Better Together (Friday Devotional)

 

And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Hebrews 10:24-25

We’ve been hearing it for years now: Black Friday’s just not the same as it used to be.

At its peak, the day after Thanksgiving was an occasion for crowds to line up in front of stores at 2:00 in the morning, camping out in tents while they waited. Whether in search of a big screen TV or the year’s hottest toy, shoppers would map out the store in advance like generals planning an invasion. And when the doors finally opened, the store would transform into a frenzy of activity, with people sprinting full speed through the aisles and sometimes even coming to blows with other customers. Black Friday was wild.

And now…well, now you leisurely pull out your laptop and place your order whenever it’s convenient. Despite their best initial efforts to incentivize in-person shopping, most of the stores have resigned themselves to the reality that people would rather shop from the comfort of the couch than wake up at an ungodly hour, drive across town, brave the elements, and risk life and limb for the sake of a bargain. There are still Black Friday deals to be had, but now they can be had from home.

For most of us (myself included), this is a welcome change. But for the Black Friday die-hards, the ones who made bargain hunting an annual tradition with friends and family, there is a sense of loss that comes with this shift. Shopping online is easier, no doubt, but it’s also solitary. Instead of spending hours in line with other people sharing a common experience, you’re simply taking care of a task by yourself. Community is traded for convenience.

There are some things that just aren’t the same when done alone as when done together—and, as we all learned last year, one of those things is church. Watching a worship service online from your living room is certainly better than no participation at all, but it’s simply not the same as the fellowship you experience when you gather with other believers. Serving alone is worthwhile, but not as enjoyable as doing so with your brothers and sisters in Christ. Private devotion is meaningful and important, but it’s not a replacement for corporate discipleship.

What the Lord wanted us to know when he established the church was that we are better together than apart, that everything from worship to service to discipleship is something we are called to do in community rather than as solo operators. While faith is personal, it is not private; the gospel is something we learn, share, and live out as a family of faith.

So when it seems easier to go it alone, to adopt an individualistic mode of Christianity where the church is optional, remember why Jesus gave it to us in the first place: some things just aren’t the same when done alone. We’re better together.

Daddy's Arms (Friday Devotional)

 

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

- Psalm 46:1

Last night we were eating dinner at a nearby restaurant, with Lindsey and Andrew sitting on one side of the booth and me and Katherine on the other side. Suddenly and without warning, Katherine, who’d been sitting on her knees, slipped under the table and came crashing down to the floor. She immediately started crying, so I scooped her up and held her in my arms until she calmed down.

After a few minutes, I set her back down to eat. She had a couple of fries, but then whimpered again and scooted closer to me. “Daddy’s arms!” she pleaded. I put her in my lap, held her close for a couple minutes, then set her back down. But two more times we went through the same cycle—with her scare still fresh, the only place she wanted to be was in Daddy’s arms.

There’s something about that kind of experience that we never fully outgrow—when we feel unsafe or hurt, we want to be held close. The insistence we have on being independent and proud fades away; our stubborn refusal to accept help is a thing of the past. When you’ve been knocked down, you want someone to pick you up.

Scripture promises that our heavenly Father is there for us when we stumble as well as when we are upright, that He loves us when we think we are self-sufficient and when we recognize that we aren’t. While the world can be a threatening, frightening place, God is sovereign over it all, and in Him there is rest. So whether you have fallen and are hurting or you think you have it all together, know that there is a place where safety and love can be found: in the arms of the Father.

A Legacy of Faith (Friday Devotional)

 

One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.

- Psalm 145:4

There are certain things which may matter to you, but that no one else cares to hear about. The status of your fantasy football team, for example, may be of intense interest to you, but will make any listener’s eyes glaze over with boredom. Similarly, a story about office drama may make for good gossip within the confines of your workplace, but it’s likely of little interest to those outside it. Updates on what you had for lunch, who you saw at your high school reunion, the deal you got on a used car last month—all of these things may fascinate you, but they don’t necessarily captivate other people.

What does hold people’s attention are stories that really matter. Talk to someone about a life-and-death struggle and they’ll sit with rapt attention. Rope them in with universal themes of struggle, loss, redemption, and overcoming steep odds, and they’ll listen to you all day. Tell them about something transformative and they’ll stick around.

