Reviewing Every Book I Read in 2019 - Part III

Wrapping up my review of all the books I read in 2019. If you missed it, Part I is here with great books about the Inklings and Cold War espionage, and Part II is here with entries from both the political right and left, and a beautiful War and Peace-style tale from revolutionary era Sicily.

October (continued)

31. Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson) (audiobook)

Background:
The second half of a home assignment has its own special kind of stress, especially when the fruits of the weeks before returning to the field increase in proportion to how social one can be. For serious introverts that can make it an exhausting time as well. During those tiring but good and fruitful days, which included lots of driving around Texas, I listened to a very long and rather unique book I'd read a long time ago. This historical-ish fiction novel was written by geek-overlord author Neal Stephenson, and contains long passages of mathematical theory, explanations of the foundations and basic theories of cryptography, and historical exposition of the second world war period with many satirical additions and emendations.

The Basics:
A multi-era novel with several plot lines taking place during World War II, and in the 90's. The War, English attempts to crack the Nazi's enigma code and the art and science of cryptography in general, and one young genius codebreaker's experiences are balanced against the adventures of a savvy pair of web entrepreneurs in the 90's, hoping to achieve more than financial success through their start-up based in the Philippines.

The Good:
The narrative unfolds at a pace leisurely enough to accommodate Stephenson's usual vast amounts of extraneous but pertinent information, slowly constructing several plotlines that could each be novels in their own right. One takes place in the 90's (the present, at the time of writing) in which some very internet-savvy friends have started what they think can be a ground-breaking web-based business in the Philippines, which begins to evolve into something greater, which involves island dictators, data havens, and Nazi gold among other things. The physical connection to WWII history is but one of the very many ways the story is built into a decades-spanning meta-story that takes the reader from pipe organ math in the Midwest to surprise Komodo dragon attacks on remote Pacific battlefields to top-top-secret Bletchley Park in the English countryside and the heart of the allied efforts to crack Nazi codes. There's so much going on in this work, and Stephenson somehow keeps track of the threads well enough to keep weaving them into the ongoing narrative in unexpected and creative ways.

The Questionable:
Stephenson's writing style is fairly unique. People who don't welcome lots and lots of details, who prefer not to pause every few pages to delve into the inter-connected backstories of the ideas and people that lie behind history and theories we now take for granted, are probably not going to make it through the first several chapters. For some of us, however, the exchange of information is a kind of love language, and Stephenson showers his readers with that sort of agape.

Stephenson takes an interesting approach to the idea of religion and faith. He is by no means a believer, and his writings take a cynical attitude towards faith traditions, correctly observing that vast numbers of people who consider themselves religious have little understanding of what they profess to believe and often live in states of profound ignorance. Yet at the same time he acknowledges the power of faith, and sometimes seems to recognize the universal truths in Christianity are compelling ideas that must be addressed separately from the failings of those who profess to live by them. It seems to be the stance of a man who would like to reflexively smirk at those things atheists like to smirk at, yet recognizes the intellectual slothfulness of doing so and therefore takes a more carefully neutral approach, giving credit where he feels it is due, and taking note when people do live by what they profess.

The Bottom Line:
For engineers or other people who love information and detail, Stephenson's earlier novels (up to and including Reamde) may be unique among all books for their enjoyment value. They manage to combine what would be several college courses' worth of information into an interesting and plausibly constructed narrative, with memorable characters and story moments as well.

32. The Life of God in the Soul of Man (Henry Scougal - Paul Lamb)

Background:
As I got settled back into the swing of ministry, this book was recommended to me by a missionary colleague.

The Basics:
A short book which is an updated English translation of a long letter written over 350 years ago by Henry Scougal. Scougal was a Scottish theologian seeking to encourage a friend whose faith had lapsed, and instruct him in all the vital basics of living the Christian life and seeking a relationship with God. He died at only 28, of tuberculosis, but his published letter lives on centuries later.

