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297. The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Summer Youngs

Author:   Dalai Lama XIV, Desmond Tutu, Douglas Carlton Abrams

Genre:  Non Fiction, Philosophy, Psychology, Self Improvement, Theology, Happiness

354 pages, published October 18, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

In The Book of Joy, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu (both of whom are winners of the Nobel Prize,  spiritual masters, moral leaders, and are close friends), meet in Dharamsala for the Dalai Lama’s birthday and to discuss the concept of living a life of joy even in the face of adversity.  As narrated by Douglas Abrams, the book has three layers:  their own stories and teachings about joy, the most recent findings in the science of deep happiness, and the daily practices that underpin their own emotional and spiritual lives.  While both the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu have been experienced significant adversity, they have found a way to use that struggle to be joyful and to spread joy to others.

Quotes 

“The three factors that seem to have the greatest influence on increasing our happiness are our ability to reframe our situation more positively, our ability to experience gratitude, and our choice to be kind and generous.”

 

“The more time you spend thinking about yourself, the more suffering you will experience.”

 

“The Dead Sea in the Middle East receives fresh water, but it has no outlet, so it doesn’t pass the water out. It receives beautiful water from the rivers, and the water goes dank. I mean, it just goes bad. And that’s why it is the Dead Sea. It receives and does not give. In the end generosity is the best way of becoming more, more, and more joyful.”

 

“Wherever you have friends that’s your country, and wherever you receive love, that’s your home.”

 

“Marriages, even the best ones—perhaps especially the best ones—are an ongoing process of spoken and unspoken forgiveness.”

 

“We create most of our suffering, so it should be logical that we also have the ability to create more joy. It simply depends on the attitudes, the perspectives, and the reactions we bring to situations and to our relationships with other people. When it comes to personal happiness there is a lot that we as individuals can do.”

 

“When you are grateful,’ Brother Steindl-Rast explained, ‘you are not fearful, and when you are not fearful, you are not violent. When you are grateful, you act out of a sense of enough and not out of a sense of scarcity, and you are willing to share. If you are grateful, you are enjoying the differences between people and respectful to all people. The grateful world is a world of joyful people. Grateful people are joyful people. A grateful world is a happy world.”

 

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. I felt fear more times than I can remember, but I hid it behind a mask of boldness. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

 

“I think that the scientists are right,” the Dalai Lama concluded. “People who are always laughing have a sense of abandon and ease. They are less likely to have a heart attack than those people who are really serious and who have difficulty connecting with other people. Those serious people are in real danger.”

 

“Much depends on your attitude. If you are filled with negative judgment and anger, then you will feel separate from other people. You will feel lonely. But if you have an open heart and are filled with trust and friendship, even if you are physically alone, even living a hermit’s life, you will never feel lonely.”

 

“We are wired to be caring for the other and generous to one another. We shrivel when we are not able to interact. I mean that is part of the reason why solitary confinement is such a horrendous punishment. We depend on the other in order for us to be fully who we are. (…) The concept of Ubuntu says: A person is a person through other persons.”

 

“You show your humanity by how you see yourself not as apart from others but from your connection to others.”

 

“One of my practices comes from an ancient Indian teacher. He taught that when you experience some tragic situation, think about it. If there’s no way to overcome the tragedy, then there is no use worrying too much. So I practice that. (The Dalai Lama was referring to the eighth-century Buddhist master Shantideva, who wrote, “If something can be done about the situation, what need is there for dejection? And if nothing can be done about it, what use is there for being dejected?”

 

“What the Dalai Lama and I are offering,” the Archbishop added, “is a way of handling your worries: thinking about others. You can think about others who are in a similar situation or perhaps even in a worse situation, but who have survived, even thrived. It does help quite a lot to see yourself as part of a greater whole.” Once again, the path of joy was connection and the path of sorrow was separation. When we see others as separate, they become a threat. When we see others as part of us, as connected, as interdependent, then there is no challenge we cannot face—together.”

 

“Joy is the reward, really, of seeking to give joy to others. When you show compassion, when you show caring, when you show love to others, do things for others, in a wonderful way you have a deep joy that you can get in no other way. You can’t buy it with money. You can be the richest person on Earth, but if you care only about yourself, I can bet my bottom dollar you will not be happy and joyful. But when you are caring, compassionate, more concerned about the welfare of others than about your own, wonderfully, wonderfully, you suddenly feel a warm glow in your heart, because you have, in fact, wiped the tears from the eyes of another.”

