Go check it out...

and I'll just have to live vicariously through you because I've got T-Ball today.

I have an mp3 player that I pretty much just use while doing yardwork. A few months ago I went to the dollar store looking for presents for the kids and bought them "the Wind in the Willows" on audio CD. They listen to it in bed while going to sleep. While there I bought "The War of The Worlds" by H.G. Wells on audio for myself. I've heard the Orson Wells radio broadcast, and I've seen the Tom Cruise movie, but that's it. I thought it would be cool to hear the original. It's been sitting in my desk drawer all this time.

So I finally put it on my mp3 player this morning. Only the file it was put in also had Megadeth's Greatest Hits. On the player each file started with a number. So chapter one was followed by Megadeth's song 1, and chapter 2 was followed by the next Megadeth song and so on. Chapter, megadeth song, chapter megadeth song...

IT WAS AWESOME!!!!

The end of each chapter is a kind of a cliffhanger...totally enhanced when you hear heavy metal music after final words like, "the second craft had landed" or "the missle was headed right for us". And me being weird like I am, I listened to parallels between the song and the chapter, and there almost always were some. (Songs like "Hangar 18" and "Holy Wars" for example.)

The chapters are VERY short. I'm thinking about doing a series here on the blog where I summarize a chapter, then share with you a few Megadeth lyrics that I heard, so you can experience what I experienced, sort of. (So far, I'm on chapter 7).

But who knows, I may never get around to it. I like the idea though.

Have any of you read "War of the Worlds"?

Have any of you read (or listened to) a book and created your own soundtrack for it?

Mine happened totally randomly but I still feel like the creator, kind of a mad scientist. (Cue loud guitar music here.)

A Little Ditty that will be on your mind for the rest of the week. When it haunts your dreams, think of me fondly.

The last time my brainbone hurt this much was reading N.T. Wright's The Challenge of Jesus about 7 or 8 years ago, the first Wright book I ever read and the one that baptized me by fire in Wright's writing. Now I'm reading Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, and while I keep checking the windowpanes for errant tree branches, I get the strange feeling that creaking sound is my paradigm once again shifting.

Actually, let me be more accurate: Wright is saying stuff in this book that expresses for me what have only been theological "hunches" in my mind before now. So it's not exactly new; it's just now firming up.

What is heaven, for instance?
Where is it? If Jesus' ascension wasn't literally a movement up (which I didn't think it was), what is it? Where did he go and how did he get there? And if we will be in heaven after our death but before our bodily resurrection, how is it not a purely spiritual place for disembodied existence? If it is that, how is the bodily resurrected Jesus there now?

Wright:

The mystery of the ascension is of course just that, a mystery. It demands that we think what is, to many today, almost unthinkable: that when the Bible speaks of heaven and earth it is not talking about two localities related to each other within the same space-time continuum or about a non-physical world contrasted with a physical one but about two different kinds of what we call space, two different kinds of what we call matter, and also quite possibly (though this does not necessarily follow from the other two) two different kinds of what we call time. We post-Enlightenment Westerners are such wretched flatlanders. Although New Age thinkers, and indeed quite a lot of contemporary novelists, are quite capable of taking us into other parallel worlds, spaces, and times, we retreat into our rationalistic closed-system universe as soon as we think about Jesus. C.S. Lewis of course did a great job in the Narnia stories and elsewhere of imagining how two worlds could relate and interlock. But the generation that grew up knowing its way around Narnia does not usually know how to make the transition from a children's story to the real world of grown-up Christian devotion and theology.

I sure didn't. Until now.
I'd never thought of the Narnia-Earth dynamic working as a good illustration of Heaven-Earth before. But I'll sure use it now.

Fyi, for those, like me, who despite reading lots of Wright for several years have wished for a clear, succinct, direct take from him on the Second Coming, it's in this book. While I don't agree with him on every point of his take on the Olivet Discourse, it's nice to at least finally know what he believes about the Lord's future return. (I knew he affirmed the second coming; just wasn't clear on the details of his affirmation.)

