They can't get here soon enough.

WONDER BOYS by Michael Chabon

Part farce, part stoner comedy, and part drama (with some notable autobiographical elements thrown in for good measure), Wonder Boys didn't win me over until the last 40 of its 386 pages. But in the nick of time, Michael Chabon landed the plane as only he can.

Wonder Boys is a 'long weekend' story about Grady Tripp, a writer-professor lost in the weeds of his next novel, a 2,000+ page behemoth with no end in sight. Grady is a loser in every sense--his third marriage is falling apart, his mistress just told him she's pregnant, his best friend and editor is losing faith in him, and he's not sure his novel is actually any good. But on the weekend of a writer's convention at his college, friends and events (everything from the shooting of his mistress's dog to a Passover dinner with his wife's family to a break-in of his old car) push him toward some sense of self-realization and even, perhaps, enlightenment.

This book is all over the place, as unfocused as its main character, and that drove me crazy as I was reading. Around page 150 or so, I actually put the book down and muttered aloud, "What is this?" But Chabon is, for my money, the most talented writer of prose out there, so I soldiered on out of respect for the writing. I'm glad I did, because everything really does come together at the end, as unlikely as that might have seemed 100 pages earlier. In fact, the ending winds up being quite touching, a surprise considering the screwball nature of the story.

If you've never read Michael Chabon, I wouldn't start here (start with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, his Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece and my all-time favorite novel). But with that being said, I am glad I read it, because for a book that seemed for most of its duration to be about nothing at all, it winds up having something to say after all.

SUPERMAN SUNDAY CLASSICS: 1939-1943 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster

Nowadays, when you say "comics", you mean one of two things: comic books or comic strips. To overgeneralize, comic books are the home of superheroes like the Avengers and comic strips are the home of cartoon animals like Garfield. But for a while, Superman strode both worlds, fighting crime in both the pages of Action Comics and the local newspaper. This book collects the Sunday strips from the first four years of those newspaper strips.

In terms of writing and art, there's not much difference from what I read in October, when I dove into Superman's earliest comic book stories. And that makes sense, since Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were pulling double duty at the time, creating stories for both the monthly book and the Sunday strips. Parts of these stories have not aged well, but for the most part they're fun, retro adventure tales, usually told over the stretch of 8-12 full page comic strips.  With the notable exception of Luthor, Superman does not take on any super villains in these stories, instead battling mob bosses, corrupt landlords, enemy agents, and the like. The strip takes a noticeable turn toward the patriotic in the last 30 pages or so, when the champion of truth, justice, and the American way suddenly starts battling fascists, including a "what if" story in which Superman hauls Hitler and Stalin before the League of Nations to stand trial.

As with the previous Superman Golden Age collection, I found that a little bit went a long way for me with these stories (I read 8 pages every morning), but they were more fun than you might expect. As both an artifact of early comics history and simple entertainment, this collection was worth the time and made for a fun reading experience.

SHOWCASE PRESENTS: SUPERMAN VOL. 1 by Otto Binder, Bill Finger, Wayne Boring, Al Plastino, et al.

Comics aren't for kids anymore. In fact, they haven't been for quite some time--for at least 20 years, Marvel, DC, and other comic book publishers have mostly given up on trying to reach elementary school kids with their books, relying instead on 25-40 year old males to keep them afloat. The sad result is that there aren't many books on the stands that I'd feel comfortable putting in my son's hands by the time he's old enough to ask.

But when that time comes, this is the book I'll hand him first. While Marvel made its mark in the 1960s by trying to appeal to an older audience, the Silver Age DC Universe was still definitively written for children. Fights were bloodless, romance was sexless, and villains were more buffoonish than frightening...and every superhero had a pet (or in Superman's case, basically an entire menagerie: Krypto the Super-Dog, Comet the Super-Horse, Streaky the Supercat, Beppo the Super-Monkey, etc.) It all makes for self-contained stories that are cartoonish, unrealistic...and utterly charming.

Of particular note in this volume of Silver Age stories (presented in black-and-white; the Showcase Presents line was DC's answer to my beloved Marvel Essentials) are "imaginary stories," tales outside the canon of the DCU in which we learn what Superman's life would have been like if Krypton had never exploded, or if he and Lois actually got married, or any number of other unthinkable scenarios. Also notable are the first appearances of Braniac and Bizarro, two villains who continue to plague Superman to this day.

The writing and art in this volume are "house style," meaning it all looks and sounds pretty much the same from issue to issue. Nothing too ambitious is happening in these issues. But don't let that dissuade you from picking it up--these issues won't make you think too hard, but they will make you smile. And when you're picking up a comic book, sometimes that's more important anyway. Especially for kids.

BLACK PANTHER VOL. 1: A NATION UNDER OUR FEET by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brain Stelfreeze

I wanted to like this. Really, I did. I mean, it seems like a match made in heaven: Black Panther, the first black superhero (not to mention the titular character of the biggest movie in the world) and Ta-Nehisi Coates, the most talented, famous, and influential black writer around (not counting Barack Obama.) This book was seemingly destined for greatness.