 

“If you are setting out to be joyful you are not going to end up being joyful. You’re going to find yourself turned in on yourself. It’s like a flower. You open, you blossom, really because of other people. And I think some suffering, maybe even intense suffering, is a necessary ingredient for life, certainly for developing compassion.”

 

“There are going to be frustrations in life. The question is not: How do I escape? It is: How can I use this as something positive?”

 

“Discovering more joy does not, save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily too. Perhaps we are just more alive. Yet as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters. We have hardship without becoming hard. We have heartbreaks without being broken.” 

My Take

I really enjoyed The Book of Joy, especially its focus on gratitude and kindness as the cornerstones of a joyful life.  I completely agree with this sentiment.  In fact, I believe that you cannot be happy unless you are grateful and that envy is a killer of joy and happiness.  I also appreciated that both the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu emphasized that suffering is not the enemy of joy.  In fact, suffering allows us to gain compassion for others and, in the end, can increase our own joy.  A thought provoking book with lots of practical applications for increasing your own joy and happiness.

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295. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Betty Lipstreu

Author:   Timothy Keller

Genre:  Non Fiction, Theology

293 pages, published February 14, 2008

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Throughout his life, Tim Keller, a prolific Christian writer and the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, has encountered many skeptics and doubters who have posed questions to Keller about the existence and nature of God.  Why is there suffering in the world? How could a loving God send people to Hell? Why isn’t Christianity more inclusive? Shouldn’t the Christian God be a god of love? How can one religion be “right” and the rest “wrong”? Why have so many wars been fought in the name of God?  In The Reason for God, Keller addresses these challenges and provides well reasoned, thoughtful and compelling responses.

Quotes 

“If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.”

 

“The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less.”

 

“The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.”

 

“It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you. Strong faith in a weak branch is fatally inferior to weak faith in a strong branch.”

 

“If you wait until your motives are pure and unselfish before you do something, you will wait forever.”

 

“When we look at the whole scope of this story line, we see clearly that Christianity is not only about getting one’s individual sins forgiven so we can go to heaven. That is an important means of God’s salvation, but not the final end or purpose of it. The purpose of Jesus’s coming is to put the whole world right, to renew and restore the creation, not to escape it. It is not just to bring personal forgiveness and peace, but also justice and shalom to the world. God created both the body and soul, and the resurrection of Jesus shows that he is going to redeem both body and soul. The work of the Spirit of God is not only to save souls but also to care and cultivate the face of the earth, the material world.”

 

“We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order. The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it. Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken. His miracles are not just proofs that he has power but also wonderful foretastes of what he is going to do with that power. Jesus’ miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we all want is coming.”

 

“To stay away from Christianity because part of the Bible’s teaching is offensive to you assumes that if there is a God he wouldn’t have any views that upset you. Does that belief make sense?”

 

“…the basic premise of religion—that if you live a good life, things will go well for you—is wrong. Jesus was the most morally upright person who ever lived, yet he had a life filled with the experience of poverty, rejection, injustice, and even torture.”

 

“It is not enough for the skeptic, then, to simply dismiss the Christian teaching about the resurrection of Jesus by saying, “It just couldn’t have happened.” He or she must face and answer all these historical questions: Why did Christianity emerge so rapidly, with such power? No other band of messianic followers in that era concluded their leader was raised from the dead—why did this group do so? No group of Jews ever worshipped a human being as God. What led them to do it? Jews did not believe in divine men or individual resurrections. What changed their worldview virtually overnight? How do you account for the hundreds of eyewitnesses to the resurrection who lived on for decades and publicly maintained their testimony, eventually giving their lives for their belief?”

 

“Those who believe they have pleased God by the quality of their devotion and moral goodness naturally feel that they and their group deserve deference and power over others. The God of Jesus and the prophets, however, saves completely by grace. He cannot be manipulated by religious and moral performance–he can only be reached through repentance, through the giving up of power. If we are saved by sheer grace we can only become grateful, willing servants of God and of everyone around us.”

