Book Review: The Shaming of the Strong by Sarah Williams

God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. - 1 Corinthians 1:27

Thanks to my good friend, Ryan Boettcher, I was introduced to Sarah Williams via her moving book The Shaming of the Strong. Williams is a professor at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, and has held academic posts at Oxford University.

The book, The Shaming of the Strong, relates Williams' own journey through a challenging pregnancy. Her third child was a joyful expectation when a 20-week ultrasound scan revealed that the baby was developing with a unique condition that would lead to its death upon delivery. Williams lets us into the depths of confusion, grief, despair, and joy that meets her within the months of her pregnancy.

With moving honesty, Williams chronicles the challenges that she faced along with her husband, Paul, her two daughters, Hannah and Emilia, and close family and friends. How do we relate to one another when things are not as we had hoped? How do we relate to God in these challenging situations? How might we need our own hopes and dreams to be refined by the apparent 'wrongs' that come into our lives.

Now, some of you are saying: "Matt, this really isn't a book I'm going to read because it really doesn't apply to my life. I mean, I'm not pregnant ... I don't have kids ... I'm not even thinking about getting married ...", etc. Listen to me: this is a book worth reading for anyone because of the way in which Williams draws us into her personal story and engages the head and heart with the perplexing issues of valuing life as followers of Jesus, understanding what true strength and weakness are, and wondering how God meets us in the shadows of life.

We all face times, like Job, where our dreams and hopes are taken away or crushed. How might we, like Job, still say:

The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away,
may the name of the Lord be praised. - Job 1:21

Read this brief excerpt from the end of the book:

Everyone hurts. At some stage most people find that life does not deliver what we expect it would or should, and sometimes, worse still, life damages us directly. Although we may use our strength to control what happens to us, often we have little power to prevent difficult things happening. What we do have, however, is the power to choose how we respond. Everyone can choose to turn towards God and to love him in spite of the difficulty and injustice, even in the midst of a situation. . . . All we would have without him is the illusory freedom of our own strength to protect ourselves and our autonomy to isolate ourselves. (171)

While this profound quotation does not do justice to the narrative of Williams' journey with her baby, it gives us a glimpse of the power found in her story for us.

Facing the Tomb

This past weekend I was reading through the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac on Mount Moriah. It’s one of those stories that throws me for a loop every time I read it. God tells Abraham to kill his son who was a tangible promise of God’s goodness and blessing. Why would God do that? It seems so convoluted.

The story is that Abraham is called out of Ur to follow God (Genesis 12). He travels around for quite some time through places like Canaan, the desert regions of the Negev, Egypt, and more. Abraham does well sometimes – living as if God’s promises are true – and then fails other times – living as if God didn’t exist and never promised him anything.

One of my favorite stories of Abraham’s failure is when he attempts to make things happen with God’s promises. You see, he’s supposed to be the father of many nations (Gen 15:4-6), but he has no physical son or daughter. How does the promise get fulfilled without a flesh and blood heir? So, he has sex with Hagar, Sarah’s servant girl, and everything goes downhill from there. Sarah gets jealous of Hagar and throws her out with her newborn son, Ishmael. The ‘making it happen’ solution really just made things worse.

But overall, Abraham was a faithful believer in God and his promises. He was so faithful in his belief, that when God told him to sacrifice the son of promise that he had been given – Isaac – he went up to the mountain with his son, two servants, and a bundle of sticks to do it.

He didn’t argue with God. He didn’t make excuses. He simply believed God.

He and Isaac climbed the mountain together. They made the altar together. Abraham bound Isaac to the altar. He raised the knife to kill his son.

Abraham was facing a test (Gen 22:1). He was facing death. He was entering into the destruction of the promise. Why would God call him to do something at odds with God’s own words?

It’s like Good Friday. We face the tomb with the body of Jesus laid in it. Jesus is dead. All God’s great promises – help, salvation, a new way, a new life – are laid to rest in death before us. Not a halfway death but total death. We wonder why. Why would God do this? Why would he do something at such total odds with his words of promise in Jesus Christ?

