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The Power of Scripture

“O you who dislike certain portions of the Holy Writ, rest assured that your taste is corrupt and God will not stay for your little opinion.”

“How depraved you are if you can perceive no heavenly luster about the Book of God!”

Charles Spurgeon really thinks you should treat the Bible a bit more seriously.

Spurgeon was a 19^th century Baptist preacher. That description does not even begin to capture the force of nature he was. There is a 63 volume set of sermons he preached at a couple of different churches, with nearly 3600 sermons in it. In addition, he published around 50 books in his lifetime. He would have loved the Internet Age.

So, deciding to read some Spurgeon could be a bit overwhelming. When faced with a pile of sermons this high, where does one begin? Enter Jason Allen and Moody Press. They recently launched The Spurgeon Speaks Series, what promises to be collection of short volumes consisting a selection chosen by Allen of sermons given by Spurgeon on Assorted Topics. The two volumes so far are on Prayer and Scripture.

The volume Spurgeon on the Power of Scripture suggests both the potential and the pitfalls of books like these. On the plus side, the volume has seven sermons which is a lot less intimidating than a 63 volume set. You definitely get the flavor of a Spurgeon sermon when reading these. It is not hard to see why he was and remains quite popular. If you want a sermon which feels like it is flowing straight from the source, Spurgeon is your guy. He is passionate, full of vim, and doesn’t mince words.

The downside? When you pick up a book entitled Spurgeon on the Power of Scripture by an author who is widely reputed to be among the most theologically literate preachers of the 19^th century, you will be forgiven for starting out thinking this is a volume explaining and elaborating on the power of Scripture. You might well expect the equivalent of a work of theology, a person systematically setting out the arguments for why Scripture matters. When you see chapter titles like “The Infallibility of Scripture” and “The Bible Tried and Proved” and “The Bible,” you might think you are really sure that is what you are getting.

But these are sermons, not a theological tract, and they are thus much less directed and focused than you would have expected. This should not be surprising, but somehow it is. Spurgeon has a tendency to raise issues in the heat of is argument and never quite trace the thought to its end.

How do you know that God wrote the book? That is just what I shall not try to prove to you. I could, if I please, do a demonstration, for there are arguments enough. There are reasons enough, did I care to occupy your time in bringing them before you. But I shall do no such thing. I am a Christian minister, and you are Christians, or profess to be so, and there is never any necessity for Christian ministers to make a point of bringing forth infidel arguments in order to answer them. It is the greatest folly in the world. It is folly to bring forward these firebrands of hell even if we are well prepared quench them. Let me of the world learn error of themselves; do not let us be propagators of their falsehood.

That is a bit jarring to the academic mind, but we really can’t fault Spurgeon for things like this. He is, after all, preaching a sermon. This sort of argument makes total sense for a sermon, but not for a theological work. The form difference has a rather large effect on the substance. Sermons are not the same as theological exercises.

To get a flavor of the form of argument, consider a matter Spurgeon returns to repeatedly in the sermons collected here. How should we read scripture?

How differently some people read the Bible from the way in which they read any other book! I have often noticed how people let novels get right into them, trash as they generally are, but when most people read the Bible, they appear to be anxious to get the unpleasant task finished. In some cases, they seem to think that they performed a very proper action, but they have not been in the least affected by it, moved by it, stirred by it.
Yet if there is any book that can thrill the soul, it is the Bible. If we read it aright, we shall lay our fingers among its wondrous harp strings and bring out from them matchless music. There is no book so fitted or so suited to us as the Bible is. There is no book that knows us so well, is so much at home with us, has so much power over us, if we will but give ourselves up to it.

Similarly, Consider Spurgeon’s discussion about the encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees in Matthew Chapter 12.