The Good:
The list of books I think should be required reading for every English-speaking believer is a short one (Mere Christianity by C.S.Lewis is on it). This book/epistle deserves to be on it as well, not for any deep or impressive new insights raised, but for its earnest description of what it means to be in relationship with one's Creator. In its day Scougal's letter inspired such giants of the Great Awakening as the Wesleys and George Whitfield, and this version is a translation by Paul Lamb which brings the archaic English of the original into a version accessible to modern readers. At only 61 pages long it is not long, and is very much worth the time.

The Questionable:
I could wholeheartedly recommend this book as necessary reading for every believer (especially those who have known God long and need to hear the basics again in a passionate way) except for one glaring flaw which emerges somewhat unexpectedly later in the book: a very strong streak of neo-platonism, the "matter is evil, spirit is good" dichotomy which, taken to a further extreme, leads down the path of gnosticism. The author does not stray outside the bounds of what is recognized to be orthodoxy (the whole Western church has dabbled and more than dabbled in neo-platonism), yet it is a serious flaw in an otherwise joyful and convicting piece of spiritual writing.

The Bottom Line:
With the above-mentioned caveat about neo-platonism, this is a book of great value that I'm surprised I only heard about last year. Anyone who seeks to love God and live a life of faith in this world should read it.

Nov/December

33. Eternal Security (Charles Stanley)

I find my journey of faith tends to move through a slow cycle of emphasizing what can be known and what cannot. At some points at the extreme end of the latter times, the idea of eternal security can seem a little dubious. This need not involve doubting any principle tenet of the faith; for me it most often comes when I consider the vast gulf between who God is and how my life would reflect His glory. It was at a time like that I decided to read a book which set forth a case for eternal security

Thoughts:
The problem with doubts and fears about eternal security is that they are primarily emotional. (Not to say irrational--it's precisely the eternal importance of the question that makes it reasonable to be very concerned) An anxiety regarding one's eternal destination and whether one has "really believed," given the existence of passages of Scripture which seem to suggest the possibility of deluding oneself or falling away, is an understandable struggle and a real challenge for many believers, but not one that can be rectified by "right answers." (Versus, say, a spiritual experience of the presence of God in a unique way which allays one's fears) Therefore, Stanley's attempt to calmly deal with each potential objection by explaining how no passage which appears to suggest salvation can be lost actually means that doesn't necessarily accomplish the stated objective of the book. (To be fair, Stanley admits this up front)

There are a few points in the book where the author makes some leaps of interpretation which simply aren't justified. The most notable is when he attempts to resolve fears over the "cast into the outer darkness" passage in the parable about the wedding feast by saying these are believers too, just less happy ones. Twisting around to find a convoluted interpretation in order to make your case seem more consistently air-tight is a quick way to kill the credibility of your other, sounder exegesis.

The Bottom Line: 
If you are struggling with assurance regarding your faith, this book is not the silver bullet to resolve that, but I don't believe there is any such thing. On the other hand, a look into the passages frequently cited regarding this question, whether you agree with Stanley's understanding of the passages or not, will probably be helpful for you as it was for me. I suspect there are better books out there that address this subject, but other than one or two obvious missteps, this isn't the worst place to start.


34. Salt - A World History (Mark Kurlansky)

One entry in a list of Kurlansky's interesting series of books that take a particular thing or product and examine their far-reaching effects on world history. In this case, salt turns out to be that commodity you already knew was important but never realized how much.

The Good:
Perhaps you didn't know that salad, saucer, and soldier all come from the latin word for salt. I hadn't known that the Chinese logograph for "well" does not, in fact, represent the cover of a water well, but the bamboo scaffolding for a salt well. There are a wealth of interesting facts and connecting flow of history based around salt that I was entirely ignorant of before reading this book. There are even various period recipes included. I listened to the audiobook, and it's an excellent choice for interesting listening that doesn't require much concentration.

