Book Review: Three Cups of Deceit

Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way by Jon Krakauer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Forget Alanis! Want to teach your students about irony? Have them read Jon Krakauer's latest book, Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way. Ironies abound in this slim, whistle-blowing volume, dedicated to stripping Mortenson of his Indiana-Jones-Meets-Mother-Theresa facade. For a man who portrays himself as a crusader against anti-Muslim sentiments, he sure does spread a lot of fear-mongering with his fabricated tales of run-ins with the Taliban. And, for a man who presents himself as dedicated to the cause of alleviating the sufferings of others, he sure does fly on a lot of chartered jets, at the expense of his fundraising organization, the CAI. And, for a man who exhorts kids in the U.S. to give up their lunch money in order to provide educational opportunities for children in the Middle East, he sure has left a lot of empty school buildings languishing without supplies and staff in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It's about time someone exposed this guy for the fraud that he seems to be.

I found myself having two reactions while reading this book. On the one hand, there was something very satisfying about watching Jon Krakauer bring this over-inflated guy down. There's a certain justice in it, mixed with a bit of reality-TV-like entertainment. On the other hand, I felt very humbled by this morality tale. If we're being honest with ourselves, we all have a tendency to self-aggrandize to some degree. The only difference between normal people and guys like Greg Mortenson (or Ergun Caner, for those of you who followed that fiasco) is a little bit of audacity and luck. Greg Mortenson's story served to remind me yet again of the fallibility of human nature.




View all my reviews

Book Review: A Meal with Jesus

A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table by Tim Chester

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


People will often say that Gandhi and Jesus had a lot in common. While I'm sure some similarities exist, I think such a view betrays a superficial understanding of both men. Take one example: their diverging attitudes about food. Gandhi appeared to have a rather strained and fickle relationship with food. He held the view that one's taste for food was inextricably linked with one's sexual appetite – and both were inherently vulgar, debased, impure – desires to be squelched. In his mind, the disciplined man lives in a state of perpetual "partial fasting," relying only on scant portions in his "grim fight against the inherited and acquired habit of eating for pleasure" (Gandhi quoted in Joseph Lelyveld's book Great Soul).

"The Son of Man," rather, "came eating and drinking..." (Luke 7:34). This astonishing truth about Christ, along with the Bible's repeated use of food and feast related imagery, is the subject of Tim Chester's fantastic book, A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community & Mission around the Table. Chester's main burdens in this book are as follows: to explain the startling significance of Christ's desire to eat with sinners and Pharisees alike; to reveal the deeper spiritual realities that these shared meals with Christ point to; and to encourage us as Christians to make the sharing of meals an integral part of our fellowship with others, so as to regularly enact and reflect upon the grace that Christ so freely gave to us.

This is a neat book because it addresses some of the concerns commonly raised by the emergent church – our lack of connectedness, our desire for authentic community, the need for social justice and equality, the call for the church to reflect people from every tribe, tongue and nation. And yet, it does all this in a completely gospel-centered way, a way that does not depart from historic Protestantism. This is a book about food and fellowship, yes, but, ultimately, this book is unabashedly about the gospel. It's about substitutionary atonement. So, how does Chester connect the topics of food and fellowship with the cross?

Chester demonstrates that hospitality is a recurring theme in God's story. From the forbidden fruit of Genesis to the banquet imagery of Revelation, food and feasting – or lack thereof – is symbolic of our standing before a holy God. In the Old Testament, when Israel enjoyed peace with God, food was abundant. And, conversely, in times of judgment, the reality was famine. But, though we deserve the famine, God demonstrates his faithful love to undeserving people through abundant feasting, made possible only by the free distribution of his grace. Chester cites a rich and beautiful passage in Isaiah that embodies this gospel reality:

"On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined…"

But, how can that be, when our sin separates us from God? Here’s the best part!

"…And [the Lord] will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth…" (Isa. 25: 6-8)

Chester explains: "No one need ever leave this feast. In Isaiah 25 death itself is on the menu – God himself will swallow it up. So this is a perpetual feast" (59).

How beautiful and coherent the Bible is, that we see substitutionary atonement in the Old Testament, God taking the sin of his people onto himself, so that they can be reconciled to him. We eat good food; God eats death. And all of this points to the cross. Throughout his book, Chester just relishes this fact.

