Weekly Links - Holy Week edition

~ LINKS TO SOME INTERESTING READING, too late for the weekend, but perfect for a monday ~



-"Thoughts on the 'Benedict Option' - a Lament": Dr. Peters' point? Don't write a book about the Benedictines and get the monasticism wrong. 


-"10 Things You Should Know About the Trinity": This whole thing is good, but I especially appreciate point #8.


-"The Death of the Levite's Concubine":

Once having choked it down, you’re left wondering, as with the whole rest of Judges, who exactly the good guy is. 

-"Three Myths of Cohabitation": interview with a sociologist who just completed a very interesting study. A snippet:

Generally speaking, the least educated married families in Europe enjoy more stability than the most educated cohabiting families. That’s not what I would have guessed.

-"Stop Hating on Christian Popular Culture": now here's a challenge for our modern age!


-"Celebrating the Feast of the Anunnciation": I'm a few weeks late on this one, but I really appreciate this piece, and I think it's a good meditation for Holy Week:

This year I had several friends who faced the death of a loved one right at Christmas time.  They had no choice but to grieve and celebrate in the same breath. These sorts of emotional juxtapositions always be gut retchingly difficult. Yet living year by year through the liturgical seasons we are offered a foretaste of the multi-dimensional nature of our emotional life.  In following the seasons we are encouraged to explore the depths of our own souls in both joy and sorrow, to bring our hearts before God, and to align ourselves with the life of the church. When triumph is followed by disaster we have a sense of the path to take, we have walked it and we know where to fix our eyes. In the darkness of the tomb we wait for the light of resurrection.

-"Sushi Saturdays": My eldest daughter and I are the only people in the house who love sushi, and we're determined that this experiment is the perfect activity for Bright Week this year.


-"Researchers Have Transformed a Spinach Leaf into Working Heart Tissue": wow!


-"The Impossible Novel that Became IMPOSSIBLE SAINTS": I follow Clarissa Harwood on Twitter, and enjoyed reading this long version of her first novel sale, especially her honesty when she said:

In hindsight I can see that I was far too close to Novel #2 to see it clearly enough to revise it. I invested too much of myself in it, but that’s also why it was such a joy to write. It was everything a first draft should be: too long, repetitive, self-indulgent, and confusing. In other words, what was an utter delight to write was a complete nightmare to read.

I hope you have a good and blessed Holy Week!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Weekly Links!

SOME INTERESTING LINKS FOR YOUR Monday Morning--and usually I set these in the categories of faith, family, and fiction, but this week it's just faith (because that's what I found this week!)

First off, I have to link to Anne Kennedy's book "Nailed It: 365 Sarcastic Devotions for Angry or Worn-Out People." It released about a week ago, and has already been showing up places like Christianity Today.

It's so good. If you're looking for a book that will lead you through the Bible with wit, wisdom, and a wry sense of humor, this is the book you want.

(It's also a book I've been involved with for just over two years now, as an editor--and actually getting to finally hold it in my hands is so delightful!)

Okay, on to the articles!

-"Why I Don't Flow with Richard Rohr": I don't think I've ever read a book review quite like this. It's bitingly funny, but I'm pretty sure the bite is there because the reviewer really, really cares about the subject at hand. And he's right in that. Which means you can enjoy the cleverness without any guilt at all.

-"The Axe of Advent":

Advent isn’t supposed to soothe us.

-"'I'm Actually a Better Follower of Jesus Than Most Christians...'": Oh, it's so nice to hear someone take this one on.

-"Children, Safety, and the Sixth Commandment": I don't agree with everything here, but the author's thought process is insightful and worth following.

-"In Which I Rejoice Over That Ohio Law": Yes, this:

...laws against theft don’t stop all theft, and laws against drunk driving don’t stop all drunk driving, and laws against murder don’t stop all murder. But because those things are wrong, and the state has a vested interest in some level of moral standards for the peace and comfort of its citizenry, it goes ahead and doesn’t allow those ways of life even though people do them. 

-"It's Time to Take Your Medicine": An account of an enlightening little exercise.

-"Is Faith Without Works Dead, or Just Sleepy?": One part of a larger conversation on the relationship of sexual ethics to salvation. It's worth following up on the whole thing, if you're interested, and besides being worthy in and of itself, this article contains the links that will let you follow up on the whole conversation.

I hope you have a great week!

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Weekly Links: Wodehouse, Tolkien, and more!

Guarding the good reading...

SOME GOOD READING FOR YOUR SUNDAY AFTERNOON, SET OUT IN MY USUAL CATEGORIES OF FAITH, AND FAMILY, AND FICTION...

(I should note: I've skipped posting this for a few weeks, but I was still collecting links, so this week's version is super-long. Sorry!)