Two reversals of stories you've probably heard from the pulpit at some point in time but are actually not true.

1. Myth: Sincere Means "Without Wax"

[T]he most wide-spread story is that Roman potters would fill cracks in defective pots with wax the same color as the pot and sell the pots as perfect. To convince a customer that a pot was perfect, the potter had to convince him that it was sin cera “without wax”. That has long been established as either an urban myth (or an old wives’ tale, depending on your age and slang generation). Of course, sincere does not mean “without wax” or even “perfect” so the semantic side of this proposed derivation never worked.

Sincere comes to English from Latin sincerus “sound, whole, pure, genuine” via French. Its origin is simply unknown. A possible source would be a Proto-Indo-European compound sem-kero-s “of one growth” based on sem- “same, one” + kero- “to grow”. Although semantics troubles this purely speculative derivation, too, I sincerely believe it is the most likely historical scenario for the development of sincere.

2. Myth: Jesus Talked About Hell ____ Times More Than He Talked About Heaven

Nope. Jesus talked about heaven more. Or, at least, the word "heaven" appears in more of his teaching on the kingdom and eternal life than "hell" (or Hades or whatever) does.
That one is easily verifiable just looking in a concordance or checking Bible Gateway, but the Jollyblogger did a piece on it 2 years ago.

The catch on that one is that Jesus did reference hell (or some form of conscious torment/punishment for unrepentance) quite a bit, and that alone is quite shocking to those who think of Jesus as the anti-judge.

British industry magazine The Bookseller has announced this year's shortlist for the oddest book title of the year, with a typical mix of the quirky and eclectic.

Visitors to the magazine's website, www.thebookseller.com, can make their choice from six mostly non-fiction titles unearthed by publishers, bookstore workers and librarians from around the world.

The winner will be announced on March 28.

The nominees for The Diagram Prize are:

-- "I Was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen" by Jasper McCutcheon;

-- "How to Write a How to Write Book" by Brian Paddock;

-- "Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues" by Catharine A. MacKinnon;

-- "Cheese Problems Solved" by P.L.H McSweeney;

-- "If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs" by Big Boom;

-- "People who Mattered in Southend and Beyond: From King Canute to Doctor Feelgood" by Dee Gordon.

Horace Bent, The Bookseller's diarist, said on the magazine's website: "I confess: I have been anxious that as publishing becomes ever more corporate, the trade's quirky charms are being squeezed out.

"Lists are pruned, targets are set, authors are culled. But happily my fears have been proved unfounded: oddity lives on."

Last year's winner was "The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification", by Julian Montague.

The Diagram Prize has been running since 1978, when the winner was "Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice".

I vote for the closure one.

From the advance copy of Jared's Unvarnished Jesus book:

“I am the way, the truth, and the life, and if you want to get to God, you have to go through me.”

Nothing else gets us to God, nobody else gets us to God. God in the flesh gets us, and in the flesh we get to see God.

This is the fundamental question he asks us, the question that ends with a question mark shaped like a cross: Will you be satisfied in Christ alone?

From the end of chapter 2: Jesus the Prophet

Now that's just good, good stuff. . .

There are three things wrong with this graphic for an upcoming conference. Bonus points if you can name them first.

For the reading-inclined, here are seven books from my 2007 reading list that I'd like to recommend.

A.J. Conyers, The Long Truce: How Toleration Made the World Safe for Power and Profit. This work explores how the now-cliched modern understanding of toleration developed, how it marginalized Christian conviction, and argues for a return to a more pre-modern understanding of toleration that resembles humility more than indifference.

Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point. Being a bestseller, it's probably familiar to many readers. It's got great discussion about how ideas take flight and take root.

Berry, Wendell. The Unsettling of America. There are certain authors about whom I have to say, "but of course I don't agree with everything he says." Wendell Berry is one of those guys. He probably wouldn't approve of the time I spend commuting in my truck, my fancy phone that keeps me hooked up to the office 24/7, or my fondness for frozen pizzas. By the same token, I think he could stand to read a few books on economics. But he is a good corrective to many of the more/faster/now obsessions of contemporary life.