The Savior generally carried in the war into the enemy’s camp, and He did so on this occasion. He met them on their own ground, and He said to them, “Have you not read?”—a cutting question to the scribes and Pharisees, though there is nothing apparently sharp about it. It was a fair and proper question to put to them; but only think of putting it to them. “Have you not read?”
“Read!” they could have said, “Why we have read the book through very many times. We are always reading it. No passage escapes our critical eyes.”
Yet our Lord proceeds to put the question a second time: “Have you not read?” as if they had not read after all, though they were the greatest readers of the law then living. He insinuates that they have not read at all, and then he gives them, incidentally, the reason why he asked them whether they had read. He says, “If you had known what this means,” as much as to say, “You have not read, because you have not understood.” Your eyes have gone over the words, and you have counted the letters, and you have marked the position of each verse and word, and you have said learned things about all the books, and yet you are not even readers of the sacred volume, for you have not acquired the true art of reading. You do not understand, and therefore you do not truly read it. You are a skimmers and glancers at the Word; you have not read it, for you do not understand.

Passages like that apply not just to the Bible, but to every book. As Adler and Van Doren put it in How to Read a Book, the question is not how many books you have read, but how many books have read you. The question is not how much time you spend reading the Bible, but how much time you let the Bible read you.

Thinking about how to read a book, or specifically how to read the Bible, makes it clear that reading a short collection of Spurgeon’s sermons also demands something of the reader. This is not a philosophical book or a theological book. It is a self-help manual. For Spurgeon, thinking about the Bible is an applied science. The ultimate question is not “What does the Bible say?” but rather, “What are you going to do once you understand that the Bible has something important to say?” “How are you going to read this book?” morphs into “How are you going to live your life now that you have read this book?” Sermons are there to educate, sure, but the difference between a sermon and a college lecture is this question of application. A college lecture may inform. As sermon is there to exhort.

So, Spurgeon on the Power of Scripture is an aptly named book. The sermons are there not to talk about the idea of Scripture. The sermons are there to demonstrate the power of Scripture to affect the way you live your life.

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(Moody Press sent me a copy of the book in exchange for this review.)

Follow Me

I have decided to follow Jesus.
I have decided to follow Jesus
I have decided to follow Jesus
No turning back, no turning back.

That hymn (originally written by an Indian missionary) was a staple of the Billy Graham Crusades. Come forward, accept Jesus, no turning back.

Then what? While nobody ever quite articulated it thus, there was a time in American evangelicalism when the entire gospel message seemed to be reduced to “Say the magic prayer and receive your Get Out of Hell Free card.”

Enter Dietrich Bonhoeffer. A German Lutheran pastor in the early 20^th century, he is best known for being hung after participating in a plot to kill Hitler. His book, The Cost of Discipleship became one of the staples in Popular Books of 20^th Century Christianity.

The most famous part of the book is Bonhoeffer’s discussion of the bankruptcy of “Cheap Grace.” The phrase is indeed arresting. Grace, by definition, is free. If I show you grace, I can’t send you a bill afterwards and still call my action “grace.” As the Apostle Paul notes, Christ’s death has the same property: “But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many” (Romans 5:1, ESV).

So, if grace is free, what is cheap grace? This is not an idle question for Bonhoeffer. He begins the book: “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.” Cheap grace is very much epitomized by the “All you need to do is accept Jesus into your heart” message.

It is what follows that opening statement, though, that is a bit surprising. After that opening, if you are expecting a bracing book full of fire and a fighting spirit you will be shocked as you settle in for that wild ride that never quite materializes. Instead, Bonhoeffer launches into a lengthy series of meditations on the Sermon on the Mount. What is most surprising about it is how thoroughly conventional it is. If you have been around church for a while, it is hard to escape the feeling as you read that you have heard this all before. Many, many times. After all, the Sermon on the Mount is one of the Greatest Hits in the Bible, endlessly played on the Sermon Top 40.

The fact that the book seems so pedestrian, however, is another product of Cheap Grace. As Bonhoeffer thinks of it, cheap grace is not solely confined to people who assert that all that matters is a brief moment of decision and a quick prayer. Most Christians follow that up with feeling the need to follow what we can think of as the Handbook of Christian Life. Once you become a Christian, you get a set of rules or practices you should follow. “Don’t drink or chew, or go with girls that do.” Go to church. Read your Bible. Stay away from sinful places. Be good. Be nice. You know the list.

