Shameless Stocking Stuffer Solicitation

To be an author in the third millennium is to be a shameless self-promoter, a crass hawker of wares; consequently, I have selfliness* to promote and wares to hawk. So let me humbly remind you that Deliver Us from Me-Ville makes a fine, inexpensive Christmas gift!

Nothing says "Merry Christmas!" quite like a book in a decorative stocking, if I do say so myself; I have a Batman(tm) Christmas stocking hung on my office bulletin board with care, and the copy of Deliver Us from Me-Ville sticking out of it really adds to the ambiance. After all, nothing keeps Christ in Christmas quite like a book which presumes that all of society--including the people on your gift list--is hopelessly narcissistic.

To those of you who are even now muttering, "Put a sock in it, Dave!" I respond in true humility: put it in your sock.**

Happy holidays,
Dave Zimmerman,
author, Deliver Us from Me-Ville

*A word coined by a kid in my church. I like it; it's clever.
**The one hung by your chimney with care.

Of the Making of Books There Is No End

A friend of mine in the publishing business has often compared books to little missionaries: they go where we can't, they speak to people we might otherwise never meet, they propel conversations that otherwise might have died on the vine of our own locality. It's a nice image, a helpful rationale for publishing as an industry. No less voluminous a writer than N. T. Wright, however, offers a counterpoint in the closing paragraphs of his John for Everyone commentary:

Once the Word has become flesh, all the books in the world can't do justice to it. Nothing less than flesh can now do justice to the meaning of the Word: your flesh, my flesh. Books can reach a small way out into the world. Our lives, in the power of the spirit, can reach a lot further.

I suppose that both these statements are true. Books serve their purpose, and to the degree that we share our scholarship among various localities we are binding the whole church together and deepening its discipleship. But to the degree that books are nonrelational--to the degree that they dictate rather than converse, decree rather than contextualize--they fall short of the relational kingdom that Jesus calls us into. Books are means to an end; the end is that author and audience, like Paul and his correspondents, would have one another in their hearts, would share in God's grace.

Incidentally, and appropos to this post, if you're looking for a nonprofit to throw your money at this December, consider Word Made Flesh. Their executive director, Chris Heuertz, wrote a mighty book this year called Simple Spirituality, but their main work is to build relationships of justice and mercy with some of the poorest people in the world. Helping them out is tantamount to helping a community of women trapped in the sex trade find their way out, or helping a garbage dump community of outcastes fight for just treatment and human dignity. Plus, they're just really good people to be in a relationship with.

This Is a Book About Love

For whatever reason, it never occurred to me to write book reviews on Loud Time till this past month. And in fact, I probably wouldn't have done it at all had I not stumbled upon an invitation to review a book in exchange for a free copy of that book. Suddenly I find myself with a stack of books to review, some out of the kindness of my heart, some as a kind of quid pro quo--I'll review yours if you review mine.

This is a review of the latter sort. I stumbled across Larry Shallenberger by accident; he's a regular contributor to Burnside Writers Collective (one of my favorite online magazines) and the husband of someone I went to college with. As it happens, we share a publisher, so we got to talking and decided to review one another's books. I fear that I got the better deal out of the arrangement, as in addition to being a regular contributor to BWC, Larry is on the pastoral staff of a megachurch and so influences tens of hundreds of readers, while I write a blog that is read by my mom. So Mom, have I got a book for you.

Divine Intention is a book about love. It says so right in the book, in one of the more delightfully audacious printed statements I've read in a long time. You'd not necessarily figure out right away that this is a book about love--Larry buries the lead on page 46, and his publisher buries this theme under the perhaps more saleable veneer of a book on the ancient church in contemporary perspective, or, in other words, a book on the book of Acts. But Larry effectively makes the case that the book of Acts itself is a book about love, and if this is a book about that, then this is a book about that too.

