Quote of the Day

My friends over at Think Christian very kindly linked over to a previous post here about self-promotion in Christian ministry. A comment there from REB is today's quote of the day:

"God isn’t going to bless vanity!"

Short and sweet. It preaches. Nicely done; it beats out the quote I was going to run with, from Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets: "Go sell crazy somewhere else."

I suppose the two are related . . .

Tripe for the Picking Apart

The hardest thing about writing a book--at least for me--is having other people read it. All my defense mechanisms kick in, including the pre-emptive self-effacement ("It sucks; I'm sorry I subjected people to this tripe"), the reactive self-defense ("What the &%$*%& do they know, anyway?") and the self-serving faux humility ("Oh, glad you enjoyed it; of course it's totally meaningless, in the same way that everything is ultimately meaningless--oh, I'm so spiritual and couth"). So far with Deliver Us from Me-Ville I've received a "bit-o-encouragement" from a guy whose book I'm editing (pretty delicate situation I've forced him into, isn't it?); he said it offers a good discussion of the distinction between significance and self-absorption (I'll have to reread it). A friend who is on the pastoral staff of a church on the east coast says she likes it a lot; "the authenticity and transparency is really going to resonate with people." A friend and unknowing mentor of mine sent me a quick e-mail letting me know that from his quick initial scan, the book looks decent. I should quickly aver that none of these folks has read the whole thing yet, so it's possible they haven't yet reached the really lame parts.

The big test of my depth of character is on the immediate horizon. Some friends are writing a full constructive critique of the manuscript as it is. These are folks well-heeled in the publishing industry, so they know what works and what doesn't, and they have little patience for mindless tripe. One of them e-mailed me today to let me know her critique is in the mail. I suddenly don't feel well.

My subject matter doesn't help. A potential alternate title for the book was Enough About Me. So far, that's not been my experience; I'm generally up for talking about myself, and writing a book makes for lots of polite conversation about yourself anyway, no matter how hard you try to avoid it.

It strikes me that there's a paradox in the escape from superbia (another potential title, once upon a time): you think about yourself through to the other side, where you (hopefully) understand yourself in proper context. It's like getting over smoking by smoking till you throw up, but it's also like sitting down with God and saying "Search me and know my heart," and then really paying attention to what he has to say.

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.