If you think of the Christian Life as a series of things you are supposed to do or to avoid, you are living under Cheap Grace. The problem with that way of thinking is that it treats the Christian Life as an external checklist. Do these things. If you don’t do them, however, don’t worry, you are still loved by God. The result is often that we look at the list of things we should and should not do, think to ourselves, we are doing pretty well when we can check off most of the items, feel bad about not being quite perfect in a few others, and then, of course, there are all those we aren’t really trying to meet. Maybe later. As Augustine put it, “Lord, make me chaste. But not yet.”

Bonhoeffer says repeatedly that thinking about the Christian walk like this is all wrong, totally and completely wrong. It treats grace like it is this thing you got and then there are no real implications other than maybe begin thinking you should do a few more things on the Christian checklist if you have a spare moment.

Costly grace is realizing that grace is not just that thing that happened once upon a time.

When we are called to follow Christ, we are summoned to an exclusive attachment to his person. The grace of his call bursts all the bonds of legalism….Discipleship means adherence to Christ, and, because Christ is the object of adherence, it must take the form of discipleship.

Jesus said to people over and over, “Follow me.” He could have said, but didn’t, “Acknowledge me and then follow this list of activities.” The difference between those two commands is really large. It is the difference between costly grace and cheap grace. What does following Jesus mean? What does discipleship mean?

It means an exclusive adherence to him, and that implies first, that the disciple looks only to his Lord and follows him. If he looked only at the extraordinary quality of the Christian life, he would no longer be following Christ. For the disciple this extraordinary quality consists solely in the will of the Lord, and when he seeks to do that will he knows that there is no other alternative, and that what he does is the only natural thing to do.

The cost in costly grace is the abandonment of your independent will. You follow Jesus not in the sense of putting bumper sticker on your car saying you do so, but in the sense that you actually follow Jesus. You do what He would do in the way He would do it. Take an example from the Sermon on the Mount:

“Be not anxious for the morrow.” This is not to be taken as a philosophy of life or a moral law; it is the gospel of Jesus Christ, and only so can it be understood. Only those who follow him and know him can receive this word as a promise of the love of his Father and as a deliverance from the thralldom of material things.

Do Not Be Anxious is not a command we should follow. It is not an item on a checklist of Christian Life. It is not something we work to be better at. Do not be anxious is rather a description of what life is like for someone who follows Jesus. If you are following Jesus, you won’t be anxious. What possible reason is there to be anxious if you are following Christ Himself? If you feel anxiety, then you are not following Christ. Period. Full stop. The solution is not to try to be less anxious. The solution is: remember whom you are following and then follow Him.

So, yes, The Cost of Discipleship seems at one level like a bunch of things you have heard a zillion times. But the message underneath it is something with which we all struggle. Following Christ is hard. Following Christ is costly. But, by the grace of God, the free grace of God, following Christ is possible. Grace is both free and costly. When that no longer seems like a contradiction in terms, then you have learned what Bonhoeffer is trying to teach us.

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Does God Want Religious Liberty?

Religious liberty is under assault. There was probably never a time when that statement was not true. But these days there is a new front in the war over religious liberty coming from unexpected quarters. The rise of what we can call the neointegralists has been rapid.

To take the most well-known example, look at Patrick Deneen in Why Liberalism Failed, the title of which tips off the agenda. The Liberalism that failed is not the policies of the modern Democratic Party, but the entire Enlightenment project, including the protection of religious liberty. As Brian Smith has detailed, arguments like Deneen’s lead easily to arguments in favor of a more explicitly Christian State. It isn’t just the Roman Catholics making this argument, however. Greg Forster has found the same themes in evangelical Christian nationalism. Faced with these trends, it is useful to think anew about the argument in favor of religious liberty. Andrew Walker’s recent Liberty for All: Defending Everyone’s Religious Freedom in a Pluralistic Age is a useful contribution to this endeavor.

