To be honest, I was a little put off by the heavy tie-in to Amazon’s Kindle store, but Amazon tends to be my book retailer of choice anyway. Besides, the Kindle does support other formats and the online conversion service for pdf and other documents seems to work fairly well. There are also a number of good programs which will convert to Amazon’s format anyway. Also, some of the large, out-of-copyright book repositories, such as Project Gutenberg, offer their books directly in native Kindle format.

But what’s it like as a book replacement? Rather good actually. Obviously it’s not a book, doesn’t feel like a book and doesn’t look like a book. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be used to read books. And for that, it’s rather good, as I said. It’s not like reading from a pc screen either I should point out. It’s an entirely different display technology and it is claimed to be less fatiguing than a normal lcd screen. I would certainly go along with that and I’ve read for several hours at a time without eye-strain. I doubt that that would have been the case reading from a monitor. In fact, I know from spending many hours in front of a computer that it definitely wouldn’t be the case. Is the same true of the newer tablet devices, such as the iPad? I don’t know – I haven’t tried one.

So why wasn’t I tempted to hang on for an iPad or similar? I know I come across as somewhat anti-Apple and there are historic reasons for that, largely associated with the days I used to use them at work. What they do, they do very well, or, at least, very prettily. Much as I like their prettiness though, I rarely give in to form over function. Take my mp3 player for example. The one I have is an ancient brick of a thing, looks ugly, has a clunky interface and has about as much street-cred as a thing with no street-cred. But, when I bought it, the main competition was the iPod (the older ‘classic’-style) and a few others. But few, and certainly not Apple, supported multiple codecs, direct recording from internal mic, external mic or external line source (and to multiple formats, in multiple quality settings) – at least not without additional, expensive accessories. Nor did anything at that time match the sound quality (Apple have only got close to ‘excellent’ quality with their latest generation players). I’ve also been able to ‘pimp’ it somewhat and, for the last 3 years, it has had 24 hour battery life and 32G of solid state memory – again something only the newest generation of players has caught up with. The point being that function has seriously out-classed form in this device and that’s why I bought it.

And so it is with things like the iPad. It’s too big to be a comfortable ebook reader. Its battery life means that I couldn’t go on holiday with it without a charger (the Kindle lasts for about 3-4 weeks before needing recharged). But the iPad can do so much more, I hear you say. “So what,” I reply. I’ve been through the phase of looking for the ideal device that does everything and concluded that, at the moment, it doesn’t exist. Maybe the iPad’s close, but not close enough. When it’s the size of a paperback, and has a 3-4 week battery life, and I can watch HD movies without squinting, and I can get full internet access and a keyboard I can properly type on and I can use any software from any supplier and I can properly multi-task, then I might be interested. In the meantime, give me a device that does what I need it to do and have it do it well (or at least well-enough). For reading books, the Kindle is close enough.

But what have I been reading? Just a variety of ‘stuff’, including some classic sci-fi. Currently reading ‘The Blue Parakeet‘ by Scot McKnight. Excellent book and I’ll probably be posting some thoughts from it soon.

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The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us. Thus I suggest that prophetic ministry has to do not primarily with addressing specific public crises but with addressing, in season and out of season, the dominant crisis that is enduring and resilient, of having our alternative vocation co-opted and domesticated.

The italics are Brueggemann’s and state the hypothesis for  the book. The extract, I believe, succinctly states the mission and problem for the church. The church needs to be counter-cultural. And that doesn’t mean that it decries culture, rather it should always be asking if this is the ‘best’ we can achieve. And by ‘best’, I would suggest that that means being more ‘Christ-like’; being fully human and fully spiritual creatures, living life in its fullest measure without fear of discrimination, oppression and injustice.

But the extract also highlights the biggest danger the church faces – becoming ‘co-opted and domesticated’. (The phrase, “Aslan is not a tame lion” has just sprung to mind). My biggest fear of Emerging Church is that the Christian distinctives get subsumed by a desire to be ‘relevant’ – faith and worship are co-opted to suit a context, rather than that happening the other way round. Domestication comes when the church is no longer proactive but reactive and is ‘used’ to provide social services or a place where religious-types can go on a Sunday morning. Or perhaps domestication has come through the church becoming a useful branch of Historic Scotland responsible for the upkeep of a bunch of old buildings. I’m sure there are many ways in which we have become ‘co-opted and domesticated’.

How easy is it though to rediscover our revolutionary voice?

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There is no sin you can commit that God in Jesus hasn’t forgiven already. The only way you can get yourself in permanent Dutch is to refuse forgiveness. That’s hell. The old baloney about heaven being for good guys and hell for bad guys is dead wrong. Heaven is populated entirely by forgiven sinners, not spiritual and moral aces. And hell is populated entirely by forgiven sinners. The only difference between the two groups is that those in heaven accept the forgiveness and those in hell reject it. Which is why heaven is a party–the endless wedding reception of the Lamb and his bride–and hell is nothing but the dreariest bar in town.?