I just wish I knew what was going on in it. That's the fundamental problem with this book: it is NOT friendly to readers unaware of Black Panther's recent history. I went in better informed about both T'Challa and Wakanda than the average new reader, and I was utterly lost for the majority of the four issues this volume collects. To his credit, Coates has clearly done his research, but no effort is made to get the reader up to speed...which, since this is the first volume of a new series, seems like a fair thing to expect.

As best I could tell, the story begins with Wakanda in a shakier position than it's been in decades, the result of several recent conflicts and the death of T'Challa's sister Shuri, who had recently reigned as queen in his stead. This volume shows the birth of a series of internal rebellions and how T'Challa begins to deal with them. Or at least, I think that's what's going on.

The art's great, and anyone who recently saw the movie will see that the cinematic vision of Wakanda borrows from these issues. The dialogue is interesting. But ultimately, I spent more time trying to puzzle out what I was reading than enjoying it. I'm told the later volumes are improvements over this one...but I'm not sure I'll be along for the ride.

A Fair Price (Friday Devotional)

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

- Mark 8:36

I have a weakness for memorabilia shops. Surround me with 1960s baseball cards, autographed electric guitars, and vintage movie posters, and I can waste hours admiring every item, mentally rearranging the furniture at home to make room for everything I see. There aren’t many things in a memorabilia shop that I don’t want.

Nevertheless, I almost always walk out empty-handed. Desire is not the problem, but cost. I might stare longingly at that autographed Roger Staubach football helmet, but I shudder at its $400 price tag. I want it, sure, but that’s a steep price to pay.

In life, virtually everything you want comes with a price. If you want financial security, you will have to sacrifice your time and energy to work for it. If you want fame, you will have to sacrifice control and be willing to take risks. If you want strong relationships, you will have to sacrifice getting your way for the sake of investing in the lives of others. The list could go on forever—nearly everything we want out of this life, from the trivial to the essential, comes with some sort of a price.

The question becomes, what price is too steep? Ambition’s lie is that, if you want something bad enough, you must be willing to do whatever it takes to get it, that you must be prepared to sacrifice principles and people on the altar of your dreams. If you want to be respected, for example, you’re going to have to take people down a few pegs along the way and bully your way to the top. If you want to make money, you’re going to have to bend a few ethical rules in pursuit of profit. If you want success, you’re going to have to dominate or remove your competition by any means necessary.

Jesus responds to this whatever-it-takes mentality with a simple question: is it worth it? If you gain the whole world but lose your soul along the way, did you really get what you wanted?

His holy alternative to whatever-it-takes ambition is whatever-it-takes compassion, a willingness to sacrifice your desires for the sake of other people instead of the reverse. Compassion means giving so that others can receive, choosing silence so that others can find their voice, and ultimately even dying so that others can have life—it is the way of the cross, and its price is steep. But where worldly ambition leads you to the despair of an empty soul, Christlike compassion leads you to the joy of an empty tomb.

Ambition and compassion each come with their own rewards, and each come at a different cost. Which price are you willing to pay?

When the Screaming Won't Stop (Friday Devotional)

“For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.”

- Romans 12:4-8

I couldn’t make the screaming stop.

That had been the frustrating, recurring theme of my Wednesday. Every time I had attempted to lay my son down for a nap, he would squirm and kick and finally, when I wouldn’t take the hint, scream. No amount of soothing or coaxing had helped; none of the usual tricks that I’d spent the first fourteen months of his life learning had worked.  Whether he was teething or fighting off a stomach bug or just feeling temperamental that day, the end result was a very tired, very unhappy toddler. So as I lay in bed, exhausted and defeated from a full day of this, I wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear screams once again coming from his room, where my wife was taking her turn trying to put him down for the night. I pulled the covers over my head and tried to block out the noise.

Sometimes it feels like that’s the only way to respond to a world that you can’t get to stop screaming—screaming in terror, screaming in anger, screaming in pain. Sometimes ignoring the school shootings and the sexual assault and the drug abuse and the poverty and the wars and the corruption and the countless other evils and injustices feels like the only way to stay sane. Sometimes you just want to pull the covers over your head and hope it muffles the screaming.

But, of course, it never does. Even if you try to see no evil and hear no evil, evil persists. No matter how firmly you clasp your hands over your eyes and ears, the darkness breaks through and demands a response. Retreating from the world, in all its sin and dysfunction, is not a viable option. God does not call His children to abandon the world He gave them dominion over.

Instead, He calls you to do your part, however small it may seem. He calls you to help. He calls you to care. For some, being light in the darkness means offering encouragement to someone you know is struggling. For others, it means prophetically speaking out and taking action against injustice. For many, it means quietly, humbly serving those who may never give you so much as a 'thank you' in return. Whatever your role in a given moment, the important thing is that you do not let your fear of the world overcome your love for the Savior. After all, as hard as it can be to remember sometimes, he has overcome the world.