Kunstler, James Howard. The Geography of Nowhere. On a bad day, Wendell Berry is not half as depressing as James Howard Kunstler. When he was a small child, someone in a car on a suburban highway must've done very bad things to him. And he is still not happy about it. Kunstler needs to lighten up a little bit, but if you take seriously his claims about how suburban sprawl has marred the American landscape, it's hard not to join the pity party with him, if only a little bit. What's good about this book is it's not the fact of development he rails against, but the throwaway aesthetic that has latched onto it. What's bad is he doesn't offer much in the way of solutions (for that you'll have to read his other books), he lapses at times into environmental determinism, doesn't pay much attention to any valid reasons why suburbia was (and remains) a preferred option for many, and fails to recognize that suburbia isn't (to my way of thinking, at least) not so much a place as a distillation of the modern mind, operative as well in the inner city and rural America.

Leithart, Peter. Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, and Hope in Western Literature. I can't get enough of Leithart.

Lewis, Michael. The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game. This is a fantastic sports book that should engross even those who are passionately apathetic about football. It's part "Hoosiers" and "Hoop Dreams," telling the story of an illiterate inner-city kid who dreams of athletic stardom. It's part Lifetime TV-movie, telling how this neglected homeless kid of a drug-abusing mother was taken in and nurtured by a gentle, yet demanding mother figure. It's part sitcom: gigantic black teenager with no money and no life is taken in by a rich family with the former Ole Miss sorority girl mom to smother him, the business executive dad to play the stern patriarch, the cheerleader teenage daughter to be his surrogate sister, and the goofy younger boy to be his video game buddy. All this came to Michael Oher for one reason: a wrinkle in modern football strategy. The NY Times has an excerpt from the book here.

Yunus, Muhammad. Banker to the Poor. When liberals read about Yunus, they probably don't think "capitalist." Neither do some conservatives. I wish they did. Yunus is the founder of Grameen bank, which pioneered the use of micro-lending as an escape hatch from poverty for poor Muslim women in Bangladesh.

This year Thanksgiving Day falls on the date most people know as the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. But most people don't know that on the exact same day as Kennedy's untimely death -- November 22, 1963 -- across the pond in merry ol' England, an unassuming Oxford don passed on to his heavenly reward. His name was C.S. Lewis.

I guess it's easy to overlook Lewis in this time. He wasn't a man who enjoyed the spotlight anyway, and he probably would think it just fine that the day of his passing be obscured by the Death of Camelot. But I say with complete confidence that the legacy Lewis left us is far greater than that of JFK.

Lewis was a poet, novelist, essayist, literary critic, professor, and "amateur" theologian-philosopher. His fiction manages to capture the mythic grandeur and eloquence he so loved as a child and the attention-grabbing wonder every lover of good stories covets. His non-fiction sparkled with an easy-going style. Lewis's illustrative method was remarkable. He was able to take difficult and complex concepts and somehow explain them in ways that made sense. He always favored simplicity even when discussing "big things." He never used a big word when a small one would have worked just as well.

C.S. Lewis's influence on modern Christianity is unmatched to this day. No other Christian has come close to rivaling his place at the summit of Christian literature. No other Christian has come close to influencing Christian thought in the 20th and 21st centuries more than he. That is why I believe Lewis has been the single most influential Christian of the 20th century. No one -- not even Billy Graham -- has left such a indelible mark on Christian culture. Graham may win the souls, but Lewis builds them up. You might not be able to get an atheist to read Graham's How to be Born Again, but I bet you could get him to read Lewis's The Abolition of Man. And he'd be better off for it.

