Page 3088 – Christianity Today (2024)

Rocks and fossils contain many lessons of life and death on ancient earth. A particularly impressive example is found in the Permian limestone of the Guadalupe Mountains in west Texas. Fossil sponges and algae embedded in the rocks formed perhaps the most spectacular barrier reef ever to exist in an ancient sea. Hikers on the trail up McKittrick Canyon follow the traverse of an imaginary paleo-scuba diver swimming up from deep water to the reef crest and then landward across a wide shallow lagoon.

All of the fossil species in the Permian reef are long extinct. This is true of most fossils in the geologic record of life. Paleontologists reckon that most fossil species survived no more a than a few hundred thousand to a few million years before extinction (often to be replaced in overlying strata by similar species with modified features). Overlapping ranges of species generally appear to have kept the ecosystems of ancient earth filled and functioning like an exceedingly long baseball game in which generations of players gradually replace their predecessors. But the Permian reef teaches us another lesson about earth history, for the lords and tenants of this reef were doomed to a mass extinction that would leave few descendants in the overlying strata. Game called on account of global holocaust.

The mother of all extinctions happened at the end of the Permian Period, some 251,400,000 years ago. Ninety-five percent of all marine species were vanquished, with profound effects on emergent terrestrial life. An asteroid that hit the earth more recently, a mere 65 million years ago, managed to take out only 50 percent of marine species while wiping out that hearty group of terrestrial beasts we call dinosaurs. There is substantial evidence for that end-Cretaceous scenario, including a crater buried beneath the Yucatan coast and a thin layer of clay around the world containing abnormal concentrations of iridium, a rare element that is found in meteorites and “cosmic dust.” A satisfactory explanation for the end-Permian extinction remains up for grabs. Solving this ultimate murder mystery is the preoccupation of an international cast of earth scientists using all available technology for wringing history out of rocks.

Paleontologist Douglas Erwin has hiked up McKittrick Canyon and other trails around the world searching for clues. In Extinction: How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago, Erwin offers a thorough overview of one of the most interesting problems in earth history. A curator of fossils at the Museum of Natural History in New York City and author of numerous professional papers related to the Permian extinction, Erwin takes the reader on an insider’s journey that includes adventures in the field, tedious hours in the laboratory, and stimulating but sometimes contentious exchanges among colleagues at scientific meetings. He gives rigorous consideration to every reasonable hypothesis, which means the reader is presented with data and interpretations from paleontology, paleoecology, sedimentology (the deposition of strata), geochronology (radiometric dating), and geochemistry (chemical tracers in rocks that relate to environmental conditions).

Erwin interweaves the history of paleontological work on the Permian mass extinction with an account of contemporary work, including his own multidisciplinary and international investigations. He describes travels to China with MIT geochronologist Sam Bowring and Nanjing Institute paleontologist Jin Yagan to look at marine deposits spanning the Permian-Triassic boundary. Their detailed sampling and dating of volcanic ash deposits in the strata narrowed the duration of the end-Permian extinction event to less than a few hundred thousand years, a mere instant in geologic time. Erwin was guided by South African paleontologists to study the impact of the extinction on terrestrial animals, plants, and fungi (yes, fungi) preserved in the strata of the Great Karoo Desert. But it is not enough to collect ash and bones; even the isotopes of carbon in sediments contain information related to the health of the Permian ecosystem. Erwin not only reports the results of scores of scientific studies but also describes the investigators with collegial grace. More than eighty contemporary scientists are mentioned by name in the text, and even more in footnotes and references. This is a mystery with more detectives than suspects.

Readers will be thankful that Erwin frequently reviews major points or lines of evidence presented in earlier chapters (it gets pretty complicated). The text is animated with personal stories, and he is careful to explain the jargon and technicalities of modern science. Witty geo-jargon betrays well-lubricated campfire discussions after a hard day’s work in the field (geologists are unrepentant beer-drinkers). For example, extinct fossils that mysteriously reappear in rocks above the Permian upper boundary are called “Lazarus species.” Closer examination recently revealed that many Lazarus fossils are actually different, but nearly indistinguishable descendents of the extinct species. What to call these fossil imitators? “Elvis species.”

The book begins and ends with a list of possible causes for the extinction. The suddenness of the event would make a dramatic extraterrestrial impact a reasonable culprit. The problem with that, Erwin argues, is the lack of consistent and convincing evidence in the end-Permian rocks that is associated with the end-Cretaceous extinction. Other ideas involve the collapse of ecosystems following sudden global climate change, rapid changes in sea level or ocean circulation patterns, or sudden anoxia (oxygen deficit) in ocean water. Anomalous carbon isotope compositions in shells and preserved organic matter deposited at the end of the Permian certainly are consistent with anoxia in shallow seas, but does this chemistry reflect the cause or a response to the extinction? Erwin elaborates on the significant coincidence of the extinction and the most extensive episode of volcanic activity in the past 600 million years, eruptions that spread basaltic lava across much of Siberia (an area roughly equivalent to the continental United States) to a depth of 6,000 meters. Heat from the massive extrusions would have burned coal deposits in the region, releasing atmosphere-warming carbon dioxide. Erwin humbly admits that he does not know exactly what happened. He even suggests a Murder on the Orient Express hypothesis, in which all the suspects have a hand in the disaster.

Erwin avoids deep thinking on the philosophical implications of the end-Permian extinction. Paradoxically, he suggests that the event really may not have made that much difference in the development of life (contrary to the declarations of typical museum exhibits and other popular literature on the topic). A comprehensive survey of some 35,000 fossil genera by the late University of Chicago paleontologist Jack Sepkoski indeed shows the dramatic dip in numbers at the end-Permian. However, so-called modern faunas that proliferated after the mass extinction were already emergent and growing in ecological stature before the event. Given this perspective, Erwin avoids the temptation to get too gloomy about alarming rates of contemporary extinctions.

Of course, the brute fact of species extinction—like the notion of geological time—challenged traditional interpretations of Genesis when early natural philosophers like Robert Hooke (1635-1703) began to come to terms with the mutability of living things. Many Christian philosophers of that period accepted the concept of a “Great Chain of Being,” including the doctrine of plenitude, an assumption that all that had been created continues to exist. Such would be the case in a perfect and complete creation. In contrast, modern biblical scholars have attempted to replace Greek presuppositions with the ancient Hebrew presuppositions underlying biblical accounts of origins. Good creation does not mean perfect creation. Mass extinctions are not necessarily inconsistent with the way God appears to work in creation and even in human history. The geological record is a gift from our creator that contains lessons about the durability or vulnerability of earth systems, helping us to be better stewards of creation.