Read the rest at Law and Liberty

Understanding God through Faith and Science

“This most elegant system of the sun, planets, and comets could not have arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being….He rules all things, not as the world soul but as the lord of all. And because of his dominion he is called Lord God Pantokrator [“universal ruler”]….to treat of God from phenomena is certainly a part of ‘natural’ philosophy.”

The thing that surprises people the most about that quotation is its source. If you don’t recognize it, you undoubtedly think it is from some religious figure. Instead, it is from Isaac Newton’s Principia, the single most important work of science in the history of the world.

It is common folklore that there is a war between science and faith. Elaine Howard Ecklund, a sociologist at Rice University, has done extensive surveys of both scientists and religious communities about their views on one another. In Why Science and Faith Need Each Other, she attempts to bridge the gap by writing to Christians explaining, as her subtitle says, Eight Shared Values that Move Us Beyond Fear.

The fact that a book like this needs to be written at all is itself rather curious. Why do people believe there is a divide between science and faith? Why do many Christians struggle with the idea of exposing their children to the work of secular scientists? Why is there a suspicion about the study of the world designed, as Newton claims, by the universal ruler?

In large part the impression of the divide is fueled by people with a vested interest in perpetuating it. A mass media constantly seeking explosive content, will happily give airtime to people willing to wage a war between science and faith. With lucrative book contracts and speaking fees in sight, there is no lack of volunteers to play in this battle.

As Ecklund’s surveys show, however, the majority of both scientists and religious people do not believe that science and faith are incompatible. This is, without a doubt, the most important thing in the book. If you, like Isaac Newton, think science and faith can happily cohabitate, but you thought you were alone in thinking that, you will find a great deal of comfort in Ecklund’s work.

Ecklund wants to do more than simply note the range of views within religious and scientific communities, though. She wants to demonstrate that these two communities need each other. Ecklund explains her approach: “I see science and faith not just as sets of ideas but as groups of people.” This, then is not a theoretical exercise showing there is no incompatibility; it is more akin to trying to get the cliques in the school to mingle with one another.

Ecklund’s method is akin to standing at a flip chart and asking each group to toss out “values” which are important to the group. She gets eight of them and then proceeds to show that both groups share this value, or at least both groups should share this value. The values: Curiosity, Doubt, Humility, Creativity, Healing, Awe, Shalom, Gratitude. At its best, the method does provide some common ground. The universe is indeed jaw-droppingly amazing, and this fact breeds awe in both scientists who study it and Christians who worship the Creator of it. Both the scientific community and the religious communities could use a lot more humility when it comes to engaging in debate. We all could use more gratitude for both science and faith.

It is when the Ecklund’s method doesn’t work, though, that we being to see why the integration of science and faith really needs a firmer place on which to stand. The chapter on Creativity was jarring to say the least. It begins by noting that many churches have a hard time discussing infertility; if a church constantly emphasizes that children are a blessing from God, this can leave infertile couples feeling left out. The chapter then morphs into a discussion of how IVF (in-vitro fertilization) is a tool created by science to allow infertile couple to conceive. Many Christians find the methods used in IVF to be morally problematic since such procedures often result in the destruction of embryos.

This is a fantastic example of where science and faith meet. How does Ecklund address the matter? She explains her own struggles with infertility and then casually notes that her daughter, who has been frequently mentioned in the preceding pages, was born thanks to IVF. Now that she has personalized the issue, she leaves the reader is the odd situation of needing to feel churlish in order to argue there is a problem with IVF. Ecklund solves the problem by pointing to her survey evidence. Not all Christians think IVF is morally problematic. This is, to put it mildly, not a persuasive argument.

The IVF discussion should not have been surprising, though. Back in chapter 3, Ecklund directly addressed the most obvious point of tension between science and faith: the theory of evolution. If there is anything that needs to be addressed before we can hope to bridge the perceived divide between science and faith, this is it. Ecklund’s approach? She shows that many Christians believe that evolutionary theory contradicts the Bible. But, many Christians do not see such a conflict. That is the extent of Ecklund’s argument.

