Pastor Glenn’s Weblog

            My eighth-grade daughter’s English class was assigned to read The Giver, by Lois Lowry.  Discovering it is a controversial book for school kids, my wife and I decided to read it with her.  The Giver reminds me, in may ways, of George Orwell’s 1984, which I had to read in high school.  It presents a world that seems utopian.  People in the community lead quiet lives, while doing their assigned jobs, and all their needs are met; there is no war; crime and pain are almost non-existent; everyone tells the truth.  However, the reader learns this utopia is forced on the people through the removal of their freedoms.  Everyone is pushed, or brainwashed maybe, into “sameness.”  For example, every family has two children, one boy and one girl; and there is no variety, emotion, music or love in their lives. 

            If fact, the more one reads the more dystopian the society appears.  The elderly, the extra babies and those who break too many rules are “released” from the community.  One soon discovers this means, euthanasia, infanticide and capital punishment without trial, but, it seems, the majority of the inhabitants don’t realize this truth.  Unfortunately for younger readers, an infanticide release is told in terms too graphic for some to handle.

            When Jonas, the main character, turns twelve, he is assigned his special job of Receiver.  He will carry the memories of the true pain and pleasures of life and of past societies.  The society must have these available to the elders for wisdom sake.  However, when Jonas realizes the truth, he, with the help of his mentor, “The Giver,” escapes from the culture with a small child recently assigned to be released.

            The book made for some good discussion about the idea of utopia.  My daughter realized there is no such thing as a perfect society because we are all sinful people.  Because of sin, every society is dysfunctional in some way.  We also talked about some freedoms being removed from us today, such as those in the proposed health care plan, and how removing those freedoms may seem, on the surface to be a good thing, but are small steps toward government control of our lives.  The book’s hero realizes the need for distinctions and freedoms, and in that regard, The Giver is a positive book.

            The Giver is only book one of a trilogy, all of which we will read this school year, so we don’t yet know the outcome of Jonas’ escape from society.  On the positive side, it will be interesting to find out.  Can one person bring freedom to an oppressed people?  On the negative side, books tend to be more graphic as series progress, not less.  I hope this is not the case with Lowry’s trilogy.

            I just completed two more chapters in John Calvin, A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine and Doxology, about the man as a pastor.  The chapter called “The Churchman of the Reformation” was written by Harry Reeder, pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham.  The amount of work John Calvin turned out as a pastor makes me feel inadequate and ashamed of what I accomplish with the same title.  As a leader, Calvin wrote a treatise called the Ecclesiastical Ordinances, which became the “foundational guide for the Sixteenth Century Reformed churches.”  This document still influences our views of church leadership today.  He personally trained many of the leaders in the Geneva church.  As a preacher, he gave about 20 messages a month, expounding the New Testament on Sundays and the Old on weekdays.  With the preparation I put into one sermon, I can’t imagine how he could preach twenty!  Reeder comments that “his preaching was normally extemporaneous.”  Amazing!  (The following chapter tells more about his extemporaneous preaching.  He stood in the pulpit with nothing but an open Bible – Greek when preaching from the New Testament and Hebrew when preaching from the Old!)  As a teacher, Calvin started the Geneva Academy, which at its peak had 12,000 students.  Calvin handpicked many of the professors and taught some classes himself.  Two hundred years later it was still considered by Thomas Jefferson to be the premier college in Europe.  As a writer, Calvin’s Institutes became the premier publication of the Reformation and has remained in print, in one form or another, into the present.  That opus is a small work compared to the volumes of biblical commentaries, letters and sermons in print that came out of his ministry in Geneva.  As a shepherd, Calvin’s heart “has unfortunately been obscured and neglected.”  He began three hospitals, taught the deacons to visit the sick, wrote numerous letters of concern to those suffering the plague, encouraged Reformation leaders all over Europe, and opened his home to students, immigrants and poor people.  As an evangelist, his sermons are full of evangelistic appeals, and he trained his pastors to make strong appeals for the gospel.  More than 100 missionaries were sent out from Geneva to England, Scotland, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Germany, and even Brazil!  By 1560, more than 100 underground churches were planted in Calvin’s native France, and within a few years they had multiplied to over 2000!

            Though reading such things can make me feel guilty for the measly amount of work I put out by comparison, I have to realize I can only do what God has called me to do.  My prayer is that God would open doors of opportunity, that I would recognize those doors and not let comfort or laziness determine my response.

            I am reading John Calvin, A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine, and Doxology, an anthology edited by Burk Parsons.  Besides the fact I love the title, R. C. Sproul’s ministry sent free copies of this book to pastors all over the country.  Authors of the various chapters include famous names like John MacArthur, Michael Horton, Sinclair Ferguson, Jay Adams and Jerry Bridges.  I’ve only read the forward by Iain Murray, but even in that little bit, there is a quote worth passing along.