It should, then, come as no surprise to us that Jesus is the host of and a participant in many shared meals, as he prepares a way for us to have fellowship with God. "Jesus is the Passover lamb. His blood is daubed over our lives; the Lord passes over us, and we’re redeemed…so we can come to the mountain of God, and eat and drink with God" (113).

Chester, then, charges us to live in light of this gospel reality, inviting others, particularly those we are in the habit of rejecting, to join us around the table. I loved this book. I’ve been resisting this cheesy cliché, but, what the heck; it truly was “food for the soul.”

So, while I appreciate Gandhi’s aversion to gluttony and his desire to see hungry people fed, I have to disagree with his assertion that a full meal is "a crime against God and man." For people who put their faith in Christ, a full meal – especially one shared with others – is symbolic of our reconciled relationship with God through Christ, and a pointer to the feast to come.




View all my reviews

Book Review: Modern Times

Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties by Paul Johnson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


While working at a public high school in New Jersey I observed a rather interesting pedagogical practice. It looked a little something like this: a band of students acting as undercover ambassadors of their history class would approach an unsuspecting non-history teacher with a historical or geographical trivia question. If the stunned teacher could not, say, identify a particular world destination on a blank map, or name a particular African dictator responsible for such and such event, the students would then report this failure back to their history class, sneering all the way at the ignorance of that unfortunate teacher, who was then labeled by the history class as being representative of a larger pattern of ignorance within our culture.

I'm not here to debate the merits of this type of assignment (although, someone should point out to the annoyingly arrogant students that the only reason why they know the answer is because their history teacher just talked about it last period...). I simply wish to share that the knowledge that, at any time, these students could be on the prowl struck a chord of fear in my heart. Commanding proper attention and authority as a young, female teacher is hard enough as it is; the last thing I need is to not be able to point out the Republic of Djibouti on a blank map in front of my entire class.

I've always been a bit insecure about my flimsy knowledge of historical and world happenings. The last time I took a proper world history class, I was a sophomore in high school. And, it was taught by the high school football coach, whose favorite technique was to distribute pastel colored worksheets, which we were then told to complete on our own. Needless to say, not a whole lot stuck. I can't blame all my ignorance on Coach Small, though. If I had spent my college summer vacations reading about history instead of playing countless hours of Tropico, I would be a much better person today.

Reading Modern Times by Paul Johnson constituted an attempt to better my historically-challenged self. This is not a people’s history, nor does it focus in depth on any one particular person or event. Rather, it's the story of the 20th's century's world leaders, the various ideologies they represented and the bloodshed that resulted when utopian visions inevitably imploded. Johnson seems to be particularly fascinated by the 20th century's unique propensity for producing charismatic revolutionaries, visionaries and messiahs whose often whimsical and ill-conceived decisions tragically influenced the lives of millions of people. The law of unintended consequences is a key theme in this book.

One characteristic of Modern Times that I appreciated is that Johnson doesn’t claim he’s done the impossible task of presenting the cold facts of history in an objective manner, completely free from bias. Rather, he unabashedly analyzes history, massaging the landscape of the 20th century into a narrative arc, replete with characters, themes and tragedies. His basic premise, which drives his analysis, is that Nietzsche’s prediction for the 20th came true, that at the dawn of modern times “the belief in the Christian God [was] no longer be tenable.” The vacuum left behind by God’s absence inevitably needed to be filled. Johnson goes on to argue, “Nietzsche rightly perceived that the most likely candidate would be what he called the 'Will to Power,' which offered a more comprehensive and in the end more plausible explanation of human behavior than either Marx or Freud. In place of religious belief there would be secular ideology. Those who had once filled the ranks of the totalitarian clergy would become totalitarian politicians. And, above all, the Will to Power would produce a new kind of messiah, uninhibited by any religious sanctions whatever, and with an unappeasable appetite for controlling mankind. The end of the old order, with an unguided world adrift in a relativistic universe, was a summons to such gangster statesmen to emerge. They were not slow to make their appearance” (48).