Erwin’s short course is a professional service for geologists (like me) who have read only some of the primary literature on the end-Permian extinction. I wonder if the complexity of the problem and the depth in which Erwin covers the research might discourage all but the most determined readers who lack professional training in geology or the equivalent thereof. Certainly Erwin has worked hard to hold willing readers without dumbing the story down, and as an advocate of geology, I applaud his effort. This scientific mystery story should be read and appreciated by thoughtful Christians. The popularity of creation science and flood geology in our subculture has produced an unfortunate and unreasonable skepticism toward geology. Erwin’s elaborate presentation of our effort to understand an important milestone in earth history is but one example of the kind of remarkable work being done in the geosciences today. The story should also give Christians pause to again ponder some of the old questions about the implications of natural history for theology and how creation, past and present, reveals the character and provision of God in strange and wonderful ways.

Stephen O. Moshier is associate professor of geology at Wheaton College.

Copyright © 2007 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine.Click here for reprint information on Books & Culture.

Dear Timothy and Junia,

Right now I want you to do some careful thinking about the role that the institutional church will play in your lives. Many young Evangelicals are a bit leery of getting too involved in the life of a local congregation. Some can tell painful stories of bad experiences with institutionalized Christianity.

In America, Evangelical churches have often been bastions of conservatism, providing support for the status quo. For example, many of our leaders were reluctant to lend their support to the civil-rights movement when their help was desperately needed. More recently, some of our leaders have allowed male chauvinism to continue unchallenged. Unfortunately, these kinds of lapses have earned Evangelical churches a reputation for being reactionary and even contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ. When secularists are asked about Evangelical churches, they often say that they consider our churches and other Evangelical institutions to be anti-gay and sexist.

It is certainly true that our congregations have, at times compromised the radical requirements of discipleship prescribed by Christ, and you may find yourself put off by the church because of its failure to be faithful to his teachings. But I would urge you to consider this fully, and to think about the words of St. Augustine: “The church is a whor*, but she’s my mother.” That statement brilliantly conveys how I feel about church. It is easy for me, like so many of the young Evangelicals I know, to note the ways the church been unfaithful as the bride of Christ. You don’t have to look too hard to see that the Evangelical church in America has a great propensity for reducing Christianity to a validation of our society’s middle-class way of life. Unquestionably, the church too often has socialized our young people into adopting culturally established values of success, rather than calling them into the kind of countercultural nonconformity that Scripture requires of Christ’s followers (Romans 12:1-2).

Why, then, do I encourage you to participate in organized religion and commit yourself to a specific local congregation? Because, as Augustine made clear, the church is still your mother. It is she who taught you about Jesus. I want you to remember that the Bible teaches that Christ loves the church and gave himself for it (Ephesians 5:25). That’s a preeminent reason why you dare not decide that you don’t need the church. Christ’s church is called his bride (11 Con 11:2), and his love for her makes him faithful to her even when she is not faithful to him.

Through the ages, God has used the church to keep alive and pass down the story of what Christ has done for us. It is the church’s witness that has kept the world aware that Christ is alive today, offering help and strength to those who trust in him. The story of Christ would have been lost during the Dark Ages if the church had not sustained it in monasteries where the Scriptures were laboriously hand-copied while barbarians were tearing down the rest of Western civilization. Church councils have protected Christianity from heresies by examining new theologies. Today, it is against two thousand years of church tradition that our modern-day interpretations of Scripture are tested. In short, it is the church that has preserved the Gospel and delivered it into our hands.

Where would most of us be without the church? Most Evangelicals have the church to thank for the Sunday-school classes that taught us what the Bible says and paved the way for our eventual decisions to commit our lives to Christ. Stop and consider the importance of the church’s worship and liturgical functions. Even if we Evangelicals aren’t likely to call them sacraments, as the Roman Catholics do, we still recognize the importance of certain ceremonial rituals. For instance, baptism is an important public declaration of faith that initiates new members into the fellowship our churches. In baptism, new Christians become part of a body of fellow believers who are called to spiritually encourage one another and hold one another responsible for consistent Christian living. The extent which churches live up to such obligations varies from congregation to congregation.

Holy Communion is another ritual of our church that cannot be taken for granted. Even if most Evangelicals view the bread and wine as only symbolic of the body and blood of Christ—and there are many Evangelicals who view them as more than that—the role that those symbols play in our lives cannot and should not be minimized. Holy Communion focuses our faith Christ’s sacrificial death, which delivered us from our sins and signaled his conquest over the demonic forces of the universe.

My earliest memories of church services involve the sacred specialness of Communion Sundays. Before I understood any of the theological underpinnings of Communion services, I sensed that there was some kind of mysterious blessing in the air on these days. I felt an awe and reverence falling upon the congregation, and I was aware that something special, something with inklings of the supernatural, was happening. I realized early on that there was a sacred meaning to the bread and wine that demanded a hushed solemnity from everyone present.

Sitting with my parents at a Communion service when I was very young, perhaps six or seven years old, I became aware of a young woman in the pew in front of us who was sobbing and shaking. The minister had just finished reading the passage of Scripture written by Paul that says, “Whosoever shall eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 11:27). As the Communion plate with its small pieces of bread was passed to the crying woman before me, she waved it away and then lowered her head in despair. It was then that my Sicilian father leaned over her shoulder and, in his broken English, said sternly, “Take it, girl! It was meant for you. Do you hear me?”

She raised her head and nodded—and then she took the bread and ate it. I knew that at that moment some kind of heavy burden was lifted from her heart and mind. Since then, I have always known that a church that could offer Communion to hurting people as a special gift from God.

Some claim that they can worship alone, and I do not question their claims. Indeed, those who cannot be alone with God are not fit for community. But the positive experience of worshipping alone does not contradict my argument that something different happens when Christians come together in corporate worship. The sociologist Emile Durkheim recognized that at such a gathering a unique feeling of oneness often emerges—he called it “collective effervescence.” He meant that there is some kind of shared emotion and psychic power that can be experienced only in communal worship. It doesn’t always happen, but when it does, those who share in this ecstasy keep coming back for more.

I belong to an African American church, and on those special days when the congregation “really gets down, and the Spirit breaks loose,” as my pastor says—those are days when that collective effervescence is especially evident people say afterward, “Oh, we had church today, didn’t we?” For them, on those days the church becomes something more than a gathering of people in a sanctuary. It becomes a happening. But such happenings would never happen if there weren’t “an earthen vessel,” as Paul called it, to contain them. That’s what the church is. In spite of all of its flaws and shortcomings, it is the “earthen vessel” that can serve as a home for sacred happenings and the special fellowship that the Greek New Testament calls koinonia.

At Eastern University, where I teach sociology, we have weekly chapel services. Attendance is voluntary, but students have been showing up in such large numbers over the past few years that we have had to move our weekly worship services from the school chapel to the gym. It’s not the speakers that draw the crowds, but the worship. These worship services feature “praise music.” As an old guy, I have difficulties with this new praise/worship music, but the students love it. I see them with their hands lifted up and tears running down their cheeks as they sing love songs to God, and I realize that they are experiencing God in a way that transports them from the gym bleachers into a mystical community of holiness. I become aware of that collective effervescence wherein God’s presence becomes uniquely real. There and then, I am grateful for the corporate worship that makes such things possible.

