David Foster Wallace on self-centeredness

Poignant words from the late David Foster Wallace:¹

A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. Here’s one example of the utter wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it’s so socially repulsive, but it’s pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default-setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you’ve had that you were not at the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real — you get the idea. But please don’t worry that I’m getting ready to preach to you about compassion or other-directedness or the so-called “virtues.” This is not a matter of virtue — it’s a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.

People who can adjust their natural default-setting this way are often described as being “well adjusted,” which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.

May we all learn to be “well-adjusted”.

HT: Andrew Sullivan, via Frank Wilson.

1. Image pictured is David Foster Wallace, courtesy of Steve Rhodes. ↩

• The World is Flat author Thomas Friedman’s new book is titled Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America. The Huffington Post has the roundup and some videos. “The book’s main argument is that the convergence of global warming, global flattening (the rise of middle classes all over the world), and global crowding (the population boom) is driving five key trends that will define the 21st century. Friedman argues that those five trends — energy and resource supply and demand, petro-dictatorship, biodiversity loss, climate change, and energy poverty — have all been driven past a tipping point such that they have created a new era of history: the energy climate era.” BONUS: From now until August 4, you can download The World is Flat audiobook in it’s entirety for free at Friedman’s website (it’s a hefty $39 on iTunes)! 07/26/2008

Interview with Michael Kelly, author of “The Tough Sayings of Jesus II”

I was recently given the opportunity to read and review a new curriculum put out by LifeWay called The Tough Sayings of Jesus II. The ‘Leader Kit’ that I received comes with a CD containing music that accompanies the curriculum, and a DVD with a bunch of great videos as well. I can personally vouch for the quality of the curriculum; not just because I received it as a gift, but because I think highly enough of it to use it next school year with my youth group.

Below you’ll find an unedited interview with the author of the curriculum, Michael Kelly. My questions will appear in italics. Thanks to both Michael and Bill Seaver for the opportunity.

JAKE BOUMA: Thanks for the interview opportunity, Michael. I loved this book, and plan on using it next school year with my own students. Anywho, could you give the readers a bit of background about yourself?

MICHAEL KELLY: Glad to hear it, Jake. Me - I grew up in Texas where my parents still live and I met and married my wife. We moved from Canyon, TX to Birmingham, AL where I went to Beeson Divinity School. After that we moved to Nashville where I am now as a writer and editor. In the meantime, we had 2 kiddos - Joshua, 4, and Andi, 1.

JAKE BOUMA: What was the impetus for this particular curriculum?

MICHAEL KELLY: It’s interesting to me how many times in my church experience that I’ve heard sermon series that skip or gloss over some of the difficult passages of Scripture. Like how many times have I heard that we’re doing a sketch of Romans, and we hear a talk about the victory of Romans 8 and then I turn around and we’re offering our bodies as living sacrifices in Romans 12? What? It’s like Paul didn’t intend to write those 3 chapters in between. Same thing with the gospels I think. We like a picture of Jesus where among other things, He’s “nice.” So we gravitate towards those passages. But that leaves us with an incomplete and mishapen view of Jesus and doesn’t allow us to examine the fullness of what He taught and lived. So I wanted to write something that engaged people at alot of levels - emotionally, intellectually, as well as spiritually.

JAKE BOUMA: I’m currently reading Dallas Willard’s “The Divine Conspiracy”, and in it he says, “Strangely, we seem prepared to learn how to live from almost anyone but him [Jesus]. We are ready to believe that the ‘latest studies’ have more to teach us about love and sex than he does, and that Louis Rukeyser knows more about finances.” What I appreciate about this curriculum is that it doesn’t fall into this trap. What lead you to believe that the sayings of Jesus DO teach us how to live?

MICHAEL KELLY: Kudos to you for reading Dallas - one of my favorites. I appreciate you saying TS doesn’t fall into that category. I think for Jesus, every moment was spiritual. It seems to me that one of the things He continually tried to emphasize was that every moment is truly a “God” moment when you are walking with the Lord. So I think the distinction we draw between “theology” and “application” is laughable to Jesus in some ways - what is theology if it’s not applied? And what can truly be applied that is not theological? So Jesus has much to say about recognizing the “God-ness” of ordinary moments in time.

JAKE BOUMA: Do you think that youth are in some ways more receptive to hearing the message of this book? Why or why not?

MICHAEL KELLY: I think as a whole emerging generations want the unbiased and unapologetic truth, so Jesus is a natural fit, when we indeed embrace everything He has to say. People everywhere, students especially, want a faith that engages their whole person. I believe people will rise to that challenge.