            Because Calvin is known for his emphasis on depravity and obedience, he is sometimes characterized as stiff, formal, or even gloomy (the reason I so like the book’s title!).  But Murray comments, “It is the knowledge that a Christian is identified with the cause of God that raises this perspective from any shade of gloom.  Nothing in the short term, or in death itself, can mean defeat: God must win.  It is the vision of God that changes everything.  Calvin writes, ‘We shall never be fit for service of God, if we look not beyond this fleeting life.’  He adds, ‘When any person has fixed his eyes on God, his heart will be invincible, and utterly incapable of being moved.’”  Looks like it will be a good read.

Here are some more thoughts from Benson Bobrick’s Angel in the Whirlwind, from the chapter on the Declaration of Independence.  After Thomas Jefferson wrote the document and presented it to the Continental Congress, the delegates went over the document word by word.  “Justly proud of his composition, Jefferson was appalled when his colleagues began changing words and phrases and making drastic cuts.”  They debated for three days, from July 2 to July 4, 1776.  After a brief summary of the great phrases that the Congress kept intact, Bobrick comments:

All this was important.  But it is the preamble to the declaration that made it the immortal document that it is:  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.  Thankfully, these lines emerged from the stern editorial scrutiny of the delegates unchanged.

Nevertheless, Jefferson remained indignant about the revisions for the rest of his life.  In all, close to a hundred changes were made and the text cut by about a fourth.  Adams himself believed that Congress, while making some judicious emendations, had also “obliterated some of the best of it.”  Richard Henry Lee was likewise sorry to see many of the phrases go.  “I wish sincerely, as well for the honor of Congress, as for that of the States,” he later wrote to Jefferson, “that the manuscript had not been mangled as it is.  However, the Thing in its nature is so good that no cookery can spoil the dish for the palates of free men,”

And who could deny it?   (page 200)

A few pages later Bobrick, in the passage which gives the book its name, adds these thoughts:

Those who afterward lined up to sign the document (on August 22) had reason to be uneasy.  They knew the peril and penalty of treason and were signing, as it were, with halters about their necks.  John Hancock, as president of Congress, wrote his name first.  “We must be unanimous,” he reportedly declared.  “There must be no pulling different ways, we must all hang together.”  “Yes,” replied Franklin, “we must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”  .  .  . 

Yet there was also an overriding and mystical feeling of providential cover to the boldness of their act.  As John Page, a Virginia statesman, put it rather beautifully to Jefferson two weeks after the declaration was adopted, “God preserve the United States.  We know the Race is not to the swift nor the Battle to the Strong.  Do you think an Angel rides in the Whirlwind and directs this Storm?”  (page 202)

I am thankful for the men who “lined up to sign the document.”  They put their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor on the line, and freedom has never looked the same.  I suppose an Angel really did direct the storm they rode.

Some interesting books I read in 2008.

Furious Pursuit, Tim King and Frank Martin.  Though I don’t completely agree with their theology, the reminder that we don’t pursue God so much as he pursues us made a good read.  The subtitle is God Will Never Let You Go.  “You’re not defined by what you’ve done.  You’re defined by Who pursues you.”

Tom Horn, Blood on the Moon, Chip Carlson.  This is a well-researched biography of an infamous hero/villain from my home town, Cheyenne, Wyoming.  Horn was a scout for Teddy Roosevelt in Cuba, a detective for the big cattle companies who made huge drives through Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and Wyoming, a rodeo cowboy and a ranch hand.  Though finally convicted for murder and hung, it was probably the one crime he didn’t commit.

Total Immersion, Terry Laughlin.  No, it’s not about baptism.  This is a book about swimming, and it reveals the most recent theories about moving through the water.  The things that have been learned in recent years about how to propel through water, and the way swimming is taught, have totally changed since I was a kid taking lessons.  As a lap swimmer with a swim-team daughter, I found it absolutely fascinating.

Men Are Like Waffles; Women Are Like Spaghetti, Bill and Pam Farrel.  Cathy and I have read many marriage books together in our 26 years.  This is one of the best on communication differences between men and women.  The subtitle is “Undersdstanding and Delighting in Your Differences.”

Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ, John Piper.   I have already commented a few times about this book in the blog.  Probably the best I read this year.  I thought it would be a “quick read” from a favorite author of mine; instead it turned out to be one of those very slow “have-to-ponder-every-paragraph” kind of books, but what it made me pondered is great stuff.

That is quite a variety of topics and styles.  Happy reading in 2009!  And thanks for reading some of these ramblings in 2008.