A Wolf At the Gate by Mark Van Steenwyk

When I received my copy of Wold at the Gate in the mail and I cracked open the cover, I instantly became a child again.  Stickers!  I love stickers!  What a cool surprise!  I wasn't sure where I'd put the stickers, but the joy I felt in seeing them was a definite plus.

As I began the thin volume, I was a little disappointed.  It read like an academic writing a children's book: well plotted, but without any levity, charm or prosaic interludes.  It is not aiming to be a classic in children's literature, but a moralistic allegory.

But what a clever allegory it is. While on the surface it is a retelling of the legend of St. Francis and the wolf, it goes far beyond that into the motivations of evil and criminals, and how one can transform them through love and acceptance.  While I found a couple of the turns a bit too quick, I think the bravery of both Francis and the wolf and their unique approach to evil is excellent and full of hope.

All my children are grown (thank God), but I wish that at least one were small that I could read this book to them and to get their opinion.  So I challenge you: get a copy of this book, spend a few evenings reading it to your elementary-school-age child and then discuss it with them:

When someone is attacking us, how should we respond to them?
How did Francis respond to the wolf?
Do you think that's a good way to deal with bad people?

Then let me know if your child was engaged enough to respond to the story.  I'm curious. 

Books on the Road to Damascus

I am a white male evangelical who repented.  I didn’t repent from being white or male, which I couldn’t help, and I understand from my science friends that it has to do with some genetic whoozawitz.  I still retain much that is evangelical, although my evangelical friends might disagree.   My repentance has not as much to do with being white or Christian, but it has much to do with the books I read.

It was a book that caused me to think that giving up everything I had and surrendering my life in service to the poor was a good idea.  It was a book that showed me that normal charity just wasn’t enough. It was a book that taught me that compassion to those not like us is the best way to live. It was a book that taught me that the Bible wasn’t written to the middle class evangelicals, but to outliers of society, and the best way to understand THAT book was to read it from their perspective. 

Clearly the lesson here is: Books are dangerous.  At least if you want to keep your life intact.

Obviously, not every book is dangerous.  I think reading Terry Pratchett is generally safe.  Or The Purpose Driven Life.  Or Jesus Calling.  I’m not saying that these books can’t  be inspirational or entertaining or even powerful.  But they can never be dangerous.  They aren’t the kind of books that take your life by the throat, choke out your last breath, toss you to the ground and say, “Now get up and walk.”  

There are books that speak to my privileged state as a white, relatively well-off, conservative evangelical  and says, “You know that this is not all there is to Jesus.”

Below are some books that belong to the “challenge the narrow-minded Christian” genre.  These are books that talk about how the author went through a process of paradigm shift and invites us to make that same change, to see the world in a different way than we did originally.  To see the world in a way closer to how Jesus saw it and sees it.  Yes, these books are all written by white male evangelicals.  But like the movie Knocked Up, these are books about male religious “slobs” who come to mature in powerful ways because a Lover taught them new ways to love.

Surprised by the Power of the Spirit by Jack Deere
Jack was a pastor of a moderate evangelical church who believed that the charismatic was of the devil and needed to be stopped.  This book details his journey to become a charismatic himself, not because of doctrine or theology (although that comes into play), but through the work of God.   It’s a well-told story, and Jack shows that his exclusionist theology was cutting off God’s work in his life.
http://www.amazon.com/Surprised-Power-Spirit-Zondervan-ebook/dp/B003TFE1QW/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397415552&sr=1-1&keywords=suprised+by+the+power+of+the+spirit

The Jesus I Never Knew by Phillip Yancey
Phillip grew up with a Sunday School Jesus like many people, but when he really started examining the gospels, he found that the real Jesus was quite a bit different than the one taught in churches.  This is an open, informal examination of the gospels, explaining what Phillip learned by going directly to Jesus and learning from him.
http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-I-Never-Knew-ebook/dp/B001EM0YAE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397415504&sr=1-1&keywords=the+jesus+I+never+knew