JAKE BOUMA: Did students play any role in the process of writing/editing the curriculum?

MICHAEL KELLY: I do speak at a number of retreats and conferences throughout the year, and one of my favorite and most challenging parts is engaging in discussion with the folks who are there. Listening to people talk you get the sense that they aren’t just looking for behaviorism; they’re really searching for a deeper walk with Christ. That encouraged me a great deal to try and write for that kind of reader.

JAKE BOUMA: I enjoyed your movie metaphor, where you talked about how many leads in contemporary movies are morally ambiguous. Can you unpack this for the readers and its implications in ministry?

MICHAEL KELLY: Sure - I think I mention Superman in the book, and superheroes are a good example of this. The first Superman movies showed a hero without flaws. He always did the right thing; always knew what that was. But since some superhero movies have been relaunched, like Batman or Ironman for example, you see the good and the bad of the hero. They’re still the hero, the protagonist, but you watch them struggle with their actions. You see the humanness to them. Another good example of this is the biopic genre of movies, in which the protagonist is revealed to have flaws just like everyone else. It’s an interesting comment on culture and its leanings I think in both a good and bad way. The good is its more authentic. And in some ways, more biblical. The Bible doesn’t hold up people as perfect; we bear witness to their sin as well as their faith. But it might be bad because it’s reflective of the idea that there really are no good guys any more, because there really is no good or bad any more; it’s all relative.

JAKE BOUMA: Finally, what’s next on your plate? Any forthcoming books or projects you’re working on? Feel free to shamelessly plug anything! Thanks again for taking the time to answer some questions for the readers.

MICHAEL KELLY: Just a few things - Still travel to do speaking gigs, and am working on a deal to take Tough Sayings I and Tough Sayings II and put them together into a tradebook for more wide distribution. Hopefully that’s going to happen soon.

The Divine Conspiracy

I’ve been meaning to read Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy for a while, and I finally started reading it about a week ago. The book has been amazing so far, but chapter two, entitled Gospels of Sin Management, has absolutely blown my mind. Rather than blabbing on about it, I’m just going to post a few extended quotes that rocked my world. Enjoy.

“We get a totally different picture of salvation, faith, and forgiveness if we regard having life from kingdom of the heavens now — the eternal kind of life — as the target. The words and acts of Jesus naturally suggest that this is indeed salvation, with discipleship, forgiveness, and heaven to come as natural parts. And in this he only continues the teachings of the Old Testament. The entire biblical tradition from beginning to end is one of the intimate involvement of God in human life — or else alienation from it. That is the biblical alternative for life now.”¹

“The sensed irrelevance of what God is doing to what makes up our lives is the foundational flaw in the existence of multitudes of professing Christians today. They have been led to believe that God, for some unfathomable reason, just thinks it appropriate to transfer credit from Christ’s merit account to ours, and to wipe out our sin debt, upon inspecting our mind and finding what we believe to be a particular theory of the atonement to be true — even if we trust everything but God in all other manners that concern us.”²

“Strangely, we seem prepared to learn how to live from almost anyone but him [Jesus]. We are ready to believe that the ‘latest studies’ have more to teach us about love and sex than he does, and that Louis Rukeyser knows more about finances… Where we spontaneously look for ‘information’ on how to live shows how we truly feel and who we really have confidence in. And nothing more forcibly demonstrates the extent to which we automatically assume the irrelevance of Jesus as teacher for our ‘real’ lives… We do not seriously consider Jesus as our teacher on how to live, hence we cannot think of ourselves, in our moment-to-moment existence, as his students or disciples. So we turn to popular speakers and writers, some Christians and some not — whoever happens to be writing books and running talk shows and seminars on matters that concern us.”³

“We who profess Christianity will believe what is constantly presented to us as gospel… And those in the wider world who reject those gospels will believe that what they have rejected is the gospel of Jesus Christ himself — when, in fact, they haven’t yet heard it.”⁴

There you have it. Chew on those quotes for a while… I have been for the past several days. What are your initial thoughts? Drop a comment and let me know. Also, has anybody else read the book? Is the rest of the book as amazing as the first two chapters?

