Currently Reading...

 Current book...Good stuff.

"Why is Jeremiah's book in such disarray?...because that's what life looks like during deep sorrow."

You can find the book here.

Reading

"If you ever get down about American culture, you might like to remember that there are still more public libraries in this country than there are Starbucks." (David McCullough, this morning at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., aired on CSPAN.)

That is a comforting thought. Reading, widely, is a bulwark of American democracy. The only people who can keep democracy are those who read.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Another good reason to read...

...it may add to your longevity.

Researchers say they found book readers live an average of two years longer than people who don't read at all.

The study's authors analyzed data from more than 3,500 people who were participating in a larger health study. They were all over the age of 50 and answered several questions about reading.

Researchers then divided the participants into three groups: those who didn't read any books, those who read books for up to three and a half hours a week and those who read books longer than that.

After controlling for certain factors such as gender, education level, income and race, the authors found those who read for up to three and a half hours per week were 17 percent less likely to die over 12 years of follow-up.

And those participants who reported reading more than that were 23 percent less likely to die.

Today's Word of the Day: Ethology

A form of this word came up while re-reading Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference in preparation for two-plus days of upcoming meetings.

When I think about it, the word makes sense. The prefix, as I'm familiar with it, comes from the koine (common) Greek New Testament word ethos, which means customs and usage, in addition to, sometimes, morals or character. Ethos is about how people do things.

The suffix-logy, from the Greek logos, literally means word. As it's been transliterated into English, the word means, literally the word about or, less literally, the study of the subject of the word's prefix. So psychology is the study of the psyche (life) of a person; geology is the study of earth (ge in the Greek); anthropology is the study of human beings; sociology is the study of people in society, and so on.

But I hadn't remembered ethology from my first time through Gladwell. Apparently, there are people who are ethologists. Wonder if that's printed on their business cards? ("Joe Smith, Professional Ethologist.")

And once people realize what an ethologist does, do they become self-conscious about everything they do and why they do it when they're with an ethologist?

When they're on airplanes, do ethologists try to keep their profession secret from seatmates until after they've established a rapport, the way we pastors do?

Back to my reading.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

Books I'm Reading Right Now

I usually have two books going at the same time. (Reading them, not writing them.) Right now, there's How to Say No to a Stubborn Habit: Even When You Feel Like Saying Yes by Erwin Lutzer and The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-1945.

Ambrose was a favorite historian of mine. His biography of Dwight Eisenhower, one of the best studies of Ike I've read and Citizen Soldiers, a moving account of the heroism of G.I.s who were central to the Allied victory in World War 2, are among my favorites.

The Wild Blue focuses particularly on a man whose heroism and patriotism were later impugned when he ran for president in 1972, George McGovern. The South Dakotan who would later become an historian and a US Senator, piloted what were, by common consent, the most difficult-to-fly aircraft of the war. This is a great book!

Lutzer, a very conservative Christian evangelical, provides tremendous insights and guidance for anyone wanting to defeat bad habits in their lives.

Without the Bible, God's book, and other reading material, life would be barren. (In saying this, I'm not putting other books on a par with the Bible, by the way. It would be ridiculous to compare any book to the Word of God! But I am glad that God has gifted some people to author all kinds of books.) I'm so thankful for the gift of reading, for authors, and for the fact that my mom took me to the library to get borrowing privileges when I was little. (My first book was an oversized book containing photographs by Matthew Brady and others chronicling Abraham Lincoln and his times. Already a nerd, I was about four at the time.)

A Review: 'Heaven's Lessons' by Steve Sjogren

Steve Sjogren's newest book will help anyone wanting to live a better life.

It would be an especially good gift item for people who don't go to church or don't believe in God. They won't get preached at, but experience the honest wrestling of a guy who went through a set of horrible circumstances and learned to live a better life after dying during gall bladder surgery that went very wrong.

CORRECTION: Scripture isn't the ultimate self-disclosure of God. Jesus is. But it's authoritative because it's the normative revelation of the God we meet in Jesus.