There is another reason that the church should play an important role in your lives: the church is Christ’s primary instrument for bringing about social change and transforming the institutions of society to conform with his will. It is through the church that Christ has chosen to bring all principalities and powers into submission to himself (Ephesians 1:21-22).

When the apostle Paul used the phrase principalities and powers, he was referring to all of the suprahuman forces that influence what we think and do. Some Christians limit the meaning of these words and think that Paul was referring only to evil spirits (i.e., demons). Undoubtedly, that is part of what Paul meant. Evangelicals, especially in this postmodern age, are ready to affirm that there are demonic forces fostering havoc and evil in the world. It should be noted, however, that modern scholars such as Walter Wink and John Howard Yoder have pointed out the phrase’s broader meaning. Principalities and powers, say many Biblical scholars, also include such social constructions as television, government, economic systems, and the arts. These and all other social institutions, they argue, should be understood as superhuman forces that influence human behavior. What Paul tells us in Ephesians 6:12 is that we members of the church are supposed to wrestle with these principalities and powers so that they might be transformed into institutions that enact God’s will.

Allow me to give you some examples of how ordinary Christians are doing extraordinary things as they work to bring the principalities and powers under the lordship of Christ through the church. Christians in England, working together across denominational lines, have seriously influenced international policies regarding Third World debts. When the heads of the G8 nations held a summit in the city of Birmingham in 1998, Christians mobilized tens of thousands of church members to hold a prayer vigil in front of the convention hall where the meetings were held. Clare Short, who was then Britain’s secretary of State for international development, told me that it was that church-sponsored prayer vigil that moved the world leaders to make the first efforts toward debt cancellation.

The collapse of apartheid in South Africa offers another dramatic example of the church’s bringing principalities and powers into submission to God’s will. Archbishop Tutu, the leader of the Anglican church in that country, was able to make the church into a force for justice. There can be no question as to the crucial role the church played in challenging the racism that had made black Africans into less than second-class citizens.

As young people rebelled against the oppression of the South African police, they found in Tutu a spokesperson and leader for their movement. American author (and my friend) Jim Wallis describes how, on one occasion, Tutu met with thousands of freedom-seeking young people in the cathedral of Cape Town. The atmosphere was electric with anticipation as Tutu took his place in the pulpit. He pointed to the policemen who had positioned themselves along the walls of the cathedral to intimidate the crowd. Then he lovingly spoke to the police: “Come join us! You know we will win, so why not be part of the victory?” Then he led the thousands of young people in singing freedom songs. The congregation rose to its feet, swayed to the music, and started dancing in the aisles. There was no containing these young people, who were celebrating the coming end of apartheid. The dancing spilled onto the streets, and passersby joined in. Thus, a revolution was fueled by a church that was willing to challenge oppressive principalities and powers that had once seemed unshakable.

In addition to such direct campaigns for social change, there are a host of other ways in which the church has been a powerful force for positive societal transformation. Consider what has been accomplished because of missionary work in developing nations.

Schools created by missionaries have educated most the significant leaders in Africa, Latin America, and Asia The professional elites in developing countries—the doctors, lawyers, engineers, and entrepreneurs—almost all owe their training to church-sponsored education. Kofi Annan is one example. In Latin America, even Marxists have to give credit to church schools for training their leaders. Fidel Castro readily testifies that his revolutionary ideas came from his childhood training in Jesuit schools. And I haven’t even mentioned all the incredible work missionaries have done in the fields of medical care and agriculture in developing countries

Some people mock the missionary efforts of the church and claim that they have been destructive of indigenous cultures. There is some truth in what these critics say; missionaries have often made the mistake of imposing Western values and lifestyles on native peoples. But today’s missionaries are much more cross-culturally sensitive than were their predecessors, and they are often trained in cultural anthropology so that they can contextualize the Gospel in ways that both employ and preserve the best of native cultures.

While I think that cultural sensitivity is essential, l don’t believe that every cultural practice should be tolerated simply because it is indigenous. For instance, certain cultures allow the ceremonial sacrificing of children, and others call for the circumcision of girls upon entering puberty. I believe unequivocally that such practices should be eliminated, and I think you will, too. Likewise, I have no qualms when it comes to challenging the treatment of women in Islamic countries governed by sharia law or what remains of the caste system in India. If the work of missionaries undermines cultural patterns that are cruel and dehumanizing, I’m all for it. The sooner, the better.

There is little doubt that the tentacles of Western technology, and the social changes that come with it, sooner or later will reach out and affect every tribe and nation on earth. Given that expectation, I would prefer that preliterate societies first encounter the West via missionaries, who have the best interests and salvation of indigenous people at heart, rather than via commercial forces whose only concern is the maximizing of profits.

There is one scary thing about our desire to change the world into a societal system that is ever more like the kingdom of God. This is the triumphalist tendency, increasingly evident among us Evangelicals, to use political power to impose our will on the rest of the nation and even the rest of the world. I see this happening especially among Evangelicals identified with the Religious Right who exercise their significant influence to try to force their agenda on others. There is incredible danger in this. I hope you can understand that Evangelicals’ God-ordained identity as a servant people is compromised when we adopt coercion as our means for bringing others into compliance with God’s will.

Young people often tell me that they are wary of the institutional church because they believe it is filled with hypocrites. Well, it is. What these people fail to understand, however, is that it is because the church is filled with hypocrites that they’ll be right at home in it. If they don’t think their own lives are filled with hypocrisies, then they are blind to the truth. We in the church mad no bones about it. We acknowledge our hypocrisy. We believe that everyone is a hypocrite, if by “hypocrite” we mean someone who does not live up to his or her declared ideals and does not practice what he or she preaches. Most of us in the church recognize that we fall short of our goals, but we acknowledge our shortcomings and have come together to help one another overcome our failures. As the old saying goes, “We’re not what we ought to be, but then we’re not what we used to be.” The apostle Paul spoke for all of us in Philippians 3:13-14 when he acknowledged that he wasn’t perfect but was still striving to become what God wanted him to be. I guess what I’m trying to tell you is the same thing I’d tell anyone else: if you ever find the perfect church, don’t join it—because your joining will ruin it!

