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Back in the ’90’s December 22, 2006

Posted by Patrick in : Christianity, Reading , add a comment

Since we disconnected the internet a few weeks ago, my reading has drastically increased. Here are a few things that I’ve read recently:

A Simple Plan (Scott Smith) - Like the movie, the grief of hiding secrets, both small and large, were difficult not to empathize with. A Simple Plan tells the story of two brothers and a friend finding a treasure in a field, and their efforts to keep it. The plan was to keep the money stashed away for six months, split it three ways, and each leave town separately.

It was interesting and sad watching the characters’ relationships deteriorate as half-truths and deceit muddied up both their inner and outer lives. If anything, it showed me the seriousness of sin, especially when it’s unconfessed.

Evangelism: Doing Justice & Preaching Grace (Harvie Conn) - This book is a short one that I picked up at a conference a month and a half ago. Don’t let the title throw you off. The book was written in 1982 and I think that the connotations of the word evangelism have continued to sink since then.

In just over 100 pages, the book basically fills out why the Christian life needs to be both word and deed. It focuses more on the church (community of believers) and why social healing must be part and parcel with gospel-saturated teaching.

He fleshed this out with his twelve-year experience of helping those trapped in Korean prostitution rings. When he went to Korea, he understood the gospel just as calling individual sinners to repentance and faith. His prostitute hearers were merely the subjects and agents of sin. Though many listened, he saw little fruit.

As he continued to work with the prostitutes, he came to understand how the gospel needed to speak to not just sinners, but also the sinned-against. He witnessed how many of the women, because of their circumstances, were buried in guilt and shame because of the extreme debt they had toward those who imprisoned them. It really wasn’t their fault that they were in prostitution.

As he learned this, Conn’s compassion began to grow. He worked toward changing the system while speaking a message of Christ dignifying the shamed. The gospel started to break through and become a reality to the girls. They began to taste “the power of the new day that has come”.

Parable (Carlos Delgado) - This short story was written by my friend Carlos (not the same Carlos Delgado who plays MLB). I was impressed by this one. Many will find it sad and depressing, but I kind of like these themes of overbearing mothers who completely smother their children until the point of madness. I look forward to other works.

Ankeny Briefcase December 16, 2006

Posted by Patrick in : Friends, Reading , 1 comment so far

If you’re looking for a last minute Christmas gift for your bibliophile friends, pick up the Ankeny Briefcase. It’s a collection of various short stories from young, upcoming writers. This endorsement, of course, has nothing to do with my friend Carlos who was just published in it. Is he the next Flannery O’Connor? You’ll have to buy it to make that judgment.

Seven hours for one second November 21, 2006

Posted by Patrick in : Movies, Reading , 6 comments

Sunday, I showed up for an extras’ call for Smart People. I still don’t know what the movie is about. All I know is Dennis Quaid is the main actor playing a CMU professor. He was on set on Sunday. And for the seven hours there, I think I probably had a second’s worth of camera time. The glamour of Hollywood is wearing thin.

While waiting to be called on set, I started Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor. This novelette has been on my list for a while. So far, it starts out with Hazel Motes as a painfully awkward son a preacher man travelling to the big city after the war. So far, I’ve only read chapter one.

And while at Borders today, I picked up A Simple Plan. About eight years ago, I watched this movie with my friend Jeff and was captivated by its dark plot. The story follows two brothers and a friend stumbling across a large sum of money and the decisions they make in order to keep it. As the story unfolds, you watch how it’s the small decisions that shapes lives and character. It’s one of the scariest movies I’ve seen.

Should I not love that great city? October 10, 2006

Posted by Patrick in : Christianity, Reading , 3 comments

Preparing for tomorrow night’s Bible study, I perused Rodney Stark’s book The Rise Of Christianity again for some information on the city of Antioch. Tomorrow, we study Acts 11:19-12:24, with a focus on the first half of the passage which is the gospel being preached to both the Jews and the Greeks. It’s the first account of preaching the good news to two different ethnic groups who live in the same city.

The text states that “the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch” (Acts 11:26). Stark’s book paints Antioch as a city with eighteen ethnic groups who didn’t necessarily intermingle. He challenges one historian’s view of the city being a “proper melting pot”:

But it is not clear how much melting actually went on. What does seem clear is that the social integration of Greco-Roman cities was severely disrupted by the durability of internal ethinic divisions, which typically took the form of distinct ethnic precints.

Did the gospel’s inherent ability to break down racial pride cause the city to name the Christ followers Christians? It’s interesting to think about.

As a sidenote, if you’re interested in a frank sociological survey of the early church and the rise of Christianity, check out this book. I read it about a year ago and it cleared up a lot of misconceptions I had with the early church. For one, he argues (as do most scholars I found out) that the early church was primarily a movement of middle-class urbanites and not a movement of the poor as people once thought.

The author has good trend data on Christianity’s expansion up to Constantine. The rate of growth is actually on par with Mormonism. He researches the causes of conversion of the Empire. The reasons include heightened women’s roles, the high value of human life, its continuity with Judaism, and the “new culture capable of making life in Greco-Roman cities more tolerable (his emphasis).”

He’s coming out with a book in the next couple of months called Cities of God, which continues his research that Christianity was first and foremost an urban movement.