 

“God’s grace does not come to people who morally outperform others, but to those who admit their failure to perform and who acknowledge their need for a Savior.”

 

“The Hebrew word for this perfect, harmonious interdependence among all parts of creation is called shalom. We translate it as “peace,” but the English word is basically negative, referring to the absence of trouble or hostility. The Hebrew word means much more than that. It means absolute wholeness—full, harmonious, joyful, flourishing life.”

 

“There is, then, a great gulf between the understanding that God accepts us because of our efforts and the understanding that God accepts us because of what Jesus has done. Religion operates on the principle “I obey—therefore I am accepted by God.” But the operating principle of the gospel is “I am accepted by God through what Christ has done—therefore I obey.”

 

“The popular concept–that we should each determine our own morality–is based on the belief that the spiritual realm is nothing at all like the rest of the world. Does anyone really believe that? For many years after each of the morning and evening Sunday services I remained in the auditorium for another hour to field questions. Hundreds of people stayed for the give-and-take discussions. One of the most frequent statements I heard was that ‘Every person has to define right and wrong for him- or herself.’ I always responded to the speakers by asking, ‘Is there anyone in the world right now doing things you believe they should stop doing no matter what they personally believe about the correctness of their behavior?’ They would invariable say, ‘Yes, of course.’ Then I would ask, “Doesn’t that mean that you do believe there is some kind of moral reality that is “there” that is not defined by us, that must be abided by regardless of what a person feels or thinks?’ Almost always, the response to that question was silence, either a thoughtful or a grumpy one.”

 

“Certainly we should be very active in seeking God, and Jesus himself called us to ‘ask, seek, knock’ in order to find him. Yet those who enter a relationship with God inevitably look back and recognize that God’s grace had sought them out, breaking them open to new realities.”

 

“Ultimate reality is a community of persons who know and love one another. That is what the universe, God, history, and life is all about. If you favor money, power, and accomplishment over human relationships, you will dash yourself on the rocks of reality […]

[it is] impossible […] to stay fully human if you refuse the cost of forgiveness, the substitutional exchange of love, and the confinements of community.

[…] We believe the world was made by a God who is a community of persons who have loved each other for all eternity. You were made for mutually self-giving, other directed love. Self-centeredness destroys the fabric of what God has made.”

My Take

While I have previously completed several Tim Keller bible studies and liked them, I found this book to be far more compelling.  Keller has an easy to read writing style and is very adept at directly addressing numerous challenges to Christianity.  If you are a Christian with doubts (as so many of us are), I believe this book will strengthen your faith.

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285. Why The Jews?

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Dennis Prager, Joseph Telushkin

Genre:  Non Fiction, History, Theology, Sociology

272 pages, published August 12, 2003

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Why have Jews been the object of the most enduring and universal hatred in history? Why did Hitler consider murdering Jews more important than winning World War II? Why has the United Nations devoted more time to tiny Israel than to any other nation on earth?  In Why The Jews, authors Dennis Prager and  Joseph Telushkin answer the question of why the Jews have been persecuted throughout history, from the ancient world to the Holocaust to the current crisis in the Middle East.  The authors also look at the replicating of Nazi antisemitism in the Arab world, the pervasive anti-Zionism/antisemitism on university campuses, the rise of antisemitism in Europe and why the United States and Israel are linked in the minds of anti-Semites.

 

My Take

I am a big fan of Dennis Prager, having listened to him for years and consider him to be one of the wisest people in public life.  In addition to being a nationally syndicated Talk Radio Show Host, a prolific author, the force behind the tremendous website Prager University, he is a serious religious scholar specializing in Judaism.  On his radio show, he often mentions his book Why The Jews.  Having heard a lot about this book, I was very interested in reading it.  I was not disappointed, but I was very saddened at the horrendous treatment of the Jewish people throughout history.  Prager and  Joseph Telushkin offer the following explanations for our world’s history of anti-Semitism:

– 1600 years of Christian hatred of Jews culminated in the Holocaust … Christianity did not create the Holocaust … but without Christian antisemitism, the Holocaust would have been inconceivable.

– Jews, merely by continuing to be Jews, threatened the very legitimacy of Christianity … if Judaism remained valid, then Christianity was invalid … therein, from the days of the founding of Christianity, lie the origins of Christian hatred of Jews … Christianity had no choice but to deny the validity of Judaism.