When my precious baby was crying out for relief, I knew I couldn’t make the screaming stop—but after a moment, I also knew hiding underneath the covers wasn’t doing anyone any good. I got out of bed and started picking my son’s toys off the floor of the living room. It wasn’t a big gesture, and it didn’t stop the screaming. But it was something.

And in a world that won't stop screaming, something is better than nothing.

Beauty Beneath the Surface (Friday Devotional)

“Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry.”

- Psalm 146:5-7

Yesterday morning, I did a little experiment. I approached my one-year old son with two coins, one in each hand, and asked him to pick one. In my left hand I held a grimy dime, the kind long ago doomed to a life spent between couch cushions and under the passenger’s seat, the kind coated in every manner of dust, dirt, and dried gum. In the other hand I had a shiny new penny—bigger, brighter, and cleaner than the dime.

From the way I’ve framed it, you can guess which he chose—the tiny, dirty dime didn’t stand a chance against the penny. My son’s only way to judge the worth of the two coins was based on their appearances—and while what he chose was bigger and shinier, it wasn’t actually better.

When it comes to the way we value God’s creation, we make the same mistake as my son, glorifying that which amazes us and ignoring that which does not. We stare up at the soaring heights of Mount Everest, but avoid eye contact with the homeless man begging for food. We flip through photograph after photograph of the constellations, but change the channel when a news report about refugees comes on. We fear for endangered species in the rainforest, but our hearts harden when our own neighbors tell us they feel unsafe.

In Psalm 146, the psalmist does something fascinating with this idea. In verses 5 and 6, he extols God for the glories of His creation, “heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them.” One’s mind immediately goes to the world’s natural wonders—but then the psalmist goes another direction. In the next verse—before the stanza ends, almost as though he hasn’t even taken a breath yet—he then praises God because He “executes justice for the oppressed” and “gives food to the hungry.”

The psalmist understood something we too often forget—that while the mountains and rivers and streams are glorious creations indeed, so are people, even people broken by hard times or bad decisions. You can admire the beauty of the natural world, but if you do so while ignoring or denigrating your fellow man, then you’ve missed the point. When we talk about “the glory of God’s creation,” we must never forget: people are not only a part of that creation, but the only part God created in His image.

It’s easy and instinctual to value God’s creations according to how much they impress us. But the way of Jesus is to look instead through the lens of mercy, loving people even when their worthiness is suspect. When you step outside today to admire God’s creation, do so with fresh eyes, looking for beauty in the blue sky, but also in the burdened soul.

52 Reasons Why Baseball is Better than Football

Well, there goes another football season. For some of you, that's a source of great sadness...but for others, it's just another sign that baseball season is almost upon us. So with Super Bowl LII in the books, here are 52 reasons why baseball is, in fact, better than football:

I. Ballparks. Outside of Cowboys Stadium and Lambeau Field, what pro football stadiums are worthy of a pilgrimage? Unlike the NFL's cookie-cutter stadium models, every ballpark is unique, right down to the field dimensions.

II. Radio. With apologies to Brad Sham and Babe Laufenberg (who are outstanding), football is tough to follow unless you can see what's happening. Baseball remains the only sport you can listen to in your car and feel like you know exactly what's going on at all times.

III. Minor Leagues. Minor league baseball is one of the great American traditions in entertainment. 20% baseball, 80% P.T. Barnum-style salesmanship, it's cheap family entertainment that does its best to be different every night. Or you can spend hundreds of dollars to watch 20-year olds kill each other for no pay at your alma mater.

IV. Guilt free. One of the main reasons I stopped watching the NFL was the pit in my stomach every time somebody got his "bell rung," code for "suffered a devastating brain injury." When you retire from professional baseball, you'll head into your 40s with bad knees. When you retire from pro football, you'll head into your 30s with severe, irreversible brain damage.

V. Writing. What boxing is to film, baseball is to writing...for whatever reason, it's the sport that brings out the best in authors. With apologies to George Plimpton, football writing simply doesn't compare.

VI. Names. Oil Can Boyd. Old Hoss Radbourn. Babe Ruth. Catfish Hunter. Baseball names (and nicknames) are reliably fantastic. The NFL, on the other hand, had to manufacture a nickname for Peyton Manning in his final season ("the Sheriff," which literally no one called him) for the sake of drama.

VII. Hall of Fame. Baseball's Hall of Fame, located in the quaint village of Cooperstown, New York, is a destination every baseball fan has on his or her bucket list. It's the gold standard of sports halls of fame. The NFL's Hall, in Canton, Ohio, is a place to kill a couple hours if your flight is delayed in Cleveland.

VIII. A game every day. It's a Tuesday night in June and you have the house to yourself. Is there a baseball game on? Yes. Definitely. And there's a 90% chance your team is playing. Football is appointment viewing, but baseball is always there for you.

IX. Time to think and talk. Baseball is often mocked for its slow pace, but there's something to be said for a sport that moves leisurely enough to allow you to socialize while you're watching it. Pastime indeed.