The Questionable:
A good portion of the book is given to describing the history of salted fish, which overlaps with some of Kurlansky's other books, like the history of Cod. Some reviewers felt buying the one book and then the other felt like paying twice for a lot of the same content. I have not read the history of Cod, but Salt is very much worth the read as far as I'm concerned.

Bottom line:
A well-seasoned book full of interesting facts and things you probably hadn't heard before.


35. Millennials and the Mission of God: A Prophetic Dialogue (Andrew F Bush and Carolyn C Wason)

Background:
As the end of the year approached, a school board on which I sit all read this book together and did some devotional discussions based on it. Millennials are no longer "the weird college kids" who seem to be on a different wavelength than their elders, and are now the pool of increasingly experienced teachers from which we hire. This book was suggested as a way to better understand the deep generational divide that now exists between older believers and "woke" younger generations, and to some extent it accomplished this purpose, though not perhaps as the authors intended.

The Basics:
This book comprises an ongoing conversation between a Boomer-aged Christian man and a younger Millennial (iPad, not iPod) woman as they try to figure out communication across generational gaps and the challenges and failures of the Church, and sharing the gospel in a brave new world.

The Good:
Had this book pretended to provide answers or some kind of model to follow (other than the importance of connecting across generation and worldview gaps), it would have earned my sincere condemnation. As it is, the book presents itself as a conversation (rather ambitiously described as a "prophetic dialogue" in the title, for reasons I am not sure after reading it) between two people across a generation gap, which serves as a useful frame to consider what has changed in the past half-century, and how conversations between generations with divergent values might look.

Both parties make earnest attempts to communicate with each other, across a variety of communication methods, and the book is presented as a sort of record of how the project went. This allows readers to draw their own conclusions from the dialogue in addition to any that the authors hope to helpfully provide.

The Questionable:
The book tries to illustrate the difference in perspectives of older and younger generations of believers and warn that the divide is getting nearly impossible to cross. It succeeds at this goal in some ways, but this is undermined by the fact that both participants in this conversation come from the same strain of progressive worldview. The older man doesn't seem to realize that the younger woman's quite dysfunctional worldview (something she herself admits) which he sometimes struggles to understand, is simply the ideological offspring of his own, almost two generations down the road. The Boomer asserts that we need more diversity in the Church, praises the Millennial emphasis on this issue, then is disconcerted that these new voices claim he and his ilk have said enough and it's time to shut up and listen, yet doesn't have any strong way to counter this idea.

I was reminded of how Richard Dawkins became famous by blasphemously mocking the very concept of God, yet recently has expressed qualms about the disappearance of Christmas from England. One minor theme of the early 21st century is radical thought leaders of the past several decades getting a good look at the fruits of their efforts and not always liking what they see. (As political groups and ideological scavengers profit from the aftermath)

Bottom Line:
This book can be very informative if approached as the authors intended, not as a book with any answers but as an illustrative dialogue which reveals, among other things, the dyscivilizational dysfunctionality of a woke millennial psyche (e.g. "I spend a lot of time feeling apologetic about the space my body occupies"), and how that conflicts with the very concept of truth, and evangelism, something the book's millennial co-author does helplessly recognize. The conclusions you reach from what you find here may not be what either participant in the book's titular dialogue would agree with, but it may serve as a call to renew our efforts to foster intra-generational dialogue, a warning about where US culture is headed, or a vivid picture of how those who sowed the wind must watch their children and grandchildren reap the whirlwind.


36. Loving Jesus (Mark Allen Powell)

The title says it all. This is a book all about loving Jesus, how it's tough, how we sometimes neglect this particular aspect of our faith, how we need to think about it differently, and how gloriously significant this calling is.