– the mere existence of Jews is a threat to the prevailing order of the societies in which Jews live … Judaism is an existential threat to the core values and beliefs of others … living with this threat often aroused deep and lasting hatred.

– Jews allegiance to the biblical commandments of God, Torah and Israel have made Jews outsiders who challenge the validity of the non-Jew’s gods, laws, and national allegiance.

– economic factors, the need for scapegoats, resentment of Jewish affluence, ethnic hatred … these have all exacerbated antisemitism but do not explain its genesis.

– any group acting so differently from the majority culture is bound to elicit hostility … by observing Kashrut, a Jew can eat little at a non-Jew’s house … observing the Jewish Sabbath increases the otherness and isolation of Jews.

– Nazi Jew-hatred was an end, not a means to an end … Nazism was a vehicle for antisemitism, not the reverse … Hitler used war as a means of killing Jews on a larger scale than he could do in peacetime.

*** Nazi antisemitism was based on hatred of the Jewish character, not hatred of Jews’ non-Aryan blood … the Nazis hated the challenges to their view of the German world posed by Jews and Jewish values.

 

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278. The Story of God, the Story of Us: Getting Lost and Found in the Bible

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Sean Gladding

Genre:  Non Fiction, Christian, Theology

237 pages, published August 27, 2010

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

In The Story of God, the Story of Us, author Sean Gladding tells the story of the entire Bible.  Gladding’s convention is to follow the conversations of a group of people (sitting around a campfire in Babylon, reclining at table in Asia Minor, or huddled together by candlelight in Rome) wrestling with the Story of God for the first time.  While the book can be read alone, it is designed to be shared with a group.

Quotes 

“The ever present ache of exile rises above the comforting sounds of the river, as the image of the house of the LORD in ruins breaks the peace. . . . Despite the warmth of the fire, he feels a chill. He wraps his cloak around him and looks into the eager faces of his people, then closes his eyes. ‘Picture this scene . . .'”

 

“Did you hear it? Can you picture the symmetry? Our God is a God of hospitality, creating a place for a people, a place where all life can flourish. God provides for all creation, as our Story shows. Our God is a God of order; we can trust God to provide for us now as in the beginning. “I know that it may not seem that way today, for here we are, exiles in a foreign land. Life is hard. We know that. And that is why we must tell each other the Story, and keep telling it, to do exactly what God has continually told us to do: remember . . . remember . . . remember.”

 

“Sin is not just something I do. Sin is social; it always impacts the whole community.” 

My Take

I read The Story of God, the Story of Us in a small group from First Presbyterian Church in Boulder, of which I am a member.  This book is a fresh take on the Bible and provides a succinct and compelling overview.  I especially enjoyed the discussions of the book with my small group and recommend reading it in a group if you can.  There is a companion study guide which we found very useful.

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266. The Great Divorce

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   C.S. Lewis

Genre:  Fiction, Christian, Theology

146 pages, published 1945

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The Great Divorce is C.S. Lewis’s vision of the Afterworld in which the narrator boards a bus on a rainy English afternoon and embarks on an incredible voyage through Heaven and Hell.  Along the way, he meets a variety of supernatural beings far removed from his expectations, and comes to some significant realizations about the nature of good and evil.

 

Quotes 

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.”

 

“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.”

 

“Milton was right,’ said my Teacher. ‘The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” There is always something they insist on keeping even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy—that is, to reality.”

 

“You cannot love a fellow creature fully till you love God.”

 

“The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love or patriotism or art: but lust is less likely to be made into a religion.”

 

“Son,’ he said,’ ye cannot in your present state understand eternity…That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say “Let me have but this and I’ll take the consequences”: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why…the Blessed will say “We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven, : and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.”

 

“There have been men before … who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God himself… as if the good Lord had nothing to do but to exist. There have been some who were so preoccupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.”

 

“Everything becomes more and more itself. Here is joy that cannot be shaken. Our light can swallow up your darkness; but your darkness cannot now infect our light.”

 

“That thing is Freedom: the gift whereby ye most resemble your Maker and are yourselves part of eternal reality.”

 

“Hell is a state of mind – ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind – is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.”

