Life: A Series of Transitions

I’m preparing a series of talks for an upcoming retreat on the topic of life transitions.  I’ve been mulling this word – transitions – over in my head for the past month or so and two observations have consistently come to mind.  First, I don’t like transitions.  In many ways the past three years of my life have been characterized by a series of three major life transitions that happened within the span of a year: adopting our son, buying our first home, and helping plant our church.  Clearly these were all really important, good transitions but I’d be fine with never again experiencing that much transition in such a short period of time.

Secondly, despite my allergy to them, transitions are normal.  The word itself gives a sense of impermanence but life is really just a series of transitions, one after another.  Accepting this is tough, especially within a cultural milieu built on moving past transitions.  The reasons for this are fairly obvious: transitions are times of vulnerability and uncertainty, undesirable traits in a society that values strength, stability, and savvy.  What passes for political discourse betrays these negative sentiments; our country is meant either to return to an idealized past or evolve to an enlightened future.  In both cases the point is to arrive; transitions are to be transcended.

Christians, without downplaying their challenges, are those with the spiritual resources to acknowledge the persistence of transitions while also thriving in the midst of them.  The transitions of career, family, and the many others brought on my opportunity and, more often, crisis are simply the stuff of life for the Christian.  More accurately, the stuff of the abundant life promised by Jesus.  We don’t wait to make it through the in-between times in order to live well; the good life, when defined differently than the American dream, is available now, regardless of which transition(s) we currently exist within.

“…the man at the end of the Protestant road…”

I am, maybe, the ultimate Protestant, the man at the end of the Protestant road, for as I have read the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one.  He seems to have come to carry religion out of the temple into the fields and sheep pastures, onto the roadsides and the banks of rivers, into the houses of sinners and publicans, into the town and the wilderness, toward the membership of all that is here.  Well, you can read and see what you think.

-Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow.

Berry’s take on the common view that Jesus didn’t found an “organized religion” is perfect in its whimsy and wisdom.

Wrestling for Jesus

You’ll enjoy this film far more than the title suggests.  (Unless, of course, you’re the type who searches out lo-fi, indie documentaries in which case you’re already intrigued.)  Ostensibly a film about Christian wrestlers in South Carolina whose matches are part WWF and part revival meeting, Wrestling for Jesus tells the story of faith gained and lost. I cringed repeatedly while peaking into this odd Christian subculture but director Nathan Clarke ensures that no person in his film becomes a caricature.  The film masterfully avoids all forms of cynicism and condescension.

Timothy Blackmon is the compelling and fractured character who heads the Wrestling For Jesus organization, wrestling under the name of T-Money.  Haunted by his father’s suicide and driven to use his passion for wrestling to evangelize, Blackmon is forced to navigate an increasingly perilous world, including a difficult marriage and competition with another wrestling league.  The staged wrestling in the ring begins to pale next to T-Money’s real life troubles.

Wrestling For Jesus can serve as a case study for a common tendency among certain evangelically-oriented Christians.  For Blackmon and his fellow Christian wrestlers, wrestling is a means to an end.  Each match ends with a preacher standing in the ring issuing a heart-felt invitation for the small crowd of spectators to accept Jesus.  The altar call is the real hook; the wrestling, as entertaining as it may be, is simply the bait.  This bait and hook tendency can be found throughout much of American Christianity and the film shows some of its significant deficiencies.  Even so, the way the story is told, we cannot judge Blackmon or his companions.  His passion and pain invite us into his world, whether or not we relate with his faith or circumstances.

Find this film, watch it with some friends, and enjoy the conversation that is sure to follow.

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I received a review copy of this film from the producer.

Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind

In 1995 Mark Noll wrote The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, a book directed towards Christian academics that was, thankfully, read widely beyond academia.  The book’s hook came in a phrase often quoted over the past 15 years: The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.  A bit of a downer, yes, but the book provided the implicit expectation of the compatibility of evangelical convictions with a robust life of the mind.

In his new book, Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind, Noll demonstrates how it is precisely these deeply held convictions that provide the rationale for unapologetic engagement with the academic disciplines.  Once again, regardless of its intended audience, this is a book that deserves a wide reading.

