Just Courage is filled with accounts of victims of injustice as well as those who stood up for them.  There are also historical accounts of people who made a difference, such as William Sheppard, an African American missionary who helped document and end the atrocities committed by Belgium’s King Leopold in the Congo before the turn of the century.  But slavery is not a solved issue in our world, and Haugen highlights a number of cases in which IJM employees have freed people from slave labor or forced prostitution around the world.  These employees are often highly talented and successful lawyers who have given up lucrative positions in the U.S. in order to move to a third world country and protect the defenseless.

The part of the book that stuck with me the most was the question, ‘Would you rather be safe or brave?’.  An IJM employee named Sean Litton made a decision to leave his law practice and test the words of Jesus: You find your life when you lose it. He found that there were four things holding him back: Comfort, Security, Control, and Success.  When he let go of these things, he instead received a life of Adventure, Faith, Miracles, and deep knowledge of Jesus.  Just Courage makes the assertion that we can’t be both safe and brave.

While reading this book was very inspirational, there are next steps to take if its assertions are true.  The appendix to Just Courage contains helpful study guide questions, making it a good choice for a small group to read and discuss. There is also a helpful list of next steps that a person can take to be involved in pursuing justice through IJM. The actions range from something as simple as sending one email to pursuing a career with IJM.  There is a reasonable next step for every person, regardless of their vocation or abilities.

This is a short book, only 107 pages with a study guide, prologue, epilogue, large print, and some pages taken up only by a woodcutting and a quote, so it is a very quick read. It reminds me a bit of the structure of The Return of the Prodigal Son.  It’s interesting how much Bible teaching uses three points for comparison.

Nouwen is well known for his move from the academic world as a professor at Harvard, Yale, and Notre Dame to living and working with mentally handicapped individuals in the Daybreak community near Toronto at the end of his career.  It was there that he learned the lessons of leadership that he covers in this book, and he gives some excellent examples from his own life and ministry for why leaders need to adopt the disciplines he suggests.

The first temptation faced by Jesus (as seen in Matthew 4) was to turn stones into bread after 40 days of fasting.  Nouwen sees this as the temptation to be relevant.  The leader wants to do things that will make people take notice and will help them to not feel marginalized.  Christian leaders can feel inadequate and be tempted to behave like other ‘professionals’ such as doctors or therapists, providing people with solutions to their problems.  Nouwen uses the interaction between Jesus and Peter in John 21 to give an alternative to being relevant.  Jesus asks Peter, ‘Do you love me?’.  If the leader truly loves Jesus, questions of relevancy don’t matter, but they will do what Jesus asks since they will know his heart.  The discipline that Nouwen says will promote this is contemplative prayer.

The second temptation of Jesus was to throw himself from the temple to be saved by angels.   Nouwen describes this as the temptation to be popular.  From his own life, he describes the difference between being a popular and well respected teacher to living in a community with handicapped individuals where his individualism and credentials were challenged.  Jesus tells Peter to ‘Feed my sheep’, which is ministry in community.  Instead of striving for popularity, Nouwen is saying leaders should be in their communities, serving mutually and being known by those they serve.  The discipline that enforces this is confession and forgiveness.  Leaders often don’t have an outlet for confession, and Nouwen argues that they need to seek this out within their community.

The third temptation of Jesus was to seize power over the world.  The temptation to be powerful is a strong one and leaders often seek to build an empire instead of loving and serving others and giving up control.  The challenge that Jesus gave Peter was that someday, ‘someone would take you and lead you where you do not want to go’.  This was pointing out that Peter would serve the Lord by giving up control, and in his life he lived this out by dying in a way that glorified God.  Nouwen suggests the discipline of theological reflection, or thinking of things how Jesus would think of them, to counteract this temptation.  This is a hard discipline, but one that will allow the leader to give up control and seek to serve others.

Like me, Harris grew up in a Christian home and was ‘saved’ at an early age. It took him much longer to grasp what it really meant to be a Christian and to understand how much of his view of God was incorrect or misinformed. I can identify with him in this area and found myself relating to many of the experiences he describes as he grew up. I can also look back over the years and see how I have let my lack of knowledge about theology allow me to have incorrect beliefs about God and what the consequences have been and still are in my daily living.