The Separation of Church and State

Whenever we drive out of town, my wife, Ann, and I have the same routine: She drives and I read to her. The custom began when we realized early in our relationship that she liked driving long distances more than I do and that, unlike her, I can read in the car without getting sick.

Some might call it kismet. I just call it a good deal. Ann and I both get to do what we enjoy doing while driving and, together, we "read" a bonus book beyond whatever we may individually be reading at the time.

We started out reading magazine and newspaper articles. But in recent years, we've switched to reading books. With frequent visits to see our family members, who are an hour's drive from where we live these days, we've been able to work our ways more quickly through some great books. We just finished T.J. Stiles' biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt, The First Tycoon, and have just moved onto Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War.

Philbrick attempts to revise the revisionists' take on the Pilgrim settlers of Massachusetts. He tries to move beyond the simplistic interpretations that have prevailed in the past: first, the virtuous and religious Pilgrims who got along well with the Native Americans they encountered and with whom they celebrated the first Thanksgiving; then, the rapacious, bloodthirsty Europeans who viewed the Native Americans as subhuman obstacles. Neither version of events fits with the facts, Philbrick says, though each contains elements of the more complicated truth.

I may write in more detail about the book later. But for now, I'd like to share a few lines that really caught my attention as we read Mayflower on the way back from a workout and grocery shopping foray this evening. Philbrick is discussing the Mayflower Compact, the famed document about which every elementary school student learns--or at least, learned for years and should still be learning today, if we intend to turn out citizens actually capable of making sound decisions when they vote or watch the television news. The Compact was the first governing document produced by European settlers in the Americas. Along with the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, it is among the most important political document produced here.

Just over half the Mayflower settlers were Pilgrims, meaning that in a vote by males (the only ones who got a vote in this seventeenth century outpost), they could get their way. But their pastor, who remained in Holland as a large portion of his flock headed for the New World, had emphasized the importance of working together with those who didn't share the Pilgrims' faith. Pastor John Robinson's advice, codified in the Compact signed by forty-one male colonists (nine did not sign, many probably owing to illness), acted, in a way, as a model for subsequent developments. Robinson, in a farewell letter written to the Pilgrims from their exile home in Leiden, Holland, where they had lived for some years following emigration from England, did not envisage a theocracy, but a civil government, separated from the Church.

But, take a look at Philbrick's interesting account and reflections:

Before they landed, it was essential that they all sign a formal and binding agreement of some sort. Over the course of the next day, they hammered out what has come to be known as the Mayflower Compact.

It is deeply ironic that the document many consider to mark the beginning of what would one day become the United States came from a people who had more in common with a cult than a democratic society. It was true that Pastor Robinson had been elected by the congregation. But once he'd been chosen, Robinson's power and position had never been in doubt. More a benevolent dictator than a democratically elected official, Robinson had shrewdly and compassionately nurtured the spiritual well-being of his congregation. And yet, even though they had existed in a theocratic bubble of their own devising, the Pilgrims recognized the dangers of mixing temporal and spiritual authority. One of the reasons they had been forced to leave England was that King James had used the ecclesiastical courts to impose his own religious beliefs. In Holland, they had enjoyed the benefits of a society in which the division between church and state had been, for the most part, rigorously maintained. They could not help but absorb some decidedly Dutch ways of looking at the world...

...it was John Robinson who pointed [the Pilgrims in Massachusetts] in the direction they ultimately followed. In his farewell letter, Robinson had anticipated the need to create a government based on civil consent rather than divine decree. With so many Strangers [the term the Separatists like the Pilgrims used for those who didn't share their beliefs] in their midst, there was no other way. They must "become a body politic, using amongst yourselves civil government," i.e., they must all agree to submit to the laws drawn up by their duly elected officials. Just as a spiritual covenant had marked the beginning of their congregation in Leiden, a civil covenant would provide the basis for a secular government in America...

