June Book Log

It sure felt like I did a lot of reading in June, but thanks to the size of the books (including a 1,500 page tome you'll see in next month's log), there's not much to show for it below. Nevertheless, here's a look!

2 Articles I Like This Month

"What Is Owed: Without Economic Justice, There Can Be No Equality" by Nikole Hannah-Jones, New York Times Magazine. 35 minutes.

In this brilliantly written essay, Nikole Hannah-Jones explains how through American history, the federal government has failed to match steps toward legal equality with the necessary economic measures to ensure that black Americans are able to have the same opportunities as white Americans. The only practical, moral, and financially acceptable answer, she concludes is reparations.

"Love, Loss, and Baseball" by Tom Verducci, Sports Illustrated. 111 minutes.

A fictionalized first person account of the 1918 baseball season (which happened in the midst of a global pandemic), told via the lettesr of an actual sportswriter at the time.

PILLAR OF FIRE: AMERICA IN THE KING YEARS 1963-1965 by Taylor Branch

Following up Parting the Waters, the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s, was going to be a challenge no matter what approach writer Taylor Branch took. Narrowing the sequel's focus to 1963-1965 made things even more difficult, as the book misses some of the seminal moments in the movement's history (too late for Birmingham, too early for Selma). The result is a book that misses the mark a bit, a scattershot history that seems unsure what story it's trying to tell.

Beginning with essentially a 100 page recap of its predecessor, Pillar of Fire then moves into its first big moment, the movement for civil rights in St. Augustine, Florida, a story I was completely with which I was completely unfamiliar. From there it moves to the Freedom Summer in Mississippi, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Martin Luther King Jr., with Branch then beginning to lay the groundwork for Selma in the final pages. Interspersed between this linear list of events are accounts related to the activities of other pivotal figures, particularly Malcolm X, J. Edgar Hoover, and Lyndon Johnson.

It is these side stories, while often interesting, that cause the book to feel unfocused and transitory, like it's, well, the 2nd part in a trilogy (which it is). At times J. Edgar Hoover seems more like the main character of Branch's story than King does, as Branch leaves no stone unturned in telling how the FBI sought to impede the Civil Rights Movement and its leaders.  Similarly, Malcolm X, who went virtually unmentioned in the first book, is checked in on throughout this volume, though rarely with enough detail or purpose to seem to warrant the accounts.

While I learned things in this book, especially about the St. Augustine movement and Freedom Summer, I found it to be a more tedious read than Parting the Waters. Next month I'll wrap up the trilogy with At Canaan's Edge, where King's story shifts from civil rights to campaigns against war and poverty before coming to a violent end.

LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding

For the second month in a row, the classic novel I turned to was an examination of the evil in all men’s hearts and the idea that civilization is a construct which can collapse at any moment. You know, escapism.

A parable about the line between civilization and barbarity, The Lord of the Flies tells the story of a group of schoolboys who crash land on a deserted tropical island during World War II and are left to fend for themselves—and in doing so, see themselves descend into savagery. Funny at times and horrifying at others, it’s an easy read, and a prescient one.

Reading as an adult instead of a middle schooler—and in the middle of an incredibly tumultuous time in our world—it was fascinating how much the book’s themes resonated with me this time around. The Lord of the Flies is far from a pleasant read, but its depiction of societal standards’ fragility is worth your time.

ESSENTIAL CLASSIC X-MEN VOL. 1-2

When you think about the X-Men, you probably think about Wolverine first. Others who leap to mind may be Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Mystique. There’s good reason for that; those are some of comics’ most popular characters. But while “Stan Lee Presents” sits at the top of most of their comic book adventures, none were Silver Age creations of Stan the Man and Jack “the King” Kirby.

No, the Silver Age “Classic” X-Men were a different group entirely, a team of teenage mutants led by Professor Charles Xavier. Despite some familiar names (Cyclops, Jean Grey, and the aforementioned Professor X), these ain’t the X-Men you’re used to. And after reading 50+ issues of their adventures, let me warn you: sometimes the upgrade really is better than the original.

Don’t get me wrong, there are seeds of greatness in these stories. The idea of a mutant race that is hated and feared by humanity began here. Familiar story elements like the Danger Room and Cerebro date back to these stories. Several notable X-Men villains, including Magneto in the inaugural issue, debuted in the 1960s.