My favorite chapter is the last one, Humble Orthodoxy. Our church has adopted this as one of our ‘ethos anchors‘, and I can appreciate it much more after reading this book. Harris introduces humble orthodoxy as the opposite of what we see so often in the evangelical church today: arrogant orthodoxy. I have seen this arrogance play out in real life and my reaction has been to hold less tightly to some truths because those fighting for those truths have been arrogant and confrontational. Just because someone is being arrogant doesn’t mean they are wrong or agreeing with them is taking on their arrogance. While my reaction has been the incorrect one, I hope that I won’t push others in the same direction through my arrogance. We should contrast that with the charges that Paul gives to the young pastor Timothy in 2 Timothy, which Harris sums up as “Don’t be a jerk.”

Dug Down Deep is a good introductory book on theology for younger Christians, or a good refresher for older Christians who need it.

I finished reading (or rather listening to) Michael Lewis’ book, The Big Short, about a week ago, and I think it is the book I was waiting for.  My timing couldn’t have been better.  Since finishing the book, Dick Fuld testified before congress, Goldman Sachs was charged with fraud by the SEC, Greg Lippmann (featured in the book) is out at Deutsche Bank, and the media is all over the subprime mess with some great reporting.  I have heard several senators mention the book as they grill the witnesses from these failed institutions.

Michael Lewis does a great job in selecting a group of interesting characters to tell the story of the financial collapse.  He develops the characters and then describes in detail how they came to recognize the pending collapse.  In hindsight, it’s hard to believe that more people didn’t see it coming, but that’s how it usually works.   The two main characters in the book would probably be Steve Eisman and Michael Burry, two hedge fund managers with unique personalities who saw the subprime troubles a long way off.  Lewis uses their history to tell the story of how mortgages were packaged into bonds, then those bonds packaged into CDOs, and then the real killer, the synthetic CDO was developed by our dear friends at Goldman Sachs.   The subject matter is approachable by someone with no experience in the industry, but those inside the industry really like the book as well.

The two annoying things about the audiobook edition were the mispronunciation of  Lehman (Lee-man not Lay-man) and tranche (like raunch, not ranch).   There is a nice intro and wrap-up interview featuring Michael Lewis as well.

I think this book should be required reading for anyone who wants to have a real conversation about the financial industry and its problems.  I am glad to see that congressmen are reading it and taking it seriously.  Maybe this book will be the impetus for congress and the general public to find a way to clean up the mess for good (or at least for a while).

Chapter six is where the book begins to be very practical, providing some directions for dealing with sin. For example, Bridges recommends that once we identify that we struggle with a certain sin we should internalize scripture that deals with this sin, recognize the place of the Holy Spirit and pray regularly and specifically about the area of sin, and finally bring along others to help us in accountability and prayer.

The rest of the book deals with individual areas of sin: ungodliness, anxiety and frustration, discontentment, unthankfulness, pride, selfishness, lack of self-control, impatience and irritability, anger, judgmentalism, envy, jealousy, sins of the tongue, and finally worldliness. Seeing a long list like that would make just about anyone want to put the book down, but Bridges does a good job making the discussion encouraging and practical, often including examples from his own life.

I found that as I worked through the chapters I was really convicted in areas that I have ignored or not spent time thinking about. For example, the chapter on unthankfulness helped me to realize how little time I spend being thankful for the things that I have received in life. The chapter also dealt with the topic of being thankful in difficult circumstances, not just being thankful when everything is going well. The chapter on self-control helped me realize how a lack of it can wreak havoc in so many areas of life, and that overindulgence in any area can bring unhappiness.

In the chapter on impatience and irritability, Bridges describes impatience as a strong sense of annoyance at the (usually) unintentional faults and failures of others. I found this to be a very good definition that helped me to put some perspective on my irritability. I take the train to work, and I have turned into a typical experienced commuter who gets irritated with people who talk on the train. In almost all situations, the person doing this is not doing it intentionally, so if it is bothering me it is my problem.

