Brazos Book Reviews

Christmas in the Emergency Room & Rob Bell's Greek

Our first Christmas at home found us in the Emergency Room with our first child.  At 8 months old, she loves to pick up anything off of our floor and see if tastes good.  Today, Christmas day, she decided to swallow an unknown (as of yet) object.  After living in Grand Rapids for 4 months we still hadn't figured out where the closest emergency room was, though we thought of it many times.  Bad parents right - well while we were figuring out what to do, I googled the nearest emergency room and became frustrated that I wasn't able to immediately find the nearest one.  Finally, I found where to go, we got ready quickly and jumped into the car.  She had been choking and we were worried that the unknown object could be stuck in her throat.  We took her immediately to the ER entrance, and got in to see the doctor.   We were relieved to discover that she was alright.  Our first Christmas at home turned out to be quite the scare, but in the end she was ok and we headed home.

Back at home, I began to think about the evening.  While searching online for the closest ER, I actually found out a lot of other really interesting information regarding the hospitals and urgent care centers in the area.  There are all kinds of locations for what ails you.  Some are primarily for sports care while others are just billing and paperwork locations.  Some are for rehabilitation and others are designed to take care of not-so-serious emergencies.  While getting directions to the actual hospital where we ended up going, I found out about the new Children's wing, the Cancer Research Center, I even found where the gift shop was, but couldn't locate the ER, but I knew it had to be in plain view once we got to the hospital.  I was frustrated that I couldn't just find out about the Emergency Room and had to wade through all of the different aspects of health care before I go to the one that mattered most to me at that moment.  Then it hit me, in an emergency, the ER is the most important location in a hospital - duh right?  Yet, that doesn't mean that all of the other purposes for a hospital or health care facility aren't important, they just weren't tonight.  Later on in life, they will probably grow in importance to me and my family, depending upon how our health needs develop.  For those who are struggling through cancer, their hope is set upon the cancer research center and all that it has to offer - they probably don't think of the ER all that often.

A family friend of ours was driving down the road in her native city of Vancouver with a friend one day.  She glanced through her passenger window and marveled at this beautiful building coming up on their left.  She let her friend know how impressive it looked and asked her what the building was.  Her friend laughed in amazement and asked - "How could you not know what that building is?  You've been there so many times."  Apparently, she was a regular visitor to this building, but just to its rear entrance, because that's where the ER happened to be.  Having rushed her sons there so often, she never got the chance to see what the rest of the building was for or what it looked like.

Does Christianity feel like that to you - do you sense you're missing out on so much more of what Christ has to offer.  It might be that we frequent the emergency room all to often, not realizing the vastness of what else He has come to help us with.  Christ didn't only come to earth to open up an Emergency Room - He came to open an entire hospital, with  wings, and wards, different departments, and an entire array of services needed for the whole person, -  physical, emotional and spiritual needs.  He has also invited us to join the staff of the hospital, to help others when they come through the doors, for whatever ails them or for just moderate concerns.  Eventually, they will need the emergency ward but their time at the hospital doesn't have to begin there.

I wonder this Christmas if there isn't more to him, to his plan and to his birth.  I wonder if the Gospel means so much more than just a rescue in case of an emergency.  Tonight the doctor told my wife and I that as emergency room staff, they always assume the worst possible circumstances - first.  They work down the list, eliminating the worst possibilities as they go, moving to less serious probabilities - otherwise known as differential diagnosis.  They assured us that we had nothing to worry about with our daughter because they had already eliminated the most dangerous options and had established in our time that there were no indicators for even mild concerns.  We were free to go home.

Christmas is the time of year to remember and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.  Many of us have given our lives to him, because of what he was born for.  We usually say something like, "We are born to live, but Jesus was born to die."  This immediately brings images of his cross, the crown of thorns, and his trial  into our imaginations.  We are thankful for his death and his resurrection because of what that means to us - because it means we are saved.  In our greatest hour of need, Christ came to ransom us, he championed our cause and as the Great Physician, he rushed to our emergency and gave everything to rescue us.  In our moment of distress, he became our ER, the one place that we knew we had to go to be redeemed.