But by and large, these are some of the weaker offerings from Marvel’s Silver Age, hurt by the lack of a consistent writer-artist team. While there are high points, most of these issues are middling at best and sloppy at worst, and they’re all a far cry from the heights that would be reached in the 1980s, when the book was reimagined and became the best-selling title in comics. Tune in next month for volume 3, which promises better storytelling and beautiful art before the book’s years-long Bronze Age hiatus.

Past Full (Friday Devotional)

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

- Matthew 11:28-30

When Lindsey and I bought our first house last summer after years of bouncing from one apartment complex to the next, one chore I was responsible for taking up was mowing the lawn, something I grew up doing every Saturday but hadn’t done regularly since going off to college. To my surprise, I found that I actually enjoyed mowing (which I never would have said in high school)—something about the satisfaction of a job well done was much more meaningful now that it was my yard instead of my parents’.

However, I was rusty, and that became apparent the first time I used the lawnmower my father-in-law had given me. After nearly 45 minutes of work, I was surprised when the mower suddenly sputtered and died. I checked the gas—still plenty to run on. I tried to crank it to life—no luck. Puzzled, I stared at the mower for a moment until I had my eureka moment. Grabbing the bag attachment, I pulled it off the mower and found the culprit: the bag was completely full of grass clippings, unable to hold anymore. The mower was so weighed down it just couldn’t operate anymore.

Especially right now, many of us know how that lawnmower feels. In the midst of a pandemic unlike anything we’ve seen before, trying to do your work and care for your family, doing your best not to drop any balls, you may feel like each day brings a new weight to carry. Like that lawnmower bag, you may be burdened to the point of shutting down.

If so, I encourage you to turn to the Lord who promises rest for the weary and refuge for the burdened. Instead of trying to handle everything alone, you can cast your anxieties and worries on a God who cares for you, coming to Him in prayer instead of retreating into your own plans. If you will cast pride aside and seek God’s will instead of your own, you will find, just as Jesus promised, that his yoke is easy and his burden is light.

The truth is, we weren’t made to carry life’s burdens alone, and when we try to do so—especially in such unprecedented times—we risk becoming so weighed down that we can barely move. So just as I had to do that Saturday afternoon last summer, empty your bag. For only when you’ve turned over the weight can you start moving forward.

Tied Together (Friday Devotional)

And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

- Colossians 3:14

When I was a Boy Scout, I was never good at tying knots. Knot tying is famously a key activity for Boy Scouts, and learning everything from a bowline to a clove hitch is a requirement if you want to advance from Tenderfoot to Eagle Scout. Nevertheless, I didn’t take to it, and would basically learn each knot five minutes before showing it to my troop leader, get the requirement signed off, and then promptly forget what I had learned.

The one exception was the square knot, which has fewer steps than it takes you to tie your shoes. Even given my disinterest and ineptitude, the square knot was simple enough to stick with me, and it became my go-to whenever I needed to bind two ropes. The trouble is, the square knot’s simplicity is matched by its weakness—it’s easily undone, and should never be used for supporting weight. If you want an easy bond, the square knot is fine, but if you want a strong bond, you have to look to something quite a bit more difficult.

In today’s fractured society, some bonds are easier to create than others. Many with public platforms have found fear to be an easy way of bringing people together—if enough people are scared and resentful about the same things, they’ll join together against those common enemies. Others have turned to nostalgia, bringing people together by getting them to ignore the present and dwell on the past. Still others have relied on far-reaching promises to hold their audience together. All of these are ‘square knot bonds’—they’re easy to form, but they’re unstable and unreliable.

The Lord calls his disciples to a more difficult bond: Christlike love. Unity in love takes a lot more time to produce than an alliance of fear, because it requires trust. It’s a harder sell than an alliance based on nostalgia, because it works through difficult subjects instead of skirting them. It’s not as cheap as big dreams, because it asks for sacrifice instead of just promising the moon.

But as difficult as the bond of love is to achieve—especially compared to the ‘square knot bonds’ we are offered elsewhere—it is incomparably strong. Drawing on the example of the cross and the power of the Spirit, love keeps people together when other bonds are quickly broken by circumstances. Love, as Paul succinctly puts it in 1 Corinthians 13:13, never fails.