The chapter on anger was also interesting. Bridges addresses the issue of righteous anger, something that many Christians use as an excuse for their anger over the actions of others. It seems to me like many Christians are very angry about political issues in the United States, and many may feel it is justified as righteous anger. He says:

“The fact that we may be reacting to another person’s real sin does not necessarily make our anger righteous. We are more likely more concerned with the negative impact of the sinful actions on us than we are that it is a violation of God’s law. Or we may even use the fact that it is a violation of God’s law to justify our own sinful angry response.

I would recommend this book for individuals, but it might work even better if read in small groups where there can be some discussion and accountability.

Bridges finishes off with some recommendations of putting some of the lessons of the book into practice, and ends with a very appropriate verse, 1 Peter 5:5: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble”.

I have been using the YouVersion iPhone app for about a year and I have been pretty happy with it. It provides a large number of translations and has good navigation. You can download a number of translations for offline reading, such as The Message and the New Living Translation, so it’s not just the King James Version or American Standard Version that most of the other free Bible apps provide. The mainstream versions like the English Standard Version and New International Version are only available while on the network.

The app has had two main problems problems for me: (a) performance and (b) losing my offline translations after every upgrade. The performance can really suffer on Sunday morning when I’m sure there are thousands of people using the app during church services. It does appear that YouVersion is building out their infrastructure to handle the load. It’s great to see so many people taking advantage of a tremendous resource. The app also has had trouble after upgrades of losing my offline translations or even failing to start without deleting the app and reinstalling. The quality has been better recently, and with the release of 2.2 near the end of 2009 I was happy to see them come out with a version that included a number of reading plans. Every year I try to complete a different Bible reading plan, and I have done a number of different plans over the years. By mixing it up, I find that getting through those long stretches of Deuteronomy is not so difficult. With any reading plan it’s important to be able to track your progress against the plan and to be able to eliminate any excuses for not keeping up. Once you are behind by more than a few days it can be tough to catch up.

I have found the iPhone to be an excellent tool for regular Bible reading. It is always with me and thus allows me to get some reading done when I normally might not. For the last three years, I have used the ESV web site to complete the Through the Bible and Book of Common Prayer Daily Office reading plans, both year A and B. Their mobile site works well on the iPhone, but the only drawback is that it doesn’t provide you with tracking against your goal.

With the YouVersion app, you create an account and they will track your progress on a reading plan. You can then catch up if you get a few days behind. The interaction with the daily reading plan is pretty straightforward when you use it for the first time. I quickly found and started the Project 345+ plan and started reading it on January 1. Now that I have been using it for a solid 6 weeks my only real problem with the application is the complicated flow it takes every single day to get to my daily reading. I think they got the flow right for the first time user, but once a user has setup a reading plan there should be at most two taps to the daily reading. Also, the application does not restore your reading plan if you exit and return, so you have to traverse the six steps every time you open the app. I really hope they have plans to fix this soon.

Here’s what the process looks like. First, you are told about the new feature.

Then, you are presented with the list of reading plans that you are currently reading, plus a sepate list of available plans.

Once you select your plan, you see the plan overview.

Tapping on “VIEW TODAY’S READING” finally takes you to the list of passages for the day.

Then you tap on a specific passage to read it and mark it completed. You can tap the arrows at the bottom of the page to go to the next passage in your daily reading.

John Hodgman Autograph

I have always enjoyed John’s appearances on “The Daily Show”, and as PC in the Apple commercials.  After reading this book, I can say he is quite a strange man with a very good imagination.  The book is a rambling continuation of his first book, “The Areas Of My Expertise”, which I haven’t read, but from what I can tell from the many references in “More Information Than You Require”  is very similar. This book is quite funny.  I read part of it on the train, and more than once cracked up laughing, probably causing my fellow passengers to wonder about me.

The book is broken down into several sections, such as “The Presidents of the United States: Are they the new hoboes?”, and “How to be famous”.  He also has a section where he offers advice on a number of issues, including technology and protecting yourself from identity theft that is hilarious.

