Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Grab Yourself A Paddle, July 10, 2009
The late B. Kliban, famous for his cat drawings, once drew a cartoon that was spot on when it comes to the dichotomy between faith and practice. There was a drawing of a rock matched with a drawing of a Rockette. A picture of a fish labeled `carp' sat next to one of a man in lederhosen labeled `Carpathian." Finally he drew a bearded man wearing robes with a holy aura. `Christ.' He was matched with a scowling, overweight man in a business suit labeled `Christian.'
That's what much of the world sees. It's not that non-Christians don't admire Jesus. It's that they don't see anyone actually living by his words. Churches are sometimes the most unpleasant, judgmental, unaccepting, closed collection of individuals. At least that's how it appears.
So a few years ago I started collecting notes for a book I was going to call Christian that would try to cut away the clutter and get down to the matter of what it means to be a follower of Jesus and a reader of the Bible. I was going to pare away the `isms' and schisms. I was going to ask the questions of what it would mean if people really started believing in a Jesus that was real and really expected us to live according to his word.
Then my Jeff Neuman-Lee wrote this book and I realized I could put all my notes away. Done deal. Not only that, he wrote it better than I would have.
I've known Jeff over thirty years, since our days in seminary, where we were wrestling with the question, how do we get this stuff out of the classroom and into the real world where people are hurting and lives matter? Jeff was serious enough about the issue without being solemn, which meant that life was full of spontaneous joy. I'll never forget the spring day, after the worst winter in Chicago history, when the snow really melted and an artificial lake was formed on campus. I looked out the window, and there was Jeff and his wife Judi rowing a canoe. It was that seize the day attitude that I loved about Jeff then, and continued to enjoy over the years.
That sense of claimed wonder - and images from those moments when he's been able to get out and canoe - fill these pages. Jeff asks us to imagine what the church - and our individual lives - would be like if we believed in Jesus, took him seriously (but once again not solemnly) - and lived life like it matters. And the answer is - life would be pretty good. Church would be exciting. It would matter. People would be transformed, and the world would be changed.
Jeff carefully pares away the church's current obsession and incautious romance with political power, with control, with judgment. Instead, he challenges us to recognize God is real and God is with us. God is not a party or a policy or a nation or a convenient confirmation of our particular prejudices. The creator of the universe is known in ways the creator has chosen. Love is at the heart of this action, and love will naturally flow from real discipleship.
Peace, simplicity, community, are at the heart of the matter. Scripture provides a clear map once it is disengaged from a literalist proof-texting matrix of illusions and taken seriously as God's word interpreted by the community. Love not only leads us to forgive but to seek the reconciliation God desires for all. The work of God is not an onerous burden but the natural life of a people who recognize God is with us.
And since this is a journey each chapter is opened with images from a life of canoeing, grounding us in the reality of God that is not separate or distinct from the life of faith but integral to it. This book is not about religion. It's about life in the Spirit. Real life. The thing we have glimpsed in our best moments. This is not about Thou Shalt Nots, especially shalt notting the things that other people like doing. After all, the creator delights in the world and us even more than we do. The creator created them!
Once you read this book you'll smack yourself on the forehead like one of those V-8 commercials and say that you ought to have thought of it earlier. And best of all, you won't think about Jeff so much as you'll desire to get to know God through Jesus. Because this is not a book about a cult in which we all have to think and talk like Jeff. Good thing too, because I'm terrible in a canoe.
Get this book. It's that important. Read this book. Live this book.
|
|
|
|