When we talk about a legacy of faith—whether the legacy of an individual or of a church—we can tend to get bogged down in the things that matter to us, but are perhaps of less interest to others. We refer to statistics and accomplishments, things we can point to as quantitative evidence of our faithfulness. We rely on visible, tangible prosperity for evidence that God is with us.

But if we want to tell a story that people want to hear, we’re better off talking less about what we’ve done and more about what the Lord has done; we do well to tell the story of salvation instead of merely listing our own accomplishments. Where our power is limited and fleeting, God is almighty; where our intentions are mixed, God’s are pure.

If your story of faith is built on the foundation of your actions, it may be personal without being powerful. Better then to tell a story the whole world needs to hear, a story that generations can commend to one another: the story of the wonderful works of God.

Sharing Something Beautiful (Friday Devotional)

 

And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

- 2 Timothy 2:2

In his lifetime, writer Franz Kafka published only a few short stories and articles. While known in literary circles in his native Prague, he was nowhere close to a household name, and in fact made his living as an insurance officer, writing only in his spare time.

So when he contracted tuberculosis in his 30s and made out his will, it was with a spirit of discouragement that he instructed his friend and executor, Max Brod, to burn all of his unpublished works—from unfinished novels to letters to diaries. But upon Kafka’s death, Brod ignored the instructions to burn without reading, and what he found amazed him. He was convinced that Kafka’s wishes could not be fulfilled, that to do so would starve the world of something beautiful. Kafka today is acknowledged as one of the greatest writers to ever live—but only because Brod shared what he’d read.

The gospel is like that too—for it to make a difference in our world, it needs to be shared. God has given us the good news of salvation through His Son, but not as a secret to be kept or a treasure to be hoarded. The task of God’s people is to tell others about Jesus, to use both our words and deeds to bear witness to the grace of God in Christ.

When the gospel is shared far and wide, the world is changed for the better—but first it must be shared. How will you share the good news today?

October Reading Log

3 books this month, which made for plenty of reading but not a very long reading log. Nevertheless, there was plenty to think about and write about. Take a look!

4 Articles I Like This Month

"Integrity and the Future of the Church" by Russell Moore, Plough. 17 minutes.

A sobering, insightful look at what is driving so-called "ex-vangelicals" to leave the church...it's not them, it's us.

"The Passion of Questlove" by Jazmine Hughes, The New York Times Magazine. 24 minutes.

A profile of the always fascinating D.J., audiophile, and frontman for the Roots.

"I Had a Chance to Travel Anywhere. Why Did I Pick Spokane?" by Jon Mooallem, The New York Times Magazine. 22 minutes.

The author, prepared to enter post-pandemic life, attended a minor league baseball game. What did her learn from the experience about America?

"The Afterlife of Rachel Held Evans" by Eliza Griswold, The New Yorker. 17 minutes.

A profile of one of my favorite Christian writers, the late Rachel Held Evans, in preparation of the release of her posthumous memoir.

Reading Through the Fantastic Four- #175-193, Annual #12

JESUS AND JOHN WAYNE: HOW WHITE EVANGELICALS CORRUPTED A FAITH AND FRACTURED A NATION by Kristin Kobes du Mez

Many have remarked in the last 5 years that American evangelicalism seems to be more of a sociopolitical movement than a religious one, more grounded in subculture than theology. Articles, blog posts, speeches, and endless pontificating by pundits have decried how different the American evangelical church looks from the one Jesus established in the first century. But few have told the story of how this came to be. Jesus and John Wayne, a seminal work by history professor Kristen Kobes du Mez, tells that story persuasively and powerfully.

According to du Mez, American evangelism emerged as a mixture of biblical theology, Christian nationalism, southern heritage, and masculine militancy, and can trace its birth to the early days of the Cold War. It was in that time, with the looming threat of Communism top of mind, that American Christians, insecure in the face of a changing world, began looking for security in the kind of men exemplified by the characters played by John Wayne: rugged defenders of law and order. None of that is particularly novel—people have always turned to strongmen in times of fear. What was new was the way the church began to gradually baptize this archetype.

Moving chronologically from Billy Graham to Jerry Falwell to Oliver North to the cast of Duck Dynasty to, finally, Donald Trump, du Mez convincingly shows how key figures came to exemplify (some intentionally, some unwittingly) this movement and how, by 2016, being an "evangelical" had come to mean something much different from "Bible believing Christian" even as most evangelicals maintained they were synonyms.