For whom is this book written? There is nothing in this book that would convince anyone who believes in the incompatibly of science and faith that the two things can be reconciled. Such an argument can be made, it just isn’t made here. Ecklund’s surveys turn up a number of people who attend churches where the war between science and faith is almost an article of faith. To think otherwise in a church like that can feel very lonely. Ecklund book is best seen as an encouraging word to a person like that, saying, “You are not alone.”

Not being alone, however, is not the same thing as being right. After all, if Christians disagree on whether science and faith can be integrated, they can’t all be right. Science and faith need each other for reasons far beyond the fact that both inspire awe and gratitude. Science and faith need each other because it is only through both that we have any hope of understanding the world. Faith needs science because there aren’t any religious texts out there that explain DNA or microorganisms or the properties of hydrogen. Science needs faith both to give it a moral grounding (is it OK to clone humans?) and, more importantly, to give us a basis for accepting that the world is indeed a rational and predictable place. Science and faith need each other because our minds have been constructed in a way that the search for Truth involves both. For that, we can thank the Lord God Pantokrator.

Church Scandals and Elmer Gantry

As you might have heard, there was a recent scandal in the church when it was discovered that a prominent Christian figure was exposed as being a fraud, engaged in all sorts of terrible behavior behind the scenes.

The most important thing about the preceding sentence is that it could have been written at any point in the last two thousand years.

And yet, there are still people who are surprised every time it happens.

Perhaps it would be good if more people read Elmer Gantry. Sinclair Lewis’ novel is a tale of a guy with a wonderful resounding voice who stumbles his way into Christian ministry because it is sure a lot more lucrative and pleasant than being a travelling salesman. He is far from a paragon of virtue and his theological convictions are shaky at best, yet he just keeps going from successful ministry to successful ministry. It is an excellent novel, worth reading if for no other reason than its literary quality.

The question is what devout Christians should make of a book in which the clergy throughout range from outright frauds to bumbling idiots. One reaction is to castigate the book as a vile bit of trash, vulgarly defaming the souls who devote their lives to doing God’s work on earth. The novel is a perfect example of the work of those godless heathens who constantly sneer at religion and religious figures while joining hands in merry revels round bonfires every time a Christian falls.

The other option is to acknowledge that there are indeed a lot of Elmer Gantrys in this world. Indeed, it is hard to see how “There are no outright frauds like Elmer Gantry in the world of Christian ministry” is any more true than “Every person in Christian ministry is an outright fraud like Elmer Gantry.” Why is it so hard for people in the church to simply acknowledge that in the midst of a great many devout and godly Christian figures, there have been, continue to be, and always will be people who look great on the outside, but are veritable whitewashed tombs? You don’t have to take my word for it:

He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”’” (Matthew 13: 24-30, ESV)

Why then are so many Christians so surprised when Jerry Falwell Jr or Ravi Zacharias are revealed to have been leading double lives? Why the shock at the rampant problems in the Roman Catholic Church? Why did a great number of Southern Baptists see what happened in the Roman Catholic Church and take pride that it couldn’t happen in their denomination?

Of course there are people exactly like Elmer Gantry in Christian ministry. We may cherish the image of the Christian minister serving in poverty like St Francis of Assisi, but, truth be told, Christian ministry can be a very lucrative profession. Pastors in large Protestant churches average six figure salaries; the upper end of Christian ministry hits seven figures. Even if you don’t hit that upper end, however, Christian ministry can be a nice stable job, making a good solid income with a lot of flexibility in how you spend your time and no boss to whom you have to report. After all, most churches pay minsters and missionaries because they do not want their pastors or missionaries to have to lead the life of St Francis.