(Note the second: if you want some good fictional reading, please take a look at my short story "An Anonymous Source" in Havok's Heroes vs. Villains edition. Hope you enjoy it!)

 

Faith 

-"Association Between Religious Service Attendance and Lower Suicide Rates Among US Women".

-"The Evangelical Gender Crack-Up" - There's so much good stuff here.

-"Individuality: a fresh concept":

You see what’s going on here? The prophet’s audience, the Jews of the Babylonian exile, find it hard to understand how anyone – let alone God – would not want to punish a son for his father’s wrongdoing. And vice versa. Acting in any other way seems to them not only stupid, but positively unjust. What we see happening here is a major cultural shift. A brand new idea in human history, imported from outside our world.

-"The Distressing Disguise of the Slut".

-"'We Know that We Are Going To Be Killed': An Interview with an Iraqi Priest".

-"Donald Trump, Man of Faith" - particularly this bit:

...the gloomy aspect of traditional Christian practice is also the wellspring of Christian compassion. At the moment a Christian asks for forgiveness, he must acknowledge his own weakness and look mercifully on the weakness of others. In the Our Father, the Christian asks that he be forgiven, just as he in turn forgives. From the holy terror that Peale called “fear thoughts” comes the light of Christian love.

Family 

-An older article that might be good to revisit this week: "How silence can breed prejudice: A child development professor explains how and why to talk to kids about race".

-"I'm Good With Whatever: The High Price of People Pleasing".

-"Because Life Doesn't Give Do-Overs".

Fiction

- "On Writing Negative Reviews" - I have to agree: negative reviews can be incredibly useful to the reader. And, I'd argue, to the author as well. I know I've read negative book reviews and thought, "The reviewer might not like that, but I'd love it," and gone ahead and picked up the book.

-"All In": On giving it everything, every time you write.

-"Interviews: P.G. Wodehouse" - just delightful.

-"Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year": I'm going to try. I truly am. Only 83 to go...

-"The Magic of the Lord of the Rings Books":

My favorite book began with a disappointment: The hero disappeared at the end of its first chapter...

-"Belle's Fairy Tale Education: Learning Virtue in Disney's Beauty and the Beast": a lovely meditation on the value of fairy tales, as seen in my favorite Disney movie ever.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

This post contains an Amazon affiliate link; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Weekly Links: Game of Thrones, the Trinity, and Macbeth!

"Why Is that Woman Naked?: Sources of Objectification in the Game of Thrones":

Martin’s real women problem has much deeper roots. For most of the female characters in Game of Thrones, their value resides, without question, in their sexuality. 

"'Game of Thrones' and Its Caricature of Faith":

As a novel, the problem with Martin’s reductionist criticism of religion is not that it’s silly (although it certainly is). The problem is that his characters, taken as a whole, become a bit unrealistic, lacking a facet that was pretty common for many people in the Middle Ages, namely: religious beliefs that were both genuine and not reducible to violent fundamentalism.

"Why I Am Opposed to Gay Marriage": I said earlier this week (on Facebook) that I thought a better name for this (10,000 word!) article might be "Why I Am For Marriage, Full Stop". This is beautiful, and articles on this topic are rarely beautiful. But this one is. Read on for some really good & lovely thought about how creation was set up from the beginning. Much more a positive construction than a negative tearing-down.  Worth the time it takes to read (or even, to re-read).


"Unperplexed About the Atonement": Humble-brag: I get to go to church with this guy (and better yet, with his lovely wife):

Johnson opens the book with the story of a pastor asking him, “which theory of the atonement do you believe in?” Johnson’s response: “All of them!” Something has gone wrong when the question “which theory” somehow becomes the main, or the only, question about atonement. Johnson is concerned to make that question unaskable, to “resist the search for a controlling category” that would cover all theologizing about the atonement. “There are better ways to engage the doctrine,” he says . . .

And, in keeping with the theme of this blog, here's a GREAT sermon for Trinity Sunday (celebrated last week).

And, if you need yet more Trinity goodness (and seriously, we all do), here's some more:




Finally, "Macbeth" is one of the scariest of Shakespeare's plays, and this trailer makes me hope that this movie actually captured the horror of it (i.e., the guy &; his wife are tempted by devils, they GIVE IN, and terrible things happen, and then Macduff comes 'round and wreaks bloody, righteous vengence):





I love it when every movie still looks like a painting.



Have a great weekend!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Weekly Links!

Some good reading for your weekend:

"Science Shows Something Surprising About People Who Love to Write":

The benefits of writing go far beyond building up your vocabulary . . .

"Ask the Agent: What's hot and cold in publishing these days?": a nice assessment of the latest numbers.