The book is laid out in a reference book format.  Each page, including the title page, contains a little fact from a date in history, starting with October 21 – the date the book is published.  The facts have no relation to the rest of the content, so you end up having to switch contexts on every page, which can be quite annoying, but some of them are pretty funny.  There are also a number of tables, sidebars, and strange pictures to support the content.  Hodgman has managed to do many other creative things with the book.  For example, the page numbering starts at 237, a continuation from his previous book.

After a few hundred pages of random “facts” and humor, there is a large section of the book devoted to describing mole-men (some sort of human that lives underground) and their interactions with humans throughout recent history.  In this section, Hodgman lists 700 mole-man names (ex. 611. Mr Drew Danglemites, a gem swallower).   I think the mole-men chapter was about the time when I just wanted to finish the book.

If you’re a John Hodgman fan, I highly recommend this book.  It’s filled with his unique sense of humor, and is a good change of pace for you to add to your reading list.

Serve God, Save the Planet, A Christian Call to Action is written by Matthew Sleeth, a former ER doctor from the East coast. He was living the good life, with a big house, nice cars, and a good career. Then he began to notice how many of his patients were coming into the ER with sicknesses related to environmental issues, from asthma to breast cancer. As he started to look into the issues behind these illnesses, he was convicted by his own lifestyle and how it contributed to the environmental damage that was causing these problems.

This book is an easy read with lots of practical advice. He backs up his viewpoints with scripture, and shares some fascinating stories. Most of us have heard “tree huggers” telling us how to live, but this book really prompted me to action. After reading it, I immediately made a couple of changes that I have stuck with since:

• I have stopped taking my lunch in plastic bags to work that I threw out – I’m now recycling all plastic bags
• I am not going to put pesticides or herbicides on my lawn – I still have a bag of Scotts in the garage from last spring
• I am turning off lights like crazy around the house
• I turned the thermostat down one degree this winter

One thing I like about this book is that it doesn’t spend time debating whether climate change is real or not – it concentrates on the real measurable impact of our consumption on the world’s resources. It really is an environmentalist primer for Christians, with scripture to back it up. This would make a great book for discussion in a small group or among friends.

I think having my wife read the chapter on N.A.D.D. (Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder) and A Nerd in a Cave will do more to help her understand me than hours of conversation on the subjects covered there. For example, N.A.D.D. is essentially that condition that enables a nerd to listen to music, read through 5 blog posts a minute in Google Reader, carry on 5 IM conversations, and write code all at the same time. Any Nerd will read these chapters and find themselves nodding and agreeing with the way the topic has been dealt with.

I also appreciated the chapter on outsourcing. There is some really good career advice in this book, especially for those of us in technical jobs. The book is also a quick read, in N.A.D.D.-friendly 5 page chapters. I found I could digest a few chapters on the commute home with no trouble. Take a look at the blog, and if you like the writing, pick up the book.

Like Barna’s earlier book, Revolution, he attempts to distinguish between ordinary Christians (or in this case, Christian parents) and “Revolutionary” ones using his research. He defines a Revolutionary Parent as one who applies biblical commands, principles, and narratives, using the Bible as the guide to raise a child. The goal of a revolutionary parent is to raise their children to make their faith in God their highest priority in life, living as servants of God.

This book is a pretty quick read at 158 pages in the hardcover, although the size is quite small with large print. Each chapter has a quick review at the end, along with a few “hands on” questions. The book is broken into three parts, Reasons, Research, and Relevance. The first covers how the research was started and why Barna was motivated to write the book. He is raising children of his own, and thus personally interested in the research. The second part of the book covers the research, with seven chapters that focus on different areas such as the best conditions for raising children successfully and the behaviors found most commonly in revolutionary parents. These chapters include a number of excellent quotes from both the adult children of revolutionary parents and the parents themselves, along with a number of great suggestions and ideas. The final section consists of two chapters. The first gives a set of rules for revolutionary parenting gleaned from the research, and the final chapter is a personal one by Barna describing how this approach changed his parenting. I think that is book is one that I need to review, perhaps yearly. It would be a good book to use in a group discussion, especially in a group with new and experienced parents in dialogue.