Stars and Commons (Friday Devotional)

 

Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

- Matthew 20:25-28

Over the past week, thanks to a thoughtful gift from a few church members, I’ve rediscovered an old obsession: baseball cards. Whenever I get a spare minute lately, I find myself digging through old boxes of 1991 Topps, 1992 Donruss, and 1998 Upper Deck cards, reminiscing about players long since retired and admiring these cardboard snapshots of their careers.

For the hardcore collector and the casual hobbyist alike, there’s a natural process that develops when you’re sorting through your cards: you start separating the collectors’ items (rookies, stars, etc.) from the so-called “commons,” i.e. the workaday ballplayers whose careers last just a few seasons before they faded into obscurity. Where the stars’ cards wind up behind a plastic slab or in a binder or at least in a box marked “GOOD CARDS”, the commons are tossed haphazardly to the side, waiting to be hauled up to the far corner of the attic or sold in the next garage sale.

In life, just as in baseball card collecting, we tend to sort people based on their perceived value. This person is wealthy, that person is working class. This person is brilliant, that person is ordinary. This person is influential, that person is insignificant. In our own minds, we mark people as stars or as commons.

But Jesus commands his disciples to see people a different way—and indeed, to see ourselves differently too. Rather than exalting the powerful and lording over the lowly, Jesus calls us to identify with the least of these, to achieve greatness through service and exaltation through humility. Our calling is not to judge people by their earthly castes, but to transcend those categories in Christian love.

Jesus didn’t give his life as a prize for the elite, but as a ransom for many. So if we want to be his disciples, we do so not by tossing the world’s “commons” aside, but by loving, honoring, and helping them. For in the kingdom of God, there are no stars, only servants.

February Reading Log

For the month of February, I read 38 issues of the Fantastic Four, an influential book on church health, and two important books—one recent sociological work, one primary source—in commemoration of Black History Month. Plenty of good reading; take a look!

Reading Through the Fantastic Four- #532-569

This month's reading was made up of three distinct writer-artist runs bridging the gap from the Waid-Weiringo years to the upcoming run by Jonathan Hickman and Co., which is beloved by many but that I found underwhelming. We'll see how it holds up on a second read soon enough.

First up this month was J. Michael Straczynski and Mike McKone's take on Marvel's First Family, an interpretation which would ultimately be shaped—fairly or not—by the Civil War crossover that dominated the Marvel Universe for the latter half of 2006. Throughout the run, JMS isn't shy about playing favorites, showing a clear preference for Reed Richards over the other members of the family, making the other three feel more like supporting characters than stars in their own right. Accompanied by Mike McKone's workmanlike art, this run brings things back down to earth after the off-the-wall, occasionally silly Waid-Weiringo run, injecting more realism into the book, albeit at the expense of some fun.

Next up is Dwayne McDuffie and Paul Pelletier, who are given the unenviable task of picking up the pieces after Civil War by helming an FF book that replaces Reed and Sue with Black Panther and Storm (who were married at the time.) While McDuffie and Pelletier tried their darnedest to bring back the wacky imagination of the Waid-Weiringo years in a series of cosmic story arcs, their run is hurt by a constant feeling of impermanence—you're fully aware the entire time that this lineup and its adventures are a bridge to the next big thing.

That next big thing comes when Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch, the team who made The Ultimates a blockbuster, are handed the keys. To their credit, they immediately make the book feel important, imbuing it with a fresh sense of grandeur. Unfortunately, it always feels more like a Millar-Hitch production than like the Fantastic Four. Similar to when Chris Claremont was at the helm in the early 2000s, the book is good, but just feels off in their hands, like a square peg in a round hole.

Next up is the lengthy, legendary run by Jonathan Hickman. Look for that review in April's log though, not March's—after nothing but the FF for months on end I'm going to use the next month to take a break and read a different comic series.

NINE MARKS OF A HEALTHY CHURCH by Mark Dever

Many church health and revitalization books are so practical that they begin to feel more like books about marketing, management, and how to grow your small business in 60 days with this one simple trick. Those types of books may have a few things around the edges to teach us about church growth, but often when I read them I'm left cold, struggling to figure out how to connect the newest techniques to the New Testament, the trendy to the timeless.

Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, the influential book by Mark Dever, a pastor and leading light for the Young-Restless-Reformed crowd, offers a response to the secular tips of the church growth crowd: what if we acted like a New Testament church instead? Dever offers nine suggestions drawn from scripture that, to his mind point toward the kind of church that took the world by storm in the Book of Acts. With old-fashioned things like expositional preaching, biblical evangelism, and even church discipline, Dever shines a light on the ways evangelical churches have departed from biblical ecclesiology and points readers back to our calling.

If I were to summarize his overall point, it might be this: make church demanding again. Dever describes repeatedly how the church, out of a desire not to offend current members and to attract new ones, has watered down its message and its discipleship. Reminding readers that Jesus called his followers from the beginning to deny themselves and take up their cross, Dever argues that, instead of making church as easy as possible, we ought to be up-front and honest about what it means to follow Jesus in the church. It's not supposed to be easy and commitment-free, it's supposed to be life-changing.

If I have one criticism of Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, it is borne out more by what I've seen from Dever's YRR friends than from the content of the book itself. Dever's brand of ecclesiology requires congregations to place a lot of trust in the church generally and leadership specifically—and while that's fine when things are working as they should, it opens the door for abuse when one bad apple infiltrates the bushel. Churches and their pastors should be above reproach, but when they're not, there needs to be more oversight than Dever explicitly allows for in the book.

Despite this criticism, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church is a breath of fresh air for anybody looking for biblical words about church health without the fluff of modern marketing. You won't find much in here about signage or web design—but you'll rediscover some things that are a lot more valuable.

THE 1619 PROJECT created by Nikole Hannah-Jones

This is a book that far more people have heard of than have read thanks to far-right reactionaries in the political and media spheres, who have used it as a cudgel since its original 2019 publishing in The New York Times. The 1619 Project, a collection of historical essays collected here as one hardback book, brought the ivory tower field of critical race theory into the town square, igniting a firestorm of debate that continues today in school board meetings, state legislatures, and cable TV studios. Doubtless you already have an opinion on The 1619 Project, whether you've read it or not—but since I hadn't yet, I decided there was no better time than Black History Month to do so.

The project's name comes from the year that founder and Howard University professor (then a New York Times journalist) Nikole Hannah-Jones argues is the true date America was founded: the year 20+ Africans were brought to the New World to work as unpaid labor for the white men who kidnapped them. In the telling of Hannah-Jones and the other contributors to this project, slavery preceded democracy in the United States and its roots run deeper, and 400 years later, slavery continues to impact the daily life of African-Americans even so many years after emancipation.

This book is an anthology of essays about those effects, essays which originally ran in The New York Times Magazine as one of its bestselling issues ever. The essays describe how slavery historically impacted everything from big-picture topics like democracy and justice to meat-and-potatoes things like health care and traffic, and how the modern America we know continues to bear slavery's marks. Each essay has a similar structure, first laying out the history and then pointing—sometimes gently, sometimes forcefully—toward what concrete steps must be taken to redeem America from its original sin.

There are two major criticisms of the project, one which deserves to be addressed and the other which, in my opinion, is not offered in good faith and should be dismissed as such. The valid criticism is that Hannah-Jones and other contributors sometimes prioritize advocacy over historical accuracy to the point where facts are manipulated in the service of a larger point. The examples that have been cited in various opinion pieces since 2019 are indeed concerning, and a project of this magnitude ought to be above reproach, but I will say this: part of the work of the historian is interpreting and framing history, presenting it as a narrative instead of a list of disparate facts. So long as sources are cited, the narrative conclusions are a matter for debate, even fierce debate—but not for outright dismissal.

The second criticism is the one that, to my mind, is at the root of right-wing reaction to the book, from Tucker Carlson to Donald Trump: the 1619 Project is mean to white people. With words like "unpatriotic," they dismiss the project as revisionist history, saying it denigrates America and dismisses all the progress African-Americans have made for the last 400 years. For me, that accusation is unadulterated hogwash, the defensive reaction of people who don't appreciate being reminded of a history they'd rather forget.