1. Willard, Dallas. The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998. 47. ↩
2. Ibid., 49. ↩
3. Ibid., 55-57. ↩
4. Ibid., 58. ↩

• I have been a fan of the ESV bible translation for a long time, which is why I’m pumped for the release of the ESV Study Bible later this year. Download the Introduction to the Gospel of Luke (PDF, 1.1mb) and see for yourself. More samples. (ht: ESV Bible Blog) 05/15/2008

Toilet theology

When I was growing up, a few things were consistent: Velveeta® Shells and Cheese, quiet tables, and Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.

The Bathroom Reader series is designed specifically with reading while sitting on the toilet in mind. According to the Wikipedia article, “Their volumes contain information on subjects such as quotes, dumb criminals, palindromes, anagrams, urban legends and hoaxes, failed inventions, the history of everyday things, and accidental discoveries, as well as articles on pop culture and ‘celebrities’… Throughout the books, there are what the BRI calls ‘running feet’ — short fun facts on the bottom of each page.”

All of this is to say that I was conditioned from a young age to read in the restroom. I don’t remember too much religion or theology in the Bathroom Readers, but that’s where A Theological Miscellany: 176 Pages of Odd, Merry, Essentially Inessential Facts, Figures, and Tidbits about Christianity comes in.

A Theological Miscellany is the perfect theological commode companion. Among the “176 Pages of odd, merry, essentially inessential facts, figures, and tidbits about Christianity”, you’ll find Famous Physically Disabled or Handicapped Christians, Church Announcement “Bloopers”, and Reformers Before the Reformation, among many others. I picked up my copy at Half Price Books for a scant $4.

If you can’t go number two without reading about the Holy One, this is the book for you. Plus, it’ll surely start some conversations when you have guests over.

Serendipitous stock image sighting

This is totally geeky, but as I was wandering around Barnes & Noble today, the book Please Stop Laughing at Me caught my eye, and it only took me a second to realize why. As you can see by the image above, it was because the same stock image is also used for the cover of Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry by Andrew Root.

I did a brief search at a couple of stock image sites for the image, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe you’ll have better luck (wink, wink). Has anyone else ever noticed the same stock image used for two different products?

The 123 book meme

Scott from Transformatum has tagged me in the popular “123″ or “closest book” meme, which has been around for a really long time (I remember seeing it on Marko’s blog in ‘06), even though it’s been spreading like wildfire as of late [UPDATE: Looks like I was tagged by Jeremy a couple weeks ago... whoops]. Anyway, here’s how it works.

(1) Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating! (2) Turn to page 123. (3) Find the first 5 sentences. (4) Post the next 3 sentences. (5) Tag 5 people.

Here goes:

I will revisit the pain of my mother’s forgiveness in chapter 6. My father never talked about how it felt forgiving a person who killed his boy; he never talked much about how anything felt, though he was a deeply sensitive man. But that forgiveness must have cost him a great deal too, possibly no less that it cost my mother.

The passage is from the book Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, by Croatian-American theologian Miroslav Volf, which was sitting on my bed (right behind me). Those three sentences actually provide a lot of insight into how Volf does theology - often through anecdotes and achingly honest personal narrative.

I tag b.mick, Bruce, Jonathan, Matt, and Jim. You’re it.

Poll: Amazon Wishlists*

Do you have an Amazon Wishlist? Participate in the poll below and let the world know (RSS readers, you’ll have to visit the site to cast your vote)!

I’ve had my Amazon Wishlist since August 2005 (at least, that’s when my first item was added). I love it - adding books to my Wishlist is almost as thrilling as actually buying them. Anyway, here’s a sampling of books I’ve added in the last couple of weeks:

Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin by Nicholas Ostler

Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by N.T. Wright

A Theological Miscellany : 160 Pages of Odd, Merry, Essentially Inessential Facts, Figures, and Tidbits about Christianity by T.J. McTavish

Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life by Robert B. Reich

Now what are you waiting for? Take the poll! ↴

*My name is Jake Bouma, and I approve this message.

• Jim Wallis, the author of God’s Politics and head honcho of Sojourners, tells us why he wrote his new book, The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America (@ Amazon). “The Great Awakening speaks of two great hungers in our world today—the hunger for spirituality and the hunger for social justice. I believe that the connection between the two is one the world, and especially a new generation, is waiting for.” 01/18/2008

Interview with Tony Jones, author of “The New Christians” (Part 2)

The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier

The following is Part 2 (Part 1) of an interview with Tony Jones about his forthcoming book The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier (to be released March 3, 2008). Tony is the national coordinator of Emergent Village, and a doctoral fellow in practical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. Find out more at Tony’s website.