Thoughts:
I highly recommend this book. Whether or not one agrees with every conclusion Powell reaches, the ideas and issues he raises should have an important place in the mind and heart of any Christ-follower. One of his main themes at the outset, and which he revisits, is the idea of a "second naivete"--after the initial naive period of excited new faith, once we have endured unexpected hardship and encountered too many things that don't seem to fit conveniently into any theological boxes, when trying to walk in faith in a broken world has begun to make us harder and more cynical, to willingly embrace and engender the same childlike faith we had at the outset. This is a compelling idea for those of us who have walked long with God and accumulated a lot of baggage on that faith journey. As a theological professor, Powell swims through the dangerous waters of academic religion; many of us who went through seminary understand the head vs. heart struggle that can happen there, and how it's all too easy to lose one's first love in the midst of text critical method papers. However the touchstone that sustains him is his simple love for Christ, birthed back in the "Jesus Freak" days and never lost.

Powell fleshes out a concept in his book which I think is highly valuable for Christians who are not new to the faith, a practiced piety which is not hypocritical or legalistic, but in which love for Christ is expressed through continued devotion whether or not it is accompanied by the enthusiasm of new faith. It is a mature faith which has not fallen out of love with its Redeemer. He works through his overarching ideas methodically using a series of dichotomies (this extreme is often replaced by an opposite extreme) and often finds a way forward by rejecting the false dichotomy presented to us or lazily fallen into and suggesting that, in Christ, we can have the best of both worlds, a child-like love and devotion but also a mature and tested faith.

Bottom line:
This is one of the best books I read in 2019, and one to bump toward the front of your reading list and make sure you actually read. There are concepts introduced by Powell here that, if you have followed God for a while, and especially if you're feeling a little faith-fatigue or "dryness," may be the catalysts to new growth and joy in your spiritual life.

***

Epilogue: 
I am guessing this particular entry won't ever have many readers, being a third-part book review post coming 4 months too late. However, in the multi-year history of this blog it may be the singular post I'm most proud of; it represents my determination to finish a series of posts I started no matter how utterly I lost motivation to do so in the midst of a busy season of major life changes and formidable writer's block. If you do happen to be reading this, I wish you similar success in finishing those tasks you utterly lost motivation to complete halfway through.

Reviewing Every Book I Read in 2019 - Part II

Continuing my review of all the books I read in 2019. I had originally planned this to be a two-part post, but this might be two out of three. If you missed it, Part I is here with great books about the Inklings and Cold War espionage.

July/Aug/Sept

19.-23. The Four Gospels, and Acts

Background:
This summer I visited Europe for the first time. During my home assignment months back in the States, I had a great opportunity to participate in a family reunion trip to southern Norway and meet part of my grandmother's side of the family. Already being on that side of the Atlantic, I joined a younger sibling on a two-day business trip to Italy, and we flew back to the US from Amsterdam, having traveled through France and Belgium to get there. This whirlwind Euro trip was fun, though our hastily-assembled itinerary involved a lot of train riding, and I took advantage of that extra time to do some Bible reading.

Thoughts:
I haven't included scripture in other places on this book list, whether devotional and/or reading for lesson planning and sermons, etc., since I wasn't reading those passages of the Bible "as a book", but for teaching or other purposes. In this case, with the bucolic countryside of eastern France passing by in a pleasant monotony as viewed from a train window, I decided to start reading through the New Testament book-style, rather than in small bites with lots of commentaries and contemplation. I went through the four gospels and Acts, and got a good ways into Romans before the long-train-ride leg of our journey was over, and enjoyed it very much.

I have no especially deep insights to share from that period of reading, although I was encouraged by the sense of continuity: Jesus came and ignited something, and that fire has spread through our world ever since. Truly, when He was lifted up from the earth, did He draw all men unto Himself. Now hospitals in remote jungles bear the sign of the cross, urbane and mocking atheists trouble themselves to blaspheme His name above any other, and majestic cathedrals impress my Taiwanese friends when they visit Europe. That all these things have been accompanied by human sin and mistakes by the Church may be worth mourning, but the Bible doesn't show us a world that lacks these things, except as a glimpse of what lies beyond final judgment.