In spite of all its flaws and shortcomings, I still believe that the church is filled, for the most part, with decent and caring people who will be there when you need them. The loving fellowship that the church often provides is exemplified in a story that a Presbyterian pastor once told me about his early days of ministry at a small country church. One day, a young woman came to the church to present her child for baptism. She had given birth to the child out of wedlock; in a small rural community, a woman who has done this can easily find herself shunned. The day of the baptism, the woman stood alone before the congregation, holding her child in her arms. The pastor hadn’t recognized the awkwardness of the situation until he asked, as is customary in a baptismal service, “Who stands with this child to assure the commitments and promises herewith made will be carried out? Who will be there for this child in times of need and assure that this child is brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord?” At that moment, he realized that there was no godmother or godfather on hand to answer the question. But, as though on cue, the entire congregation stood and with one voice said, “We will!”

Those who think that church people are all bad should have been around on that Sunday, when they would have had a chance to see the church at its best. They would have seen the church as a nurturing community. That kind of church is worth your time.

Sincerely,

Tony

This was excerpted from Letters to a Young Evangelical by Tony Campolo, copyright © 2006. Used by permission of Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group.

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Christianity Today‘s bookmark review of the book is in the May issue.

Letters to a Young Evangelical is available from ChristianBook.com other retailers.

It is one of the “Letters to a Young ___” book group, a part of the “The Art of Mentoring” series from Basic Books.

The book’s website links to a video of an interview with Campolo on The Hour.

Campolo’s website has an excerpt of chapter three of Letters to a Young Evangelical.

First Things posted “A Letter to Tony Campolo,” a response to the book.

The January 2003 issue of Christianity Today featured a profile of Campolo (one of the top 25 most influential preachers, according to PreachingToday.com), “The Positive Prophet.” Related articles include “Tony Talks Too Much,” “Candidate Campolo,” “Why Clinton Likes Campolo,” “One Lord, One Faith, One Voice?,” “Ethnic Cleansing, Genocide, and Plain Old Murder,” and “Rift Opens Among Evangelicals on AIDS Funding.”

Letters to a Young EvangelicalTony Campolo • Basic Books280 pages • $23.00

Tony Campolo’s latest book joins other titles in a noble series that invites prominent thinkers (writers Dinesh D’Souza and Christopher Hitchens, therapist Mary Bray Pipher) to offer their expertise.

Campolo is his often irenic self when he celebrates what evangelicals hold in common, and he navigates many of our disagreements (such as over the gifts of the Holy Spirit) with grace.

It’s when Campolo distances himself from the widely derided Religious Right that Letters to a Young Evangelical grows combative and simply inaccurate. To correct some of his mistakes:

• Tim LaHaye is not a TV evangelist.
• James Watt did not claim that “there was no need to protect” national parks and forests because of the imminent return of Jesus.
• Ronald Reagan believed people could be living in the End Times long before he met Jerry Falwell.
• Many pro-life thinkers, including Christians, advance their case against abortion without appeals to ensoulment.

Campolo writes that evangelical has taken on too much baggage and ought to be replaced with red-letter Christian, especially for believers who call themselves progressives but reject the label of Religious Left. Have fun with that semantic game, brother, but don’t expect the evangelicals you caricature to play it with you.

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

An excerpt, “Why The Church is Important” from the book is available on our site.

Letters to a Young Evangelical is available from ChristianBook.com other retailers.

It is one of the “Letters to a Young ___” book group, a part of the “The Art of Mentoring” series from Basic Books.

The book’s website links to a video of an interview with Campolo on The Hour.

Campolo’s website has an excerpt of chapter three of Letters to a Young Evangelical.

First Things posted “A Letter to Tony Campolo,” a response to the book.

The January 2003 issue of Christianity Today featured a profile of Campolo (one of the top 25 most influential preachers, according to PreachingToday.com), “The Positive Prophet.” Related articles include “Tony Talks Too Much,” “Candidate Campolo,” “Why Clinton Likes Campolo,” “One Lord, One Faith, One Voice?,” “Ethnic Cleansing, Genocide, and Plain Old Murder,” and “Rift Opens Among Evangelicals on AIDS Funding.”

Sounds like … Buddy Miller, Rodney Crowell, Emmylou Harris, Randy Travis and other proponents of country’s neo-traditionalist side.

At a glance … Danny Flowers’ long-in-the-making debut for Brash is as bold and breathtaking as it is unassuming and humble in its expressions of faith.

You could say that Jesus took the wheel of country in 2006. Historically speaking, Christ has never been far away from the genre, but for the most part, faith expressions were relegated to old-timers or under-the-radar veterans. But 2006 was different, with chart-topping albums from Alan Jackson (Precious Memories) and Alabama (Songs of Inspiration), as well as overtly Christian hits by Brooks & Dunn, Brad Paisley, and American Idol winner Carrie Underwood.

Danny Flowers may not boast the star power of any of these celebrities, but that doesn’t hinder his Brash Music debut, Tools for the Souls, from being one of the finest entries in country gospel. The album is only the third from the self-described “58-year-old developing artist,” a low-profile singer/songwriter responsible for the Don Williams classic “Tulsa Time,” as well as other cuts for the likes of Nanci Griffith, Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson.

Part of the charm is that the album has more in common with these veritable country greats than with Music City’s more pop-flavored glitterati. Harris herself adds a lovely counter harmony to the title track, an unassuming opening statement that borrows from the melody of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”—a knockout pacesetter if there ever was one. And there’s something a little more authentic in the religious intent of this album, compared to other recent Christian country offerings. The album is simply Flowers’ honest-to-God testimony after a life ruled by drugs.

It’s a message that’s accentuated further by the album’s lack of polish. Its rawness recalls Buddy Miller’s Universal United House of Prayer with Texas blues, roots gospel, Americana, and alt-country—sometimes all four at once. But the reason Tools for the Soul is a triumph isn’t so much a matter of style or substance as much as one of downright soul. It’s passionate yet modest—simultaneously striking and simple—full of faith, yet genuinely moving without sounding pretentious. An unexpected gem, and one of year’s best.

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Director Sam Raimi, a self-professed comic book geek when it comes to Spider-Man, was clearly the right man for the job when it came to making movies about the wall-crawling superhero.

More than just a Spidey fan, Raimi was particularly interested in developing the character of Peter Parker, the web slinger’s very human—and very flawed—alter ego.

Sony Pictures knew they had the right man when they hired Raimi, now 47, seven years ago for the job. And it’s paid off—earning the studio a whopping $1.6 billion worldwide through the first two films.

That figure is sure to soar—possibly to as much as $3 billion when it’s all said and done—as Spider-Man 3, which cost a reported $250 millions to make, swings into theaters this week (late Thursday night in some markets, Friday everywhere else).

A huge part of the franchise’s popularity has been Raimi’s treatment not just of the action hero in the spider suit, but of the young man underneath. Raimi’s direction and Tobey Maguire’s acting have made Peter/Spidey arguably the most popular comic book icon in film history.

Christians have been among those embracing the protagonist, in part because Raimi has been unafraid to clearly include biblical themes and spiritual imagery in the films.