And God stayed Abraham’s hand. Isaac was spared. A lamb was provided, caught in a thicket. God affirmed his promise because Abraham had passed the test.

And Jesus did not stay in the tomb. It was empty on Resurrection Day and life had burst forth. His faithfulness in obedience to God was a passing of the test. God affirmed his promise because Jesus had passed the test.

And so, we stand facing the tombs of our own lives, even as we face the tomb of Jesus. We struggle, we falter, we rise up, we walk … because many times in life are a test.

Just as Abraham faced the test and Jesus faced the test, so we face tests in our lives. We encounter times and places in which God puts us through the ringer, where we face some sort of dying and call into question parts or all of God’s rich promises. Why would God do something like this? Why would he do something at such total odds with his words of promise to me?

As we face the tomb at the end of Lent this year, may our faith rise up like that of Abraham to walk in obedience to God’s mysterious voice by the power of the risen Jesus even though we may not understand the place where God’s purpose and promises intersect.

The Case for Teaching the Bible

Here's an interesting article on Time Magazine's online journal making a case for why the Bible should be taught as part of the curriculum for public schools and colleges. Why? Because it is the 'bedrock' of Western civilization. It's worth reading if you're interested in education or the connections between biblical literacy and politics.

Me, Me, Me

Just a brief follow-on from some recent comments I made about celebrity narcissism and a recent post I wrote entitled "Collegiate Narcissism."

I ran across a thorough analysis of all this in the form of an article entitled "Me, Me, Me." The author wades his way through the contemporary morass of self-esteem movements, modern technology, self-help, personal rights, and more, drawing it into dialogue with Scripture and some fairly good thinking.

Bono and Eugene Peterson

It's no secret to anyone that I love U2 and that I love reading the works of Eugene Peterson, the author of The Message. Some folks may know that on recent U2 tours when Bono quotes from Scripture he has generally quoted from The Message paraphrase. In fact, at a celebration of the completion of The Message in 2002, Bono videoed in some words of appreciation to Peterson:

Hi Mr. Peterson, Eugene. My name is Bono. I'm a singer with the group U2. I wanted to sort of video message you my thanks, and our thanks in the band, for this remarkable work you've done translating the Scriptures. Really, really a remarkable work. As a songwriter, it was very clear to me that you were a poet as well as a scholar. You brought the musicality to God's Word that I'm sure was there, was always there in intention. There have been some great translations, some very literary translations, but no translations that I've read that speaks to me in my own language. So I want to thank you for that. And it's been ten years, that's a long time, so take a rest now, won't you? Bye.

I recently stumbled upon an interesting article in which Eugene Peterson is interviewed about U2 and their stance as a prophetic voice in the world today. For instance, when asked what he would say in response to Bono's words about The Message, Peterson says:

"Thank you for preaching to all the people who will never listen to me or read anything that I write! And for doing it with such integrity." I think that's what I feel, I just feel grateful to them for being obedient to the gifts that God has given them.

Take a read, if you have an interest in this sort of thing.

The Real St. Patrick

For those of you who might be interested in knowing more about who St. Patrick really was, you can read a fascinating account of his life here.

You might be surprised to find out that he was a freed slave who returned to share the good news in Christ with his captors.

John Perkins

Many people have heard of the ministry of John Perkins through The Ave's connections with Voice of Calvary Ministries (VOCM) in Jackson, MS. Every Spring Break, we send groups of students down to Jackson to work alongside of the year-round staff of VOCM to demolish and rehab homes in the neighborhoods of West Jackson.

Christianity Today recently provided a helpful look at the life of 'Grandpa John' who has influenced a great number of evangelicals, including the likes of Shane Claiborne, to put their faith into action, specifically in relation to social issues of our times.