I could also say that there is so much going on in scripture in terms of recurrent themes and intentional patterns and what the Spirit has woven into the ongoing narrative of the text. I think it's important that our times of looking deeply and up close at the Bible should be balanced with reading longer passages to get both perspectives.



24. The Leopard - Giuseppe di Lampedusa (Audible)

Background:
Having returned to the US, I drove around North Alabama visiting friends and supporters and speaking at some English and Chinese Churches. In I listened to this interesting tale of Garibaldi-era Italy. It began a sort of theme of the second half of the year of filling in some gaps of my historical knowledge; in this case, until coming across this story I had no real sense of the history and culture of Italy between the Renaissance-era Italian city states and the united Italy which existed by the time of WWI. (This story being set in Sicily, it would only take one or two chapters of an alternate history novel to get from the ending of this story to introducing Don Corleone's family from the Godfather series)

The Basics:
A colorful tale that follows the story of a "Prince" or lord of Sicily, Don Fabrizio, and the decline of the Sicilian aristocracy of whom he is a leading figure. It's a beautiful, slow tale, full of depictions of the luxurious and sumptuous lifestyle lived by the aristocracy, which is balanced masterfully with the anxious sense of encroaching problems and dysfunction and the end of an era. At the beginning we meet the Don in or just past his prime, and by the end both he and the Sicily he knew are no more. That sounds sad, and it is depicted with appropriate solemnity, but the book is a celebration of life and beauty in a time and place already exotic to us now.

The Good:
Imagine a compact little version of War and Peace, set in Sicily and not Russia, and with a much smaller cast of characters, and you have something like this book. On the one hand there are the descriptions of the life of Sicilian aristocrats, with dances and the details of food and clothing and reflections on the importance of certain social niceties. On the other hand the great changes taking place on the Italian mainland do find their way into the tranquil, sun-scorched setting, and to varying extents the lives of the main characters are affected. I enjoyed it very much as a mixture of insights into an era and into the human condition, contained in a well-told and not overly long story.

The Questionable:
This isn't exactly a page-turner, it's a poignant tale of the decline of an era and way of life. That's simply not going to interest some people, and I probably would have enjoyed it much less if it were not for the effort that Edoardo Ballerini put into the Audible version I chose. His voice brought to life the excitement and exhaustion of high-class parties, the middle-aged Don's masterful personality yet increasing tendency to fret, the tension of old wealth and new wealth uneasily coexisting as the latter replaces the former, and the simple delight of good food shared with family around the table. Even so, it's a very visual story, and one in which social occasions and the reputation of families and opinions of trusted peasants are important points of narrative tension, so know that going in.

The Bottom line:
This is a well-told story about a Sicilian aristocratic family in slow decline (as they increasingly realize it), and also the ending of classical era Italy. It has historical value as a detailed description of period life and social conventions, and also you will find yourself drawn slowly in to care very much about the Don and his family. I enjoyed as an Audible book, and recommend the Italian narrator if you want to give it a listen.


25. The Heretics of Saint Possenti - Rolf Nelson

Background:
I wrapped up my US visit with a couple of weeks in Dallas, and was able to visit some Chinese churches and friends from my seminary years, and preach one Sunday morning. I then headed back to Taiwan and after very quickly applying to renew my resident visa, made a subsequent seminar/retreat trip to Indonesia. I was getting tired of traveling by this point--I spent most of the past 6 years doing evangelism and church-planting in a specific city district in the largest metro area of Taiwan, then suddenly this summer I was on 27 different flights on 3 continents. (It was a blessed few months I will never forget, but as it ended I was also ready to be in one place for a while). Feeling a little drained, I chose a book that seemed more "pulp" but was connected thematically to The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher, a book I'd read in 2018 for the purposes of policy discussions with some local expat Christian leaders.