 

“I wish I had never been born,” she said. “What are we born for?” “For infinite happiness,” said the Spirit. “You can step out into it at any moment…”

 

“And yet all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies, and itchings that (Hell) contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all. Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good.”

 

My Take

I listened to The Great Divorce on the heels of The Screwtape Letters and there is a lot of similarity between the two books.  Both books are characterized by admonitions on how to live a holy life dedicated to God, and how we so often get that wrong (even though we may think we are getting it right).  Pride truly is the worst sin.  If you have an interest in Christian Apologetics, then both The Great Divorce and the The Screwtape Letters are essential reading.

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265. I Sold My Soul on Ebay

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Hemant Mehta

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Theology, Memoir

224 pages, published April 17, 2007

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

In the mid-2000’s, Heman Mehta received widespread notoriety as “the eBay atheist,” i.e. the nonbeliever who auctioned off the opportunity for the winning bidder to send him to church.  Jim Henderson, a former pastor and author of Evangelism Without Additives, won the auction and sent Mehta out to a variety of church services.  Mehta, an atheist who was raised in the Jainism religion (which he rejected as a teenager) writes about the experience, including insightful critiques about what churches could be doing better to win over converts. on the Internet and spawning a positive, ongoing dialogue between atheists and believers.

 

Quotes 

“Pastor Ted and other evangelical pastors I hear about in the media seem to perceive just about everything to be a threat against Christianity. Evolution is a threat. Gay marriage is a threat. A swear word uttered accidentally on television is a threat. Democrats are a threat. And so on.

I don’t see how any of these things pose a threat against Christianity. If someone disagrees with you about politics, or social issues, or the matter of origins, isn’t that just democracy and free speech in action? How do opposing viewpoints constitute a threat?”

 

My Take

While there are some interesting parts of I Sold My Soul on Ebay (especially author Mehta’s discussion of why he became an atheist), it started to lose me with the somewhat repetitious discussion of the different church services attended by Mehta as part of his Ebay bargain.  Okay, but not particularly compelling.

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264. The Screwtape Letters

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  John Breen

Author:   C.S. Lewis

Genre:  Fiction, Theology, Christian, Fantasy

223 pages, published 1942

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

This classic satire by the acclaimed C.S. Lewis is a sardonic portrayal of human life by the demon Screwtape, a senior tempter in the service of “Our Father Below.” The device used by Lewis are letters from the experienced old devil Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, a novice demon in charge of securing the damnation of an ordinary young man.

 

Quotes 

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality. ”

 

“We must picture hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives with the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.”

 

“Humour is…the all-consoling and…the all-excusing, grace of life.”

 

“The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring two-pence what other people say about it, is by that very fact forewarmed against some of our subtlest modes of attack.”

 

“Nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust and ambition look ahead.”

 

“[God] will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest chemist’s shop.”

 

“Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

 

“She’s the sort of woman who lives for others – you can tell the others by their hunted expression.”

 

“One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food;

(2) He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.”

 

“Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.”

 

“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

 

“You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption ‘My time is my own’. Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to him employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which h allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.”

 

“The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour’s talents–or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall.”

 

“When He [God] talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.”

 

“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.” The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.”

 

“Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.”

 

“A woman means by Unselfishness chiefly taking trouble for others; a man means not giving trouble to others…thus, while the woman thinks of doing good offices and the man of respecting other people’s rights, each sex, without any obvious unreason, can and does regard the other as radically selfish.”

 

“A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all—and more amusing.”

 

“By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the the impossible.”

 

My Take

Even though it has been almost 80 years since The Screwtape Letters was published, it still has a lot of relevance to modern day life and makes the expression “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions” particularly apt.  C.S. Lewis’ clever device of a conversation between demons on how best to ensnare human beings made me really think about how I was living my own life and what God expects of me.  Lots of food for thought told in a very interesting fashion.