Larry takes us through the book of Acts, not systematically but episodically, looking at passages that show a particular act of divine intervention. Acts has a lot of them, from the Day of Pentecost that sent the church out into Judea, to the great persecution that martyred Stephen but sent Philip into Samaria, to the conversion of Paul that ushered the church further out to the ends of the earth. This is not new news; Acts is a well-traveled New Testament book by exegetes of every stripe. Larry is a keen reader of key texts, however, and catches things that I, for one, failed to notice even after he stuck the passage right in front of me. He takes us on an interesting interpretive turn by asking why God intervenes in Acts where he does. As it happens, God intervenes because he is relational, and the relationship of God to his people demands it.

So Jesus warns his followers to expect the Spirit, and on Pentecost the Spirit comes. Stephen rehearses the story of Israel and faces his martyrdom with the assurance that his God is with him, that suffering and even death are not the end of his story. Philip and Peter hear from God that he loves them and that he loves people they might not otherwise think to love. Paul hears from God and is given a dramatic life change and a sober calling. Paul hears again from God in the wake of a strained relationship and finds renewed strength for his mission. God keeps showing that he is there, keeps showing his love for his people.

This is a more radical take on Acts than Larry's gentle writing voice would suggest. He has to be gentle; Larry is a pastor, and he's had to deal with some particularly icky stuff in a few of the churches he's served. He handles these troubles delicately and respectfully--pastorally, I suppose you could say. He rarely strays from his pastoral deckings, to be frank, in the preponderance of talk of "the abundant life," in the tight outline that steers the book, even in the fictitious narratives that lead each chapter.

The character Jonah, a struggling young pastor, is written in the first person as he recounts a monthly encounter with two long-lost friends, each of whom has drifted away from the joy of their earlier life in Christ. This itself is a nice metaphor for the way we so often approach the book of Acts: when we're disillusioned with the church of the twenty-first century--whether for its world-shaking scandals or its petty annoyances--we revisit Acts as a reminder of what the Christian faith once was and perhaps ought to be. But because Jonah is a pastor, and frankly because Jonah is Larry, he can't really haul back and freak out on anybody in the way that I occasionally wished he would. The pastoral garb is a bit of a straitjacket on the energy of the book--probably an appropriate straitjacket; Lord knows I'm not called to the pastorate. I'm also, if I may be so bold, mystified why the fictional narrative, which seems to be working its way to an inevitable resolution, never resolves. Sometimes I think we all need to take a short break--just a short one, mind you--from Donald Miller.

Larry's pastoral reserve notwithstanding, the book is audacious in the way good books ought to be audacious. Right there in the introduction, in the roman-numeral pages so that the heresy-hunters won't be offended by it, is an audacious confession followed by an audacious idea:

Love is the pinnacle of Christian teaching. However, the church has historically evaluated its biblical teachers with a yardstick of doctrinal purity. Little attention has been given to whether or not the teaching inspires greater love in the teaching's listeners. Historically, heretics have been identified by their corrupted ideas. However, if we take Paul seriously, perhaps heresy should rather be measured in terms of love.

What's good for Paul is good for the book of Acts, a love story from start to finish. It's good for us today as well, Larry goes on to show, as we find in Acts not a checklist for being a good Christian but signs and wonders from God that show us how to live well and prepare us for the cost of discipleship--which is to say, they show us how to love.

***

I would just like to acknowledge that I used the word audacious four times in one paragraph above, which was on purpose, despite the obvious arguments against such an obnoxious repetition.

The Best Books Are Human

With this post I (happily, I suspect, to some) conclude my four-part diatribe on what characterizes the best books. So far I've argued that the best books are hard to read--not in their use of arcane language or torturous prose but in the sophistication and moral challenge of their ideas, such that we feel better reading them alongside other people. I've suggested that the best books are humble in the sense that the author has dodged the conceit of thinking he or she has the last or even the only word. I've contended that the best books are humorous in that they acknowledge the silliness and even absurdity that occasionally attends even the gravest circumstances.

That's three attributes of the best books. I draw your attention, in case you missed it, to the prominent feature in each of the letter H. Spend your life listening to sermons and you start to think that way.

The fourth and final attribute of the best books that I will address (there are undoubtedly more, which you're welcome to suggest in a comment or an e-mail, but I'm running out of gas on this concept and four Hs seems like a good stopping point) is this: The best books are human.