X. You can compare eras. With a straight face, your average baseball fan will compare Giancarlo Stanton to Babe Ruth, because the game's changes haven't been too drastic to make doing so entirely ridiculous. Comparing Tom Brady's passing to Bart Starr's, on the other hand, is an absurd exercise because the NFL is always tinkering with its rules.

XI. Jackie Robinson. 'Nuff said.

XII. Hot Stove. The baseball offseason is so action-packed, full of high-profile free agent signings and trades, that it has a nickname. In the NFL season, GMs basically just keep time until preseason.

XIII. No Patriots (currently). The last true dynasty in baseball ended 15 years ago. Every year there's hope. For now, anyway.

XIV. Walkoffs. Look, any game-ending play is exciting, no matter the sport. The difference between a walkoff homer and a touchdown pass as time expires however, is that you don't spend the moments after a walkoff frantically scanning the field for penalty flags or waiting for a referee to review the play. You just get to enjoy the moment.

XV. Less replay/no penalties. I'm a Luddite when it comes to replay in sports...I want the calls correct, but not at the cost of excitement. Football's need to get every call precisely correct frequently steals from the spontaneous joy of a big play (please see, "It was a catch," the Dez Bryant Story). Unfortunately, baseball appears to be moving in football's direction on this. But for now, it's still letting the players be the stars, not replay.

XVI. Cost. Lindsey and I once paid $6 per ticket to go to an Oakland As baseball game. Good luck getting into most high school football games for that price.

XVII. Physicality isn't everything. I was essentially disqualified from playing high school football by virtue of being short and skinny as a sophomore...in order to have any success, you have to be built a certain way. As for baseball? Two words: Jose Altuve.

XVIII. Girls can play. When a girl signs up for her high school football team (almost always as punter or kicker), it's national news. When a girl puts on a baseball glove, we call it softball, one of the nations's most popular sports.

XIX. First Take rarely discusses baseball. ESPN's First Take is a plague upon our nation. And they spend 75% of their time talking about football. Point for baseball.

XX. Trade deadline. Big names actually get traded in baseball, adding some annual midseason drama. Big names getting traded in the NFL is nearly unthinkable.

XXI. Managers wear uniforms. Whether the manager is 40 or 80, he wears the same baseball uniform as his players. It's one of the goofiest traditions in sports, and I approve.

XXII. Take Me Out To the Ballgame. Baseball has its own song, sung during the 7th inning stretch of every game. The NFL has....the FOX NFL theme, I guess?

XXIII. No clock. Baseball goes until its over; it isn't ruled by the clock. There's something admirably stubborn about that.

XXIV. Global game. Baseball is played all over the world, by everyone from Cubans to Dominicans to the Japanese. American footballs' global reach is a couple of games in London every year.

XXV. Presidential traditions. Let's compare. Baseball's presidential tradition is for POTUS to throw out the first pitch of the baseball season, with results that range from inspiring to hilarious. Footballs' presidential tradition is an interview during the Super Bowl. I rest my case.

XXVI. Stays in sports pages. Admittedly, I couldn't have written this one 15 years ago, when ballplayers were testifying about steroid use before Congress. But in 2018, the NFL found itself in the news for non-sports things a lot more often than they were comfortable with, to the exhaustion of the nation. Not a problem with baseball these days.

XXVII. Roger Goodell. Arguably the most unpopular man in sports runs the NFL. MLB's commissioner, on the other hand, I doubt you can name. Which is how it should be.

XXVIII. Free market. The NFL is a multi-billion dollar business that can somehow cut its employees at a moment's notice. Baseball, on the other hand, pays its players (who are, after all, its product) handsomely. It may be weird to watch somebody make millions of dollars playing a children's game...but surely it's weirder to watch 10-year NFL veterans starting new careers at 45 when they were responsible for millions of dollars in revenue.

XXIX. All-Star Game. The MLB All-Star game isn't perfect, but it's probaby the best of the three major sports. And it certainly beats the Pro Bowl, the NFL's biggest embarrassment not named Roger Goodell.

XXX. Food. As a general rule, ballpark food beats stadium food. Simple as that.

XXXI. Spring training. Baseball spring training is held in America's retirement states, Florida and Arizona, and is an annual vacation for many fans. Training camp is basically just a few weeks of practice...attended by hardcore fans, but enjoyed only because it means the season is near.

XXXII. Promotions. With 81 home games per year, baseball teams will do what it takes to get fans in the door, even if that means giving away dollar hot dogs, free T-shirts, or baseball bats. With 8 home games a year, NFL teams just take your money and run.

XXXIII. Takes fewer players. All you need to simulate a baseball game is two people, a pitcher and a hitter. You need at least 4 for backyard football. And if we're going by the rulebook, baseball still wins, 9 per team to 11.

XXXIV. Road trip-able. You could conceivably see 4 different ballparks and 8 different teams in a 4 day stretch if you timed it right. To see 4 different NFL games, you'd have to take off a month of work.

XXXV. Smaller markets. Baseball still succeeds in smaller markets whose NFL teams are perennial losers (Cleveland, Cincinnati, Kansas City, etc.)