In an emergency room, it's important to work from the worst to the not so bad.  This is appropriate as well when we consider what Christ has rescued us from with his death and resurrection.  But what about his life, his birth, the birth of the church, or the millenia of Yahweh worshipers that preceded him?  There are many more rooms to uncover beautiful truths, to encounter God in his richness beyond the cross and empty tomb.  By no means should we denigrate what those symbolize but by no means do they denigrate the vast and robust faith that we inhabit.  The Gospel is meant for such much more and Christmas is a reminder that his birth wasn't just for his death, but for new life in this life and in the one to come.  His first miracle wasn't turning water to wine, it was being born, born from a virgin, a woman who labored in pain for his arrival.  If we set out eyes only on our rescue, we miss the life we were meant to live now.  Billy Graham once said that "Life at its best is filled with sorrow" and though life is more difficult for some, our days on earth are not to be numbered, they are to be lived, to the fullest.

Christmas isn't found just in the Emergency Room, it's in the entire hospital, in all of its rooms - its purpose is tied to all that our health involves and so much more. Likewise, Christ's birth carries so much more than our rescue, a rescue needed nonetheless, but a rescue that is only part of the breadth, depth and expansiveness of God and his robust Gospel.  We thank you Christ for this Gospel, for what it has meant and what it will mean for millenia to come.  Merry Christmas and Blessings on a New Year filled with life lived to its fullest...


Rob Bell's Advent Service - Jesus came to tell a story about the hagioi (people of God).  He came so that we could learn how to become what we really are...rather than only what we aren't - to let us know that the emergency room isn't the only ward of the hospital that he invites us to explore...

Ephesians 1

It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.

It's in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it (this Message of your salvation), found yourselves home free—signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit. This signet from God is the first installment on what's coming, a reminder that we'll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life.

Paul goes on to pray for the Ephesians in chapter 3,

I ask—ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory—to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for his followers, oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him—endless energy, boundless strength!

All this energy issues from Christ: God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ's body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence.

Glory to God in the church! 

Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus!
Glory down all the generations!
Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes!

Francis Chan - Still the Man?

I have a confession to make - I am one of those guys who critiques authors without reading their books.  Now, Francis Chan, I haven't read his books.  I've heard him in audio and visual form before and have read articles about him as well as an interview I think.  I've also interacted with a few people that have really been challenged and touched by his writings.

I wasn't really interested in his books but a lot of my friends and people I know have and they all love the books.   I get the sense that his books have these characteristics - to get people to be real and passionate and long for more from God - to do church more authentically and less like a machine - to be genuine and simple in one's approach to faith but still expect big things from God, to depend more radically on God than on man, etc...

I will sound arrogant but I've read books like that and many have been written in different forms for centuries in church history.  In reading them, I was seeking the answer to the longing for more that these books embodied.  The problem is that I've always been more interested in the "how" of this direction he's taking rather than with the "need" to do something more radical and passionate.  But I'm saying this with the awareness that I haven't read the books and only heard him through audio and visual options, which may not be enough.

Recently, I watched two of his new nooma-like videos - they were really good but left me wanting more and also frustrated by a few things he said.  I don't know if I would use them but I know that a lot of people like them, but I still don't get this guy.  He's a bit of an enigma.  A friend of mine who really likes him introduced himself to Chan at an event hosted by Chan in Chicago ( I wrote about that here and then introduce his exit from the pastorate along with other famous pastors - here ).  It didn't go so well but didn't go so bad either.  It's hard to get a lock on this guy.

The article which sparked this conversation off can be found on CNN's Belief Blog.  He's making headlines in a lot place and it hasn't stopped.  Apparently, the "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" pastor, Josh Harris, empathized with him for wanting to avoid the fame of pastoring, but didn't think that he or anyone else should leave because of that, instead just learn to roll with it and serve the church regardless.  Harris had this to say in the article,

He said he understood Chan felt God was leading him in a new direction. But he hopes there won’t be an exodus of pastors from their pulpits. “There’s a tendency to idolize one person’s choices. We have to say, ‘you know what, there are a lot of ways to see what faithfulness [to God’s calling] looks like.’ Not every pastor of a big church should leave.”