The Basics:
A "what if" near-future tale of a burned-out parish priest who notices good men seem to be hard to find in his church. After a mugging sends him into a spiral of self-reflection and confusion about his worldview, he ends up starting his own monastery to bring in struggling veterans and get them back on their feet again. But this isn't your typical monastery...

Thoughts: In early 2017 a popular and controversial book generated lots of conversations in the Christian Right and outside it. This book was The Benedict Option, and one central theme of the book was that Christians today could learn some important lessons from Saint Benedict and the Benedictine Order. The Heretics of St. Possenti is a kind of fictional exposition on that theme from a Red-State-Roman-Catholic perspective, which imagines a new Catholic order being founded as a creative take on that kind of rural community Dreher imagined, and how that might come about. Since the book makes some very straightforward ideological claims, I feel it's better to address those up front so anyone interested knows what it's about:

The term "woke" is typically used to describe young people figuring out the world is a damaged place and deciding they're going to be very vocal about how not okay they are with that fact. Typically they react in directions established by current popular left-wing ideology. There is a somewhat mirror-image phenomenon online, associated with the term "red pill," which is the perspective this book is written from. That unapologetically right-wing perspective is dished out pretty heavy-handedly through much of it; if you have ever read anything by Ayn Rand, you'll get the idea. This is not a subtle book, it intends to inform you of certain problems in the world and certain ways of thinking about them, mostly through dialogue from friends the bishop meets along the way who educate him on these matters (without quite turning and looking at the reader, but it gets close in various places).

There are some sections where the Bishop and others discuss certain Bible passages which are used to support the narrative on the book, and as usual, some of these are worth considering and others rest on shakier exegesis or proof-texting. I would say more effort was put into these sections than on many other parts of the book. I do support certain conclusions the author reaches, but I am extremely careful with exegesis, and I can't really approve of an exegetical method which delves deeply into original language text in some cases, yet retreats to the "well I'm no scholar, but as a simple man it seems" in others. Both can be valid depending on the context, but switching back and forth as convenient just shows you have already reached your conclusion and you're going as deep or shallow into interpretation as necessary to support your ideological point. As I have written previously on this blog, our ideological and other convictions aren't determined by our understanding of Biblical truth but often vice versa, and it takes consistent, serious, long-term effort to reverse that tendency.

The author of this book has very straightforward concepts of who the "good guys" and "bad guys" are. Depending on how aware you are of right-wing/red-pill sensibilities, you may find parts of the book offensive, boring, or at least rather clumsy in their presentation. If the idea of the men's rights movement makes you hot under the collar, or if you consider the idea that some immigrants are problematic to be hateful, this book will probably make you angry or sad or both at the same time. You have been warned.

Aside from the "message fiction" aspect, this book does have some enjoyable sections (the scene of recovering vets singing matins together under the starlight is especially memorable), and proposes a creative solution to the real world problems of men with broken lives, and churches "having a form of godliness but denying its power." If you aren't of the political Right but want to understand the worldview from an insider perspective, this book might be very helpful in that sense. If you are of the political Right, you may enjoy the book, though it's also unapologetically Catholic and saves a few reprimands for we rebellious Protestants as well.

The Bottom line:
This is an interesting premise for a story, but that story is more or less told in service to the book's ideological stance. If that doesn't bother you (whether because you take a similar stance, or because you're not easily triggered by such things), and if the idea of a new militant order of Catholic monks who help strugging vets get back on their feet--and sustain their monastery by ammo sales in the mean time--sounds like fun, you might enjoy it. For me, I'd like to see other creative takes on what people taking the Benedict-Option-style community building idea to 11 might look like, but less infused with Ayn Rand style ideological expositions and simplistic ethnic stereotyping.

October

26. Sodapop Soldier - Nick Cole

Background:
This quick read was a low-effort way to pass some time on my last few flights of the summer.