JAKE BOUMA: Going off of your last answer, what role has electronic media - especially the internet and blogging - played in both the shaping of the emergent phenomenon and the process of your writing this book?

TONY JONES: This cannot be overstated. Emerging technology (cell phones, the Internet, email, etc) have made the kind of connection that we’re after possible. It goes without saying that face-to-face connection is still essential, but church leaders of previous generations could not have imagined the kind of connections that we have today. I communicate with thousands of leaders every week by various means, and these communications have absolutely nothing to do with traditional denominational or confessional demarcation. This is a new era.

JAKE BOUMA: What role did your stint in youth ministry play in getting you to think about or become involved in emergent?

TONY JONES: It’s no mistake that many of the emergent leaders were formerly youth workers. Church-based youth ministry is a fertile training ground for so much that is emergent: risk-taking, entrepreneurialism, pushing boundaries, getting in trouble :-), staying up-to-date on culture, etc. All of this has influenced the genesis of emergent.

JAKE BOUMA: As you mentioned earlier, your book draws upon insights from what’s happening “on the ground” in actual emergent churches in what you call “dispatches”. Do you have a favorite or particularly memorable “dispatch”?

TONY JONES: Well, I loved writing about Solomon’s Porch — the church I attend — and that comes right at the end of the book; it’s kind of a coda to the whole book. And each of the “dispatches” that come between chapters is significant to me. Honestly, it’d be hard for me to pick a favorite…

JAKE BOUMA: A recent post on presbymergent titled A Challenge to Emergent Authors raised the following question, among others: “In the emergent conversation, are we writing the things we’re writing because we want to sell books, or are we writing the things we’re writing because we want to change the world?” How would you respond?

TONY JONES: I’ve read that post, and there are some really good points therein. There are also some naive misconceptions about the publishing industry. I see it like this: print publishing is an important way to vet one’s ideas in the broader culture. Of course, Joel Osteen sells a lot of books, so sales does not necessarily equal quality. But the ideas of emergent have been out there in the public square through books and blogs an conferences, and, as a result of the feedback (good and bad), we’ve all become better thinkers and practitioners. In the early days, many of us were committed to publishing everything for free on the Internet. But, at this point, that is just not feasible. For instance, many colleges, universities, and graduate schools do not allow students to footnote websites. You see, having a book printed lends the ideas therein credibility…at least for now.

JAKE BOUMA: Finally, what’s next on the plate for both yourself and Emergent Village? Do you have another book on the horizon? Any emergent events or a book tour (or anything) you want to plug for 2008? Thanks for participating in this interview!

TONY JONES: We’re doing some imagining around EV about the future. It might become more public, or it might go underground. We don’t really know. We’ve got a couple of great theological events coming next fall, and you can read about them at www.emergentvillage.com. Doug Pagitt, Mark Scandrette, and I will be on tour for our books all summer, so watch for that. And I’m currently writing a little book on the Didache, a very early Christian document that didn’t quite make the Bible. Thanks for having me!

Return to Part 1 of the interview »

Interview with Tony Jones, author of “The New Christians” (Part 1)

The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier

The following is Part 1 (Part 2) of an interview with Tony Jones about his forthcoming book The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier (to be released March 3, 2008). Tony is the national coordinator of Emergent Village, and a doctoral fellow in practical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. Find out more at Tony’s website.

JAKE BOUMA: Tell the readers a little about yourself - education, ministry experience, family life, etc. How did you get from baby Tony J. to the author of “The New Christians”?

TONY JONES: I grew up in Edina, Minnesota, the same town where I now reside. My parents were (are) great people who were faithful, but didn’t take their faith too seriously. And I mean that in a good way. So many of my friends in ministry grew up in homes that were spiritually toxic. Not me. My parents are highly educated, well-rounded people. They highly valued education and made sure that my brothers and I were serious about school.

We went to a great church — a funny hybrid of mainline and evangelical Protestantism, and I was very involved there growing up. I went to everything. And that church had a great stance on letting kids move into leadership positions early, so I was counseling camp and teaching Sunday school, etc., even when I was in junior high. From there I went to Dartmouth College and immediately to Fuller Seminary, a journey that I recount in my latest book (The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier).

After seminary, I was a missionary for three years, working primarily with Oglala Lakota people of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Then I took the job as minister to youth and young adults at my home church. It was there that I hooked up with Doug Pagitt and some of the other early emergent leaders. Honestly, my life hasn’t been the same since. This book is a record of our thoughts and activities over the past ten years.