What Elmer Gantry does excellently well is present a portrait of Christian ministry purely as a career option. While Lewis has a merry time portraying every pastor as a dullard at best, it is not hard to realize that the novel can be illuminating even if not every person in Christian ministry is exactly like those portrayed in the book. Lewis himself mocks people who read his novels that way. One of the characters is Elmer Gantry complains about one of Sinclair Lewis’ earlier novels:

Lord, how that book of Lewis’, ‘Main Street,’ did bore me, as much of it as I read; it just rambled on forever, and all he could see was that some of the Gopher Prairie hicks didn’t go to literary teas quite as often as he does!—and that was all he could see among those splendid heroic pioneers.

So while some people outside the church may read Elmer Gantry as a description of all Christian ministers, that does not mean that thoughtful people need to read it that way. In fact, it is an excellent book for people inside the church to read to help disabuse them of the notion that all Christian ministers are paragons of virtue.

There is an extraordinary amount of vernation in Christian circles. At times, one wonders whether the first commandment has been broken. No pastor and no political figure is above reproach. At best, at the very best, they are godly individuals struggling with sin as they try to live a life of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. That is the very peak of human achievement. Yet the confusion of flawed individuals with Christ Himself, the sense that the people being venerated can be doing no wrong because “look at all the good they are doing,” that mindset is precisely what leads to the shock when a Christian figure is disgraced. You want a test of whether you venerate people too much? Ask how surprised you were there last time you heard of a prominent Christian figure who fell.

Why does this matter so much? There are hordes of devout people toiling in this world to share the gospel, to demonstrate the love of God to others. These people get no recognition for what they do. There people like this in your church right now. The pastors and priests and people on TV get all the glory and attention, but God is saying to that quiet person two rows behind you in church “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” A little less fanfare for the Glamorous Christians and a little more rolling up your sleeves to quietly do some good in this world would go a long way.

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Glory be to God for Dappled Things

Do Christians need Austen, Dostoevsky, and John Updike; Bach, John Coltrane, and Bob Dylan; Caravaggio, Fujimura, and Picasso; The Passion of the Christ, Chariots of Fire, and The Godfather?

According to Terry Glaspey, the answer in every case is an emphatic “Yes!”

Discovering God Through the Arts: How We can Grow Closer to God by Appreciating Beauty & Creativity is an argument that Christians sell themselves short, they limit the possibilities of their faith, they cripple their relationship with God when they do not fully and frequently engage with the Great Works of Art. Far too many Christians, Glaspey argues, fail to see how much richer their relationship with God could be if only they would step outside their cloistered comfort zone and embrace Great Art. Limiting themselves to pabulum that is labeled Christian self-help books, Christian music, Christian novels, Christian movies, these Christians never see the fullness of God and his Creation.

This book is best read as a companion book to Glaspey’s 75 Masterpieces Every Christian Should Know, also recently reissued by Moody Press. While the earlier book provided arguments for why Christians would benefit from an encounter with the 75 works Glaspey describe in detail, this book reads like an introduction to that other book, stepping back from individual parts to think about the question as a whole.

Each of the artistic disciplines we’ll be exploring in this book—visual art, music, literature, poetry, architecture, filmmaking, photography, and more—cannot only be a source of enjoyment but also a tool for spiritual growth and formation. The arts can change and transform us within, which is why they are indispensable for our lives.

Glaspey is a lot like an excitable tour guide; he just can’t help himself as his joy just bubbles over the pages. At one point he describes a class he taught exploring the assorted ways the crucifixion of Christ was portrayed in paintings over the ages; you can just imagine him standing in a class with the painting displayed on a screen getting so excited to show how this painting draws our attention to the pain and that painting draws our attention to God holding Christ up, and this other painting examines the assorted responses of the spectators. It would have been a marvelous class. This book is like that class.

While the Table of Contents does not indicate this fact, the chapters are divided into three sections. Part One of the book is an argument about Modes of Thought, four different ways that art helps us experience God. First the arts show us how to pay attention. Think about how you normally go through your life, quickly going from one task to the next, from one place to the next, from one Facebook post to the next. Now take any one of the numerous paintings reproduced in this book and look at it for a while, just three minutes. Or go wild and spend five minutes. You will be amazed, truly amazed, at what you notice when you look at it for longer than the 5-10 seconds you would have normally allocated to seeing the picture and registering “Oh, picture of woman poring milk” or “Oh, orange paint on a white canvas.”