Spidey 2 (2004) might well have been subtitled The Passion of Peter Parker, as the hero wrestled with whether or not he wanted to be a “savior” of sorts. And when he saves the runaway train near the movie’s end—in a crucifixion pose, with a wound in his side and holes in his wrists, no less—and then goes through a symbolic death, burial and resurrection … well, let’s just say it’s quite a spiritual moment.

Raimi doesn’t hold back from the spiritual imagery in Spider-Man 3, either, as the main character wrestles with a dark side he never knew he had. The movie’s tagline is “The Battle Within,” and the story is reminiscent of Paul’s struggle with his sinful nature in Romans 7: “I do not understand what I do,” the apostle writes. “For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do.”

Biblical themes galore

The film is rife with themes of love, friendship, pride, vengeance, confession, repentance, forgiveness and redemption. No kidding—it’s all there … not to mention a critical scene in a church that I won’t say much about here.

In the studio’s official press kit, Raimi sounds like a Sunday school teacher when he says that in this story, “Peter has to put aside his prideful self. He must put aside his desire for vengeance. He has to learn that we are all sinners. He has to learn forgiveness.”

Wow.

Two weeks ago, I flew to Los Angeles for a press screening and to interview Raimi and members of the Spidey cast. I didn’t get to talk with any of them one-on-one, but in roundtable discussions, I was able to ask Raimi and others about the spiritual themes explored in the film, as well as the development of the protagonist’s character.

“This story was pretty much set up by the first two pictures,” Raimi said. “It was about sorting out how best to conclude these storylines and where our character, Peter Parker, had to grow next to as a human being.

“Peter learns different life lessons in each of these films. We felt that the most important thing that he has to learn now is about this whole concept of him as the avenger. He feels he’s the hero who, with each criminal he brings to justice, he’s paying down this debt of guilt he feels about the death of Uncle Ben.”

Raimi went on to say that Peter needed to be humbled.

“Peter considers himself a sinless person compared to these villains,” he said. “We felt it would be great for him to learn a less black-and-white view of life—that’s he’s not above these people, that he’s not just the hero, that they’re not just the villains, but we’re all human beings. He had to learn that he himself might have some sin within him, and that other human beings—the ones he calls the criminals—have humanity within them. And that the best we can do in this world is to not strive for vengeance, but for forgiveness.”

Watching Spider-Man go bad

Raimi says he had a hard time filming the scenes of the “dark” Peter/Spidey.

“Working on those sequences with Tobey Maguire and the dark Spider-Man, that was difficult for me,” he said. “It wasn’t fun for me, because I don’t like watching Spider-Man go bad. I kept wondering, Do we really have to show how vengeful he is? Do we really have to show how pride can destroy you? But my brother (co-writer Ivan Raimi) kept telling me yes, because Peter’s going to find himself again after he loses himself.”

Maguire wasn’t buying Raimi’s complaint.

“I’ve heard Sam say that,” he said, “but I’m not quite sure I believe him. I think he’s attracted to it and repulsed by it at the same time. I think it’s hard for him to see Peter behave in those ways, because it’s the treasured character of Peter. But it’s where his character had to go in this film.”

Maguire, who has been very involved in the development of the character and tweaking of the film’s scripts, said he enjoyed delving into a more complex Peter/Spidey.

“We were exploring new territory for the character, and that’s exciting for me,” he said. “It’s not a new character. It’s a new side to Peter Parker, something I think is kind of unexpected to see, Peter behaving in some of the ways he behaves. It was a lot of work for Sam and I to go over it, and really think about and discuss the right tone for that part of the movie.”

Another sympathetic villain

Thomas Haden Church, an Oscar nominee for Sideways, plays one of the villains—Flint Marko, an escaped convict who, through an accident in a particle physics testing facility, becomes Sandman. Much like Doctor Octopus in Spider-Man 2, he’s a villain who earns your empathy and sympathy. He’s basically a good guy who went “bad” through a series of unfortunate circ*mstances—in some ways similar to Peter’s journey in this film.

“Sandman’s character and Marko are intrinsically woven together,” Church said. “The character was always about Flint Marko. It was about the man. But like Frankenstein, Sandman is just the darker monstrosity and malevolence that he can’t control—not unlike the black suit that Spider-Man can’t control.”

Ah, the black suit. Anyone who’s seen the trailer—or read the comic books—knows that Church isn’t giving anything away here. When a meteorite crashes to earth, a living black substance crawls out—and right into Peter’s life. When it covers his Spidey suit while Peter is sleeping one night, the new “black suit” not only gives him greater power and agility, but begins to tap the darker side within.

The trailer shows Peter trying to tear himself free of the black suit at one point, but will he succeed? You’ll have to watch the movie to find out.

Church agreed that his character was a “sympathetic” villain, but went on to say, “That’s the thing: There’s no bad guys in these movies. They’re just people. They come into these stories with their value systems intact, but they’re corrupted by ambition or lust—or, in the case of Sandman, by the ferocity of his own intentions.”

That’s the lesson Peter must learn: That there’s “no bad guys”—that we all, as Raimi noted, have sin within ourselves. That, in part, is where the church comes into one of the scenes.

Raimi said that scene was “true to the comic book; it’s very similar to how it was depicted with those classic Marvel comic books of the ’80s. There are a lot of literary and spiritual concepts in the comic books, and they reverberate and work for me and for the writers.”

Maguire, meanwhile, didn’t want to read too much into it.

“For me,” he said, “I wasn’t thinking about it in terms of spiritual imagery, really, although there is definitely deep remorse on Peter’s part. He feels like he’s lost his way; he feels really humbled and wants to stop behaving in that way. It’s difficult for him; it’s emotional. But I think about it from the character’s perspective and not really in religious terms; it’s more about psychological and emotional terms that I’m thinking.”

Indeed, it’s a study in psychological and emotional character development. But the spiritual ramifications and imagery are unmistakable. Peter Parker’s Passion continues to play out, on the big screen, right before our eyes.

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Films have been a popular subject on Out of Ur. That might seem odd for a blog devoted to issues facing church leaders. But in recent years films have become a testing ground for evangelical engagement with popular culture – a topic ripe with implications for our philosophy of ministry and approach to mission.

Our colleagues at Christianity Today Movies have a thought provoking article about the lucrative niche market for Christian films. Some of Hollywood’s evangelical insiders gathered for a conference in Los Angeles recently to discuss the trend, and CT’s Jeffery Overstreet was there. His full report can be read on the CT Movies site, but we’ve included a few excerpts below.

It is a complicated, difficult, exciting time for Christians involved in movies, TV, and digital media. As Hollywood rushes to capitalize on money to be made in the “faith market,” each of the panel’s experts has been caught up in the action.

The panelists agreed that Christians must overcome many challenges in order to make faith an acceptable topic in American art and entertainment again. But how should Christians go about that? And are these new “faith-based entertainment” divisions at major studios going to help us?

