Off the Shelf November 2009

OFF THE SHELF Knowing Christ Today

By Dallas Willard HarperOne Reviewed by J. Monty Stewart “So what do you do as a pastor?”

This question has been posed to me throughout my career. Some feel that pastoring has to do with visiting the sick, conducting board meetings, and administering the sacraments. Others suspect it has something to do with deciding on proper worship styles and writing sermons. Dallas Willard asserts that it is about knowing Christ and sharing that knowledge with others.

In his new book, Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge, Willard states that for too long Christians have separated faith from knowledge.

In his introduction he asks: Isn’t it impossible “to know the things you believe as a Christian? Doesn’t Christian faith automatically relegate you to an intellectual slum?” He answers these questions with an emphatic “no”: Knowledge is a friend of faith.

“Just believe,” we often hear pastors

say, but Willard asks why we accept this from pastors when we expect the other professionals we visit — surgeons, mechanics, accountants­ — to actually know (rather than simply believe in) the field they represent.“Rational and responsible people are those who strive to base their beliefs and actions upon their knowledge,” he writes. But the church,Willard suggests, seems to have relinquished knowledge to the secular world.

“We can fail to know because we do not want to know,” he says, using the prophet Hosea’s story to show how lack of knowledge often leads Christians to a faulty worldview.“If you really want to know Christ now, you have somehow to set aside the cloud of images and impressions that rule the popular as well as the academic mind, Christian and nonChristian alike.You must try to think of him as an actual human being in a peculiar human context who actually has had the real historical effects he did, up to the present.”

Willard shows a God who is beyond the deist view.This is a God who acts in the world, the evidence of which is played out in everyday life in miraculous ways.

Willard states,“So the factuality of a major miracle in this world can be known by those who would like to know and who are willing to give adequate consideration to the available evidence.”

The knowledge of Christ is then lived out in our spiritual lives as we move and have our being in Christ every day, as we function as citizens of the kingdom of God: living in humility, being righteous on the inside, putting agape love into practice, implementing the spiritual disciplines, and becoming the church.

Fleshing out what agape love means for the church, Willard uses words that some evangelicals may find daunting: “In explicitly Christian terms ‘pluralism’ has to do with accepting those who don’t agree with us as our ‘neighbors’ and loving them as we love ourselves — with treating them as we would like to be treated PRISM 2009

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if we were in their place.” In this post 9/11 world, Willard argues, Christians often end up tolerating but not loving their neighbors. Christ loves the Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, many of whom live authentic lives, and we should love them as well.

So what is the job of the pastor?

According to Willard, pastors must do everything necessary to gain the knowledge of Christ, then share that knowledge with the disciples in the church, who take it out into the world. “Divine service is life.”

The next time I’m asked that question, I hope I remember to say,“I am growing in the knowledge of Christ so that I may share it with the nations.” What higher calling? n J. Monty Stewart is the pastor of the Kona Church of the Nazarene in Hawaii.

Scouting the Divine

By Margaret Feinberg Zondervan Reviewed by Kristyn Komarnicki Like members of the early church, contemporary Christians consider God’s Word to be alive with truth and meaning, and we search the pages of our Bible for insights and guidance. But unlike the earliest readers of the Scriptures, most of us miss out on the profound richness of its language. What sounds merely poetic to us today was to them pregnant with tangible, sensory substance and depth.

We might know how to use an online concordance (the whole Bible, in 41 languages, at our fingertips), but how many of us understand at a visceral level that when Jesus called himself “the gate for the sheep” (John 10:7) he meant he literally lays his own body down as a barrier between us and our predators? Do we ever

stop to wonder why Jesus, after identifying himself as “the true vine,” identifies God as the lowly vinedresser (John 15:1), the hands-on guy who gets dirty clipping and trudging through the fields, as opposed to the distant but powerful vineyard owner? While the words “milk and honey” bring to mind a moisturizer we might pick up at the mall, do we know that for Moses and his crew these ingredients implied a land that was not only abundant but ecologically balanced?

These are a few of the fascinating insights explored in Margaret Feinberg’s Scouting the Divine: My Search for God in Wine,Wool, and Wild Honey. In love with the Scriptures but yearning to connect at a deeper level, Feinberg set out to see the Word through the eyes of contemporary agrarians, folks who experience on a daily basis many of the realities common in biblical times. Befriending a vintner in Northern California, a shepherdess in Oregon, a Nebraska farmer, and a beekeeper in Colorado, Feinberg delves into their worlds for a brief time, studying the staggering intricacies of a beehive, watching sheep respond to their master’s voice, discovering the commitment required to train grape vines to produce the stuff of fine wine, and marveling at how wheat

and tares look identical until crushed to see what they’re really made of.

