Jesus Wants to Save Christians

In the continued Quest to Be a Better Stacey, today I picked up a book that I ordered ages ago and haven't yet read, which is completely against my personal conviction that books are meant to be read and that if you're not going to read them, you have no business owning them. I may be revising my opinion, however, because Jesus Wants to Save Christians is giving me a headache. Dear Rob Bell, I think you have some marvelous things to say, and your way of presenting biblical narrative is pretty remarkable,

but if you don't

stop writing your books

like this

I may be forced

to come to Michigan

and hurl them at your head.

If you've read any Rob Bell, you know what I'm talking about. There is this thing called a paragraph with which I wish he would get better acquainted. Perhaps this is an attempt to keep the attention of the ADD generation whose communication happens almost entirely in the 140 characters or less world of Twitter, Facebook, and text messages. I live a fair amount of my life in that world too, but sometimes it's nice to read something a little less frantic.

That said, the book has some interesting and challenging ideas, not necessarily new to me, but good reminders. Like, as Christians, how happy should we really be that the U.S. military is occupying a Middle Eastern country "until peace can be restored," when Jesus was a Middle Eastern man who lived in an occupied country and was killed by a government that claimed it was trying to restore the peace by doing so? Not that I was actually happy about this to begin with, but I'm having a little situational cognitive dissonance over it at the moment. It also mentions the multi-billion dollar business of keeping us "safe," which has long bothered me. I'm not really sure what that air puffer in the airport is supposed to do, or why my tax dollars pay for it, or why I submit to it when I don't know what good it does and have ethical questions about the company that produces it and thus makes a ton of money off of the fear of the American people. Probably because I would rather avoid the full-body pat down or missing my plane than make a fuss. Fuss is just so inconvenient.

More broadly, it is a book about the Church as an exiled people, strangers in a strange land. Which makes one wonder if we are strange enough (yes, I know, most of you think I am already plenty strange).

And so, in the spirit of cultural resistance, the poem for today is "1991 - I" by Wendell Berry.

The year begins with war.

Our bombs fall day and night,

Hour after hour, by death

Abroad appeasing wrath,

Folly, and greed at home.

Upon our giddy tower

We'd oversway the world.

Our hate comes down to kill

Those whom we do not see,

For we have given up

Our sight to those in power

And to machines, and now

Are blind to all the world.

This is a nation where

No lovely thing can last.

We trample, gouge, and blast;

The people leave the land;

The land flows to the sea.

Fine men and women die,

The fine old houses fall,

The fine old trees come down;

Highway and shopping mall

Still guarantee the right

And liberty to be

A peaceful murderer,

A murderous worshipper,

A slender glutton. Forgiving

No enemy, forgiven

By none, we live the death

Of liberty, become

What we have feared to be.