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In Review
By Rev. Dr. Colin MacDonald
Mini Reviews
Blunt Honesty
Confessions of a Pastor: Adventures in Dropping the Pose and Getting Real With God by Craig Groeschel, (Multnomah Publishers, Sisters, Oregon, 2006)
Groeschel does not back away personally from any of these issues. While at times I felt he handles his struggles a bit cavalierly, his overall honesty with his struggles was refreshing. At the beginning of the book, he writes, "You may not like me after reading this book" (p. 8), given the honesty with which he writes. Yet both his courage and his vulnerability touched me. By the end of the book, though I have never met him, I still liked Groeschel.
There is a study guide at the end of the volume that certainly helped me to delve a little more deeply into my own failures and struggles. As Dan Hill sang 30 years ago, sometimes "the honesty's too much," and I had to step away from some of the questions. Still, I am glad Craig Groeschel had the audacity to step out and say that it's all right to struggle and even fail. After all, if we were all perfect all the time, where would be the need for God's grace?
Well done, Craig!
Love Letter From God
Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading by Eugene Peterson (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2006 ) The English poet Francis Bacon once said words to the effect that some books are to be read, some to be savoured and others to be eaten. Of course, the Bible, above all others, belongs to the last category, but Eugene Peterson's Eat This Book is not far off! Having read it three times, and having led a spiritual formation group at my church based on Peterson's teachings and insights, I guess I am ready to give a positive review!
One of the most important lessons I took from this book is Peterson's use of Luke 10:26. In this periscope, Jesus is asked by a certain lawyer, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus answers, "What is in the law? How do you read it?" The use of "how" rather than "what" is a real turning point. In this one small word, Jesus says that Scripture is not primarily information to make us smarter, but the greatest source of formation in the context of our Christian faith.
A good part of the book deals with what is called lectio divina (holy reading). Peterson reintroduces the reader to the ancient and time-tested art of reading the Bible not as a "how-to" handbook to get to heaven, or as a book that will help us proof-text our own prejudices. Instead, the Bible is God's self-revelation to the world; a "love letter" if you will, from God to us. Peterson walks the reader through the four steps of lectio divina: lectio (reading) meditatio (meditation) oratio (prayer) and contemplatio (contemplation).
The chapter on the discovery of papyri at Oxyrynchus in Egypt and the Ugarit culture in which the early Hebrews found themselves is worth the price of the book.
This book comes highly recommended. With Peterson's insights we learn (for some of us, again) that the Bible is revelation first, information second. To (ab)use the Bible solely as a source of information concerning the ancient Near East, or to prove that "my" insights are right (and thus yours are wrong), whether by the liberal or conservative wings of the Church, is to say that the Bible is primarily about us. The Bible is among us as God's self-revelation. Unless and until we approach the Bible as such, we never will really "get it."
Incredible Faith Amid Horror
Left To Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust (Immaculee Ilibagiza, with Steve Erwin, Hay House Inc., Carlsbad, California, 2006, paperback) Many Canadians will be familiar with general Romeo Dallaire's memoir of his time with United Nations forces in Rwanda, Shake Hands With the Devil. There he deals with his own sense of frustration in not being allowed to stop the Rwandan genocide of 1994. In that year, the Hutu-led government of Rwanda gave a green light to the Interahamwe, a gang of Hutu extremists, to begin genocide against the Tutsi minority. At the end of that time, approximately 800,000 people had been brutally tortured, raped and killed.
One of the Tutsis who survived the holocaust is Immaculee Ilibagiza, whose book, Left to Tell, is a heart-wrenching story of gross inhumanity and, at the same time, incredible faith. Immaculee was one of a family of six of whom only two survived-her brother, Aimable, who was studying in Senegal at the time, and herself. Her parents and her two other brothers were victims of the slaughter.
The story revolves around how Rwanda slid into this dark hole of genocide and what the author had to do to survive. A Roman Catholic, she found sanctuary with a Protestant Hutu pastor in whose house she hid in a tiny bathroom for three months with seven other Tutsi women. It was during that time that she learned the power of prayer and of being in dialogue with God.
This is not an easy book to read. The horrors, the fear, the hatred are all there to confront the reader. The author's own struggles with faith and with God are evident and real. Yet there are also moments of sublime hope, where she finds herself in hopeless situations and feels strongly the presence of Jesus as her protector. The story of how she was able to come through this horror with her faith intact, and indeed stronger than before, is amazing. Immaculee truly believes, and the reader comes to believe also, that she was rescued in order to tell the story.
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