Some envision the Christian film industry following the trend of Christian music – an industry whose products are largely produced by Christians, for Christians.

Even if Christian filmmakers produce powerful movies, they face difficult choices about how to proceed. Should they allow their projects to be swept up by the new faith-based media divisions and marketed primarily to churchgoers? Or do they want to fight for a mainstream spotlight alongside Hollywood’s heavy hitters?

The idea of marketing “faith-based” entertainment specifically to Christians has inspired a wave of new “niche market” ideas, many of which were discussed by conference guests. Some even spoke about the possibility of a new movie theater chain: separate cinemas for Christians, built within churches.

This would represent an interesting shift for Hollywood. Up to now big-budget productions have been marketed through churches as an outreach tool. Films like The Passion of the Christ, Narnia, and even The DaVinci Code were pushed on pastors with the promise that the church could leverage the film to advance its own mission to spread the good news. But films developed strictly for Christians – do we need that? Apparently we do.

“We live in a world of niche content,” says Cooke. “We have outdoors channels, gay channels, women’s channels, men’s channels, sports channels, movie channels. There’s no reason in the world that the Christian audience should not be a niche market. If people feel called to make stuff for an explicitly Christian audience, I say ‘Go for it.'”

McKay sees value in entertainment designed specifically for the churchgoing audience. “There’s still a market to write movies that only Christians will enjoy. And what’s wrong with that? Christians need entertainment, too.”

Read the rest of “Christians as a ‘Niche’ Market?” here, and share your thoughts with us.

This weekend The Wall Street Journaloffered Richard Land’s analysis of the Republican primary field. The president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission delivered a grim prognosis. He thinks Giuliani’s two divorces and pro-choice views will doom him. He doesn’t fully trust McCain. He really doesn’t trust Gingrich. He could vote for Romney, should the Mormon former governor clarify how religion would affect his decision-making. And Thompson has some promise.

I think the last couple hundred words of the interview pose some serious questions evangelical Republicans must answer.

Land argues that evangelicals will decline to vote for a Republican with liberal social views, even if the Democrats nominate Sen. Hillary Clinton. Many will stay home out of principle, Land says. He warns that such an outcome would doom the Republican Party all the way down the ballot.

The Journal‘s Naomi Schaefer Riley doesn’t seem so sure. What if the Iraq War remains the dominant political issue in 2008? If evangelical supporters of the war stick to their guns, they would have a stark choice between Giuliani and Clinton — or for that matter, any Democratic candidate. The Democrats want out; Giuliani supports President Bush. So what happens in this scenario? Would evangelicals who support the war tolerate any candidate who promised not to immediately withdraw the troops? Or would abortion trump guns?

Here’s another question: Would evangelical support for Giuliani on the basis of war signal a “maturing” of our political engagement and broadened concerns? Or would we betray the social problems that triggered our recent involvement in the first place?

The New York Times has an extended piece on Barack Obama’s faith, his church, and his relationship with his pastor, Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Wright has become known for his liberation theology, which, as Wright has applied it, some have called reverse racism.

Obama describes the differences in outlook he has with his pastor.

“Reverend Wright is a child of the 60s, and he often expresses himself in that language of concern with institutional racism and the struggles the African-American community has gone through,” Mr. Obama said. “He analyzes public events in the context of race. I tend to look at them through the context of social justice and inequality.”

The article’s emphasis on Obama’s relationship with his outspoken pastor is due to its potential political effect on Obama’s presidential campaign. But the article does describe Obama’s personal conversion: “He comes from a very secular, skeptical family,” said Jim Wallis, a Christian antipoverty activist and longtime friend of Mr. Obama. “His faith is really a personal and an adult choice. His is a conversion story.”

The article has less of Obama speaking about himself than David Brooks’s column does. In the column, perhaps, we see Obama’s faith at work better than we do in the much longer piece about Obama and his pastor. Brooks says he got Obama to open up when he asked, “Have you ever read Reinhold Niebuhr?” Obama, it turns out, is a big fan. “What do you take away from him?” Brooks asked.

“I take away,” Obama answered in a rush of words, “the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away … the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from na?ve idealism to bitter realism.”

In recent years worship has been wrenched from the story of God and has been formed by some of the narratives of contemporary culture. Many find only a cultural manifestation of Christianity that bears no mark of spiritual nourishment or sustenance.

Me-oriented worship is the result of a culturally driven worship. When worship is situated in the culture and not in the story of God, worship becomes focused on the self. It becomes narcissistic. Christopher Lasch points to narcissism as a “metaphor of the human condition.”” Certainly from a biblical perspective, sin is fundamentally a rebellion against God, a rebellion that places self at the center. Therefore, we must ask whether it is really a fact that much of our worship has shifted from a focus on God and God’s story to a focus on me and my story.

This question is answered by the research of Lester Ruth, professor of worship at Asbury Seminary. Dr. Ruth examined the seventy-two top contemporary songs over a fifteen-year period of time with his primary question being, “Are these songs rooted in the Triune nature and activity of God?” His conclusions are alarming: “None of the songs in the corpus of seventy-two explicitly refer to the Trinity or the Triune nature of God. … Only three songs refer to or name all three persons of the Trinity.” While Jesus is named in thirty-two of the songs, the Holy Spirit is named in only two songs. “With so few of the songs naming or worshiping all three persons of the Trinity, it is therefore not surprising to find little remembrance of Triune activity in the corpus.” This results in a “de-emphasis on commemorating God’s saving activity.”

By not situating worship in a recollection of the trinitarian activity to redeem and restore the world, the shift in worship, revealed in this study, is to turn God into an object of worship. Consequently the “overwhelming character of the songs” is that of the worshiper “expressing love, adoration, and praise to the direct object of their worship.”

The real underlying crisis in worship goes back to the fundamental issue of the relationship between God and the world. If God is the object of worship, then worship must proceed from me, the subject, to God, who is the object. God is the being out there who needs to be loved, worshiped, and adored by me. Therefore, the true worship of God is located in me, the subject. I worship God to magnify his name, to enthrone God, to exalt him in the heavens. God is then pleased with me because I have done my duty.

If God is understood, however, as the personal God who acts as subject in the world and in worship rather than the remote God who sits in the heavens, then worship is understood not as the acts of adoration God demands of me but as the disclosure of Jesus, who has done for me what I cannot do for myself. In this way worship is the doing of God’s story within me so that I live in the pattern of Jesus’ death and resurrection. My worship, then, is the free choosing to do what Paul admonishes us to do: “Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12:1-2).

Here is the shift: the biblical God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is not the God who sits in the heavens but the one who acts in this world. The Triune God creates, becomes involved with creation, becomes present in Israel, becomes incarnate in Jesus, dies for sin, is victorious over death, ascends to heaven, and calls the church into being by the Spirit to witness to his work of redeeming the world. This same God will restore creatures and creation and rule over all in the new heavens and the new earth. Biblical worship tells and enacts this story. Narcissistic worship, instead, names God as an object to whom we offer honor, praise, and homage. Narcissistic worship is situated in the worshiper, not in the action of God that the worshiper remembers through Word and table.