"Gospel of Confession":

The Father eternal speaks forth the Son – an act that we might re-characterize as the Father eternal confessing the Son, telling forth the truth about himself in the eternal Word. If that is the case, then our confession as telling forth the truth of God finds its basis in the far greater, the complete act of the Father from eternity telling forth the truth about himself in the person of his Son. 

"Strange is Good with the Trinity":

In any given church, you'll have people at different stages of their understanding of trinitarian prayer, which leads to some awkwardness. We've all heard prayers that start out, “Heavenly Father,” and then within a couple of sentences are saying, “Thank you for dying on the cross for us.” Or prayers that start, “Dear Jesus” and move on to “thank you for sending your Son to save us.” What's going on here? Probably not outright heresies (patripassianism in the first case, some sort of Jesus-modalism in the second). Probably the person praying has been mentally focused on one person of the Trinity initially, and has shifted his or her attention to another person a few seconds later, without bothering to adjust all the other parts of the prayer or to vocalize a transition. Anybody in the congregation who is more fluent with trinitarian theology will hear something that sounds alarming. But I doubt that the person praying would fail a simple theology test if you stopped them and administered one (which, by the way, please don't).

"Fifty Shades Against Gender Neutrality":

Having repressed healthy masculinity, what bubbles up through the cracks is a crude distortion of the real thing, and our enjoyment of it is confined to the level of fantasy. We’re eating dog food because we’re hungry for steak.

Book Notes: "The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything", by Fred Sanders

The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything by Fred Sanders

"The Deep Things of God" is a long and measured look at the doctrine of the Trinity, with a mind to claiming that doctrine as a foundation of evangelical life.

After spending a chapter examining some examples of evangelical writings about the Trinity, Sanders spends the bulk of the middle of the book explaining the doctrine of the Trinity and then examining the height and depth and breadth of the gospel as it grows out of the doctrine of the Trinity.

"Edifying" is the word I want for this middle part of the book, and I mean that without any sarcasm. After reading Sanders, I feel like my theological thoughts have been turned upside-down, shaken out, straightened up, and put back in my head in right order. In one way I can say, "this is all stuff I knew" - and one of Sanders' points, indeed, is that the Christian life is suffused with the light of the Trinity, whether we're aware of it or not - but there's a difference between experience and awareness, and the result of reading this book is that I am so much more aware of God's work, both in salvation history and in my own life. Reading about the nature of God and about His goodness in Himself wakes us up, I think. The more we know Him, the more and better we can praise Him.

My favorite part of the book, though, was the last chapter, on "Praying with the Grain". You couldn't have this chapter without all the work that happens before it in the book, but all the same, I think this is the warmest and most accessible part. Sanders writes:

If the Spirit unites us to the Son and reconciles us to the Father, we have an invitation to pray accordingly: to the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit. This is not just the "theologically correct" way to pray, but a way of praying that draws real spiritual power from being aligned with reality. (emphasis mine.)

And later in the same chapter he says,

. . . there is also a communicating life in the very being of God that is analogous to prayer. We are invited to enter that eternal conversation in an appropriately lower, creaturely way, but the heavenly analogue of prayer is already going on in the life of God rather than waiting for us to get it started. If you have ever become weary of working up the right response in prayer or worship, you can glimpse the relief of being able to approach prayer and worship with the knowledge that the party already started before you arrived.

I had the privilege of having Dr. Sanders as my mentor through all four years of my undergrad career, and it was a joy to continue to learn from him through the medium of this book. My one - no, make that two - pleas to the editors of his future books are: 1) Let more of the jokes in. Sanders' humor is that rare sort that comes out of charity and intelligence, not cynicism. More of that in print form, please! It's here, to be sure, but knowing Dr. Sanders, I'm guessing there was more originally and I wish I'd gotten to read it, and, 2) I know Sanders is a gifted cartoonist, and I'm guessing that the computer-rendered diagrams in this book were originally hand-drawn and much sharper. There's no reason to digitally-render something that's already clear and charming. Hand-drawn diagrams in the next book, please?

Neither of these hopes for the next book should make you stay away from this one, though. My criticisms are very much in the "this is good, let's have more" vein. Read this book! and come away enlightened and encouraged.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

View all my reviews

Yarnalong: "The Deep Things of God" and another pair of gloves

I've started another pair of fingerless gloves, this pair for my mom. The yarn (Patons Kroy Socks FX) is a dark denim color, with subtle shifts from dark blue to darker blue. 

The book is "The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything", by Fred Sanders, and I'm really enjoying it. Which is unsurprising, because I really enjoyed having Dr. Sanders as a professor back in college! Sanders is arguing in this book for evangelicals to take their inherent understanding of the Trinity and both to make it explicit, and to deepen it. He says:

Anybody who has encountered God in Christ through the Holy Spirit has come to know the Trinity. But not everybody knows that they know the Trinity.