What Robinson foresaw as he said goodbye to his congregants is that while his flock might well remain separated from others in belief, societies in which not all share those beliefs must find ways to function together in a civil society.

Many Christians in American today call for the revival of the United States as a "Christian nation." But even a look at this small slice of US history demonstrates that the Pilgrims' idea of what constituted a Christian community or society differs from what many in the modern US would identify as "Christian." In other words, when you go back to American beginnings, you find that the Pilgrims, among the first European Christians to settle here, didn't want to force their faith down others' throats. The Pilgrims were Biblically pious and utterly intent on following God as they saw fit. And yet, contrary to the laws that prevailed in England, they decided to establish a secular government in which all (at least all white males at that time) could be involved. Like the Dutch among whom they had lived before coming to America, they even made marriage a civil, rather than a religious, ceremony.

I'm a Lutheran Christian filled with an evangelical passion. Evangelical comes from a word found in the Greek in which the New Testament was written, euangelion. It means good news, also rendered in English as gospel. As a follower of Jesus Christ, I want to share the good news about God so loving the world that God the Father gave Jesus, God the Son. to die and rise for fallen humanity and so that all who believe in Jesus will not die, but live with God for eternity.

I want to share my faith in Jesus through words and actions. I want to care for my neighbor, pray for my neighbor, and, when the times present themselves, ask my neighbor to join me in following Jesus. But like Jesus, I have no desire to impose the Christian good news or my faith in Jesus on others. Like Jesus, I want to persuade others of Jesus' Lordship, doing so, as a Christian, in the confidence that my meager efforts will only bear fruit if God the Holy Spirit is involved. True faith comes not through civil coercion (which is why state churches, such as those that exist in Europe, are disastrous for the witness and ministries of the Church), but through Spirit-powered persuasion.

Like the Pilgrims, I want to work and live together in communities and in a country where there are people who disagree with me. And like the Pilgrims, I have no desire to impose the beliefs that flow from my faith onto the laws of our country. My faith will inevitably inform my internal deliberations over public issues, but I want to live in a civil society. The separation of Church and State has largely served the inhabitants of this continent well for centuries now. It has also given evangelical Christians like me the freedom to share the Christian faith and so to see millions persuaded by reason, compassion, and prayer to follow Christ.

Pastor Robinson's advice may have been rooted in pure pragmatism. But, it turns out that the separation of Church and State is a win for both Church and State.

"How to Read an Unfinished Book"

Great thoughts!

One of the things I like about Linkedin...

is that it allows you to share a little bit about what you've been reading. The discipline of writing those brief descriptions actually helps me to get more out of my reading.

'Twelve Tips on Reading'

Reading is important to me. But as I grow older, I've become both less and more discriminating about what I read.

For example, I read more different kinds of things. But I skim some books nowadays. That feels like growth to me. I want to be more open to various aspects of life; yet I don't want to waste time.

But what do I skim?

I always skim the books of Bob Woodward. In a Bob Woodward book, you'll never miss great sentences that make you pause and wonder. A Woodward paragraph's first sentence tells you everything you need to learn from that paragraph. There's no point in pondering. Cut to the chase.

The same is true of government reports like that of the 9/11 Commission or anything written by former CIA agents, businesspeople, or law enforcement people. (I read very little of this stuff anyway.)

Gretchen Rubin skims too. Skimming is just one of twelve tips on reading presented by Gretchen Rubin here. You might want to read them.

I like Rubin's tips, although I can't speak about one and I would add one other one.

The one I know nothing about is Tivo. I don't own one. Never had the hankering to do so, either.

I would add a thirteenth tip: Read the Bible. You can read the whole Bible in one year if you read just three or four chapters a day. Believing, as I do, that the Bible is the Word of God, I also believe that it's good for us to read in order to get a good idea of Who God is and of God's will for our lives.

If you do read the Bible, you're bound to run across things you don't understand. I do every day. A good study Bible helps clear up most confusion. But I wouldn't let the difficult things vex me too much, if I were you. I like what Mark Twain wrote: "It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."