As Hannah-Jones and her fellow contributors persuasively point out in this anthology, the desire to simply "move on" is at the heart of America's problem with racism: we keep trying to run past our original sin without redeeming it. That may be fine for white people—look, we're better now!—but it is patently unfair to the African-Americans who inherited poverty instead of generational wealth, who never got so much as the 40 acres and a mule the federal government promised. Slavery, this book says, may be a dead institution, but it still has victims today, and they have never received restitution.

We'd all like to live in the America of political ads, an exceptional, divinely blessed nation that shines as a beacon of freedom throughout the globe. But any time we present that lily-white (pun intended) story, we ignore the dark truth lurking beneath—this nation was built on sacred ideals, but it was built by enslaved bodies. Slavery, like it or not, is part of our history, and we have to reckon with it now, because in many ways we never really have. What the 1619 Project argues, at its core, is simple: history isn't something you move on from, even and especially when it's painful. It's something you learn from.

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL by Harriet Jacobs

When Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was published in 1861, it served as a companion piece of sorts for books like Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Uncle Tom's Cabin, abolitionist texts meant to shame those sympathetic to the 'plight' of nervous slaveholders and remind people of the humanity of enslaved African-Americans. But in some ways, Harriet Jacobs (writing under the pseudonym Linda Brent) did her job too well—many refused to believe a slave could possibly write so well.

Jacobs' story recounts her childhood as a slave, the sexual harassment and domineering she experienced at the hands of her enslaver, the seven years she spent in hiding following her escape, and her eventual flight to freedom. Reminiscent of both Twelve Years a Slave and The Diary of Anne Frank, Jacobs is matter-of-fact in the telling of her story, but reflective about how her experiences matched those of other slaves.

What makes Jacobs' narrative stand alone amidst other famous slave memoirs is that she was not physically beaten by her enslavers, yet was still unquestionably scarred by the experience. While many assume the whip was the most feared punishment for slaves, Jacobs writes with foreboding about how, for women, it was catching the lustful eye of the master. In a post-Me Too world, Jacobs' story has more relevance than ever.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is certainly not a pleasant read, but it is an important one, and it thankfully ends happily, with Jacobs finally purchasing her freedom and embarking upon a new life in the North, not as a fugitive slave but as a free woman. For those interested skeptical of The 1619 Project and its conclusions, this primary source offers a compelling reminder: slavery is truly our nation's original sin. and we owe it to ourselves to never forget its victims.

Timeless (Friday Devotional)

 

Since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you.

- 1 Peter 1:23-25

R.C. Buckner, the famed Baptist minister and founder of Buckner Children’s Home, probably officiated more weddings than he could count in his decades of ministry. But there was surely one that stood out in his memory—one which, in a manner of speaking, really stood the test of time.

That wedding was special because of its unique timetable. At the request of the bride and groom, the vows were read beginning at 11:59 PM on December 31, 1899 and weren’t concluded until after the clock struck midnight. In other words, their wedding started in the 19th century and ended in the 20th century. Talk about timeless!

Chronological trickery aside, there aren’t many things in this life that last for centuries. There’s a reason people travel from thousands of miles away to see things like the Parthenon or the Egyptian pyramids—something that perseveres that long is a rare wonder.

The Bible reminds us that the gospel is just such a wonder, good news which not only has endured for thousands of years, but will remain forever. Even as the world around us changes at lightning speed, God’s word persists, bringing hope to generation after generation. Everything around it may crumble, but the gospel isn’t going anywhere.

Words which have converted nonbelievers, encouraged Christians, and spoken truth to all for two millennia are just as relevant today as they ever were. So be sure to spend some time in God’s Word today, for in a unique way, it has stood—and will continue to stand—the test of time.

No-Name Faith (Friday Devotional)

 

Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

- Matthew 6:1

When Major League Baseball announced in 1977 that its newest franchise would go to the city of Seattle, the team’s ownership group chose a democratic way of picking the mascot: a “Name the Team” contest which anyone could enter and win. The prize would be a pair of season tickets and one all-expenses-paid trip to see the team play on the road during its inaugural season.