I'm reading a bit of this each night and it's going very well with my Lenten reading of Ephesians. Ephesians, I'm finding, as all about theological truth and how that theological truth makes demands on how we live our lives. This book is very similar. That God is - and always has been and always will be - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is true, and would be even if we didn't know it - even if we didn't exist and never had. His being isn't dependent on us. But since we do exist, who He is is important to us and has implications in our lives, even our daily lives. Sanders talks about how the Trinity is important in our prayer lives, our salvation, our evangelism, and more.

Anyway, great book! For more book-and-yarn fun, go here.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

Book 14 of 15: Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle

I'd forgotten that this was just an introduction to the Politics.

Okay, I take back the "just". :) I was really glad to read this again. I think this should probably be an every-ten-years book for me. I read it in my late teens, and now I've read it in my late twenties. Hopefully I'll be up for it again before I turn forty.

Aristotle's question in the Ethics is "what is the blessedly happy man like?" He asks what happiness is and what virtue is, and follows every objection and question with line after line of distinctions and qualifications and definitions.

I'll admit to much of this being over my head; I'm no scholar of Greek nor a philosopher proper. But I do think that a reading of the Ethics will reward anyone who attempts it just because the questions Aristotle asks are worth asking.

I was once again struck by the similarities between the Ethics and the Biblical book of Proverbs; both are concerned with virtue and wisdom and the good life. I appreciated again Aristotle's careful explanation that the happy man is the virtuous man, that it is our habits that form us into the people we are, that give us the capacity to appreciate beauty or to contemplate truth.

I could see this time why St. Thomas Aquinas was so tempted to apply Aristotle to Christian theology. Aristotle goes absolutely as far as you can in discerning the purpose of man - as far as you can go without divine revelation (and I think you could agree to that statement whether or not you think divine revelation was eventually given). His thought is a tempting foundation that just begs to be built on. His thought is so clear and so far-reaching in its scope.

When I got, towards the end, to his discussion of friendship, I couldn't help but think of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity - that God exists eternally in three Persons, in a unity of being. Because Aristotle addresses the argument that the truly blessed man would not need friends (being self-sufficient due to his complete virtue) and disagrees. He says that since true friendship is based on similarity (similar levels of goodness) and also since true pleasure comes out of action (knowledge must be not just understood, but embodied), the blessed man wants friends because then he can see virtue like his own in action. And I thought, huh, I wonder if that's what being a part of the Trinity is like? Is that part of the glory of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in their eternal communion? That they - God in Himself - can see His own goodness in action?

Hopefully that's not a heretical thought. But it made sense to me while I was reading that part of Aristotle.

There's a lot more I wish I could write about this - I was underlining and starring and making notes in the margins all over the place!

There was stuff that applied to my personal life - like Aristotle's observation that we only try to do two things at once when they're two things that aren't much worth doing - like eating nuts at the theatre only when the actors are bad. :) It reminded me of the times when I watch a mediocre TV show while browsing on the Internet. Some parts of human nature don't change.

There was also stuff that I thought applied to our culture. I thought this paragraph might explain some of the ways that evangelical Christian culture has gone wrong in the past:

Now presumably some who say [pleasure] is base say so because they are persuaded it is so. Others, however, say it because they think it is better for the conduct of our lives to present pleasure as base even if it is not. For, they say, since the many lean towards pleasure and are slaves to pleasures, we must lead them in the contrary direction, because that is the way to reach the intermediate condition.*

But, of course, the Ethics is not about my personal life or my culture, and I don't want to make it less than it is by limiting it to specific applications. It can be used that way, and I think anyone reading it is going to have similar insights - moments when you say, "of course! that's just what life is like!" - because no one ever stated the obvious as clearly - or as early - as Aristotle. But it is a great work, and I almost wish I had the ability to appreciate it for all it is worth.

But not quite. In the end, I'm not sure that Aristotle is right about the chief happiness of human life being study. I am going to say, rather, that it is love, in the form of worshiping the One who is love. (Though I think you can get there through study. But, alas, I am not convinced enough that I am going to teach myself ancient Greek.)

However, that gets back to the problem of specific divine revelation, and I am now out of my text (to quote another great author).

Anyway . . . Aristotle. Worth reading, even hundreds of years later (yes, I know, I'm sure he's so relieved to hear me say so). I know I didn't get everything I could out of this, but I'm grateful for what I did get. I feel like Aristotle loaned me his clear thinking for the couple of days I was reading him, and my mind feels like it had a spring cleaning. There are worse ways to spend a day than thinking in the steps of "the master of those who know".

More on the 15/15 project here.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

*For Aristotle, the intermediate condition is always going to be the correct one, virtue being found between opposite errors.