Because of how fragmented our culture has become, you have no shortage of people trying to bring you into their fold. May your alliances not be based on ease, but Christlikeness—because, as even this knot-tying novice can tell you, the easiest bonds to form are the first to break.

Worth the Cost (Friday Devotional)

And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

- Luke 14:27

I’m writing this to you from a beachside condo in Port Aransas, but as recently as Monday night, Lindsey and I still weren’t sure whether we’d wind up making this trip. We’d batted the idea around for weeks, but for a host of reasons we kept hesitating to pull the trigger.

For one thing, there was the cost to consider—even with us committing to bring groceries from home instead of eating out, beach trips for a family of four ain’t cheap. For another thing, getting to Port Aransas was going to mean a 14+ hour round trip in the car with two little kids who weren’t likely to sleep much, if at all, in their car seats. And then, speaking of the kids, there was the blunt reality that no trip with two children under the age of 3 is really a vacation—we’d be wearing ourselves out each day trying to keep them on track in an unfamiliar place and on a different schedule.

But here we are. And, it should be noted, all our reasons for hesitating held true. The beach condo wasn’t cheap. The trip here was long and exhausting. Our patience with the kids has been thin by the end of each day. But this morning, as I watched Lindsey and Andrew build a sandcastle while Katherine and I felt the waves lap up against our toes, I had no doubt: it was all worth it.

Our relatively trivial choice between staying home or heading to the beach has a few things in common with a much more important decision—whether to follow Christ’s commands and live for him. In Luke 14:26-33, Jesus made clear to those listening to him that discipleship was not going to be a smooth ride, and they ought to count the cost.

That remains true today. Following Jesus—not just believing in what he said and did, but obeying and living for him—often means going beyond what’s conventional for the sake of the gospel. It’s more convenient to look out for yourself than for strangers. It’s easier to hold a grudge than extend forgiveness. It’s more reasonable to deal in fairness than in grace. But for disciples of the crucified Christ, sacrifice is not just a possibility, it’s a privilege.

So just as Lindsey and I did before heading to the beach, I hope you will count the cost of following Jesus. I hope you will look with open eyes at what is expected of Christ’s disciples—not just doctrinal belief, but faith at work. I hope you will seek not just to listen to Jesus, but to live for him. And if you do, I trust you will discover what we have on our beach trip: the reward is worth the cost.

Uncertainty Is Ok (Friday Devotional)

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

- Romans 12:3

If you’ve spent much time with a three-year old lately, there’s a one-word question you’re used to hearing: “Why?” For small kids, it’s a question that’s constantly on their minds—and as a result, constantly on their lips. Here’s a sampling of a conversation Andrew and I had in the car the other day:

“Daddy, why is that called a water tower?”

“Because it stores water.”

“Why?”

“Because the city needs lots of water.”

“Why?”

“Because we need water to drink and take baths and wash clothes.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s no other way to do those things without water.”

“Why not?”

It’s usually at about that point in the conversation, on the 4^th or 5^th why, that we’ve hit a dead end. I’ve run out of answers; my fount of wisdom has run dry. It’s at that point that I have to begrudgingly say the words that bring the conversation to a screeching halt: I don’t know.

Nobody likes admitting that. We like to think we have all the answers we need, that we’ve prepared ourselves adequately for whatever the world throws at us, that our education is essentially complete. Uncertainty is uncomfortable, and we prefer to make our way through life with as little of it as possible.

But the truth is that nobody this side of heaven knows everything. We all have blind spots and deficits. What’s difficult is acknowledging that—especially when you disagree with someone.

In a week of tremendous controversy and struggle, many have dug into their preestablished positions, hanging on for dear life in the face of conflicting arguments. The intensity of the moment has made them more certain that they’re right and always have been, that they have nothing new to examine or learn, that nuance is an unnecessary vice.

But believers in Jesus Christ are cautioned to respond to difficult moments not with stubbornness and certainty, but grace and humility. Instead of condescending to our neighbors, now is the time to listen to them; instead of arguing with people, now is the time to reach out with intentional acts of kindness. In a time of unbelievable uncertainty, people aren’t looking for your answers, but your empathy. So may you be willing to set aside your preconceived notions and come to your neighbors with open ears, an open heart, and an open mind—because sometimes admitting you don’t know isn’t a mark of weakness, but maturity.