The fact that a traditional Judeo-Christian worldview undergirds Johnson’s argument might not sit well with some readers who disagree with his presuppositions (namely, that a moral fabric is woven into the universe and that man, despite his best efforts and often good intentions, is inherently weak and easily corruptible, which is why attempts at social engineering are doomed to fail). But to those who are open to Johnson’s particular angle, Modern Times will prove to be an informative and enlightening read. If I had to take a multiple choice test on it right now, I would likely score no better than a 9%, and I probably still can’t find the Republic of Djibouti on a map. So, you might be wondering why I devoted four months of my life to reading this long, boring book. What I can say is that the impoverished picture of the 20th century that I had in my mind prior reading this book has now been edified and enriched, and most importantly, it gave me a solid foundation onto which I will hopefully build.




View all my reviews

Book Review: The Courage to Be Protestant

What comes to mind when you hear the word "evangelical?"

- Mega-churches fully equipped with their very own Starbucks, a pastor-comedian, stadium-style seating, larger than life projectors, hobby-themed rooms wherein like-minded enthusiasts can watch entertaining, pop-culture-laced sermons, streamed through a screen

- Telemarketing scam-artists wearing pink wigs

- George W. Bush

- Charismatic summer camps where kids are peer-pressured into speaking gibberish

- Various Christian “health and wealth” books and programs that promise God's blessing on your life as long as you "sow a seed of faith" for five dollars (I see a lot of these displayed prominently in the book-section of my local grocer.)

- Or, if you've recently surveyed more "with it" trends within evangelical churches, or should I say "holistic community centers", perhaps you think of the hip, middle-aged, goateed speaker who, from his stool in the center of the room, repudiates the absolute truth claims of "the dead white guys" while propagating the binding truth claims present in his own books and sermons. And, by the way, if you don't agree with his truth claims, you're probably a bigot.

Whatever associations are made with the term "evangelical," they are probably not all-together positive. What it meant to identify with evangelicalism in the 1950’s is vastly different from what it means to identify with evangelicalism today. In his excellent book The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World, David Wells traces the erosion of the American evangelical movement beginning in the 1970's as it slowly but surely transferred its allegiance from historic Christianity to Postmodern sensibilities, trading the truth that was handed down through Christ's teaching and the apostolic witness (so prized by the early church, and then gloriously rediscovered during the Protestant Reformation) for watered-down, easily marketable, feel-good spirituality that is mere secular ideology clothed in "Christianese."

According to Wells, what we see now in many churches that somehow identify with evangelicalism, whether they are “conservative” mega-churches or smaller emergent communities, is a Christianity that has imbibed its core tenets and beliefs from popular culture and postmodern values. The result? Churches full of people who might identify themselves as Christian, but who know very little of historical Protestantism. Should it surprise us then at all when poll after poll reveals that evangelical Christians live no differently than their secular neighbors?

Wells begins by analyzing market-driven, seeker-sensitive churches, in which the gospel is presented as a product and the emphasis is on, “how might this benefit me?” Within these churches, theology is de-emphasized because it is entertainment, and not doctrine, that attracts the consumer, and the more consumers, the better. According to Wells, these churches are antithetical to the gospel because “a methodology for success that circumvents issues of truth is one that will rapidly emancipate itself from biblical Christianity, or, to put it differently, will rapidly eviscerate biblical faith” (52).

Included in his discussion of evangelicalism is his analysis of the emergent church. The emergent church rightly senses that there is something wrong with the American way of life, i.e., American consumerism has given us more than we will ever need and technology has us more connected than ever, and yet we’re so empty and disembodied, “autonomous selves” cut loose from “craft, community and family.” The result is what Wells calls “the enthronement of the self” (69) and our obsessive need to tell our own stories. In an effort to remedy this American ailment and offer in its place authentic community, the emergent church has rebelled against the materialistic, impersonal and superficial product offered by the market-driven evangelical churches. The problem, however, is that it is still taking its cues from postmodern culture and not from Scripture, which historic Protestantism has always firmly believed to be both authoritative and binding. Because the emergent church finds Scripture embarrassing and countercultural, it emphasizes my story and my journey, not God’s story and what God has done. The result, Wells argues, is that within the emergent church, we ironically see “the postmodern preoccupation with the self into which the whole of reality has been contracted, the self at the center of the universe and, despite all the Christian words that are spattered around, actually refusing to be part of God’s (objective) narrative” (87).