Roger Szmodis, a presumed fan from Bellevue, Washington, was the winner—in a short essay, he said the team should be called the Mariners “because of the natural association between the sea and Seattle and her people, who have been challenged and rewarded by it.” The team has kept that name for more than 40 years, with stars from Ken Griffey, Jr. to Ichiro Suzuki carrying on the legacy that Roger Szmodis set in motion.

But one mystery endures to this day—no one knows who Roger Szmodis is. He never came to claim his prize. He never picked up the phone when the Mariners’ front office called. No one answered the door when representatives came to his apartment. To this day, his achievement has endured even as his identity has remained clouded in mystery—for Roger Szmodis, it seems, it was never about the attention.

In Jesus’ famed Sermon on the Mount, he pointed out the human tendency, which he labeled hypocrisy, to carry out works of righteousness for the sake of attention. He talked about how easy it was to see people in the temple praying, fasting, and giving alms purely so others would notice them and fawn over their piety.

But Jesus said that true followers of God were more like Roger Szmodis, carrying out their work privately, not for the sake of attention but for the sake of the work itself—praying for the sake of praying, fasting for the sake of fasting, and giving for the sake of giving. For such disciples, faith is not about glorifying themselves, but about glorifying God.

In a world which says your worth is determined by your fame, the Bible calls us to anonymous righteousness, a faith where the only name that matters is Christ’s. May the work you do glorify him—and him alone.

Offense and Defense (Friday Devotional)

 

Everyone has heard about your obedience, so I rejoice because of you; but I want you to be wise about what is good and innocent about what is evil.

- Romans 16:19

The objectives of dodgeball are twofold and they are simple. First, you want to try and hit as many people on the other team as possible with one of the big red playground balls that are flying around you. Hit somebody with a ball and they’re out—that’s the offensive part of the game. Second, you want to avoid getting hit by any balls yourself—that’s the defensive part of the game.

To be successful at dodgeball, especially in the late rounds when all the lesser players are already out, you can’t neglect the offensive or defensive sides of the game. If you’ve got amazing aim when throwing a dodgeball but aren’t quick enough to get out of the way when one comes flying at you, you won’t last long. On the other hand, if you can escape danger with the wizardry of Houdini but can’t hit the broad side of a barn when throwing, the best you can hope for is a stalemate. To succeed in dodgeball, you need offense and defense.

The same, it turns out, is true in our walk with Christ. At the conclusion of Paul’s letter to the Romans, he exhorts them to do two things: “be wise about what is good and innocent about what is evil.” Wisdom about the good speaks to what you might call taking faith on offense—displaying Christlikness in a world that does not know the Lord, shining light in the darkness. Innocence about what is evil speaks to avoiding or eschewing those things which are worldly, eluding those traps the enemy places in your path—it’s the defensive side of faith.

A mature relationship with the Lord requires both of these elements, offense and defense, so that you can be a redeeming force in the world without being corrupted by it. Faithfulness requires us to know how to throw and dodge, to proclaim the gospel boldly and take refuge in the Lord. So may you have the courage to go on offense and the humility to go on defense—all for the glory of God.

Awe and Wonder (Friday Devotional)

 

“Who among the gods is like you, Lord? Who is like you—majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?”

- Exodus 15:11

This week, most of us stayed home as much as possible. With snow falling, a solid layer of ice on the roads, and temperatures below freezing, nobody wanted to get out unless it was absolutely necessary. Well, no adult, anyway.

My kids, on the other hand—like a lot of kids, based on local news footage—were ready to head outside the moment they woke up on Tuesday morning. Undeterred by the temperatures, impatient with the need to bundle up, and oblivious to parental caution, they raced outdoors as soon as we let them, eager to explore the backyard that had become a winter wonderland overnight. The same weather that was an inconvenience for us adults was a wonder for them.