I'm not sure that leaving a church is the worst thing in the world if that' what you want to do but Harris is coming from a place that probably understands more of a triumphal church that wants to turn back the "post-Christian" tide that America is experiencing while guys like myself and others don't mind dealing with a "post-Christian" America.  It's a positive direction for those who want what Chan wants, something more than what we've cooked up.   

On another not, I think what he's done to leave the church is unique and great but there are other pastors who have done the same thing and who have left even larger churches with a passion to do something different and have done just that.  Instead of making it a big deal that they have left, but they just went and did something different and better - which is what they are known for now.

Hugh Halter and Matt Smay of Missio  are two guys that I can think of among others that I have heard of doing the same thing.  What they are doing now is way cooler than what they were doing when they left their big mega churches.  The thing is that many have seen far ahead of what Chan has seen and already chosen to not be in the position he was in, in order to do something better.  Richard Rohr's statement, "The best critique of the bad is the practice of the better" seems to resonate at this point.  For Chan, it seems like he is in the stuck in the middle of these two ideas and hasn't landed yet.  Well as long as he surfs this wave, many of us are wondering, when and where will he land and what will have to say to all of us who at this point don't know where he lands or stands yet.  We'll see eventually, but while the rest of us wait to see what's next, for many, Chan is still the Man.  Merry Christmas and Blessing on your New Year.

Doubt, friend of sinners, friend of mine

Recently, a friend of mine handed in a project teaching young adults about doubt. "How do you teach doubt?," I thought to myself.  Apparently, an article called, "The Benefit of Doubt" posted on Peter Enns's website, BioLogos.org, is what got him started.  After reading through his lesson, and learning something new, yet hearing many resonations, I was reminded of my own doubt, my own history of letting go of a God that held me up only to let me down, a god that I had created.  I am convinced that notions of God that are not true are made available to us to get us through stuff, but does that mean that those notions were not allowing us to encounter Him, the Eternal Being, our Father?  I don't think so, so what if He allows us to fabricate him and is so doing, he invades our fabrication to encounter us, or he embodies our self-deceit in order to draw us out of it?  


Psychologists will tell you that in order to help the mentally ill, you have to enter their world of "truth" in order to validate them and only then can you draw them back to reality.  The film, Shutter Island, is a fantastic example of this.  At the end of the film, the main character, Teddy, relapses back into his fictitious world because the pain of the what he did in the real world was too much to handle. He closes with this telling statement, "a place like this can make you wonder: is it better to live as a monster or die a good man?"  Truth in all its glory is too much for broken humanity, for us - we need lies to make it through the day, mostly lies we tell ourselves but we don't mind the ones we hear from others also - as long as it makes life a little easier and more manageable.  


But doubt - what about doubt?  We aren't allowed to drink mother's milk forever.  The more I experience doubt myself, I keep coming to the point that it has more to do with a transitional time than a stage of life.  more recently a book was written that might help with this.  Jason Boyett's book, O Me of Little Faith: True Confessions of a Spiritual Weakling, brings this discussion to a contemporary audience but earlier in this decade, which is about to end, Kester Brewin introduced his take on doubt.  It seems he understands it more as a stage but I've come to think of it as more of a transition rather than a stage, or maybe it's just a transitional stage.  Regardless, what are we transitioning into?  


Brewin in his book, Signs of Emergence , writes about James Fowler's stages of Faith in his book, Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning  "He identifies six stages and the first two, Intuitive-Projective and Mythical-Literal, are the stages that define the more childlike understanding of God.  Stage 3, the Synthetic-Conventional, is what Brewin calls a local maximum - it's the stage that many Christians and churches find themselves at and the process for transformation usually doesn't address more than one's own 'holiness.'"  While Individuals have been told that the answer to the question, 'How can we effect transformation?' lies in personal holiness, the systematic faults that are actually the root of the problem have remained unchanged." (pg. 27 - Signs of Emergence)  