It might be hyperbole, but the Thinklings may not have ever started were it not for Lewis. When high school Rod met high school Bird in high school gym class, we had little in common at first but our faith and an interest in Lewis. Most of my fondest early Thinkling moments involve Lewis. Before the Thinklings were the Thinklings, Bird and I used to go over to another friend's house to shoot hoops, shoot pool, and shoot the breeze. Theological debates were the order of the day. And many a theological debate or discussion was settled with "Well, what does Lewis say about it?"
I recall visiting Bird in college at Baylor one time. I remember it clear as day even though it was night, but Bird and I sat out by his apartment complex's pool, smoked stogies, and discussed C.S. Lewis. I remember a bunch of bats flying overhead. The romantic spirit of Inklings-esque camaraderie was in the air.

When I met Bill "De" Roberts in the mid-90s on that fateful bus trip back from summer camp, we were both delighted to discover a mutual affection for Lewis.
Again, it may be exaggeration, but other than our faith, Lewis may be the one common "link" between us.

I myself have a poor "reading memory." But for some reason, I seem to recall much of the C.S. Lewis I've read. His way with words sticks in my brain like no other writer. I have an odd ability to recall certain Lewis quotes and phrases, and he's really the only author for whom I can do this.
It was my father's dust-eaten copy of Mere Christianity that inspired my love of theological pursuit and passion for doctrine. It was the Chronicles of Narnia and the first book in the Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet) that inspired by particular approach to writing fiction. Today, I am doing my darndest to emulate Lewis's approach to literature -- namely, literary merit with latent Christianity.

Indeed, were Lewis writing his fiction today, he might not even make it on to the shelves of Christian bookstores. Not enough explicit Jesusness. Yet no Christian fiction has baptized childhood imaginations for future embrace of the Gospel more than Lewis's (except perhaps Tolkien's).

Lewis has been my influence and my inspiration. He's been my teacher and my comforter.
Professor Lewis, if you can hear me, I am a better Christian because of you. When I get where you are, I'd love to shake your hand and share a pint.
---

This is a slightly edited rerun of the Thinklings' annual Lewis Memoriam post.

As some of you may recall, in June I posted a Thinklings interview with author and chess historian, J.C. Hallman.

Hallman is the author of two books: The Chess Artist and The Devil is a Gentleman.

If you'd like to learn more about Hallman's writings, visit his website -- jchallman.com.

Incidentally, if you go to his site, you can see that he linked back to his Thinklings interview. Here's a piece of that interview:

Both of your published books -- The Chess Artist and The Devil Is a Gentleman -- have a religious theme to them. What's your concept of religion in the world? Did you grow up in a religious environment?

Hallman: I started out Catholic but rejected it very early. Like when I was ten. As to my conception of religion in the world, it's something I articulated more in the second book, in which I explored a variety of religious movements, taking along with me the thinking of William James as a kind of guiding spirit. What I came up with, in terms of the big picture of religion, is that consciousness, human consciousness, comes with a significant attendant cosmological curiosity. That is, when we become conscious as people, we begin to get curious about big questions: why am I here, what is the nature of the universe, and so forth. All this is another way of saying that the side effect of sentience is a god-shaped hole in our psyches. Now that's Sartre (I think), but what James might add to it is that failing to satisfy that curiosity can result in a kind of profound sadness, even the tendency to reject life. So people are hardwired to find some set of answers that satisfies that cosmological curiosity. Fills the god-shaped hole. Very often that set of answers is God, but it can just as well be science's version of creation, the Big Bang (which some string theorists describe as quaint, it's so out of date), or organized Atheism, or Christianity, or Satanism, or chess, or literature, or whatever else satisfies you in terms of your personal quandary about the basic questions and mysteries of life. This is basically what we mean when we turn religion into an adverb and note that someone pursues whatever they pursue "religiously."

Click here to read the entire interview.

MTV interviews J.K. Rowling. HT: Mark Horne.