It seems to me that as we get older, we lose our capacity for awe. Things that once made us gasp with glee illicit shrugs now that we’re grown. The willingness to be amazed—or at least to show our amazement—fades, overwhelmed by the perceived need to look unflappable.

But in the presence of almighty God, awe is the only appropriate response. The holiness of the Lord is unlike anything we can imagine; his power is beyond all measure. And to think that such an awesome God would deign to love us—how can we fail to worship?

For a child, creation never ceases to amaze. For everyone, the same ought to be true for the Creator.

January Reading Log

  

After a couple months when my morning reading routine kind of went to pot, I came in January ready to turn over a new leaf (or, rather, turn back to my old leaf) and get back to more regular reading. Here are the books my nose was buried in over the last month!

Reading Through the Fantastic Four- #60 (v. 3 numbering)—532 (vo.1 numbering)

My FF reading for January consisted almost exclusively of the Mark Waid-Mike Weiringo run, a period beloved by fans for its imagination, heart, and irreverence. In their hands, the book resembles a Saturday morning superhero cartoon in the all the right ways—there's action, there's comedy, there's drama, and you never forget that the point is to have fun.

In Waid's hands, the FF literally travel from heaven to hell. In one of his first arcs as the book's writer, Doctor Doom makes a deal with a demon lord to increase his powers as a sorcerer and manages to psychologically and physically torture Marvel's First Family before Reed Richards, his archnemesis, finally manages to topple Doom with the aid of Doctor Strange. In the wake of that arc, an angry, psychologically battered Reed takes the team to Latveria, where Doom had reigned as absolute monarch, and essentially takes over the country himself. It's a way-too-on-the-nose commentary on the Iraq War that ends in tragedy, with Ben Grimm, the Thing, perishing. So from there Reed devises a machine that winds up taking the FF to the literal gates of heaven, where God (drawn, in a stroke of genius, as FF co-creator Jack "the King" Kirby) serves a literal deus ex machina and resurrects Ben.

Weiringo is the perfect artist for Waid's stories, with a colorful, cartoony style that makes the comedy sing but still manages to work in the stories' darker moments. While hard to explain, his style is all heart, which is what this book is truly about in its best moments. He and Waid make the perfect team, arguably the best this book had seen since Lee and Kirby. After a long creative lull, this is the run that made the FF relevant again—can't recommend it highly enough.

HOW TO REVIVE EVANGELISM by Craig Springer

Evangelism is tricky business these days. Some view it unfavorably because of its historic ties to colonization in the 'glory days' of Christendom, when conversion often came about at the end of a spear. Others hear the word and think of street preachers and panhandlers holding carboard signs proclaiming the end is near. And still others simply view it as unethical—it's fine to believe what you want, but trying to persuade others to believe it too is pushy to the point of manipulative.

And yet for Christians, we can't get away from the Great Commission: Jesus told us to make disciples of all nations, he gave us a mission to proclaim his Good News to the world. So how do we do that in 2023?

In this slim volume, Craig Springer seeks to offer effective evangelism strategies for our day and time, ways of sharing Jesus that honor the honest concerns about evangelism without being ashamed of the mission. He advocates for a patient, sincere, community-oriented approach where you listen more than you talk and allow space for questions without condemnation. It's an approach that intuitively makes sense in a post-Christian society.

One thing readers will have to understand about such an approach (which I find persuasive) is that yields a lot more depth than width—you'll get a lot fewer converts this way than with the old days of Billy Graham crusades and tent revivals. But those who do come to faith are much more likely to stay, to be actual disciples instead of one-day converts who walked an aisle in a swell of emotion only to wake up with a spiritual hangover the next day.

Most of the information in this book was stuff I'd read elsewhere, but it was helpful to have it all laid out here so clearly and concisely. If some of these concepts are new to you, this is a good place to start.

MORNINGS ON HORSEBACK by David McCullough

What turned Theodore Roosevelt, an asthmatic patrician's son, into the Rough Rider who would change the American presidency forever? In Mornings on Horseback, David McCullough's award winning biography of Roosevelt, the answer comes less from Roosevelt's experiences or inner drive than from his family and friends, the people who inspired, taught, confounded, and drove him to greatness.