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256. Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Karen Reader

Author:   Bob Goff

Genre:  Non Fiction, Theology, Christian, Self Improvement

224 pages, published May 12, 2012

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Love Does is a memoir by the somewhat eccentric, but very Jesus oriented, Bob Goff.  Bob is  a true original.  While in college, Bob spent 16 days in the Pacific Ocean with five guys and a crate of canned meat.  He pursued his wife for three years before she agreed to date him.  His grades weren’t good enough to get into law school, so he sat on a bench outside the Dean’s office for seven days until they finally let him enroll.  Bob challenged his children to write to all of the world’s heads of state and then visited the ones who responded.  Bob was even named consul for the country of Uganda based on some friendships he had made.  The theme running through all of Bob Goff’s various activities and adventures is love.  However, not content to feel love, Bob’s default position is to take action because he believes Love Does.

 

Quotes 

“That’s because love is never stationary. In the end, love doesn’t just keep thinking about it or keep planning for it. Simply put: love does.”

 

“he said we’d know the extent of out love for God by how well we loved people.”

 

“I used to be afraid of failing at something that really mattered to me, but now I’m more afraid of succeeding at things that don’t matter.”

 

“Things that go wrong can shape us or scar us.”

 

“I used to want to fix people, but now I just want to be with them.”

 

“Most people need love and acceptance a lot more than they need advice.”      

 

“The cool thing about taking Jesus up on His offer is that whatever controls you doesn’t anymore. People who used to be obsessed about becoming famous no longer care whether anybody knows their name. People who used to want power are willing to serve. People who used to chase money freely give it away. People who used to beg others for acceptance are now strong enough to give love. When we get our security from Christ, we no longer have to look for it in the world, and that’s a pretty good trade.”

 

“Whimsy…needs to be fully experienced to be fully known. Whimsy doesn’t care if you are the driver or the passenger; all that matters is that you are on your way.”

 

“I used to think God wouldn’t talk to me, but now I know I’m just selective with what I choose to hear.”

 

“We all want to have a place where we can dream and escape anything that wraps steel bands around our imagination and creativity.”

 

“I learned that faith isn’t about knowing all of the right stuff or obeying a list of rules. It’s something more, something more costly because it being present and making a sacrifice. Perhaps that’s why Jesus is sometimes called Immanuel – “God with us.” I think that’s what God had in mind, for Jesus to be present, to just be with us. It’s also what He has in mind for us when it comes to other people.”

 

“Being engaged is a way of doing life, a way of living and loving. It’s about going to extremes and expressing the bright hope that life offers us, a hope that makes us brave and expels darkness with light. That’s what I want my life to be all about – full of abandon, whimsy, and in love.”

 

“I used to think you had to be special for God to use you, but now I know you simply need to say yes.”

 

“I don’t think Bible verses were meant to be thrown like grenades at each other. They were meant for us to use to point each other toward love and grace and invite us into something much bigger.”

 

“Actually, the real game of Bigger and Better that Jesus is playing with us usually isn’t about money or possessions or even our hopes. It’s about our pride. He asks if we’ll give up that thing we’re so proud of, that thing we believe causes us to matter in the eyes of the world, and give it up to follow Him. He’s asking us, “Will you take what you think defines you, leave it behind, and let Me define who you are instead?”

 

“Failure is just part of the process, and it’s not just okay; it’s better than okay. God doesn’t want failure to shut us down. God didn’t make it a three-strikes-and-you’re-out sort of thing. It’s more about how God helps us dust ourselves off so we can swing for the fences again. And all of this without keeping a meticulous record of our screw-ups.”

 

“Living a life fully engaged and full of whimsy and the kind of things that love does is something most people plan to do, but along the way they just kind of forget. Their dreams become one of those “we’ll go there next time” deferrals. The sad thing is, for many there is no “next time” because passing on the chance to cross over is an overall attitude toward life rather than a single decision.”

 

“It has always seemed to me that broken things, just like broken people, get used more; it’s probably because God has more pieces to work with.”

 

“I don’t think anyone aims to be typical, really. Most people even vow to themselves some time in high school or college not to be typical. But still, they just kind of loop back to it somehow. Like the circular rails of a train at an amusement park, the scripts we know offer a brand of security, of predictability, of safety for us. But the problem is, they only take us where we’ve already been. They loop us back to places where everyone can easily go, not necessarily where we were made to go. Living a different kind of life takes some guts and grit and a new way of seeing things.”