XXXVI. Series vs. Big Game. The Super Bowl is one night (preceded by 2 weeks of hype.) The World Series is a best-of-7 series. When the stakes are highest, I'll take 7 games over 1.

XXXVII. Baseball caps. They're a staple of American clothing, and you wouldn't have them without baseball. By contrast, nobody wears football helmets to the mall.

XXXVIII. History. Baseball cherishes and prizes its history, almost to fault. The NFL, so focused on the next game, rarely seems like they care about the game's past. Ask its retired players.

XXXIX. More Open Air Stadiums. Baseball, generally, is played outdoors. Football, generally, is played indoors. Call me old-fashioned, but I like my sports played outside.

XL. Distinction between leagues. The division between NFC and AFC is completely arbitrary, decided by tradition and convenience. The American League and National League, on the other hand, literally play by different rules. A cool quirk that sets baseball apart.

XLI. Keeping score. One of my hobbies is keeping a scorecard when I go to a baseball game. Football has no equivalent activity.

XLII. Family friendly. NFL games are notoriously adult atmospheres, especially for certain teams (looking at you, Oakland.) You can take your kids to the ballpark.

XLIII. Walk-up music. A fairly new tradition, every batter has his own theme song that is played when he steps up the plate. NFL stadiums are so constantly raucous they couldn't pull something like that off.

XLIV. Baseball movies. Bull Durham. Field of Dreams. Pride of the Yankees. A League of Their Own. I could keep going...there are some good football movies out there, but baseball's got a longer (and arguably better) list.

XLV. Kids can play. My son won't play football (Lindsey and I have already had that talk. We like his brain too much.) Not a concern with baseball.

XLVI. Rules and strategies are simpler. I still have to fake my way through in-depth conversations about football sometimes...there's just too much to learn. Baseball has fewer terms, a much smaller playbook, and still manages to be endlessly fascinating.

XLVII. More diversity. Your average baseball clubhouse speaks at least 3 languages. That's pretty cool, and not true of the NFL.

XLVIII. Less commercial. Don't get me wrong, all professional sports are ridiculously over-marketed. But nobody tops the NFL in that department.

XLIX. MLB Network vs. NFL Network. I've watched both. It's pretty clear which has better programming (and which gets better games.)

L. Fantasy sports. Fantasy baseball takes skill...I know, because when I don't try, I get last place. Fantasy football takes luck...I know, because when I don't try, I get second place. Plus, fantasy baseball the progenitor of all fantasy sports, so bonus points there.

LI. Equipment. Admittedly, neither sport can match basketball or soccer for ease of access. But I guarantee you you'll run up a bigger bill at Academy getting ready for football season than getting ready for baseball season.

LII. No Roman numerals. Baseball isn't so self-important as to number its World Series like Caesar's still on the throne. Good grief, NFL, it's 2018, not MMXVIII.

So there's my indisputable list of just 52 of the reasons America's pastime is superior to America's favorite sport. And just to prove it was all in good fun, here's George Carlin's take on baseball vs. football:

Spring training is just around the corner! Can't wait!

Sorting It Out (Friday Devotional)

“See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”

- Matthew 10:16

For the last month, every time I’ve needed to throw away some garbage, I’ve had to stop and inspect it. Every plastic container, every can, every glass jar, and every cardboard box gets rinsed out and turned upside down as I look carefully for a symbol that will determine my next move. That’s because Lindsey and I decided that 2018 would be the year we started to recycle.

Like a lot of folks, we’ve always believed in the importance of recycling…when it was convenient. When we were students on Baylor’s campus, where recycling bins are conveniently located everywhere, it was no trouble at all to make sure our empty water bottles ended up where they belonged instead of in a landfill. But for the last few years, living in apartment complexes that had dumpsters for trash but nothing for recycling, our interests in sustainability were outmatched by our laziness.

But at the beginning of this year, Lindsey said she wanted to more intentional about what we did with our garbage, and I agreed. So now we have two wastebaskets, one for trash and one for recyclables. And it turns out, it’s not that much work! After all, anything which can be recycled has a handy, federally mandated symbol designating it as such. So all I have to do is look for the symbol and sort accordingly.

It would nice if moral decisions were so easily sortable, if there was a handy “bad” symbol accompanying every temptation. Alas, morality is more complex than recycling, and so we have to rely on our own judgment and discernment—and the Bible warns us what a tricky task that is. Jesus cautioned his followers that the world is a hostile place for God’s people, rife with temptation, corruption, and violence. For the believer, every day brings new opportunities for sin to gain a foothold in your life. In the face of this spiritual antagonism, Jesus gives us a twofold command: be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.

The natural tendency is to choose one of those directives and ignore the other. So some go through life always looking over their shoulders, refusing to rely on other people, never willing to give anyone a chance—all in the name of shrewdness, proclaiming that they are being wise as serpents. Others are constant victims, so trusting as to be gullible, repeatedly misled and taken advantage of—all because they seek to be as innocent as doves.