Robert Farrar Capon
(The Mystery of Christ: And Why We Don’t Get it, 1993)

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It’s not a ‘big read’. It only took me a couple of days to get through it. It’s written in a light, very conversational tone so it skips along at an easy pace and engages you in the unfolding story. That story is Miller’s faith journey as he questions many of the religious baggage he carries as well as much of his behaviour and attitude towards himself and others. For that reason it’s very much about ‘experience’ and it has been heavily criticised for just that. In a sense it is very self-absorbed with faith growth being about growing as an individual and reconciling many of the big questions about relationships and life through a very personal lens. In essence, it starts with ‘self’ and aims God-ward.

Now this is often taken as a bit of an anathema by many who would suggest that we must always start with God and derive our meaning from that point. No argument there except that that simply isn’t the thought-world we live in these days. And interestingly (for me anyway), this was one of the themes that came out of my Masters research discussion the other day. It’s all very well having a go at someone’s ‘upside-down’ theological starting point, but if the language we use as theologians simply makes no sense to our current cultural context, we might as well be speaking Martian.

Blue Like Jazz is about ‘experiencing’ Christianity. Miller refuses to accept the label ‘Christian’ for himself, preferring instead to speak about Christian spirituality – he is a spiritual person who derives spiritual meaning from a Christian framework. I think his observations are and his experiences are exceedingly challenging and encouraging. It is a powerful testimony. I believe it could have been made even more powerful by more direct reference to scripture or theology, but that wasn’t the purpose of the book. It’s a book you could easily give to a ‘seeker’ (another contemporary term) and not feel you are Bible-bashing, but are still challenging their self-centredness and worldly outlook.

But I can’t help but feel that it still leaves a bit of a gulf between ‘true’ Christianity and some sense of a watered-down, post-modern, feel-good gospel. I wonder if Christian spirituality becomes another ‘commodity’ in the pick-n-mix religion supermarket and that if it’s all about being selfless and relationship friendly, then why not whichever framework works best for you? Why does it have to be a Christian one?

I know the book isn’t intended to be a theological tome that will encourage the pomo-generation to flock into churches, but I wonder if it short-changes those it does draw closer to Jesus. By ducking the “but why?” questions and giving an answer that is not really much better than “just because and anyway, it works for me”, it leaves open the possibility of creating either Christianity-lite or a lot of disappointed people when they discover they don’t have the underpinnings that support the times when the ‘big questions’ really matter (like when, as a friend might say, they are standing in the pits of hell asking, “how did I end up here?”).

As I say, the book isn’t meant to take people to that place (solidity, not hell), but rather expose them to a testimony that might get them engaging in the discussion about what Christianity (or Christian spirituality) is all about. And that’s not a bad starting point. Indeed it’s a place where many ‘hit them over the head with the Bible’ churches simply can’t even get people to in the first place. But the big question for me is how you then engage them in meaningful discussion that is theologically sound, God-centred and unashamedly Christian? And how to draw them beyond even selflessness into a concern and compassion for the world we live in?

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I’m very glad I did. I found it to be quite a compelling read. Just to be clear – it’s a novel and it’s ‘fiction’. By that I mean that the story is made up. Like many novels it’s a composite of the author’s experience, circle of friends, family and so on. In that respect, the outline story isn’t even all that great. It’s contrived and compressed and wouldn’t generally merit a second glance in a discount book shop. It’s also a bit ‘American’. But, if you ignore that aspect of it and treat it simply as a vehicle for the ‘main story’ then you’ll find a very thought-provoking piece of writing.

On one level it’s an apologetic, on another it’s very evangelistic but I enjoyed it for its theology. It can be read ‘lightly’ and without any real engagement but then it would be a pretty poor novel. But it deserves to be read ‘engagingly’. It does a great job, in my opinion, of trying to find words to describe the Trinity and the consequences of its presentation of the Trinity (I don’t want to give away too much – it is genuinely worth reading). It stirs up issues of ecclesiology and what it means to be ‘church’. It challenges Christian behaviour and our response to others. It tackles the big questions of evil and why do bad things happen. It touches on eschatology and heaven and rebirth. Above all it’s a story about redemption and what it really means.

In many respects it resonates with my own developing theology. It comes up against the usual language barriers when a word or phrase is used that you twitch a little at. But the the book’s trying to speak of God and language is never sufficient to do that. So in that respect, the book isn’t ‘perfect’. But then I’ve yet to come across a theology book that is. It would be a great book to run a discussion group on. I suspect it would challenge many of the popular conceptions of God and the Christian life.

I do see why it created such a stir when it appeared. Conservative evangelicals especially were up in arms (here’s a little spoiler – God the Father is mostly portrayed as a comfortably built Afro-American woman – but there’s a very good reason for that). It definitely challenges much ‘cosy’ Christianity. It certainly challenges Sunday Christians. It gives Bibliolatry a real savaging. What it does emphasise though, over and over again, is that being a Christian is about being in a relationship with God. Where the book may well challenge you is what the nature of that relationship is.

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