The current focus on worship originating in the self is probably a reaction against truth without passion and is what happened to me as a result of the Enlightenment and what happened to me when my learning of Scripture through the scientific method left me dry. The traditional worship of the fifties is more confessional, concerning itself with making truth statements about God. Unfortunately, these truth statements often are based on an Enlightenment method that privileges reason, science, and fact. Consequently, worship based on these truths is often dispassionate, intellectual, and dry. Contemporary worship is more characterized by passion. It has to do with the heart, with relationship, with an intimacy; it elicits feelings, emotion, tears, and intensity; it lacks substance. Worship needs both truth and passion. Truth without passion is dry. Passion without truth is empty. Where do we go to find both truth and passion? I suggest recovering worship as the proclamation and enactment of God’s story.

Worship Proclaims and Enacts God’s Story

There seems to be a great deal of confusion about the purpose of worship. I talk to many men and women who think worship arises from inside themselves. Worship, like spirituality, springs forth from the story of God. Worship does God’s story. It proclaims God’s story in the reading and preaching of the Word; in prayer, the church prays for the world God has reclaimed; in the Eucharist, the church ascends into the heavens and experiences the consummation of God’s story in the new heavens and the new earth. There is a personal dimension to worship. Worship is the contemplation, the delight in our own heart that comes from hearing and enacting the story of how God renews the face of the earth through his Son and Spirit. The other response to worship is the choice we make to participate in purposes of God for the world that worship celebrates. This is how song, Scripture, prayer, and Eucharist nourish our spiritual life.

Scripture Nourishes the Spiritual Life

The reading and preaching of Scripture in worship nourishes our spiritual life as it interprets the whole world through the story of God’s embrace. 12 This means that we cannot read the Bible through any other story. We cannot embrace the story of rationalism and science, on the one hand, and bring it to the story of the Bible as if the story of the Bible needs the story of reason and science to shore it up and make it acceptable. The whole method of making the Bible sensible through other disciplines—be they reason, science, sociology, psychology, or whatever—must be turned on its head and seen for what it is. Scripture calls us to delight in the story as true, stand inside the story, and let the story interpret science, philosophy, sociology, and all other disciplines. Scripture sees everything in life through the story.

God does not say, “Come and read the Bible through existentialism or postmodern philosophy or sociology and see if you can make it fit.” No. Scripture presents the story as true and says, “Look at the world and all its structures and relationships and dysfunctions through the eyes of God.” Scripture says the story of God is itself a philosophy, an anthropology, a sociology, a reason, a science. Scripture frees the Christian to see the world through the eyes of God’s story as a true commentary on the origin of life, the problem of evil, the restoration of true humanity, the meaning of life, the destiny of history.

Reading the biblical story is not enough. To be fully nourished by Scripture, one must enter into it and participate in God’s story. We must become the word, by living the Word. The Scripture as God’s Word tells us how we are to live in the pattern of death and resurrection, but Jesus, who is the living Word of God, has embodied true humanity and shows us how we are to live, following the Word and doing as Jesus did for others.

The benediction at the end of the book of Hebrews, a book that urges its readers to embody the living Word, declares,

May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
— Hebrews 13:20-21

It does not get much clearer than this. The spiritual life is not nourished by faith in an abstract idea. Rather, the spiritual life is made real as we embody the written and living Word of God by dying to all that is evil and by being birthed to all that is in the service of God.

Worship as the Prayer of the Church Nourishes the Spiritual Life

In the early church the public worship of the church was a prayer of praise and thanksgiving directed not to the people but to God. Seeing worship as prayer is a paradigm shift from the current presentational notion of worship. Today worship is frequently seen as a presentation made to the people to get them to believe in the first place, to enrich and edify their faith, and to bring healing into their lives. But the ancient church did not design (a contemporary word) worship to reach people, to educate people, or to heal people. Yet in their worship, which was a prayer of praise and thanksgiving offered to God, people were indeed nourished by offering God’s mighty acts of salvation as a prayer to God for the life of the world. The point is, of course, that worship as prayer shapes who we are. But how so?

First, worship as prayer focuses on historical events. God is known to us in this world, in the revelation of himself in creation, in the salvation history of Israel, and ultimately in God made visible in Jesus. Worship prayer focuses on God’s self-giving love through which he recapitulates the human condition, restores our union with God, and promises a restored creation in the new heavens and the new earth. This history that we pray is not dead but alive and active, for it is God’s activity, God’s presence, God’s reality working within history to redeem and restore the world.

Second, the prayer of worship is done not with the language we mortals create but with the language of God. Worship prayer does God’s history in this world using the language that is particular and peculiar to the Christian story. The language of prayer is the language of creation, fall, covenant, Passover, tabernacle, prophetic utterance, incarnation, death, resurrection, church, baptism, Eucharist, eschaton. These words are necessary because they speak God’s voice and presence. They are not common to the other religions of the world, and they are not generic. They are the specific words of God, and consequently, they constitute the language of worship, prayer, contemplation, and participation. There are no comparable words, no substitutes, no adaptations. The relationship between God and humanity must be articulated with these words, for they constitute the only true relationship between God and creation and, therefore, are the language of Christian prayer.

Third, the prayer that we do is situated in God’s story and discloses this story. Prayer does not proceed out of an inner language that we create in the depth of our own person, as if we have the capacity to form and establish our own personal prayer detached from the story of God. No. The church prays, instead, God’s story in the language of God’s voice; our prayer is always anchored in the public voice of the church. Our personal prayer is dependent on the faithfulness of the church to articulate for us what we can only say in a fumbling way. The personal praying of the public prayers of the church is a necessary component of our prayer. The public prayer is the bridge to the personal prayer. There is a process through which this public prayer takes place.

Augustine refers to that process as memoria—intellectus—voluntas. First, the prayer of the church makes an impression upon our mind. We recall through memory the particular story of God and the world. The story itself grasps our intellect, envelops it, overwhelms it with wonder and astonishment (contemplation), and then produces within us the determination of the will to find our place within the prayer, to let that prayer define the meaning of the self, of human existence, of the world, of human history, of the cosmos. The prayer urges us to enter into the historical flow of God’s story, to find our personal meaning within God’s story of the world—especially in the climax of world history in the divine embrace of Jesus Christ—and to live in the world in the embrace of the one who shows us the fullness of human meaning. Then prayer engages the will as we act (participation) as the continuation of Jesus in the world, the affections become engaged, and we love as Jesus loved.