Now, that may go without saying in the minds of many; nonhuman animals don't have the technology to write, let alone write well. Give a hundred monkeys a hundred typewriters and an endless supply of paper and toner, and they may eventually throw the entire works of Shakespeare at you--along with their feces--but even then they're not writing; they're copying. But I'm not talking about the humanness of the author; I'm talking about the humanness of the content.

The best books strive to be authentic in their representation of the stories they tell, the ideas they convey. Last night a group of us discussed The Shack, a novel that begins with the abduction of the protagonist's daughter. I'm not arguing that The Shack should take its place alongside War & Peace and Moby Dick--far from it--but the story did remind me of one of my friends.

His daughter, about the same age as the book's abducted daughter, went missing for several days after a boating accident. She eventually resurfaced and is doing fine, but I found myself worried that my naive suggestion that we discuss a book together would prove traumatizing to my friend. So I shot him an e-mail warning him that he might find it hard to read (there's one of those four Hs).

My friend did read the book and during our discussion commented on the parallels between the story he read and the story he lived. He doesn't know what great sadness haunts the author of The Shack, but he does know that the book's description of a child gone missing as experienced by the parent "pretty much nails it." Beyond that, the reflections and emotions that emerged out of the story proved comforting to him as he processed his own experience. Through the story, the author showed solidarity with his reader.

The best books regard the human condition in a way that causes us to regard the human condition differently. Animal Farm is a human book despite the near-total absence of humans; Charlotte's Web is a human book despite the primacy of the nonhuman characters. The best books don't pummel us with the author's dogmatic assertions of what is really real; the best books crawl into our laps and ring true for us, and then we close them and revisit the human race from a fresh, even more human perspective. The best books are human because their readers, and presumably their authors, are human themselves. Through the venue of the book they each get to know one another and themselves a little better. And in that respect the best books are not only serving their readers, they're serving the communities inhabited by their readers, and in the best-case scenario, they change a generation.

So ends my rant. Given these four Hs, I'm curious what books you would nominate as the best books ever. What books do you find particularly hard to read, especially humble, uniquely humorous, profoundly human?

Me-Ville

My forthcoming book now has a title--Deliver Us from Me-Ville, which I like very much--and a cover, which I like very much and will post here when I get a final JPG from my publisher, Cook Communications. Suddenly it all feels real to me, and I am beset with a real anxiety. All my neuroses (or at least more neuroses than are appropriate for one person to have) come into play in the production of a book.

I have performance anxiety: what if my editor, Andrea Christian, whom I respect and feel a great debt toward, hates the draft? What if she writes back and tells me that the draft is so bad that she can't edit it into publishable form and thus demands that I (a) start from scratch or (b) give back the advance money (which I've [c] already spent).

I have social anxiety: I'm asking friends and colleagues to review and potentially endorse the book. What if they don't like it? How will our relationship be affected? I tell stories from my own experience in the book; what if friends or family misinterpret my meaning in how I tell a story? How will our relationship be affected? And eventually, I hope, the book will be reviewed in various media outlets. What if they don't like it? Then the book (and, by extension, I) am publicly and broadly known as that guy who wrote that bad book.

I have ethical anxiety: Am I overstepping professional boundaries by contacting people I've met through my work to support a book I'm not even publishing through my employer? Am I coercing people who want to maintain a good working relationship with me? Is it really OK that I'm publishing with Cook instead of with InterVarsity Press, or have I transgressed some boundary of loyalty in the minds of my coworkers?

I have evangelical anxiety: I talk about Jesus in this book a lot. I mean a lot. Is that going to make people uncomfortable? Have I inadvertently confessed heresies I'm not even aware of? Have I taken a "holier-than-thou" posture that I don't even recognize? Is this book a fair representation of the faith I profess?

I could go on, but my heart rate is way up. And it hasn't slipped past me that in declaring myself an expert on narcissism, I am showing myself to be highly vulnerable to narcissistic tendencies.