You can read the article in CT here. You may also want to read Perkins' autobiography, Let Justice Roll Down, which features a new introduction by Shane Claiborne in a reissued edition.

The Emerging Church

I am often asked for a concise summary of what the emerging church is all about. Scot McKnight, a professor at North Park Seminary on the north side of Chicago, recently published an article in Christianity Today that I found to be a helpful summary of the movement. This is a feat of wonder given the fact that the movement does not have a defining center, doctrinal statement, and many folks who consider themselves part of it disagree with one another.

You can read the article here, as well as the highly divided comments in response to it and things not in the article at all.

Magna Doodle Salvation

Did you grow up playing with a Magna Doodle? My kids have one and I love the thing. It’s a massive step up from the Etch-a-Sketch that I played with as a kid. Back then, we had to rely on two massive white knobs to create drawings with. It was really hard to draw circles – they always ended up looking like deformed, pixilated diamonds. Then, to clear the display of your deformed, pixilated diamond-circle thingy, you had to shake and shake and shake it until your shoulders and head hurt … then a little more and start over to make another pixilated creation.

But with a Magna Doodle, you can draw anything you want. Then, with the simple push and pull of a slider (sound effect: ‘swish-swish’), you can clear the display of your work and start over. The simplicity and effectiveness of the ‘swish-swish’ is beautiful.

I wish that life was like a Magna Doodle. When things go wrong inside of your soul or with other people, you could just move the slider (‘swish-swish’) and start over. A lot of times, that’s how we view our faith. We come to Jesus for salvation and ‘swish-swish’ everything’s better. All our issues and difficulties are gone. It’s Magna Doodle salvation!! (Halle-lu-jah!)

But life isn’t like that. When we come to Jesus, our issues don’t go away magically with a ‘swish-swish’. When we come to Jesus, we begin a new journey towards wholeness in Christ. We are at the beginning of something new … not the end.

So many times, we don’t let God really deal with the issues in our life because we’re clinging to Magna Doodle salvation. As we resist God’s desire to really reshape and remold us, we simply transfer our old issues into our new life with God. The old people pleasing that had led us into the party scene now leads us into activism in the nearest Christian group. The old bitterness from abusive relationships in our past leads us into co-dependent and broken relationships with our new Christian small group. There is no ‘swish-swish’ that can magically take them away.

Instead of Magna Doodle salvation, we need to return to the biblical understanding of our lives as clay in the hands of the potter. Jeremiah talks about this when he says “like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, house of Israel” (Jer 18:6). It’s what the Apostle Paul is referencing when he says “we have this treasure [God’s glory] in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us” (2 Cor 4:7).

When we come to Jesus, God takes us in His hands and begins the process of forming and reshaping us. We are bent and malformed. He wants to slowly return us to how He made us to be in the first place: truthful, humble, patient, loving, bold … and the list goes on.

As we move forward in life day by day – with all of our good and bad issues – may we release ourselves into the hands of the Creator so that He might reshape us for good in His time and in His way.

Amazing Grace

Just saw the movie Amazing Grace with some friends yesterday. While not fast-paced at all, it was a pretty profound account of the life of William Wilberforce. Wilberforce was one of the chief activists in England in the early 1800s working for the abolition of the slave trade and slavery. The movie tracks his life, relationships, political work, and spiritual life from his earliest efforst in Parliament.

I'd highly encourage folks to see the movie. It will be quite different from most of the movies you would see these days. Wilberforce is a shining example of how a vibrant faith in the living God relates to seeking change in society.

For some further insight on Wilberforce, you could check out the following web-sites:

• Christian History's web-site has a number of articles you can read, including this one about the influence of John Newton (author of the words to the hymn 'Amazing Grace') on Wilberforce
• The BBC's history sub-section on historical figures here
• Prison Fellowship's brief biographical statement on Wilberforce
• Brycchan Carey's web-site dedicated to 18th century England with an in-depth biography of Wilberforce as well as a bibliography of primary and secondary sources