The Jesus of Suburbia

Mike Erre

I finished this book a little while ago, but for some reason, I'm just getting around to blogging about it. The subtitle of this book asks the question, "Have we tamed the Son of God to fit our lifestyle?" I doubt a single book published on the subject has answered "no" to that question, so it's not surprising that the theme of this book is that we have taken the Jesus of the Scriptures and conformed him into the image of a nice, happy Jesus that fits into the values of suburban culture.

There's really nothing ground breaking or revolutionary about this book. The ideas contained in it have been written by others for years, and many are common critiques of evangelicalism even from its staunchest defenders. For instance, the chapter entitled "The Danger of Theology" gives the same distinction between knowing God and knowing about God that has been explained by J. I. Packer and countless others within evangelicalism.

At the same time, however, this book packages these concepts into one book for easy consumption and digestion. Clearly the highlight of the book is its first chapter, entitled simply, "Revolution." The chapter does an excellent job of reorienting the evangelical portrait of Jesus around his revolutionary intentions--even the announcement of his birth would have been read as intentionally subversive to the reign of Caesar, and people gave their lives for the claim that "Jesus is Lord" as a result.

Other chapters highlight what to me are core convictions of the Reformed tradition--the dismantling of the sacred-secular divide in the church today, a treatment of mystery and paradox and how much of evangelicalism has tried to answer questions that need not be answered, and the mission of the church to live redemptively in culture. If you already have formed deep convictions in these areas elsewhere, this book may not add much to your convictions, but if you're looking for a book that packages it all together succinctly and simply, this is a good book with which to start.

The Conversion of the Imagination

Paul as Interpreter of Israel's Scripture
Richard B. Hays

R. B. Hays has written a book detailing the narrative substructure of Paul's letters. He argues with convincing clarity that when Paul quotes or cites Old Testament texts, he is not just prooftexting his own arguments. Rather, he is drawing them in, often quite subtly, to the narrative context of the Old Testament quotation. He may only cite one verse, but he will continue to use vocabulary from the Old Testament narrative to situate his readers within that narrative and give his audiences both identity and exhortation on the ground of their place in Israel's story.

Hays has done a remarkable job, and reading this book ought to cause us to have our own imaginations "converted" as we read both Paul and the New Testament. Hays notes that Paul does not quote the Law to command his readers, even when those laws would seem applicable. Rather, he draws them in to Israel's story, situates them in their proper place, and exhorts them on that basis--as the people of God living on this side of the cross.

The last essay is called "hermeneutics of trust." That essay is worth the whole book. He both critiques the postmodern "hermeneutics of suspicion" and also gives us a new way of looking at the Scriptures from the basis of faith. While not decidedly evangelical, and while he comes from the so called "new perspective," this is still quite an intriguing read.

Jesus' Tomb?

I woke up this morning to the Today Show telling me that they found the tomb of Jesus, his wife and son. Wow. I waited for the historian or archaeologist who made this discovery and found out it was James Cameron, the movie director who made Titanic. This "new" discovery has been around since 1980, and never was thought to amount to anything until Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici got their hands on it.

Here's my take on it: Suppose I'm looking for a guy by the name of John. I know he died a few decades ago, but I can't find his body. I know him to be a poor, unmarried man from Baltimore with no children. In my search I happen to find a family tomb in Washington D.C. where there's a casket with John's first name (I can barely make it out, but I think it's "John") and also the first name of his father. Then I find in the tomb another casket with his mother's first name on it as well as a casket with the name of one of his siblings. But then I find a couple other caskets with names on them that aren't is relatives (one of them might be that of his wife), and then I find a casket with his son's name on it. I further determine that this tomb is the tomb of a rich family, not a poor one, like the John I'm looking for. It would not be a difficult conclusion to reach to say that I have the wrong John. I'm not even sure the casket says John, and what I can tell about him is very different from the John I'm looking for.

Now it's possible that I have completely misunderstood John. He was posing as a poor, unmarried man from Baltimore with no kids. In fact, he had a whole secret identity. Yet without any evidence of that secret life, it's a really stupid conclusion to draw.

The fact is perfectly obvious, from the data that we have about this tomb of "Jesus," that this is a different Jesus from the Jesus of the Gospels. The Jesus of the Gospels is from Galilee, not Jerusalem. He and his family were also poor. There's no conceivable way a poor family could afford a wealthy family tomb just south of Jerusalem (and if they had come into money, they would have bought one in Galilee). Furthermore, he is presented as being unmarried with no kids throughout his whole life. The "Jesus" (if that is what the scribble on the ossuary says) of the Talpiot tomb was a wealthy man from Jerusalem who was married with a kid and had other relatives we don't know to be those of Jesus of Nazareth. The tomb contains the body of a man who is a different man than the Jesus of the Gospels.

Now perhaps the Gospels got Jesus all wrong, and he was in fact a wealthy man from Jerusalem with a wife and kid, but without any evidence to suggest that, it's a pretty dumb conclusion to draw from what we've found in that Talpiot tomb. And if the Gospels got all that wrong about him, why would we trust the names of his relatives as stated in the Gospels anyway?

That's my thought on the matter. Anyway, Ben Witherington, a New Testament scholar whom I respect, has this to say about it: Ben Witherington's blog.