The middle of Wells’ book is comprised of a thorough analysis of Postmodern culture, like the Enlightenment in its rejection of a personal god, but unlike the Enlightenment in its rejection of moral absolutes, turning instead inward to the self for guidance rather than looking outside the self for transcendent meaning. Wells argues that the postmodern self has lost its center, i.e., God, and, as a result, is uprooted. Having turned inward, Postmodern culture is all about “finding the self for yourself, discovering your inner potential for your own benefit, esteeming yourself, and developing new ethical rules that serve the discovery of…the self” (136). Without a moral center, we find ourselves vacillating between “aggressive legalism on the one side or a rampant, libertarian individualism on the other” (172). This spirituality of the self is completely at odds with biblical Christianity, and yet “how readily evangelical churches have taken on board what is essentially an enemy of what they believe” (157).

Wells begins the conclusion of his book with a wonderful gospel presentation that is so rich and rewarding, articulating very clearly what historic Protestants believe about God’s sovereignty, the person of Christ and the efficacy of the cross. One reviewer I read criticized Wells for only identifying the problem with the evangelical church and not offering a prescription for its many ailments. I think this person missed one of Wells’ biggest points. We don’t need any more new strategies for “doing church” better! Scripture outlines very clearly the marks of a Christ-centered church, and it’s to Scripture, not Postmodern culture or the latest marketing strategies, that we need to turn. Wells is actually very clear in offering a remedy to the problem of American evangelicalism. We need more churches that are not ashamed to be doctrinally sound, that are led by pastors who will proclaim the Word of God and apply it to our lives, not simply fill a sermon with thirty minutes of self-help strategies. We need churches that will rightly administer the sacraments in a way that points people to Christ and we need churches that will be involved in people’s lives, holding them accountable in love because our God is a holy God. We need churches that trust in God’s sovereignty and will for the church, not the latest man-made techniques for getting bodies through the church doors.

This is an excellent book that I enthusiastically recommend to any Christian who is concerned about the state of Christianity in this country and any non-Christian who associates theologically conservative Christianity with anti-intellectual pablum. I walked away from my reading of this book feeling both challenged and encouraged by Wells’ insightful analysis of Christianity and postmodern culture and was thoroughly refreshed by his presentation of the gospel. This book left me feeling proud to be Protestant, not because of anything we have done, but because of what God has done for us in Christ.

Who is Dodo Conway?

Dodo Conway is a minor character from Sylvia Plath's 1971 novel The Bell Jar. Plath's characterization of Dodo offers a rather unflattering portrait of motherhood.  I'll let the text speak for itself:

With great care, I raised my eyes to the level of the window-sill.  

A woman not five feel tall, with a grotesque, protruding stomach, was wheeling an old black baby carriage down the street.  Two or three small children of various sizes, all pale, with smudgy faces and bare smudgy knees, wobbled along in the shadow of her skirts.

A serene, almost religious smile lit up the woman's face.  Her head tilted happily back, like a sparrow egg perched on a duck egg, she smiled into the sun.


I knew the woman well.

It was Dodo Conway.


Dodo Conway was a Catholic who had gone to Barnard and then married an architect who had gone to Columbia and was also a Catholic.  They had a big, rambling house up the street from us, set behind a morbid facade of pine trees, and surrounded by scooters, tricycles, doll carriages, toy fire trucks, baseball bats, badminton nets, croquet wickets, hamster cages and cocker spaniel puppies - the whole sprawling paraphernalia of suburban childhood.


Dodo interested me in spite of myself....

Dodo raised her six children - and would no doubt raise her seventh - on Rice Krispies, peanut-butter-and-marshmallow sandwiches, vanilla ice cream and gallon upon gallon of Hoods milk.  She got a special discount from the local milkman...

I watched Dodo wheel the youngest Conway up and down.  She seemed to be doing it for my benefit.


Children made me sick.


A floorboard creaked, and I ducked down again, just as Dodo Conway's face, by instinct, or some gift of supernatural hearing, turned on the little pivot of its neck.


I felt her gaze pierce through the white clapboard and the pink wallpaper roses and uncover me, crouching there behind the silver pickets of the radiator. 


I crawled back into bed and pulled the sheet over my head.  But even that didn't shut out the light, so I buried my head under the darkness of the pillow and pretended it was night.  I couldn't see the point of getting up.