Ultimately, du Mez postulates, what today drives American evangelicalism as we know it is fear—fear of change, fear of being reduced or replaced, fear of an unknown future. What's left to the next generation, if we are to turn the ship around, is to remind people that perfect love casts out fear. As du Mez puts it in the book's final sentences, "Appreciating how this ideology developed over time is also essential for those who wish to dismantle it. What was once done might also be undone."

MIDDLESEX by Jeffrey Eugenides

Hooooo boy. Going to have to be careful how I write this review.

That's because Middlesex, the winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, is a coming-of-age novel about a hermaphrodite, a.k.a. an intersex individual, someone who is born with both characteristics of both sexes and cannot be classified in a binary sense. Dealing with issues of sex and gender, the book is ahead of its time in many ways (though, for those deeply enmeshed in the LGBTQ+ community, I suspect it is considered retrograde in other senses). And for those almost totally unfamiliar with these topics <raises hand timidly> it is an education and, like all great novels, an exercise in empathy.

But, as you might guess about an award-winning novel, it is not confined to one topic. In fact, the book is equal parts family saga, immigrant novel, and coming-of-age story, while also having a good deal to say about America (specifically Detroit) in the 1950s through 1970s. To be more specific, it tells the story of Cal (initially Calliope) Stephanides and her struggle growing up with the secret, suspected but not entirely understood, that she is intersex. As Cal tells his story, he takes it all the way back to the scandalous marriage of his grandparents in Greece and their immigration to America, as well as the meeting and marriage of his parents and ultimately Cal's own birth.

Throughout the book, several themes dominate: shame, acceptance, and ultimately, redemption. By telling his family's story, Cal comes to terms with his own; by grounding his identity in his family story, he is able to make sense out of the confusion he was born into.

Jeffrey Eugenides is a masterful writer (this was my second of his novels, and far superior to the other, The Marriage Plot), and manages to pull off the literary feat of telling a complex, thematic story without ever seeming pretentious or overly intellectual. While the plot of this book is worlds away from what I'd normally read, his engaging prose and relatable characters hooked me early. For those willing to listen and learn, to put yourself in the shoes of someone whose experience you know nothing about, I recommend Middlesex. It'll stretch you, to be sure. But sometimes we need that.

ESSENTIAL GHOST RIDER VOL. 1 by Various

My impression going into this Essential volume, the first of four on this character, was that Ghost Rider is a fantastic design in search of a character. After reading his first 20+ issues, I stand by that assessment.

There is no doubt, Ghost Rider looks cool. I mean, look at that image above. A leather-bedecked motorcycle rider with a flaming skull for a head?  That's just awesome, especially when his cycle has flaming wheels (not pictured above, but quickly made a feature of the character.) It's for good reason that Ghost Rider's design has barely changed at all in the 40+ years since his introduction.

But as for the character and his stories, this volume shows that Marvel knew they had visual gold long before they had any narrative to match. While the origin would later be retconned more than once, Ghost Rider's basic origin comes down to a deal with the devil, a deal struck by stunt rider Johnny Blaze (yep, that's his real name) in order to save his mentor and the father of his girlfriend. In exchange for the sparing of that life, Blaze becomes an agent of darkness, transformed every night (and then in a later retcon, whenever danger lurks) into a hellfire-wielding demon.

It's actually not the worst premise, just one that never really goes anywhere, at least not in this volume. As depicted by a rotating cast of Marvel's Bronze Age writers, Ghost Rider is little more than an Evil Kinevil ripoff, an undisguised attempt by Marvel to cash in on that 1970s craze. The character doesn't acquire any memorable villains in his first few years, his support cast is so boring that he ends up stealing someone from Daredevil's (Karen Page briefly joins Blaze's stunt crew), and the character as a whole feels utterly directionless. For a character who looks so dynamic, it's amazing how boring his book really is.

Ghost Rider's early stories betray the danger of when comics rush something out. With a design like Ghost Rider's on the cover, comic readers were always going to give this book a shot. But if I'd been there in the 1970s, it wouldn't have taken me long to give up on the book. Great visuals will get you started in comics, but they can't be the only thing you have going for you.