Delighting in the sensory details of her experiences, Feinberg draws spiritual parallels from each new discovery, winsomely sharing her own struggles to trust the Lord as instinctively as sheep trust their shepherd, to rejoice in God’s discipline even as vines respond to the pruner’s seemingly painful (and sometimes extreme) slicing, to patiently await the harvest in her life just as the farmer knows he cannot rush his crops, to enjoy without envy her role in the body of Christ in the same way that bees commit wholeheartedly to the particular job they are given.

Joining Feinberg on this journey into the heartland of wonderment will enhance your reading of the Scriptures from here on out. I understand such verses as “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Ps. 119:103) and “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4) with a new appreciation — one I can taste, smell, savor, and digest. Once you’ve read this book¸ you’ll never again read the Good Book in quite the same way. n Kristyn Komarnicki is the editor of PRISM.

Money, Greed, and God

By Jay W. Richards HarperOne Reviewed by Bruce Wydick Twenty years ago when I was a student in Ron Sider’s economic justice class at Eastern University, we engaged in a class debate between capitalism and socialism.

I was drafted to play the role of “Federico No-es-rico,” a left-wing Marxist dressed in a camouflage uniform. My friend played a Friedman-esque character in a business suit who believed that free markets could solve all the world’s problems. For me the PRISM 2009

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debate was the highlight of the semester.

During my subsequent studies at Berkeley and in 12 years as an economics professor, I’ve had the privilege of reading a great number of articles and books on the role of markets in society, participating in numerous debates, and guiding my own students through the same questions we pursued at Eastern.

In Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem, Jay W. Richards leads us through his answers to these questions. Among the many books that I’ve read in this area, Richards’ is one of the best, especially for being written by a non-economist.

But like many works on economics by authors with backgrounds outside of economics, some of his main points fail to point out important nuances, qualifications, and limitations of the market mechanism that are understood by those with a deeper understanding of how markets actually work (or, in some cases, don’t.)

The book is built around what Richards sees as eight commonly held myths about capitalism. These include the belief that trade requires a winner and a loser, the belief that wealth is transferred and not created, and the belief that the essence of capitalism is greed. I

would boil down his book to three major themes, each of which most mainstream economists would generally support: (1) exchange is good; (2) wealth among the wealthy doesn’t create poverty among the poor; (3) capitalism is the best economic system in a world where people act in self-interest.We shouldn’t compare it to heaven — just to the other, lousier alternatives. No problems here, although these are not really original ideas, just well articulated in Richards’ lucid and entertaining prose.

The moderate discomfort I have with the book stems from Richards’ failure to place any boundaries around the benefits of the free market. For example, we know with certainty that the free market fails in both efficiency and its ability to maximize social welfare in the presence of “externalities.” Externalities are spillover effects from economic activity that impinge upon third parties or the community at large, such as pollution. The book does not even pay lip service to the problem of needing to correct the market for externalities, something that undergraduates learn in their first course in microeconomics. This is not a trivial omission.

Moreover, the market mechanism contains nothing to stop the “tragedy of the commons,” the tendency under a free market to over-exploit common-pool resources like water, forests, or grazing land.

As a result, no trained economist would ever posit that the free market alone could, for example, solve an issue such as global warming. But Richards devotes nearly an entire chapter to saying that he doesn’t think global warming is a big deal anyway.

Even more surprising is that in the middle of crises in financial markets and health insurance, there is little mention of the problem of market failure in the context of incomplete information between transacting parties. When two parties have unequal information in an economic transaction, the free market cannot produce its usual efficient outcome.

Economists understand that this infor-

mation problem is at the root of why the free market is failing us in these sectors, but again, no mention.

Both of these areas constitute arenas in which we believe markets fail, not from convincing heuristics and ideological hand waving but rather by mathematical proof and empirical evidence. The former is commonly accepted by all economists, the latter the subject of the trio of Nobel prizes given in economics in 2001. Again, these are not trivial exceptions to the generally beneficial properties of free markets. Climate change, financial market meltdown, and healthcare represent some of the biggest challenges of our time.

While I agreed with at least 85 percent of Richards’ points (especially those made earlier in the book), Christians who take unabashedly conservative (or liberal) stands on every issue generally make me suspicious. The great battle of our time is not between a (good) conservative force and an (evil) liberal one. It’s always more complicated than that, which someone of Richards’ intellect should work harder to appreciate. This being said, Richards’ book is excellent and enjoyable reading for those concerned about the debate over free markets and world capitalism. n

this book more than a spiritual travelogue. Her year-long studies in Jerusalem motivated the research and preparation for this pilgrimage; her seminary education in church history and later work in Middle Eastern studies strengthen the historical connections throughout the book. Her pastoral experience translates into an ability not only to initiate conversation about spirituality but also to listen deeply to people’s stories. On one level, her pilgrimage is a contemporary journey made with Bruce Wydick is professor of economics at the two friends. On another level, she travels with historical figures like Felix Fabri, University of San Francisco.