But Christ did not say to choose between wisdom and innocence, he called us to hold them in tension with one another. Neither cynicism disguised as shrewdness nor victimhood disguised as blamelessness honor the Lord; rather, we bear witness to his kingdom by balancing wisdom with innocence, justice with mercy, and truth with hope.

Sometimes the right thing to do, say, or believe is absolutely clear—but not as often as politicians and preachers would have you believe. When your soul is conflicted, when you don’t know where God would have you go, trust in him who is both the Word and the Lamb to help you balance wisdom and innocence. Moral decisions may not be easily sortable—but with God’s help, they are discernible.

January Reading Log

None of my New Year's resolution had to do with reading, but I kept up my pace this month. Here's a look at the articles and books I had my nose buried in this month!

5 Articles I Like This Month

"Colin Kaepernick Has a Job" by Rembert Browne, Bleacher Report. 41 minutes.

A well-written, insightful profile of America's most famous protester. Everyone's opinions on Colin Kaepernick seem to have been set in concrete long ago--which is ironic, since the main takeaway from the article is that Kaepernick seems to be using his exile from the NFL to learn and grow as much as he can. But whether you love Kaepernick or hate him, you probably don't understand him--Colin Kaepernick the man, not Colin Kaepernick the symbol--well enough to justify that admiration or that rage. If you're interested in having an opinion on him that's informed and not just loud, this piece is a good place to start.

"Generation Screwed" by Michael Hobbes, The Huffington Post. 35 minutes.

An in-depth explanation of the dire financial plight the millenial generation is facing and why everything from education to housing to retirement is considerably more difficult to attain than it was for our parents and grandparents. If you've ever used the words "participation trophy" in a derogatory sense, please read this. Please.

"The Man Who Made Black Panther Cool" by Abraham Riesman, Vulture. 15 minutes.

When you go see "Black Panther" in theaters next week along with the rest of the world, the basics--a superhero king of an African technological oasis--will come from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the character's creators. But most of the details will come from Christopher Priest, whose 62-issue run on the character in the early 2000s redefined T'Challa and, as the title of this article indicates, made him cooler than he'd ever been. This profile of Priest is an interesting slice of comics history and a good look at a creator finally receiving his well-deserved moment in the spotlight.


"Is 2018 the Year We Step Away from Social Media?" by Nicole Dieker, Longreads. 5 minutes.

If you're like a lot of people, myself included, then social media has become something that brings you aggravation far more often than pleasure. In a short thinkpiece, (which draws from 7 linked articles) Nicole Dieker talks about why we're on social media, why we're growing disenchanted with it, and what we can do to remove its influence on our lives without robbing us of its benefits. An especially good read for those considering giving up social media for Lent.

"Can You Say...Hero?" by Tom Junod, Esquire. 33 minutes.

You may have heard the announcement this week that Tom Hanks will be playing Mister Rogers in an upcoming movie based on his friendship with journalist Tom Junod. This is the article the movie will be based on, and it'll make you fall in love with Mister Rogers all over again.

(RE)UNDERSTANDING PRAYER: A FRESH APPROACH TO CONVERSATION WITH GOD by Kyle Lake

How do you pray? Eyes open or closed, hands clasped together or raised toward heaven, silently in your car or audibly in your prayer closet, for a few seconds or for hours at a time? Does every prayer start with thanks "for this beautiful day" and end with the request that God "lead, guide, and direct" you? Maybe most importantly, does prayer sometimes feel like a weird waste of time, like you're just talking to a wall?

Kyle Lake, the founding pastor of University Baptist Church in Waco, wrote (Re)understanding Prayer in the hopes of getting readers to deconstruct and reconstruct their assumptions and beliefs about prayer. He accurately points to the various cliches that permeate the prayers we hear every week in church (and probably use ourselves) and insightfully describes the insecurities that most Christians have about their own prayers, all to make the point that when we pray, it's often more about sticking to a script than about real conversation with God. Furthermore, he says people use prayer more like a tool than a dialogue, believing that every decision they make has One Acceptable Answer and that prayer is how God reveals that Answer, known in church-speak as "God's will." Lake, pointing to biblical examples, offers a less frustrating, more holistic model for seeking God's will in prayer, one that is based in the idea of a relationship with God instead of getting quick answers.

(Re)understanding Prayer is like a funnier, more accessible version of Hearing God by Dallas Willard, a book which helped me (re)understand prayer before I ever read this one. If prayer is something you struggle with, I'd start here and then go to Willard as a supplement. Lake writes with the sensibility of the cool young pastor he was, and you're likely to find yourself laughing, nodding along, and thinking as you read his writing. And hopefully, by the time you've finished the book, you'll want to go spend some time in prayer. I know I did.

THE PREACHING LIFE by Barbara Brown Taylor

If there was an official Truett Seminary reading list, Barbara Brown Taylor would be guaranteed to make the list. In my three years of seminary, I lost count of the number of professors, chapel speakers, and fellow students who recommended her preaching and writing. Yet amidst all that praise, somehow she never made it onto the "Required Books" section of any of my syllabi, meaning I left Truett with a healthy but completely uninformed respect for her abilities, vowing to check out her work when I got a chance.