New books & albums October 9, 2006

Posted by Patrick in : Reading, Music , 4 comments

Visiting a book & album store, I kind of splurged and picked up some stuff:

50% Classics September 2, 2006

Posted by Patrick in : Reading , 5 comments

I walked through Barnes & Noble tonight not expecting to buy anything. Little did I know that they have 50% off classics right now. So I picked up some monsters:

East of Eden August 14, 2006

Posted by Patrick in : Reading , add a comment

During my return flight from Arizona a few weeks ago, I picked up East of Eden. I almost didn’t buy it because I thought I didn’t like John Steinbeck. All this was based on a ninth-grade reading of The Pearl. East of Eden has caused me to repent and read him with delight.

Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then - the glory - so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished (130).

Living la hora nica July 12, 2006

Posted by Patrick in : Friends, Reading , add a comment

Andrea’s now in Nicaragua and blogging again! Andrea’s a good friend who’s working in Nicaragua with the hunger relief organization, Food for the Hungry. One of the best things to read was from her roommate’s blog. People seem to brighten up and come alive when they’re around Andrea. Her roommate is no different. She writes (sorry for some of the inside jokes):

My roommate Andrea is a trip. She is seriously one of the funniest people I know. One of the best things about living with her is that we both have this tendency to randomly break out into song after the other of us says anything remotely close to an existing song lyric.

These are some of the things she says regularly that I love.

1. “Seriously”
2. “Do you hate me?”
3. “Everything is fine” (especially in a high pitched voice after seing a cockroach)
4. “I hate feet”.
5. “I´m taking my boyfriend [meaning the fan] to bed with me”
6. “I love it!”

Check out her blog. And keep up the writing Andrea!

For V-day February 14, 2006

Posted by Patrick in : Christianity, Reading , 4 comments

First, real quickly…you can download Lisa & Ralph’s famous valentines here. You know, the ones with I Choo Choo Choose You and Let’s Bee Friends.

Also, I’ve been meaning to post an article that I found on the web a couple years ago. And given the subject matter, what’s a more perfect day that Valentine’s to do it? The article is titled Gospel-Community: Singleness, Marriage & Family. It used to be hosted at the veritas page at Chosun Journal. But during the past several months, the link has been broken. I thought it was lost and gone forever. But my friend Tim reminded me of good old google cache. So we managed to salvage it.

Hopefully, Tim Keller and those at Redeemer church don’t mind me hosting it. If you do, let me know. Keller had some interesting things to say about dating. He identifies both traditional and contemporary idols of marriage/singleness and offers some practical advice that avoids both of these and prompts faith. You can download it here [PDF]. The following are a couple highlights that I thought were good:

While traditional societies tend to make an idol out of marriage (because it makes an idol out of the family and tribe), contemporary societies tend to make an idol of independence (because it makes an idol out of individual choice and happiness.) While the traditional motive for marriage was social duty, stability, and status, the contemporary motive for marriage is for personal fulfillment. Both of these motives are partially true, of course, but they tend to become ultimates if the gospel has not changed your mind and heart (emphasis mine).

and

Paul refers to his singleness as a ‘gift’ in 1 Cor 7:7. Since he almost immediately afterwards says, “but if they cannot control themselves they should marry” (v.8), Paul probably means that a single ‘gift’ consists of a very low ‘felt need’ for a romantic relationship or marriage. We need to make a few cautionary remarks here, however. a) First, it is possible that a ‘low need’ for relationships is not from God but is a sign of a deep idolatry of personal freedom. Or it may be an inability to create deep relationships in general. Don’t mistake a selfish spirit or an inability to keep friendships or a fear/disdain of the opposite sex as a ’single gift’! In other words, we should not be too quick to accept a lack of romantic desire as a ‘gift’ from God. Unless you’ve done some serious dating and made a true effort, you can’t be sure about your own heart in this regard. b) Second, it is possible that a ‘gift’ like this is not a permanent condition but rather something given for a definite period of time. It must be reevaluated periodically. c) Third, it is not possible for a man or woman to be so sure of ‘God’s calling’ that they ever totally close off the possibility of marriage. You should stay open to God by allowing yourself to be in a more ‘passive’ mode for dating. Don’t seek but don’t refuse.

Oh, the places you’ll go! January 19, 2006

Posted by Patrick in : Reading , 2 comments

The internet has been chock full of delicious sites today. Here are the ones I’m feasting on:

Context has been a word that’s been ringing in my ears since my visit to the Met with my friend Peter. We were looking at a Hiroshige woodcut, and talking about art appreciation. And he said something maybe somewhat obvious, but profound at the time. He said that the one thing that he had learned in seminary is that “context is king”. So in order to appreciate this 19th century piece of art, we should seek to understand the thoughts, ideas, and things of the day. The more we know its context, the more we can appreciate it. Pretty obvious, right?

As we moved on, he also commented on how we need to do that with the Bible. Sometimes without seeking to understand the context, we derive meaning out of the text that was never there to begin with. He brought up how that’s one of the dangers of lectio divina (reading yourself into the passage). The comment stuck with me and I find myself continually asking questions of context now. It’s really helped me appreciate things of all sorts.