The Sacred Journey

A Memoir of Early Days
Frederick Buechner

I don't read many autobiographies; this is the first one I've read in years. A friend of mine recommended Buechner's memoirs to me, and this is the first in a series of books in which Buechner reflects on the meaning of his life. He's convinced that God speaks in our lives, and the task before us is to learn to hear His words in and to us. In reading of his life, Buechner hopes that we to will catch glimpses of God's words to us and in us. The Sacred Journey describes in vivid detail the first 27 years or so of his life, focusing mostly from about the time of his father's suicide to his conversion experience. In hearing his story, we have the opportunity see the wonder of how God works in us, beautifully narrated in elegent prose. I highly recommend this book.

Far as the Curse Is Found

The Covenant Story of Redemption
Michael D. Williams

This book is a fine introduction to reading the Bible as redemptive history, and it rightly focuses on God's plan of redemption for the entire cosmos, not just for human souls. It is good to see a book written for your average student of the Word that looks at redemptive history in that way. It is well written, relatively concise (for the breadth of what he's seeking to cover) and filled with good theology. I wrote of another book earlier, entitled The Drama of Scripture, that covers basically the same ground, but in far more detail. That book also gives a you a good history of the Bible, and is therefore a better book to book in that regard. Yet for a brief overview of the Bible's redemptive history, this may be the best place to turn.

The Faces of Jesus

A Life Story
Frederick Buechner

This is one of the more intriguing books I've read recently. As you might imagine from the cover, it's a book about Jesus, and throughout the book, he's giving us a portrait of his "face"--his presence among us. Buechner is a wonderful writer, and his prose is simply filled with beautiful descriptions of certain aspects of his life and ministry for us. For instance, referring to Jesus' statement, "as you did it to one of the least of my brethren, you did it to me," he writes, "Just as Jesus appeared at his birth as a helpless child that the world was free to care for or destroy, so now he appears in his resurrection as the pauper, the prisoner, the stranger: [he] appears in every form of human need that world is free to serve or ignore" (p. 92). It is pure joy at times just to read his prose and fall in love with the Christ who saved our souls.

Yet at other times, he seems to toss that faith to the winds. He qualifies his statements of faith: "it would take no less than God, if there were a God, to enable men to see God's glory in that shambles of a face" (p. x). A wonderful insight, but why would he have that insight and also question if there is a God? At other times, he leads us needlessly into critical discussions about the reliability of the Gospels, and at times will even pit them against each other. One senses a Barthian sensibility to his trust in the Gospels, and for me, I find it annoying that it is included in such beautiful prose like olives on a pepperoni pizza.

I hate olives. I pick them out of my pizza when someone foolishly thinks they might add to the flavor of the pepperoni. I eat the pizza and enjoy it, but there's always that slight tinge of olive flavor that reminds me of what I had to remove to enjoy it. So it is with this book. I truly enjoyed it, and will likely quote from it from time to time, but there was nothing I could do to fully remove the flavor of his critical allegences from the beauty of his prose.

Kingdom Come

How Jesus Wants to Change the World
Allen Mitsuo Wkabayashi

There are lots of books on the Kingdom of God out there to read. Most of them are either highly academic and difficult to read or they simply have poor view of the kingdom of God. This book is probably the first book with great kingdom theology that is accessible to just about any reader who would be interested in reading about the kingdom of God.

The basic premise of the book is that the gospel is bigger than what we give it credit for. We tend to think of it as what we need to believe to get to heaven, but such thinking (as true as it is) alone does not compel us to live a life of mission. Allen is seeking to give us a fuller picture of the kingdom (or, better, reign) of God--that God "has broken into history in the person and work of Jesus Christ. The blessings, power and justice of the future kingdom of God have reached back into the present and taken root in our world" (p. 145). God's reign in this world is intent on reclaiming all that was lost in the fall, not just human souls (as important as that aspect of the gospel is). When we understand the nature of the kingdom and the message of the gospel, we are then compelled to live life with a sense of mission--seeking not only to care for the poor, but to get involved in redeeming the societal structures that cause people to end up in poverty to begin with.

Yet this is not bare theology. Woven throughout the book are helpful illustrations and life examples from even his own marriage, as he and his wife have needed to graple the reality of abuse and rape and the tension those realities create for what we believe about Jesus and His kingdom.

I have one issue with chapter 11 on "Conversion." There he seems to draw too hard a dichotomy (my guess is that it's not intended) between what Dallas Willard calls "gospels of sin management" and a kingdom-oriented gospel. To be sure, he and Dallas Willard are correct to point out that the problems we face in discipliship can be traced directly to the way we present the gospel--we tend to focus exclusively on having all our past, present, and future sins forgiven in Christ so that we can get to heaven when we die. If that's the sum total of the gospel, then there's precious little reason to live a holy life afterwards. New converts can easily balk at the cost of discipliship with the objection, "I didn't sign up for this. I just wanted to be forgiven so I could go to heaven and still live how I want."

He even gives an example of a girl who accepted his gospel presentation but later said she didn't want to stop sleeping with her boyfriend. He suggests that a kingdom oriented gospel would prevent the misunderstandings that she had--fair enough. But the solution is not to add to a gospel of forgiveness. I fear sometimes we forget the life-transforming power of the Holy Spirit (not our gospel presentations) that works through forgiveness. As Paul so aptly said, it was the kindness of God that led him to repentance. If we truly understood our own rebellion against God's kingdom (regardless of whether or not we engage in premarital sex), and if we truly understood the magnitude of our forgiveness in Christ (his righteousness has been imputed to us), then by God's Spirit our lives would change, and we would see his Kingship over us as the gracious loving reign that it really is. That's what causes change in us.

Nevertheless, I find it to be a wonderful book, and I highly recommend it for all interested in an accessible treatment of Christian living in the kingdom of God.