Book Review: Ain't Too Proud to Beg

I had promised the folks at Eerdmans that I would review some books for them. I reviewed The Luminous Dusk a few months ago and had planned on offering a similar review shortly thereafter on Telford Work’s Ain’t Too Proud to Beg: Living through the Lord’s prayer. But it didn’t happen. True, a lot came up, including my father’s passing and the birth of my daughter, but what kept me from reviewing this book for so long was that I just didn’t like it. It feels lame to say such a thing, but the truth is that it just isn’t a very interesting book. This seems like a disservice to say, since Work is a wise scholar and there are many great moments in this book. The problem for me was Work’s insistence on bad examples and going on for too long about subjects that I honestly was not expecting or interested in. But to try to do some honor to this work, I have decided not to do an actual review, but to share on some points that were illuminating for myself as I read. Also, you can go to Scot McKnight’s blog, where he has been writing about this exact work.

My favorite part of this book was located in a section titled The Woe of Sloth. It’s at this point, in my opinion, that Work writes the best, saying:

Sloth is certainly a sin I have struggled with lately. As I write, I am unproductive, burnt out, worried, numb. Despite outward health, I have not shaken a nagging feeling of massive failure. I spend way too much time in ways I regret even while I do them. I put off necessary duties with aimless diversions that quietly accrue into weeks of life simply surrendered to the void.

“That sounds like depression,” the clinically savvy will say; “you should seek professional counseling.” Even if the diagnosis fits (and it probably does, though only in a very mild form), this response just means that psychology would prefer to use a different word with merely medical rather than fully moral connotations, as if I need only to be treated rather than saved…

Sloth is a far more demanding and satisfying diagnosis. It tells me that I am distancing myself from my sources of life. I am salt that is losing its saltiness and light that is hiding out of sight…

Modern depression and mid-life crises are, at least in some cases, the cognitive dissonance between our crumbling sense of obligation to fix everything and our building sense of ineptitude and impotence. Apathy, burnout, inactivity, and hopelessness shrivel childhoods of pride into adulthoods of sloth. Once our resignation finally breaks through our messianism, there is finally nothing to do but retire as comfortably as possible and wait for the end to come. (pp 185, 6)

This passage resonated with me in an amazing way. I have felt burnt-out for years and I know, especially after reading this passage, that I went from a self-messianic wanting to fix everything and everybody to a nihilistic despair as I realized my own impotence to produce the kinds of changes I long to see in my world. Why is it so hard to find that middle ground where we rely on God. Why can’t I live out Augustine’s words and act as if everything depended on me but trust as if everything depended on God?


My other favorite passage is found on page 101. It is about how some churches work in the U.S., and I will not comment on it, but let you read and think your own thoughts about it (he writes about four different kinds of American Christians, but this is what I have experienced the most, so I found it noteworthy):

It is when she breaks [this particular type of Christian’s] code rather than, say, the Bible’s moral standards that the community of faith demands contrition and repentance and offers forgiveness and restoration. Sexual offenders need to repent, as well as disloyal children, blasphemers, abusive parents, liars, thieves, swindlers, backstabbers, and substance abusers. However, Christian businessmen do not need to repent of lives driven by greed. Overachievers do not need to repent of consuming competitiveness. Conspicuous consumers do not need to repent of how they handle their prosperity as long as it has not endangered their children. Soldiers do not need to repent of fighting unjust wars, let alone just ones. Politicians do not need to repent of working the system (so long as they have done it legally). Wage earners do not need to repent of exploiting the tax code or America’s retirement system (though welfare patients might). Heretics do not need to repent of their theological mistakes. Parents and children do not need to repent of putting their families before their church communities. Teens do not need to repent of their popularity or longings for it. When some of them do, fellow congregants react with amusement, puzzlement, discomfort, or resentment: we have a zealot in our ranks!...

This perpetuates a folk Christianity that rewards social conformity, punishes radical obedience, distorts the faith through peer pressure, and is suspicious and dismissive of outsiders.

Peace,
Matt

Yet Another Quote

I know I just keep posting quotes and links, but I just can't help it. Today's comes from Wendell Berry:

Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.