May Reading Log

I read two very big books and three smaller ones this month, along with plenty of good stuff online (plus the daily barrage of bad news). On to the reviews!

4 Articles I Like This Month

"My Priceless, Worthless Baseball Cards" by Ryan Hockensmith, ESPN. 11 minutes.

A reflection, inspired by the author's collection of 150,000+ baseball cards, on what nostalgic creature comforts mean to us in this time of pandemic.

"Ordinary People Are Leading the Leaders" by David Brooks, The New York Times. 3 minutes.

When you're online, it probably feels like we're as divided as ever right now. But when you talk to people in person, you learn that, regardless of the stances of our various political leaders, the American public is mostly on the same page right now about how we're handling COVID-19. A refreshing take.

"The Day the Live Concert Returns" by Dave Grohl, The Atlantic. 6 minutes.

An ode to the live concert and why live music matters, not just for us as individuals but us as a society. Worth the read for the last paragraph alone.

"What if 'Roe' Had Not Needed to Lie?" by Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa, The Dallas Morning News. 2 minutes.

In the wake of the bombshell revelation that Norma McCorvey, the famed 'Jane Roe' of Roe v. Wade who spent years after the case as a pro-life advocate, was being paid for her so-called "conversion" to the pro-life position, Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa argues that being pro-life means being not just anti-abortion, but pro-woman.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE SON OF GOD by N.T. Wright

N.T. Wright's work has been formative in my theological education. Thanks to him, I know far more about the first century world than I used to. Thanks to him, I better understand what it meant for Jesus to fulfill the Law rather than abolish it (i.e. how Christianity is related to Judaism.) But the debt I owe him is that, after years of reading his books at both the popular and academic level, I came to understand why the resurrection is such a big deal.

The Resurrection of the Son of God, the third part in Wright's series on "Christian Origins and the Question of God" (look for the fourth and final part in July's reading log...it'll take me 2 months to read all 1,500+ pages of that volume), is a tightly focused examination of what the first century world believed about resurrection, what the Bible says about it, and why it matters for Christian faith. Wright's final conclusion is that Christ really did rise from the grave, that in doing so he revealed himself to be Lord and Messiah, and that his resurrection is the firstfruits of God's new creation.

The most valuable thing this book does is thoroughly dismantle the popular notions about what Christians believe about life after death: that when you die, your soul goes up to heaven where you live with God for eternity. As Wright convincingly shows, that is not what anyone in the early church believed, and it is not what Jesus promised or Paul taught. The gospel witness is not about eternal disembodied bliss, but about resurrection, about a day to come when the dead shall rise, transformed and redeemed by the power of God to reign with Christ in a new creation.

In Wright's telling, resurrection is the glorious endpoint of all the metanarratives of Scripture—it is the restoration of creation, it is the end of Israel's exile, and it is the full fulfillment of the promise that God is with us. With meticulous attention to both the historical details surrounding the writing of Scripture and to the exegesis of the Bible's texts about resurrection, Wright makes his case compellingly, correcting popular misconceptions with a mountain of historical, biblical, and theological evidence.

For many, even many Christians, the resurrection of Jesus is simply a happy ending to the story of Jesus's passion, one final miracle before he ascended into heaven. But as Wright shows, the resurrection is where all the hopes of the faithful find their fulfillment; it is where God announces once and for all that he is doing something new. I cannot thank Wright enough for his work in this volume, which I would probably now count as the most personally influential theology book I've ever read. If you want to know why Easter matters, you'll find no shortage of answers here.

PARTING THE WATERS: AMERICA IN THE KING YEARS 1954-1963 by Taylor Branch

The story we were taught in school about the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s goes something like this: Rosa Parks, in an act of spontaneous outrage, refused to give up her bus seat to a white man and was arrested. In response, Martin Luther King, Jr. led the black citizens of Montgomery to boycott the buses until the laws were changed. MLK then went from city to city throughout the south giving speeches and leading nonviolent marches, until he finally gave his "I Have a Dream Speech" in Washington D.C. and convinced the nation—and the White House—that America's black citizens deserved equal rights. His assassination in 1968 marked the end of the movement, if not the struggle for equality. The end.