Turns out, yep, she's pretty great.

The Preaching Life is really more like two short books in one, the first a series of musings on worship, Scripture, and preaching based in Taylor's life and theology, the second a collection of her sermons. Part one made for an excellent introduction to her ways of thinking and communicating, blending biblical thought with lived experience beautifully, with a mastery of language that made me jealous.

But part two was where I really got my money's worth. Much like Fred Craddock, her preaching mentor, Taylor has a gift for retelling biblical stories in plain language, pulling in everyday illustrations in a way that they connect naturally, and bringing it all home at the end in a way that fits perfectly while still utterly surprising you. Equally impressive is her diction-- no words wasted or out of place, no cliche employed unless for a purpose. These sermons are a treasure, and had me rushing to YouTube to see if I could watch her preach any of them.

It's been said that the best argument in favor of female preachers is watching a gifted, Spirit-empowered woman preach. If you're on the fence about women in the pulpit, read this book and try to tell me Barbara Brown Taylor needs to keep her ministry in the church nursery. So glad Truett pointed me her way, and I look forward to watching and reading many more of her sermons.

PRACTICE RESURRECTION: A CONVERSATION ON GROWING UP IN CHRIST by Eugene Peterson

Every Christian is tasked with growing in Christ, but many are never taught how to do so. While churches have classes and how-to manuals for evangelism, discipleship and spiritual formation tend to be be treated like givens. Go to church, read your Bible for 10 minutes a day, pray when you wake up and when you go to bed, and voila...you're spiritually mature now. Right?

With the epistle to the Ephesians as his guide, Eugene Peterson seeks to provide guidance on Christian growth in Practice Resurrection, the fifth and final volume in his series on spiritual theology. What emerges is, in large part, a love letter to the church, without whom Peterson says spiritual formation cannot fully occur. The church Peterson describes is not the lofty, invisible, eternal church, accessible only with heaven's eyes--to this reader's great relief and appreciation, Peterson makes it abundantly clear that the church God works through is the church as we know it, with all its gossip and immaturity and frustration. The church is far from perfect, Peterson says again and again, but it is ours, and it is God's, and that counts for something. Instead of abandoning the church, he calls believers to embrace it, to seek community instead of isolation so that we can all grow together in Christ.

As in previous volumes, Peterson displays a knack in Practice Resurrection for making the abstract concrete, bringing the heavenly into the neighborhood. Whether with an anecdote, a well-crafted sentence, or a simple point you'd never considered, he has a gift for bringing making the spiritual accessible and desirable. This was my favorite of the five volumes in his series on spiritual theology, and the one I am most likely to read again in a few years. If you only read one book by Peterson, this is the one I'd recommend.

THE COOPERSTOWN CASEBOOK: WHO'S IN THE BASEBALL HALL OF FAME, WHO SHOULD BE IN, AND WHO SHOULD PACK THEIR PLAQUES by Jay Jaffe

I've been to Disney World, and it's great, but it's not the happiest place on earth. Cooperstown, New York, home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, is the happiest place on earth. I've been multiple times and fully intend to go again (and again and again and again)--for someone who loves the history of baseball even more than the game itself, nothing can match the Hall of Fame.

So The Cooperstown Casebook, the deepest dive into the Hall's history, players, and standards I've ever seen, was catnip for me. Jay Jaffe, a writer for Sports Illustrated (who I shouted out in the "Articles" section of November's reading log) probably knows more about the Hall than anyone, and it shows in this dense yet immensely readable book.

The first section of the book is a series of scattered chapters dealing with the Hall's storied but inconsistent history and standards, explaining everything from the Hall's origins to the voting process that elects Hall of Famers (which has evolved numerous times over the years) to the Hall's treatment of suspected performance-enhancing drug users. These assorted chapters were my favorite part of the book and worth the price of admission. Jaffe does a great job of mixing history with opinion (and believe me, he has opinions, usually stated with trademark snark), and makes stories of bureaucracy far more entertaining than they should be.

The second and longest section of the book works better as a reference than as something to read straight through, though I did the latter anyway. In this section, Jaffe lists and ranks current and potential Hall of Famers by position, offering a couple of paragraphs for each player along with their relevant stats, explaining in his analysis whether the player raises or lowers the standard for his position in the Hall. For each position, Jaffe also gives an extended profile of one or two players, similar to the ones he does each year for players on the Hall of Fame ballot. This part of the book gets a little tedious and repetitive after a while, but you can't argue with the information (and like I said, I'm not sure it's meant to be read straight through anyway.)

Overall, it's hard for me to imagine that there's a big audience for a book that's this obsessive about the National Baseball Hall of Fame...but I'm definitely in that audience, so what do I care? As a compilation of advanced stats, baseball history, and trivia, this book was basically written for me. Highly recommended, but only for serious baseball nerds.