This new book popped upon my screen after I added a book to my wishlist (a historical theology book, go figure): Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's. Looks like a pretty fascinating book for anyone. Here's part of the Publisher's Weekly review:

Robison describes how from nursery school on he could not communicate effectively with others, something his brain is not wired to do, since kids with Asperger's don't recognize common social cues and body language or facial expressions. Failing in junior high, Robison was encouraged by some audiovisual teachers to fix their broken equipment, and he discovered a more comfortable world of machines and circuits, of muted colors, soft light, and mechanical perfection. This led to jobs (and many hilarious events) in worlds where strange behavior is seen as normal: developing intricate rocket-shooting guitars for the rock band Kiss and computerized toys for the Milton Bradley company. Finally, at age 40, while Robison was running a successful business repairing high-end cars, a therapist correctly diagnosed him as having Asperger's. In the end, Robison succeeds in his goal of helping those who are struggling to grow up or live with Asperger's to see how it is not a disease but a way of being that needs no cure except understanding and encouragement from others.

The Guardian has a pictorial on writers' rooms. HT: Lifehacker.

I love to read. I hate to be interrupted. And the worst kind of interruption is one created by an author.

I'm reading two books right now that have the same problem: Habits of the Mind by James Sire and Ready for Anything by David Allen.

Both decided what they had to say was so unimportant that it was necessary to interrupt their writing the random placement snappy quotations from other writers on just about every flippin' page. It drives me nuts. Does the quote fit in directly with what you're writing about? Yes? Then why isn't it part of your main text? No? Then why is it even on the page?

I can only figure that it's designed to draw in un-serious readers. I wish they'd cut it out. On the flip side, I love it when authors use a quotation to set the stage for a new chapter. George Grant is a master at it.

Endnotes rub me wrong, too. Especially when there's an endnote marked in the text, and I run to the reference at the back of the book, only to discover he's not citing anybody, he's just writing some more.

In Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius recounts a supposed correspondence between Jesus and King Agbarus of Edessa, taken from public records from Edessa, extant in Eusebius' time. The king, apparently stricken with disease, called upon Jesus to come to Edessa in order to heal him.

Agbarus, prince of Edessa, sends greeting to Jesus the excellent Savior, who has appeared in the borders of Jerusalem. I have heard the reports respecting thee and they cures, as performed by thee without medicines and without the use of herbs. For as it is said, thou causest the blind to see again, the lame to walk, and thou cleansest the lepers . . . And hearing all these things of thee, I conclude in my mind one of two things: either that thou art God, and having descended from heaven, doest these things, or else doing them, thou art the son of God. Therefore, now I have written and besought thee to visit me, and to heal the disease with which I am afflicted.

Jesus' response:

Blessed art thou, O Agbarus, who, without seeing, hast believed in me. For it is written concerning me, that they who have seen me will not believe, that they who have not seen, may believe and live. But in regards to what thou hast written, that I should come to thee, it is necessary that I should fulfill all things here for which I have been sent. And after this fulfillment, thus to be received again by Him that sent me. . . . I will send to thee a certain one of my disciples, that he may heal they affliction, and give life to thee and to those who are with thee.

Like many of you, I enjoy reading and, along with that, amassing books. I take special notice of the disparate subjects treated by the books people have in their library. I love to see unlikely pairs sitting together on a bookshelf.

I'll give you a few of mine. My bookshelves are especially random, since my books are completely unorganized, having been placed on the shelves straight out of the moving boxes and never alphabetized or categorized in any way. How about:

James Hastings Nichols, Corporate Worship in the Reformed Tradition, alongside J.P. Mauro, Al Franken is a Buck Toothed Moron, and Other Observations.

Canonical texts of pacifism and conservatism sit together: The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder with William F. Buckley's Up from Liberalism.

Alvin Plantinga's philosophical work, Warrant and Proper Function, holds its own next to a classic in its field, Boston's Gun Bible by Boston T. Party.

Agrarian Wendell Berry's In the Presence of Fear: Three Essays for a Changed World, rests uneasily upon Ann Coulter's Godless: The Church of Liberalism. Berry's slim volume is a pointed critique of American culture in light of 9/11.

What odd juxtapositions can be found on your bookshelves?

Brandi and I took a little excursion -- sans the kiddos -- to the local Christian Megastore the other day. While I perused through the books, I thought, They sure as heck have a lot of books about C. S. Lewis.

That got me thinking about something that Lewis said in God in the Dock:

There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium.