It's not an entirely inaccurate story, to be sure, but it's awfully oversimplified. The true story of African-Americans' movement for civil rights began long before Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King, and even once King became its de facto leader, he was not some messianic figure acting alone. The protests of the movement were not universally welcomed, nor were they all successful. And while the White House—Kennedy and later Johnson—put the wheels in motion to ensure that the movement's righteous purpose resulted in legislation, it was only after years doing their best to duck the issue altogether.

In short, the story of the Civil Rights Movement is a lot more complicated than you might think, and Parting the Waters, the 900+ page first book in Taylor Branch's trilogy on the movement, provides all the painstaking details you could want. Exhaustively researched and written matter-of-factly, Branch introduces readers to figures who don't make the front cover of the history books even as his spotlight remains on Dr. King. His blow-by-blow accounts of all the conflicts the movement had to endure—between King's SCLC and the more established NAACP, between King and J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, and between King and the Kennedy administration (especially Attorney General Robert Kennedy)—show how miraculous it is that the movement accomplished anything at all, given the headwinds it was facing.

Parting the Waters has a lot of ground to cover, and occasionally gets so deep in the details that you start to lose the forest for the trees, but there can be no disputing its value as a resource for students of history. Check back next month as I read part 2 in the trilogy, Pillar of Fire.

HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad

Given the length of Parting the Waters, I needed to make sure that the classic novel I read this month (you may recall that I've committed to reading one each month in 2020) would be short. At less than 100 pages, Heart of Darkness seemed to fit the bill. Little did I know how long it would take me to trudge through those pages.

Heart of Darkness tells the story of Marlow, a steamboat captain who travels into the Congo in search of a mysterious trader named Mr. Kurtz. Marlow's obsession with Kurtz, the foreignness of the land, and the assistance and conflict he finds from the African natives on his journey serve to show the reader that darkness is something which transcends civilization and is present within each of us.

Unfortunately, Heart of Darkness is the perfect example of the kind of book which is more fun to discuss than to read. Joseph Conrad is a big fan of the loooong paragraph and doesn't use a lot of dialogue, so I found myself frequently losing the thread. What's more, there are long stretches where nothing really happens in the story and where he's instead letting nature provide the symbolism—again, that can be fun to discuss, but it's a drag to read.

Sometimes called "the first modern novel," Heart of Darkness has a great deal to say about race, colonialism, sin, and power. I just wish those things were a little easier to find on the page instead of having to learn about them in the Cliff Notes.

ESSENTIAL HULK VOL. 7

This is my third (and final) reading log in a row featuring Bronze Age Hulk stories, so you'll pardon me if I keep this one short. Roger Stern's writing run is tremendous fun; the rest is forgettable. The art isn't anything worthy of praise or condemnation. Plot-wise, this volume sees General "Thunderbolt" Ross suffer a nervous breakdown, the divorce of Glenn Talbot and Betty Ross, and the death of Hulk's one-time love Jarella.

But mostly, Hulk smashes. And what more could you ask for than that?

ESSENTIAL MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN VOL. 1 by Gary Friedrich, Doug Moench, Mike Ploog, John Buscema, et al.

Would you have guessed that a mute, hulking monster out of Victorian literature would make for a decent comic book protagonist? Yeah, me neither, but that's 1970s Marvel for you, full of surprises.

This collection of stories began as a simple retelling of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but after a few issues the story continues as Frankenstein's monster seeks revenge on his creator. From there you get a few more stories about the monster's travails in Victorian Europe before he is frozen in Arctic waters and then reawakened from suspended animation in modern times. It's at that point that the book starts to resemble The Incredible Hulk, with the monster taking on various antagonists even as he also deals with persecution from a society that fears and misunderstands him.

To be honest with you, I was kind of dreading reading this particular Essential, since I have no connection to the source material and had a hard time imagining Frankenstein's monster carrying a solo title. But as Marvel horror goes, this book was closer to Tomb of Dracula (some of the best Marvel Bronze Age stuff in any genre) than it was Brother Voodoo or The Scarecrow. The stories are strong, the characters interesting, and the titular monster acts less as a protagonist than a catalyst, which serves the stories well. As 1970s Marvel horror goes, this is worth the small time investment it takes to read it.