Noll, formerly a professor of history at Wheaton College and now at the University of Notre Dame, is straightforward about the reason he believes evangelically-minded people should care deeply about learning.

Thus, the greatest hope for Christian learning in our age, or in any age, lies not primarily in heightened activity, in better funding, or in strategizing  for the tasks at hand – though all these matters play an important part.  Rather, the great hope for Christian learning is to delve deeper into the Christian faith itself.  And going deeper into Christian faith means, in the end, learning more about Jesus Christ.

And a few pages later,

Put most simply, for believers to be studying created things is to be studying the works of Christ.

Christology, according to the author, is the hope and rationale for all Christian learning.  This is the point he makes throughout the book, dedicating chapters to history, science and biblical study to show the difference it makes when certain theological truths are held about Jesus Christ.  He comes to this unsurprising but often-neglected starting point through a few key passages from the New Testament – John 1:2-3; Colossians 1:15-16; Hebrews 1:2 – as well as the major Christian creeds – The Apostles’ Creed; The Nicene Creed; The Chalcedonian Definition.

The expansive implications of Noll’s deceptively simple thesis is what makes this book so important.  Consider: If, as the biblical passages above claim, Christ is creator, sustainer, and purpose of the universe, shouldn’t Christians be the most curious of all people?  Wouldn’t we expect to learn more about the one we claim as Savior and King as we pursue wide-ranging studies?  Rather than leading to the sort of anti-intellectualism evangelicals can be known for, Noll shows that belief in Jesus as Lord provides all that is needed to intellectually motivate the serious scholar and ordinary person alike.

Noll covers a lot of ground in a quick 167 pages, far too much to summarize here.  The pace slows down at points (at least for this non-academic) but the payoff is always worth the effort.  Other portions move quickly, with implications that provoke the imagination.  Chapter 3, “Jesus Christ: Guidance for Serious Learning,” was one such section for me.  Here the author provides “four general expectations that might inform intellectual life” based on “the nature of Christ’s person and work.”  These expectations – duality, contingency, particularity, and self-denial – provide an attractive vision of distinctly Christ-centered learning.

Evangelically-oriented Christians have often not taken seriously the biblical command to love God with our minds.  Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind shows the pointlessness of this sad fact while providing plenty of hope for a different future.

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I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.

One.Life

It’s unlikely that you are the intended reader of Scot McKnight’s latest book, One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read it.  Who is the book for?  While he never says it, the presence of the hundreds of undergraduate students- Christian and not- he has taught over the years lurk in every chapter.  Scot’s care for these students and their questions, concerns, and complaints about Christianity seem to me the driving force behind the content and passion in these pages.

Scot describes One.Life as an overview of “how Jesus understand the Christian life,” one meant to connect with young people who care little for Christianity but who remain intrigued by Jesus.  The chapters are divided by topics and attributes that slowly bring into focus a definition of a life devoted to Jesus.  The strength of this book is how discipleship is never isolated from Jesus.  Scot doesn’t shy away from the way Christians believe challenging things- the reality of hell for example- or live in difficult ways- money and sex are seen in counter-cultural ways.  But unlike some books that attempt to portray the radical edge of Christianity, Scot ties all of these beliefs and practices to the reality of Jesus who makes such a life possible and reasonable.

Reading this book I was glad that Scot included his own story of growing up within a distinct branch of Christianity.  His was a tribe that prioritized individual conversion and separatist piety.  Certainly there will be plenty of readers, young and old, who will identify with this experience.  For those of us without that same strong memory there are a few moments in the book that could feel reactionary.  But One.Life is a gracious book and regardless of our backgrounds the wide expanse of Christianity as portrayed by the author invites further exploration.

So if this book wasn’t written primarily for you, then why read it?  First, you will hear questions being asked by a younger generation from someone who spends much of his time on the receiving end of those questions.  Second, like the author you may have been handed a vision of Christianity that is too small or that contains far too little of Jesus.  Third, Scot’s conviction that Jesus actually changes lives is a reminder we cannot hear enough of.

One last reason, for what it’s worth:  a story from the book made it into my sermon a couple of weeks ago as a poignant example of the way Jesus subverts our religious instincts.  For that reason alone I’m glad to have read this book and happy to recommend it to you.

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I was sent a copy of this book by the author to review.