 

“Turning down this invitation comes in lots of flavors. It looks like numbing yourself or distracting yourself or seeing something really beautiful as just normal. It can also look like refusing to forgive or not being grateful or getting wrapped around the axle with fear or envy. I think every day God sends us an invitation to live and sometimes we forget to show up or get head-fakes into thinking we haven’t really been invited. But you see, we have been invited – every day, all over again.”

 

My Take

Not only is Love Does a really inspirational book, but it is also a lot of fun to read.  Bob Goff is a character who is living life on his own (and God’s) terms.  In his recounting of many hilarious and impossible stories of his life, his love for people and God shines through.  Through his example, you see that most of your limitations come from your own mind.  Goff shows us that we all have a potentially amazing life to live if we trust God and step forward and live it.

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190. The Sparrow

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Mary Doria Russell

Genre:  Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Theology

431 pages, published September 8, 1997

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

In the year 2019, we find proof of extraterrestrial life when a listening post picks up exquisite singing from a planet that will come to be known as Rakhat.  While the UN debate and try to figure out what to do, the Society of Jesus quietly organizes an eight-person scientific expedition.  The journey to and the discoveries on Rakhat lead the crew to ponder the meaning of life and God.

Quotes 

“There’s an old Jewish story that says in the beginning God was everywhere and everything, a totality. But to make creation, God had to remove Himself from some part of the universe, so something besides Himself could exist. So He breathed in, and in the places where God withdrew, there creation exists.”

So God just leaves?”

No. He watches. He rejoices. He weeps. He observes the moral drama of human life and gives meaning to it by caring passionately about us, and remembering.”

Matthew ten, verse twenty-nine: Not one sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it.”

But the sparrow still falls.”

 

“The Jewish sages also tell us that God dances when His children defeat Him in argument, when they stand on their feet and use their minds. So questions like Anne’s are worth asking. To ask them is a very fine kind of human behavior. If we keep demanding that God yield up His answers, perhaps some day we will understand them. And then we will be something more than clever apes, and we shall dance with God.”

 

“I believe in God the way I believe in quarks. People whose business it is to know about quantum physics or religion tell me they have good reason to believe that quarks and God exist. And they tell me that if I wanted to devote my life to learning what they’ve learned, I’d find quarks and God just like they did.”

 

“Faced with the Divine, people took refuge in the banal, as though answering a cosmic multiple-choice question: If you saw a burning bush, would you (a) call 911, (b) get the hot dogs, or (c) recognize God? A vanishingly small number of people would recognize God, Anne had decided years before, and most of them had simply missed a dose of Thorazine.”

 

“I do what I do without hope of reward or fear of punishment. I do not require Heaven or Hell to bribe or scare me into acting decently.”

 

“See that’s where it falls apart for me!” Anne cried. “What sticks in my throat is that God gets the credit but never the blame. I just can’t swallow that kind of theological candy. Either God’s in charge or he’s not…”

 

“There are times…when we are in the midst of life-moments of confrontation with birth or death, or moments of beauty when nature or love is fully revealed, or moments of terrible loneliness-times when a holy and awesome awareness comes upon us. It may come as deep inner stillness or as a rush of overflowing emotion. It may seem to come from beyond us, without any provocation, or from within us, evoked by music or by a sleeping child. If we open our hearts at such moments, creation reveals itself to us in all it’s unity and fullness. And when we return from such a moment of awareness, our hearts long to find some way to capture it in words forever, so that we can remain faithful to it’s higher truth ….When my people search for a name to give to the truth we feel at those moments, we call it God, and when we capture that understanding in timeless poetry, we call it praying.”

 

“That is my dilemma. Because if I was led by God to love God, step by step, as it seemed, if I accept that the beauty and the rapture were real and true, the rest of it was God’s will too, and that, gentlemen, is cause for bitterness. But if I am simply a deluded ape who took a lot of old folktales far too seriously, then I brought all this on myself and my companions and the whole business becomes farcical, doesn’t it. The problem with atheism, I find, under these circumstances…is that I have no one to despise but myself. If, however, I choose to believe that God is vicious, then at least I have the solace of hating God.”

 

“Watching him with one eye, she wondered if men ever figured out that they were more appealing when they were pursuing their own work than when they were pursuing a woman.”