I had nothing to look forward to.

Based on this passage, Sylvia Plath would have us believe that motherhood is an occupation completely devoid of genuine joy and creativity, a role that, by its very nature, is at odds with the life of the mind and is deadly enough to whittle an ivy league educated woman down to a near-comatose shell of a human being.  So, in essence, being a mother means trading your ideas for peanut-butter-and-marshmallow sandwiches.  If you're a woman destined for motherhood, of course there is nothing to look forward to.

I couldn't disagree more, which is why this blog is dedicated to dispelling the Dodo Conway fallacy.

From Housewife to Homemaker

I've heard more than one person say, "I could never be a stay-at-home mom.  I would go crazy from boredom!" Go crazy? Maybe.  From Boredom? Definitely not.

Before I go on, I think it's good to keep in mind the classic aphorism, different strokes for different folks.  I'm sure domestic life is better suited for some than for others.  In my case, it helps that many of my favorite hobbies - cooking, home organization, gardening and reading - sort of naturally align with the home.  I suppose if you love rock-climbing, heavy metal concerts, clubbing and dining out, you might not like being a stay-at-home mom, particularly not in my town, where Publix grocery is about as cosmopolitan as we get!

I believe that the role of the the wife and mother is an extremely important one that our culture largely devalues.  A lot of today's anti-stay-at-home-mom bias comes from the way popular culture depicts our demographic, e.g., Desperate Housewives.  But I think the terminology we use to describe women who decide to forgo a full-time career in favor of staying home is also very problematic.  Perhaps it's time for a change.  Let's look at some examples.

Stay-at-home-mom:

This term, commonly abbreviated as SAHM, is the one I see and hear most these days.  I'm just going to be honest and say that I strongly dislike this term, and, from now on, I'm going to banish it from my mental lexicon.  There are several problems it.  First, it underscores what the woman is not doing - i.e., she's not climbing the corporate ladder, she's not going out, she not jet-setting - instead of what she is doing.  Consider when someone asks you if you are going out tonight, and you reply, usually with a sigh or a hand gesture of complete resignation, "Naw, I'm just gonna stay at home." It sounds lame, doesn't it?  So, why would we want to apply it to our trade?  In addition, the emphasis is put solely on mothering and not on wifedom.  As a Christian, I affirm the belief that I am first a wife to my husband and then a mother to my child.  This doesn't discount my love for my child; rather, it emphasizes the unique "one flesh" union I have with my husband and no one else.  And, lastly, the SAHMs that I know are hardly spending all their waking hours at home!   Let's collectively decide to ban this term!

Housewife: This one sounds too much like "horsefly" for my liking, and, like SAHM, it restricts the woman's influence to the confines of four walls. Also, it makes no mention of mothering.  And, it just sounds boring.  No wonder the housewives are desperate!

Full-time Mom:  Like SAHM, this term says nothing of a woman's responsibility to her husband.  It also excludes women who have forgone full-time work in favor of staying home, but who work part-time or from home. Also, I feel like every mother, whether she works full-time or not, is a full-time mom, so, in that sense, the term is meaningless.

Domestic Diva: This one might work for some, but I am simply not "glam" enough to pull it off.

Homemaker: Now, this is a term I can get on board with!  Notice how, unlike the term "stay at home mom," the emphasis is on what the woman is doing, that is, she is making a home. It may sound a bit old-fashioned, but I think it captures the spirit of what we strive to do as wives and mothers: transform a house into a home.  I don't think this means that you must be a gourmet chef or that your home must be picturesque at all times.  I've been married less than a decade and have only very recently become a mother, so I'm still figuring out exactly what it means.  But what I do know is that home is a place that is safe, warm and inviting - a place where all members of the family want to be.  And, let's just be realistic for a moment: it takes copious amounts of time and energy to pull off. This is what my own mom created for our family and what I hope to create for my own.  And, lastly, unlike some of the others, this term is very inclusive, welcoming any woman who values the art of making a home, whether she has children, or not, and whether she works outside of the home, or not.

So, in the spirit of dispelling the Dodo Conway fallacy and taking pride in what we do, I propose we ditch the tired out terminology and adopt the term homemaker!