St. Francis of Assisi, and the apostle Paul.

Through their writings and biographies, Park is in constant dialogue with these Sacred Encounters figures about the nature of pilgrimage, sacred Middle Eastern places, and God.

By Tamara Park In each place she visits, Park looks for InterVarsity Press benches,a level meeting place that becomes a metaphor for dialogue. Park sits beside Reviewed by Jenell Williams Paris strangers and asks them to describe God. Sacred Encounters from Rome to Jerusalem These encounters are sometimes silly, somedelivers what it promises.With two friends, times profound, and sometimes obscured Pastor Tamara Park set out on a pilgrim- by language difference, but taken as a age to encounter God for herself and to whole, they offer powerful insight into initiate along the way conversations with the many ways we try to connect with people of various cultures about how they others and with God. The chapters of Sacred Encounters are experience God. Park’s experience and education make titled with the 25 stops on the author’s PRISM 2009

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journey. At times I wished for more depth of insight about a particular location or conversation partner, but the breadth of the book is remarkable — from Charlotte, N.C., to Rome to Albania to Jerusalem.

Sacred Encounters offers valuable insight into the spiritual life and lessons of a single female pastor. Its biographical and historical material offer educational value, and its narrative — which includes travel mishaps and the promise of romance — keeps the reader engaged.

It is a good find for readers of travel memoir, spiritual memoir, women’s spirituality, church history, or contemporary Middle Eastern issues. n Jenell Williams Paris is a professor of anthropology at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa.

Fallen Angel (DVD)

By David Di Sabatino Jester Media Reviewed by Al Tizon In 2006 director David Di Sabatino brought us Frisbee:The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher (2006), a documentary about the first bona fide evangelist of the countercultural Jesus Movement of the 1960s and ’70s. Now he brings us Fallen Angel: The Outlaw Larry Norman about the man who essentially provided the soundtrack for that movement. In both cases Di Sabatino portrays how these men served as conduits through which the Spirit of God powerfully moved people to faith in Christ, but also how flawed these human conduits were.Very flawed.

The cover of this latest offering on “father of Jesus Rock” Larry Norman, who died in February 2008, should bear the warning “May be harmful to Norman lovers,” because the trail of broken relationships, adultery, lies, and disingenuous business dealings does not jive with the (some say, self-generated) public image

of the Christian who was being persecuted by both church and world for his uncompromising faith.

Interviews with his first ex-wife, friends, members of the Solid Rock family of the 1970s, and former band members reveal a range of responses to these inconsistencies. While some have concluded that he was nothing more than a charlatan and a hypocrite, others say that he was a genuine brother in Christ who, despite being high-functioning and charismatic, had deep psychological and emotional problems that prevented him from establishing enduring intimacy with others.

“He died a lonely, broken man,” says Randy Stonehill. As Norman’s closest friend, Stonehill appropriately dominates the interviews as he provides both fond memories and sobering insights into the man. In many ways, Stonehill and others who were most hurt by Norman turn out to be the real heroes in the film, as they found ways to extend Christlike forgiveness to the one whom, in one form or another, betrayed them. This explains in part why after watching it I reached for my Stonehill LPs and not Norman’s to put on my turntable (that’s right, a turntable), as the film evoked in me the need to walk down memory lane.

On a pure entertainment level, if one has any interest in the Jesus Movement of the 1960s through the ’70s, this documentary is a must-see. The rare pictures and film footage will satiate any Jesus Music connoisseur. The inside scoop on what really happened in the Solid Rock community—an idyllic, artsy, avant-garde, Christian community experiment where something went terribly and suddenly and mysteriously wrong—is both compelling drama and good journalism.

And the soundtrack, which Stonehill provided by redoing songs from his definitive Welcome to Paradise and The Sky is Falling albums, demonstrates that some of that early Jesus Music has actually appreciated through time.

There are some gaps in the story that Di Sabatino chose for some reason not to mention, such as anything about Norman’s second marriage (to Stonehill’s first wife, to add to the drama), which also failed, but not before the birth of their son Michael. There was also no mention of Phydeaux Records, the music company that Norman had started after Solid Rock went under. Despite these oversights, this film has no rival in peering into the deeply flawed Christian rock-’n’-roller named Larry Norman.

As one among many whom Norman impacted with his music (see my May/ June 2008 PRISM postmortem tribute to him), I had a hard time watching this film. However, the hurt that truth brings will inevitably yield positive fruit. In fact, I’m beginning to taste it already, as I chew on the absolute scandal of God’s grace, which not only shows mercy and forgiveness to the undeserving, but also uses those very same broken, sinful people to accomplish great things in the world.

I suppose all of our heroes of faith would fall under this category. To the extent that this is true, Larry Norman is in good company. n Al Tizon directs ESA’s Word & Deed Network and teaches at Palmer Seminary.

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