 

“You know what’s the most terrifying thing about admitting that you’re in love? You are just naked. You put yourself in harm’s way and you lay down all your defenses. No clothes, no weapons. Nowhere to hide. Completely vulnerable. The only thing that makes it tolerable is to believe that the other person loves you back…”

 

“we all make vows, Jimmy. And there is something very beautiful and touching and noble about wanting good impulses to be permanent and true forever,” she said. “Most of us stand up and vow to love, honor and cherish someone. And we truly mean it, at the time. But two or twelve or twenty years down the road, the lawyers are negotiating the property settlement.”

“You and George didn’t go back on your promises.”

She laughed. “Lemme tell ya something, sweetface. I have been married at least four times, to four different men.” She watched him chew that over for a moment before continuing, “They’ve all been named George Edwards but, believe me, the man who is waiting for me down the hall is a whole lot different animal from the boy I married, back before there was dirt. Oh, there are continuities. He has always been fun and he has never been able to budget his time properly and – well, the rest is none of your business.”

“But people change,” he said quietly.

“Precisely. People change. Cultures change. Empires rise and fall. Shit. Geology changes! Every ten years or so, George and I have faced the fact that we have changed and we’ve had to decide if it makes sense to create a new marriage between these two new people.” She flopped back against her chair. “Which is why vows are such a tricky business. Because nothing stays the same forever. Okay. Okay! I’m figuring something out now.” She sat up straight, eyes focused somewhere outside the room, and Jimmy realized that even Anne didn’t have all the answers and that was either the most comforting thing he’d learned in a long time or the most discouraging. “Maybe because so few of us would be able to give up something so fundamental for something so abstract, we protect ourselves from the nobility of a priest’s vows by jeering at him when he can’t live up to them, always and forever.” She shivered and slumped suddenly, “But, Jimmy! What unnatural words. Always and forever! Those aren’t human words, Jim. Not even stones are always and forever.”

 

“The poor you will always have with you,’ Jesus said. A warning, Emilio wondered, or an indictment?”

 

“It is the human condition to ask questions like Anne’s last night and to receive no plain answers,” he said. “Perhaps this is because we can’t understand the answers, because we are incapable of knowing God’s ways and God’s thoughts. We are, after all, only very clever tailless primates, doing the best we can, but limited. Perhaps we must all own up to being agnostic, unable to know the unknowable.”

 

“Consider the Star of David,” he said quietly. “Two triangles, one pointing down, one pointing up. I find this a powerful image—the Divine reaching down, humanity reaching upward. And in the center, an intersection, where the Divine and human meet. The Mass takes place in that space.” His eyes lifted and met hers: a look of lucid candor. “I understand it as a place where the Divine and the human are one. And as a promise, perhaps. That God will reach toward us if we reach toward Him, that we and our most ordinary human acts—like eating bread and drinking wine—can be transformed and made sacred.”

 

My Take

When I started The Sparrow, I was expecting a science fiction story, a genre I hadn’t read in awhile.  While there is plenty of science fiction to keep the reader interested, there is a lot more to this book.  Against the backdrop of a journey and investigation of another planet inhabited by intelligent life, Author Mary Doria Russell explores the eternal question of the meaning of God and how we, as “clever apes,” are meant to relate to Him.  A fascinating and thought provoking book.

 

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181. God. Gifts. You. Your Unique Calling and Design

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   First Presbyterian Church in Boulder

Author:   Shirley Davis

Genre:  Non- Fiction, Christian, Theology, Self-Improvement

170 pages, published August 29, 2017

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

God. Gifts. You.  is a bible study and assessment of spiritual gifts written by Shirley Davis, a staff member at First Presbyterian Church in Boulder (my home church) who focuses on community building.  In addition to verses from scripture relating to spiritual gifts and calling, the study includes a detailed self-assessment to help you discover your gifts.  Shirley also helps you understand God’s plan for you and how to use your gifts for His glory.

 

 

My Take

I read God. Gifts. You.  as part of a Bible Study at First Presbyterian Church in Boulder.  The self-assessment confirmed some things that I already knew (I have the gifts of hospitality and administration) and surprised me in other ways (I have the gift of encouragement).  More importantly, it started me thinking about how I am using my spiritual gifts in my one and only life and how could I use them in the future.  This is a great resource if you want to know yourself better and/or you are not sure what God is calling you to do.

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