The final title of this book was not the first title: the first title was Escape from Superbia, a play on some language from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together and a reference to one of the seven deadly sins recognized by the church from antiquity. Apparently, Latin words in English book titles don't fly, so we went with Me-Ville. The new title is meant to evoke the Lord's Prayer--not, as some people have mentioned, Dr. Seuss. I like the final title more and more as I reflect on it, because more and more I see how every word tells.

"Me-Ville," I suggest, is the culture we inhabit, a contention common to many social psychologists. We live in an age and a context where looking out for number one is a virtue, and we are regularly exhorted to be so virtuous.

"Us" is a reminder that all of us are individually and collectively shaped by this culture, and that despite the privatizing, isolationist tendencies of the age, we're all in this together.

"Deliver" evokes one of the great glories of God, who delivered the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, only to set them on a long and complicated journey of self-discovery to a promised destination. He similarly delivered individuals and families and cities and ethnic groups from wrongs being done to them, and drew them out of the traps of self-serving narcissism that they invariably got themselves into. Most emphatically, God delivered the world from evil by virtue of the death and resurrection of his Son, who called people to follow him into their own journey of self-discovery toward a promised destination.

"From" is a preposition. You have to have it.

I end the book as I'll end this post, with a brief reflection on the Lord's Prayer. The two stanzas are held in tension with one another. The first is a self-forgetting paeon of praise to our Father in Heaven, whose name is hallowed and whose kingdom is forthcoming, whose will is unflinchingly good. The second is self-absorbed, concerned with mundane, daily needs, emotional well-being and an ultimate sense of security. It ends in a reminder of the journey that God has us on:

Lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.

The later imposition of another phrase swings the pendulum back and bookends the prayer in the goodness and power of God:

For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours
Now and forever.

I take solace in the words of that prayer, and my anxieties are eased--not fully, not even finally, but enough to remind myself that God is king even over my narcissistic, anxious self, and he delivers me, and he leads me, and he restores my soul. Not bad.

Meme of the Day

Inspired by the effusive posting of Christianne and my own literary hubris, here's a meme for you to chew on and spit into the open mouths of the hungry little chickies in your midst. Name and make the case for five books you frequently foist on your friends. Here's mine:

1. Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton. If I could have, I would have, but I'm so glad he did. So playful, so insightful.

2. Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Worthy of an endless conversation, so all the more reason to recruit more conversation partners.

3. Forgetting Ourselves on Purpose by Brian Mahan. Nature's most nearly perfect book; Brian approaches Chesterton in his apt mixing of wit and self-effacement with profound insight. It hasn't had nearly the effect on the people I've loaned it to, however, that it's had on me. Fair warning.

4. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. Jesuits in space. How can you lose?

5. Daredevil: Born Again by Frank Miller. Yeah, it's a comic book. Deal with it. Brilliant story telling, great revision of an aging character, remarkable secular appropriation of Christian imagery and language.

There are others, of course, but these five came to mind most quickly. How about you? Post a comment here or an entry on your blog--I tag everybody.

The State of My "Strange and Unpleasant" Industry

My friend and fellow editor Drew sent me this librarian's assessment of the state of reading among young people.

"I became a school librarian because I loved books and wanted to bring the joy of reading to young people. . . . Silly me. Young people no longer read for pleasure, and libraries are no longer places to discover great works of literature and biography and history. We librarians now exist solely to help bored students maximize their database searches, so they can complete papers and assignments in minimal time. When students do check out a book on, say, Jane Austen or Thomas Jefferson, they don’t actually read it; they check it back in the next day, having copied down what they need to cite the book as a 'source.' My fellow librarians and I still try to 'entice young minds and bring them to the reading table,' but to no avail. Most teenagers regard reading a book as some strange and unpleasant ritual from the distant past. I recently tried to coax one senior into reading Dickens’ Bleak House, promising that if she read just one page, she wouldn’t be able put it down. She took one look at the book, coolly assessing its hundreds of pages, and said, 'I think I’ll watch the DVD.'"
--Thomas Washington, "Washington Post," cited in "The Week," February 2, 2007, p. 14

If you're one of those weirdos who still reads, why do you do it?

If you've dismissed reading as "strange and unpleasant," convince me why I should give up on books.