Now imagine a life like that, noticing the absolutely stunning variety of things in this world. One of the things you start noticing is how wonderful the world is. This is yet another benefit of Art; it teaches us to “stop and consider God’s wonders” as Elihu counsels Job. Ponder Starry Night or “Pied Beauty” and there is no way you don’t come away saying “Glory be to God for dappled things.”

As you are delving into Great Art, learning to pause and find wonder, another thing starts happening. You begin to find deeper meanings than you noticed at a first glance. You never really fully understand Eliot or Blake or Shakespeare or Dylan; you just keep getting deeper and deeper into the world, seeing new things at every turn. And when you realize this is true of poets and novelists and songwriters and painters, you discover it is also true of God and the Bible.

If you want to settle for a simple faith, then it becomes dangerous to ask too many questions of life and faith. But if you want a rich, full, and authentic faith, then you are going to have to be willing to live with the mysteries and only partially answered questions that are embedded in Christian belief.

Then, after you have learned to pause, find wonder, and dig for deeper meanings in Great Art, you will also notice the final benefit of these travels. Great Art breathes new life into scriptures. It does not take long in the Christian walk for Scripture to become tame and a bit lifeless. “You must be born again” slowly slides into being “bornagin,” one word which just runs quickly of the tongue, and you start thinking being bornagin is just a code word for “conversion” and you miss the wild oddness of Christ’s Phrase, a strangeness that caused Nicodemus to asked in a startled voice, “Whatever do you mean?” As Glaspey notes, Great Art draws us into new ways to see the stories and sayings of the Bible in fresh ways, keeping the mysterious and marvelous message evergreen.

Having reached this point, Glaspey turns to the second part of his argument by looking at Topics of Thought. Beyond teaching us how to think, Great Art offers new thoughts, new ways to see and reflect upon Christian themes. Great Art helps us deal with our emotions, provides comfort and courage, helps us become more empathetic, and gives us a renewed passion for Justice. These four chapters all read like the syllabus for a course on the topic, providing a guided tour. For example, the chapter on Justice begins with Isaiah and the other Old Testament prophets, and then moves on to Dante, Blake, Austen, Walker Percy, Spirituals, Blues, John Coltrane, Billie Holliday, Grandmaster Funk, Public Enemy, N.W.A., Talib Kweli, Lauryn Hill, Bob Dylan. Francisco Goya, Picasso, A Hidden Life, Just Mercy, Dark Waters, The Lord of the Rings, and To Kill a Mockingbird. That is all in one chapter, exploring one theme. Add three other chapters like that and you have this section of the book.

Glaspey’s argument closes with the punchline. After finding in Great Art new modes of thinking about God and new ways to express topics of thought, Glaspey notes that ultimately Great Art helps us learn to pray, to converse with God, to contemplate God. Great Art teaches us to get out of the mindset that our relationship with God is nothing more than going to him with our prayer list of requests and then trying to be a semi-decent person today. A relationship with God is always to learn more, to find new ways of expressing ourselves and new ways to listen. God uses Great Art to show us how to draw closer to him.

The breadth of the enterprise Glaspey is proposing is seen at the end of the book when he provides 15 pages of suggested artists and works of art. Like all such lists, it is a wonderfully idiosyncratic set of artists and works of art.

On the whole Glaspey has done a marvelous job here in making a case that desperately needs to be made again and again. Far too many Christians, like far too many scientists and economists, treat art like it is some sort of mushy swampland of imprecision. The message to anyone who does not grasp the value of poetry and novels and paintings and film is Hamlet’s exclamation, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” If you have never read the book of Genesis or the Gospel of John, you have limited your ability to understand God and this world. If you have never read Dostoevsky or spent five minutes with a Caravaggio painting, then you are similarly living in a small world indeed.

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(Moody Press sent me a copy of the book in exchange for this review.)