A few weeks ago, my Twitter stream had an offer go through it. If I had a blog and agreed to give a book review, the nice people from Zonervan would give me a book. Hey, i will do anything for free so I thought why not. I contacted they, got the book a few days later, and now, the last day that the review should be done I finally got the book read. I am not saying it was a boring book. Quite the opposite. In fact, I had to put it down to many times the chew on what the author had to say.
Now when I got the book I did a big eye roll. The author, Steve Chalke, was listed on the back cover as being '”..a UN Special Advisor working to combat people trafficking.” Oh well, another liberal author, is it too late to send the book back or pretend that I never got it in the first place. I am glad that I did not do it. I took the time to do what I said I would. And in some ways, that is what the author was trying to say.
Now, do not get me wrong. I still feel, especially from my conservative point of view that the author is more liberal. I have no problem with that. I know a lot of people who are liberal and we can learn from each other if we put prejudice aside and listen to each other. And that is what I had to do here.
The book is divided into Parts. Each part has two sections and a Thinking Christianity section. The first section is available to read if you are so inclined. And it was the first section that really got me upset with the author. His premise as I could tell, was that we have interpreted Jesus, the Bible and Christianity in our own image. Did what our meaning of the words match up with what the Bible really said. How bold of him to think that was my reaction. Are you going to tell me that my way is wrong and yours is right. What makes your opinion any better than mine. First reactions are not always right. At one point he points out that if you take the 10 commandments as a list of do’s and do not’s then you have missed the point. Read the whole thing. Of course, that is what I try to do. As he pointed out that God just before this said, ‘be holy for I am holy’, not the commandments take on a different meaning. They are not suggestions as some might say, but God is saying, ‘I am Holy, here is how you are to be Holy!’ Now we do not have a list of rules to follow, but ideals.
Now that becomes the them of the book, the ideals that we should have as Christians. In fact, in the very last chapter he says what the whole book has said in two lines:
In truth, however, as we have seen, the formation of moral habits and practices is a real and ongoing communal discipline. Whereas blind obedience to a set of inflexible rules is not only a lazy and poor substitute for moral formulation, it will also stunt your growth.
I yelled out in my mind why didn’t you say that 140 pages ago. I could have saved a lot of time. And then I thought, no I was not ready for what he had to say. Although I feel this is the way I lead my life (not as well as I could I will say), I realized that I would not have accepted what he said 140 pages before this. I had to let him weave the stories of Jesus life and the old and new testament saints into a pattern that I had not see up until then. I did not see that when Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, He did not ask which was the neighbor, he asks who acted like the neighbor. Who threw away the rules and did what was right. It was like the story that I heard Charles Swindol say on his radio show, Insight for Living, this morning. A story of a little boy who in Nazi Germany was lead with a neighborhood in Germany to dig their own graves, and then lined up naked and shot. The boy did not get shot by some miracle, but was covered by his parents blood and fell into the pit when they did. The Germans covered the bodies, but the shallow grave let him breath till night. He dug his way out and went from farmhouse to farmhouse asking for help and all panicked and would not take him in. He then said something no Jewish person would ever say. As the door opened, he said, ‘Do not turn me away, I am the person that your Jesus talks about when he says not to turn away one in need.’ And the took him in warmly. The people had to turn away the fear that they would be killed for taking him in, to do as the Good Samaritan did, throw out the rule book and like the way Christ wanted them too.
Am I going to say this is easy, nope. It is a struggle every day, and we have to have the insight not to say something is wrong because our church says it is wrong, but we have thought it through and said this is how Jesus would have acted. Does that mean we will always agree. No, because we are fallen humans and still see things differently. While the author talks about how much better it would be if we would council young pregnant woman to have their babies, and help with the adoptions rather than be political about it, I had to scream a little bit. First because I know many people/ministries that are doing that. Second, because why can we not do both? In the end we will have disagreements and I think that is OK.
The book is not a simple read. If you pick it up, make sure that you know that you will have to take some time to digest the nuggets that are there. I do recommend it though.