McCullough, it is clear, is not so interested in Roosevelt's accomplishments as his origin story—the book ends with his engagement to Edith Carrow, 15 years before he became president. As such, a tremendous amount of time is spent on the stories of people like Roosevelt's grandfather, Cornelius Van Schaack (C.V.S) Roosevelt; his father, Theodore Roosevelt, Sr.; his mother, Martha Stewart "Mittie" Bulloch; and his brother, Elliot Roosevelt. Indeed, at times T.R. seems like a side character in his own story. For those interested in family systems, it is fascinating to see how Theodore's upbringing shaped who he became—what he accepted from his upbringing and what he cast aside.

This book surprised me a bit; I expected a standard biography and got something different. Nevertheless, McCullough's reputation as one of America's preeminent historians is based on books like this one. Well written and carefully researched, this book sets out to explain how Theodore Roosevelt's early years shaped him, and it does just that.

THE RIVER OF DOUBT by Candice Millard

There are times when history is so compelling it might as well be an action-adventure novel. Those times happened a lot where Theodore Roosevelt was concerned. Having read about his early years in Mornings on Horseback, I turned next to his life post-presidency, specifically to a journey he took following his unsuccessful "Bull Moose" third-party campaign for president. Accompanied by an experienced crew and his son Kermit, Roosevelt descended an unmapped portion of the Amazon River, a region so treacherous some believed it was impossible.

The trip almost killed Roosevelt; indeed, he contemplated suicide at one point. Everything from shipwreck to malaria to a murder within the crew threatened to make this journey one without a happy ending. But in Millard's telling, the trip instead became Roosevelt's final, most dangerous adventure.

Candace Millard presents the story with an eye for detail and an ear for storytelling that ensure it never presents as dry history. Instead, she tells the story so cinematically you can easily imagine seeing it on the big screen. For those wanting a survival story that just so happens to be about somebody on Mount Rushmore, this is a great beach read!

LETTER FROM BIRMINGHAM JAIL by Martin Luther King, Jr.

I make a point to read this American epistle every MLK Day, and this year was no exception. Addressed to a collection of white, moderate pastors who were concerned with Dr. King's protest-centered approach to social change, its central theme can be summarized by its most famous quote: "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Drawing from Scripture, American history, and outright common sense, King systematically dismantles the concerns of his fellow pastors, showing how both his faith and his heritage demand that he remain outspoken on the subject of civil rights, and how the methodology of the movement is not only effective, but moral. Furthermore, King respectfully but forcefully decries the caution of his fellow pastors, convincingly arguing that there are times when God calls his children to boldness, not moderation.

For someone who proudly identifies as a moderate on social and political issues, Letter from Birmingham Jail challenges me on an annual basis. I consider it to be right up there with the Gettysburg Address among the greatest works of American political writing—if you've never taken the time to read it in its entirety, do it now.

THE FLAG, THE CROSS, AND THE STATION WAGON by Bill McKibben

Part memoir, part sociology text, part political manifesto, The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon is environmentalist Bill McKibben's take on how the 1970s, the decade in which he grew up, represented the moment when America shifted from patriotic idealism to nationalistic nihilism. A Baby Boomer himself, McKibben is firmly of the opinion that Boomers abdicated their responsibility to leave the nation better than they found it, and this book is his attempt to diagnose the problems and advocate for solutions.

As the title suggests, McKibben frames our national decline around three things: the partisan sclerosis of our government, the gradual decline of faith (specifically, the mainline church), and the rise of the suburbs, which effectively reversed the tide of integration the Civil Rights Movement had begun. Mixing personal experience with historical fact with sociological analysis, McKibben makes an occasionally compelling, albeit predictable case that basically boils down to, "Liberal ideas good, conservative and moderate ideas bad."

This book was one I grabbed impulsively at the library one day; it's the sort of thing I typically read online or in magazines, not as a full book. I liked it fine, but can't say I learned much that I didn't already know. If you're politically plugged in, you've probably heard these arguments before, but if you're a more casual watcher of the news, this book makes some arguments worth considering.