Lewis died in 1963, and, I think, his writings are fast becoming what our MTV culture would consider to be "ancient." I fear that Lewis, like most writers of antiquity, will be remembered more by what other people write about him, rather than by what he wrote himself.

Do yourself a favor. Pick up a copy of anything that Lewis wrote (it's all BRILLIANT), read and enjoy.

Speaking of the local Christian Megastore and books of antiquity, I picked up a copy of Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History while we were there. I've been salivating over that books for months!

"Watch it, man!"

I careened into a guy with a pencil rammed up his nose and tore past the nurse into the hall. Have to get out of here. I hurtled over a girl tying her shoe and dashed by my locker without stopping. Every second counted."

Thus begins Dorkman, a novel written by long-time Thinklings lurker Rich Pearce and Ken Story.

Months ago, Rich asked me if I would be willing to read and review Dorkman. I said "of course", and I read it and then . . . well, the "review it" part slipped off my mind's plate. So I'm here to make good on my promise.

Dorkman chronicles a few months in the 8th grade year of protagonist Cole Erickson, a popular, athletic, winsome kid, as his destiny crosses paths with Gordon Dorfmueller, aka Dorkman.

It's a familiar tale, and yet not so familiar. It contains some formulaic junior high icons - the good natured, popular and athletic kid who struggles with maintaining his social status while still doing the right thing, the self-absorbed, pretty and popular head cheerleader with a cruel streak, the middle school toughs who live to torment the unlovable, and the high-watered, up-buttoned, clueless dork of a kid who just can't fit in - and yet the plot takes some wild turns that I wouldn't have predicted. One turn in particular totally shocked me.

Bottom line: I liked it. The characters were believable (with some caveats, coming below), and Pearce and Story do a good job of making the atmosphere of Junior High real while still maintaining a relatively clean story, language-wise (more caveats, below). The measure I apply to an author's work generally rests with whether or not I care about the characters. And I cared about these characters.

The story contains some Christian themes, but doesn't oversell them. Yet the impetus beind Cole's inner struggle between maintaining the status quo and showing compassion to the least of these is his Christian faith, which is facing its first real test. This faith-tension isn't spelled out by the authors so much as just experienced in the pages, which made the book seem more authentic.

And the story is redemptive, while not being DisneyKids-ish.

Now, some caveats: There are some aspects of Gordon Dorfmueller (the "Dorkman") that strain credulity. Among them is his home-life and home-environment. For instance, we read this description of Gordon's home:

"From the outside, Dorkman's house had seemed like a regular everyday house, but inside . . . inside it was something altogether difference. The smell alone drove me back to the door, which I left open so fresh air could blow in. Somewhere, trash needed to be taken out, cat litter needed changing, and, ohmigosh, dog poop definitely needed scooping."

Reading further, we find that the house is full of animals and insects. For some reason, this didn't jive with the character of Gordon Dorfmueller as revealed in the novel. Plus, one word kept coming to mind as I read this: "CPS".

And, finally, regarding the language in the book. As I mentioned earlier, it is relatively clean, and full of (rather clever) Junior High-isms that ring true in this depiction of the life of Junior High students. However, this book appears to be directed toward the age bracket it describes, and so some cautions should be given: the language in the book might not be appropriate for smaller kids, and - in one case at least - a full blown four-letter anglo saxon epithet is said.

Overall, I found it an engaging read, redemptive, thought-provoking, a little sad, and "real". I liked it!

George Grant blogs about a new Tolkien book set to come out later this month:

Yes, indeed. It is a new Tolkien book! Begun shortly after he returned home from the trenches of World War One and tinkered with for decades afterward, The Children of Hurin, like The Silmarillion, was never completed in his lifetime. But Tolkien's son and literary heir, Christopher, has painstakingly culled, edited, and reconstructed all the scattered variants of the story, much as he did decades ago with The Silmarillion. The laborious task took thirty years. But now, the much-anticipated book will be in stores by the middle of this next month.

Anybody know anything about this?