Brewin writes regarding Fowler's understanding of this third stage, "'for many adults it becomes a permanent place of equilibrium'" where people fall into the trap of thinking that any further change is unnecessary.  At this stage being part of a tribe of community is very significant.  Reflecting on Fowler's work, Alan Jamieson identifies people at this stage as being 'loyalists who hold deep convictions' but that while their beliefs and values are often deeply held they are typically not examined critically and are therefore tacitly held to.  That is, they know what they know but are generally unable to tell you how they know something is true except by referring to an external authority outside of themselves.  The most common example of this are 'the Bible says so,' or 'my pastor teaches this.'" (pg. 28 - Signs of Emergence)


The fourth stage is a tricky one - it requires removing oneself from the group and questioning long held assumptions, conventionally laid wisdom, and the authority that speaks.  "They raise doubts and call things into question.  Their identity does not need to be bolstered by being part of a tribe, and they tend to widen their frame of reference beyond the perceived small world of Stage three...Churches that are stuck around stage three become intolerant of those in stage 4, who in turn become intolerant of an unchanging church, and many, many Christians give up and leave the church altogether." (pg. 29 - Signs of Emergence)


Brewin reminds us that there are still two more stages described but to outline that would take a lot more text so I'll save that for later but for now I'll finish with a long quote from page 33.


"It is important to note that one can never force individuals from stage to stage.  It is no good egging someone on to Stage four; what is important is that the path is clear for them to travel when they find their way there in their own time.  In fact, it would be criminal to force people on before they were ready, for Fowler suggest that is is usually difficulties or suffering that prompt movement, and to wish that someone would just suffer a bit so that they could see the truth better is unthinkable.  The problems come when people are either so enmeshed in their infantilism and disconnected from wiser sources that they never find out that other paths exist, or are spiritually unconscious and unable to process the changes they are experiencing.  If people are forced to experience life from a Stage 3 perspective in a Stage 3 church when they are actually at Stage 4 (but have no idea that anything could be different), they they are likely to become damaged.  Two things tend to happen at this point: either they opt out altogether or, like infants...[they] blindly focus all their energies on making the only model they know work as best it can, not realizing that any other is possible." (pg. 33 - Signs of Emergence)


As G.K. Chesterton once wrote, "Life is not a illogicality, yet it is a trap for logicians; its inexactitude lies hidden; its wildness lies in wait." (pg. 28)

In closing out this decade and reflecting upon the birth of Christ, it seems appropriate to ask the question "What would Jesus doubt?"  Would he have, should he have?  If he were a human being as much as our tradition teaches us, and doubt is not a sin, and we confess that Jesus never sinned, then did Jesus doubt?  He must have; yet if that's true what did he doubt and how did he and whom did he doubt?

I'm somewhat comforted by the fact that Jesus doubted, but not so comforted to not know what he doubted. If he did, in what what way do you think it happened?  Merry Christmas to all the doubters who celebrate Jesus' birth in spite of our doubt.  Blessings!

-Nathan Smith

Walter Brueggemann on preaching - whoa!

Ken Robinson - Don't know the future? - don't try

iPad & iPhone Christmas concert - WOW!!!!!

Jesus and Women - Ben Witherington on the move again.

Thanks to Dave Fitch for posting this on his twitter.



Jesus and Women from CPX on Vimeo.

The Rapture debunked - Sorry Scofield and D.L.

Love of God is Love of Neighbor

An Invitation to Justice from The Justice Conference on Vimeo.

James K.A, Smith Dancing with the Neo-Reformed

"Sometimes...folks who are eager to be Calvinists might not understand the implications of what it means to be Reformed."  - James K.A. Smith



Greg Wheatley interviews Jamie Smith on Moody Radio to get a better picture of what his new book, Letters to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition on Moody Radio's "Inside Look" with Greg Wheatley.  It was a great interview and an awareness of the history of the Reformation Tradition.


The Economist covers the shift to the New Calvinism from Baptist associations in a unique way, especially among the SBC - the largest evangelical denomination in the U.S.




Jamie Smith will be presenting his latest book discussed above at Baker Books on December 3rd and then at Calvin College on the 4th in Grand Rapids.  Information for this can be found at Jamie Smith's blog