Unexpected News: Reading the Bible Through Third World Eyes by Robert McAfee Brown
When Robert started living as a church worker in Latin America, he thought he was the expert on the Bible.  What he soon realized is that he had a lot to learn.  The Bible wasn’t written to middle class Americans, but to the rural poor, and if we are going to learn what the Bible says, we have to learn how the poor read it.
http://www.amazon.com/Unexpected-News-Reading-Bible-Third-ebook/dp/B005B7UQHO/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397415460&sr=1-1&keywords=unexpected+news+reading+the+bible+with+third+world+eyes

The Unkingdom of God by Mark Van Steenwyk
Mark grew up as a patriotic American evangelical, and saw nothing wrong with that.  It took Mark to learn, not only that the American way of leadership wasn’t necessarily the best one, but how to transform himself into a servant, as Jesus would want him to be.
http://www.amazon.com/Unkingdom-God-Embracing-Subversive-Repentance-ebook/dp/B00EHIC9SW/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397415412&sr=1-1&keywords=the+unkingdom+of+god

Radical Faith by John Driver
Many of us were taught the basic lessons of church history by our church or seminary.  This is usually the story of our denomination or of Christendom’s triumph over the West.  But the heart of the church has been the outcast and rejected movements.  Driver examines many of these movements, planting a seed for a new way to look at the heart of the church over the last two thousand years.
http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Faith-John-Driver/dp/0968346286/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397415190&sr=1-2&keywords=radical+faith+john

Long Live the Riff Raff: Jesus’ Social Revolution by Steven Kimes
It’s a little tacky to suggest one’s own book, but here it is.  I grew up as a non-Christian in a wealthy part of the U.S. and when I spent time in India, I was shocked to see real poverty.  When I came back to the Bible after my experience, I found that Jesus’ teaching had a lot to say about social issues that I was never taught in the church.  This book is a summary of what I learned from Jesus about social structures and how to turn them upside down.
http://www.amazon.com/Long-Live-Riff-Raff-Revolution-ebook/dp/B007RJCBQS/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397415608&sr=1-1&keywords=steven+kimes

It is amazing how many of these books are simply Christian men being re-converted by Jesus.  Not converted by the church, by theology or by an excellent teacher.  Rather, in following Jesus, Jesus stopped us on our own road to Damascus and told us we were going the wrong way. 

I am sure that we all have things we need to learn from Jesus.  I pray that we would all be willing to keep being ready to repent, to be converted to be more like Jesus. 

A Prayer Journal by Flannery O'Connor

For a year and a half while the someday great author was in her early 20s, Flannery O'Connor had a private prayer journal.  Well, it is called a prayer journal, but they were really just notes to God, confessing her doubt, anxieties and personal struggles.  Don't expect any of these prayers to show up in collection of great prayers, because they are decidedly not devotional.  We might expect it of the author of A Good Man is Hard to Find and Wise Blood, but she is as brutally honest toward her own soul as she is later of her society at large.

Here are some quotes which give us a sense of her spiritual life:

"My thoughts are far away from God.  He might as well have not made me... Today I have proved myself a glutton-- for Scotch oatmeal cookies and erotic thought.  There is nothing left to say of me."

"Contrition in me is largely imperfect. I don't know if I've ever been sorry for a sin because it hurt You. That kind of contrition is better than none but it is selfish. To have the other kind, it is necessary to have knowledge, faith extraordinary.  All boils down to grace, I suppose."

"One thing I have seen this week-- it has been a peculiar week-- is my constant seeing of myself as what I want to be, but the right genre, the eternal embryo-- and eternal in no false sense.  I must grow."

"My dear God, how stupid we people are until You give us something.  Even in praying it is You who have to pray in us.  I would like to write a beautiful prayer but I have nothing to do it from. There is a whole sensible world around me that I should be able to turn to Your praise; but I cannot do it. Yet at some insipid moment when I may possibly be thinking of floor wax or pigeon eggs, the opening of a beautiful pray may come up from my subconscious and lead me to write something exalted."

"Sin is a great thing as long as it's recognized.  It leads a good many people to God who wouldn't get there otherwise."

"I do not want to be lonely all my life but people only make me lonelier by reminding me of God."

"Am I keeping my faith by laziness, dear God?"

A Prayer Journal is published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013