Yet one more thing: in the prayer of the church that does the saving acts of God in history, it is not the acts of God that constitute our personal prayer but the wonder and astonishment of the God who reveals his nature through this historical action culminating in the God who becomes incarnate, suffers for us, and is risen for us to reclaim us and the world to himself. We marvel in the kind of glorious God whose overwhelming love leads to these actions that reveal his very nature. And our nature, lifted .gyp into the nature of Jesus in prayer, is through him united to God and -hanged, transformed, and transfigured into the original nature created .n the image of God, for in him we are to live, to move, and to have our Being. What wondrous splendor is the prayer of the church, which we gray and through which we contemplate and participate in God.

The Eucharist Nourishes the Spiritual Life

In order to be nourished by Christ at bread and wine, most Christians I know will have to go through a paradigm shift. My circle of Christian and non-Christian friends are formed so deeply by Enlightenment rationalism that they only see bread and wine. It is as though they are looking at a snapshot photo of what Christ told us to eat and drink. They live with such a truncated and desupernaturalized faith that wants a reason to believe that Jesus is disclosed at bread and wine. In this demand they do what I have been decrying from the start of the book. They bring their Enlightenment worldview that privileges reason and science to God’s story and demand that God’s story be accountable to a scientific worldview rather than the other way around. To them I say, you must denounce the priority you give to a false worldview and step into the story of God and see Eucharistic bread and wine from within the story. The story says, “You do not live in a natural world explained by reason and science.” God’s story says, “You live in a supernatural world of wonder and mystery. Stand in this world and receive the mystery of bread and wine, disclosing to you the goodness of creation and the union of the human and divine embodied for the restoration of the whole world in Jesus, now made tangible to you and disclosed in this piece of bread and drink of wine. Be free from the constraints of reason and science and meet the true meaning of life in the mystery of these elements.”

Now, how do bread and wine draw us into a participation in the life of God in the world? Bread and wine disclose the union we have with Jesus, which, as I have said earlier, is not a mere standing but a true and real participation that is lived out in this life as we become the story of God in this world individually in all our ways and corporately as the people of God. First, we are to ingest eucharistic bread and wine. In contemplation we look on with steadfast delight in all that bread and wine disclose, pulling back the curtain to the divine embrace. In participation we first reach out and take the whole world into our hands. We lift the Alpha and Omega to our mouth. We take God’s whole story into our stomach, let it run through our bloodstream, let it then energize our entire living-our relationships, our work, our pleasure-all of life is to be lived now as Jesus lived his life for us, and for our sake, dying for us, rising for us, showing us how to live in the pattern of his dying and rising. As he took into himself the suffering of all humanity, so we are to take into ourselves the suffering of the world and do something about it. As he rose above all that is evil in the world through his resurrection, so we, too, are to rise to the new life by the Spirit of God. All our death to sin and rising to life finds its true and ultimate meaning in him who lives in us, living in our sufferings, living in our struggles with evil, living in our resurrections to new life.

So bread and wine is no abstract object out there, no thing to be observed as an object of interest, no mere ritual to be taken in a perfunctory or mechanical way. No. We move from a delightful contemplation of all that bread and wine disclose to participate in God’s story by letting the Jesus who comes to us by bread and wine be given anew and poured out again to the world through our individual lives and through the community of the people of God, the church.

Used by permission of Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group, copyright © 2006. All rights to this material are reserved. Materials are not to be distributed to other web locations for retrieval, published to other media, or mirrored at other sites without written permission from Baker Publishing Group.

The Divine Embrace is available from ChristianBook.com and other retailers.

Karen Kingsbury, a popular inspirational novelist, has sold upwards of 5 million books. She wrote eight books last year alone and can sometimes turn out a draft in five days. Two of her recent novels are Like Dandelion Dust (Center Street, 2006) and Ever After (Zondervan, 2007). Stan Guthrie, CT’s senior associate editor, sat down with Kingsbury.

When did you convert to Christ?

I came to Christ in my early 20s. I had met the man who I ended up marrying, Don. And he was an amazing guy. I loved everything about him except that he had the tendency to want to bring a Bible to a date, and that was just a little more than I could comprehend. I was so frustrated at [our] constant debate about Christ and the validity and the value of the Word, that I took his precious Bible—highlighted, underlined, notes in the margins—and threw it on the ground and broke it in half, the binding split down the middle. God used that.

That weekend I bought my own Bible. I was going to prove him wrong. And God wouldn’t let me sleep—[I was] just tormented at why I had to throw the Bible down to defend my watered-down faith. I felt all my traditional beliefs falling away, and God said I could either fall with them or I could grab on to his Word and never let go. It was life-changing, and I gave my entire heart to Christ that weekend.

What do readers like about your books?

I’m receiving 300 to 500 letters every week from people telling me that God used my stories to save their marriage or to introduce them to Christ or to heal a relationship that had been broken. Some people will just write and say, “I never realized that loving Christ was a daily, minute-by-minute event until I read your novels and saw how characters were either ignoring God’s voice or following after it.” So I think there’s a level of realism in my books. You need to get down among the people who are the dirtiest and dustiest, and the depravity, and you need to see Christ’s light shining there. I tell that story. My characters are not plastic. So my readers are resonating with what I’m writing and at the same time finding a lasting change.

You deal with real-world issues such as adoption and abuse.

You need a little bit of courage to have a character who will not walk away from a physically abusive relationship, such as the main character in my book Like Dandelion Dust, who will give a baby up because she knows that when her abusive husband comes out of prison, she’ll take him back.

What do you think people are hungry for?

The secular world can give you physical, intellectual, and emotional details in depth. But I can give you all of that and the spiritual. And we’re all spiritual. You can deny Christ, but you’re still made in his image. You can ignore his voice and it may have grown still and quiet, but you still resonate with a story that touches your spirit. They want me to keep telling the truth.

Many people seem to be gravitating to you for spiritual direction.

When you go to church on Sunday, you hear this great sermon. A lot of times what you’re going to walk away with is the illustration. I have the incredible blessing to be able to take truth and show you an illustration that will change your heart because it’s a story, and the walls of your heart are down. You’re not coming into a novel thinking, “I really need to save my marriage, so I’m going to read this novel.” You’re looking a lot of times for escape. That’s I think why Christian fiction initially wasn’t viewed as something valid to the Christian walk, because it was more of an escape. But when you can come into a story, the walls of your heart are down. We can use more storytelling, I think, on our journey to understanding faith.

The world needs story. The power of story is an unbelievable force. When Jesus wanted to tell you straight, he just told you straight. But when he wanted to touch your heart, he told a story.

Do you ever get tired of writing?

No, I love writing. But the business of writing takes up ten hours to every one hour of writing.

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Karen Kingsbury keeps an online journal on her website.

Like Dandelion Dust is available ChristianBook.com and other retailers. They also have an author interview and an excerpt.

Kingsbury wrote adopting three of her children in Today’s Christian Woman

Today’s Christian had a profile of her.