Peace,
Matt

Have Yourselves a Jacques Derrida Christmas

From Derrida's The Gift of Death:

“On what condition does goodness exist beyond all calculation? On the condition that goodness forget itself, that the movement be a movement of the gift that renounces itself, hence a movement of infinite love. Only infinite love can renounce itself and, in order to become finite, become incarnated in order to love the other, to love the other as a finite other. This gift of infinite love comes from someone and is addressed to someone; responsibility demands irreplacable singularity.”

Merry Christmas, and Peace on Earth!

Matt

Americanized Christmas Rants

A person I work with sent out an all-staff e-mail today to tell us to go to this site. To be absolutely blunt this morning...this is stupid. What is stupid is that whoever made this video is trying to put the Christ back in consumerism. But there is no Christ in consumerism, just the functional savior that we continually make our stuff into. They are upset that this holiday season, when Americans spend enough money to end world poverty but buy gifts instead, stores are not calling it Christmas but "holidays".

What if Jesus is pleased not to have his name mingled with such blind greed and selfishness?

What if this is itself a small act of God?

God bless America...right?

Peace,
Matt

"Progress" in Ferndale

I went for a long run this morning throughout Ferndale, the town in which I currently reside. I went out merely with the desire to move and feel healthy. But I got much more than I was looking for. On my run, I received a view of the progress of Ferndale. The truth is, I moved here knowing that it is growing, and thinking that my house had a lot of potential to sell for more someday, as the town grew. But honestly, I never thought about what it really means when we talk about a town growing.

There used to be two different ponds that I ran by when I first moved here three years ago. Both are now gone. One has a housing development on top of it, and the other has been covered in gravel and mud, and the small bit that was left was fenced-in and has literally been filled with scrap wood and debris, making it a sick cesspool with no natural inhabitants. Ironically, as I ran today, three different massive groups of geese flew over me. None of them flew in their usual "V" formation, and I realized that they were swooping and circling overhead because they were looking for a place to land and rest. They were looking for the places they have always rested in. As I ran through the typically wet December streets, with rain pouring down, I had to watch and think about how we no longer have wetlands. Not even Western Washington has wetlands! And so the birds circle and circle, and I ultimately see some land in a sick drainage ditch outside a housing development. The water was less than three inches deep, and the birds sat silently in it, and I swear they were looking at me with eyes that said something along the lines of "What the hell?"

Ah, but it gets even better. Directly outside this particular housing development has always been one of my favorite secrets. Surrounded by housing development literally on all sides, there was this one (maybe two?) acre of land, with shrubs and small trees and tall grass that everybody always drives quickly by without looking. Fortunately, I always looked. And what I see is two doe deer, occasionally with young ones. Perfectly camouflage, they have hidden in the heart of Ferndale for who knows how long, and may have continued on just as long as the geese migrated through that same region. Instead, in the four months since my last run through the neighborhood, two monstrous steel frames have gone up for a new school. Don't get me wrong, I strongly support schools. But I wonder if anybody ever asked about those deer. Where did they go? Where could they go? Is this right? Why can't we have undeveloped places in our cities and towns that aren't parks? Is it not a real community until everything has been paved and "developed" so that anything that is unknown, such as animals and nature itself has been pushed out?

Honestly, I'm just really sad about all of this. I wish we would ask better questions before we do what we do. I do not want to "progress" in the way our society progresses. I do not want to "develop" in the way our culture chooses to develop.

Peace,
Matt

Today is Human Rights Day

Check it out here. And try to find a small way to live-out such a great day today. Or everyday.

And if you are really looking to have some fun, go through the universal declaration of human rights and try to figure out how many our country breaks on a regular basis. What fun!

Peace,
Matt

Grassley vs. the Megachurch

If you haven't heard already, Senator Charles Grassley is taking on the biggest churches in the US, asking probing questions about their finances and whether these megachurches should be allowed to retain their non-profit status. I rejoice in this in one way, though it's a sad day when a government has to hold the church morally accountable. Is this just a case of poor leadership, gullible congregations, or is the problem all of us who have not done a good enough job holding our brothers and sisters accountable?

Either way, NPR has a good write-up about the whole story, as well as their usual audio. Listen and enjoy.

Peace,
Matt