THE COLOR PURPLE by Alice Walker

I'm a big believer that, before seeing a film adaptation of a book, you should read the book first. This week, I applied that rule to musicals as well, since tomorrow night Lindsey and I are going to see The Color Purple, the first show of this Dallas Summer Musicals season. The Color Purple, Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, is one of those modern classics I've considered picking up many times, only to put it back on the shelf, so the upcoming performance was just the nudge I needed.

The Color Purple is the story of two African-American sisters raised in the 1930s South, one who remains there her entire tortured life and the other who becomes a missionary to Africa. Told as a letters to one another and to God, the book deals with everything from abuse to family to race to feminism to faith, all with a distinctive dialectical style reminiscent of Zora Neale Hurston. Celie, the older sister and main protagonist of the story, is a tragic but inspiring character who I won't soon forget.

I didn't pick this book because of the Me Too movement, but boy did that make it it resonate. Abuse and sexual assault are ever-present realities in Celie's life, and it is through the help of women in her life that she is able to persevere and even find joy in a life mostly full of misery. Anyone who struggles to understand the anger that sometimes undergirds feminism will get an education after walking through Celie's life, a life in which virtually every man she encounters hurts her in some way or another.

The Color Purple is a pretty easy read once you get used to the style, but it is not light reading. The subject matter, as you have surely gathered, is adult, and while never exploitative or sensational, Walker is not afraid to describe the reality of what Celie experiences. But for all the sadness in this story, it is balanced by glimmers of hope, turning what could have been a depressing story into an inspiring one. The Color Purple is a classic for a reason...I'll be interested to see how it works with music and choreography!

ESSENTIAL SGT. FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Dick Ayers

Every war movie since Vietnam has essentially had the same message: war is hell. In these movies, fear is emphasized over heroism, horror over brotherhood, grim nihilism over duty. But dip into your grandpa's black-and-white movies and you'll find war movies of a different sort, from epics with casts of thousands to screwball comedies. Before Vietnam muddied the waters in the public consciousness, for better and for worse, fictional war stories were less about sending political messages than providing exotic stages for old-fashioned entertainment.

Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, a Marvel WWII comic running from 1963-1981, is firmly planted in that old-fashioned template, telling corny, bloodless war stories for kids, stories that have more in common with Indiana Jones than Platoon. Starring an ensemble cast led by Nick Fury (20 years before, as a colonel in the 1960s, he would be appointed Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.), the book takes Fury's commando squad across the European theater, Africa, Japan, and even, in one special issue set years later, into Korea, where they help score a victory against the Commies in the Korean War. Fighting villains like Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, a Nazi fencing champion, Fury and his Howlers brawl their way through the war with humor, swagger, and rarely more than a scratch to show for their efforts.

The first few issues of this series are rough going, with way too much going on and too many practically identical characters, but after four or five issues, Lee and Kirby (the Dynamic Duo of comic creators) hit their stride, with Kirby soon thereafter passing the art baton off to Dick Ayers. For anyone who's read the Marvel comics of the early 1960s, these will fit right in, albeit without the superpowers: lots of screwball comedy and plenty of action. This isn't Lee's best work, or Kirby's, but it's certainly not bad--just reliably entertaining self-contained action stories, surely worth the 12 cents readers were plunking down at drug store counters in 1963.

Anyone looking to this comic for an exploration of the morality of war should look elsewhere. Anyone looking for complexity or socio-political themes should too. But if you want a good adventure story, you could do worse than opening to a random story from this book.

SILVER SURFER VOL. 4-5 by Dan Slott and Mike Allred

You may remember that vol. 1-3 of this series were given to me by my brother as a birthday gift last October (actually, come to think of it, if you do remember that, you're way too invested in these reading logs). Anyway, come Christmas, he helped me out by finishing the collection with the final two volumes of this 32-issue run by Dan Slott and Mike Allred. And if the first three collections convinced me this series was good, the final two convinced me it was great.

This iteration of the Silver Surfer is one who explores the spaceways with a companion, Dr. Who-style. But where Dawn Greenwood began the series seeming to be little more than comic relief, by the beginning of vol. 4 she has developed into a fully formed character, still full of jokes, but also of heart. In fact, early in vol. 4, she and the Surfer confess their love for one another, a revelation that, far from the melodrama usually associated with typical comic book romances, feels perfectly natural. The two make a wonderful pair, and their friendly chemistry is a delight to read.

Most issues in this two volumes are self-contained, with Dawn and the Surfer encountering everyone from an evolved Galactus (now the Life Bringer instead of the World Devourer) to his old love, Shalla-Bal, to the holo-light beings of Inkandessa. But truthfully, the adventures are secondary to the slow, deliberate character work being done, as the Surfer and Dawn grow individually and together. All of this culminates in the series finale, which I won't spoil, but is one of the best final issues I've ever read. I didn't cry, but I wouldn't judge anyone who did.

The best descriptor for this series, especially as it progressed and found its footing, is pure joy. The writing is light, funny, quirky, and doesn't take itself too seriously. The art is retro, imaginative, and bursting with bright colors. Imagination leaps off every page. And most importantly of all, by the end it has made you feel something. You can't ask for much more from a comic book than that.