Read the rest of this entry »

Best of 2007

I am pleased to present the second annual JakeBouma.com “Best of” list. Feel free to argue with my choices in the comments. Here’s the list for 2006.

1. Army of Me - Citizen
2. Matt Nathanson - Some Mad Hope
3. Andy Davis - Let the Woman
4. Anberlin - Cities
5. Kanye West - Graduation
Honorable Mention: Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger, The Alternate Routes - Good and Reckless and True, Eric Hutchinson - Sounds Like This, William Fitzsimmons - Goodnight

1. Once
2. Atonement
3. Bourne Ultimatum
4. 3:10 to Yuma
5. Sweeny Todd
Honorable Mention: Ratatouille, American Gangster, I Am Legend, Oceans 13, No Country for Old Men

1. Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry: From A Strategy of Influence to a Theology of Incarnation by Andrew Root (Review forthcoming)
2. Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church by James K. A. Smith
3. Everything Must Change by Brian McLaren
4. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
5. The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google by Nicholas Carr (Review forthcoming)
Honorable Mention: The Courtier and the Heretic by Matthew Stewart, The Primal Teen by Barbara Strauch

1. Chicago Cubs games
2. Heroes
3. Man Vs. Wild
4. The Colbert Report
5. Project Runway

1. Google Reader (seriously, I live a different life because of it)
2. Twitter
3. Bleed Cubbie Blue
4. IAmJoshBrown
5. Rethinking Youth Ministry

• I opened a new Twitter account at http://twitter.com/jbquotes to post short quotes from whatever book I am currently reading. Actually, I set up an entire “quote blog” a long time ago, but it never really got off the ground. Heck, let’s make this fun: I will give $10 via PayPal to the first person who finds my secret quote blog and contacts me with the correct URL. UPDATE: Scott (from Transformatum) is the winner, by finding http://www.jakebouma.com/quotes/. Nice work. 12/11/2007

The Primal Teen: Book review

The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries about the Teenage Brain Tell Us about Our Kids

I first heard about Barbara Strauch’s The Primal Teen from Mark Oestreicher (a.k.a. ysmarko) on his blog, and then in person when he plugged it during his seminar on middle school ministry at the 2007 National Youth Workers Convention.

The basic premise of the entire book is that new findings in the field of neuroscience (scientific study of the brain) are proving that many stereotypes and/or assumptions about adolescents have a biological foundation. “Teenagers may, indeed, be a bit crazy,” says Strauch in the Introduction, “but they are crazy according to a primal blueprint; they are crazy by design” (xiv).

Analyzed in light of recent scientific findings are many of the things traditionally associated with adolescence, such as impulsiveness, out-of-character and shady behavior, experimentation (drugs, sex, etc.), raging hormones, puppy love, sleeping too much, and so on. Many of these things have something to do with the prefrontal cortex, which is essentially the decision-making and impulse-resisting center of the brain. Adolescent bodies develop faster than the adolescent prefrontal cortex, and although a “teenager may outwardly look like a mountain of maturity to us… it’s an illusion” (36).

There’s a lot of great stuff in this book. If you’ve ever been puzzled by a teenager and asked the question “Why on earth does s/he do that!?”, this book has a lot of answers. It challenges us to look at adolescence as more than an awkward stage of bodily growth and social unrest; adolescence, scientists are finding, is period in which brain development rivals that of early childhood.

As a professional youth worker, I highly recommend this book, both to fellow youth workers and parents alike. For youth workers, you’ll see your job in a whole new way. In addition to encouraging kids in the Way of Jesus, we’ll begin to see our ministry as vital to the biological development of adolescents. The implications here are huge. Things we do (and the way we do them) in youth ministry will not only affect the rest of teenagers’ lives spiritually, they will affect the rest of their lives biologically - we are, quite literally, molding their brains.

I have just one caveat. The book was published in 2003, which means most of the research and interviews were likely conducted in 2002 and before. As we approach 2008, this book nears its fifth birthday, and five years in the field of neuroscience is a LONG time. So the book is a bit dated, but it’s still relevant. As far as I know, there haven’t been any similar (and similarly accesible) books since The Primal Teen was published.

I’d like to end this review with a quote in the book from an 18 year old guy named Stuart which I think accurately sums up the book. He says,

I think one of the biggest changes I notice is that my mind seems to see things in a more complex, complicated kind of way now… It’s like for the first time, my brain can ask “what if” (202).

May we be courageous enough to encourage adolescents to ask “what if”. Their biological development may depend on it.

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