The Basics:
There is a genre one might call "gamer fiction" (Ready Player One being a well-known example) and this novel is something along those lines: a near-future fiction about a professional gamer playing two very different computer games at the same time, one as his "day job", and one as his side gig. After he receives a certain account on an illegal "anything goes" game, he finds himself caught up in a power struggle which goes in multiple unexpected directions.

The Good:
It's not boring. The author spins an improbable but mostly well-told digital yarn of a simple man whose professional skills at online gaming lead him into a larger web of complications which have him simultaneously pursuing the good life and trying to not to die.

The parts where he and his team are urgently working together against the odds to defeat the online forces of another megacorporation conveyed the excitement of online gaming well. To anyone who doesn't understand what many men and some women find so compelling about multiplayer or co-op style gaming, this book does get that across. There are pop culture references scattered throughout, and the writing style is high-energy and positive. I can't find any specific information on how old the author is, but it's a Gen Z kind of book, where the cynicism present is due less to years of life experience and more to having seen the darker side of human nature the internet so easily reveals, and where anything might be possible if you have skills and hustle hard enough.

The Questionable:
During my years in Dallas I helped with a youth group at a medium-sized church with mostly Asian families, and we had this problem where kids from financially well-off homes would get old enough to really start feeling the lure of "the world" in the biblical sense. As soon as they got a car (usually an expensive newer model) they vanished, never to be seen again. Some of them became truly unapologetic materialists, and church or religion of any kind had nothing to seriously interest them anymore as they strove to live what was considered the best life for privileged young people in the current year. The closest they came to religion was the "church of hustle" where you were expected to work hard, put yourself out there, take chances, join an upwardly mobile team, etc. all in exchange for worldly success and leveraging your abilities to see what you could achieve.

To a young person with enough resources to get into that game, and with a zest for living life and seeing what's out there in the world, that siren call seems nearly impossible to avoid without parents who are strong believers with a good relationship to their kids, and even then some kids latch onto worldly goals and strive after them with all their heart, sometimes returning to Church only after many years of their parents' prayers.

Books like this tick me off a little because they're written from the perspective of that shiny and uber-attractive lie. The protagonist is that guy who saves the world (sort of) and gets the girl (or lots of female attention, at least) and finds a way to make it up to the literally-higher class areas and eat the good food and sample the good life. The best I can say for it is that it's "honestly materialistic"--the author almost seems to be writing himself into the character as someone who simply wants it as good as he knows some other people have, and who genuinely enjoys nice food and nice things, not as status symbols but for themselves. (What I mean by "honestly materialistic" is along the lines of what Paul was talking about "if Christ were not raised." Lacking God, the kind of nice-guy hedonism the book's protagonist aims for would be a very reasonable way of life.)

Sodapop Soldier is a "fun" book aimed at that younger audience; the ones who want a shot at what the worldly world has to offer, the good life and attention from beautiful women and the pluck to run with the big dogs when the chance comes along. Reading it in 2019 helped me realize that as I get into my mid-30's the wealth of shalom looks increasingly attractive when compared to the riches of mammon.

In terms of the book's shortcomings as a book, as someone who has a lot of experience with computer games, the long passages describing events in-game and the carefully rendered detail in the levels were understandable, but the dark and wicked aspects of the black market the protagonist encounters while playing the illegal game were wearying (knowing that world exists doesn't mean reading about it is fun, though it does succeed in heightening the tension for a certain phase of the novel). The excessively deus ex machina / Matrix-style ending of a certain plotline of the book was a bit disappointing as well.

The Bottom line: A gamer action novel that tries to get all kinds of things packed into one book and somewhat succeeds. It's well-written for what it is, but the "nice-guy hedonist" worldview isn't what we need more of in 2020, though it's very Gen Z and so we'll probably see more of it anyway.


27. Beautiful Outlaw - John Eldredge 

Background: I had begun this book last year and bogged down part of the way through. Returning to Taiwan after a summer of traveling, I was ready to settle back into local ministry. Remembering this book, I went back and finished it, and I'm glad I did.

The Basics: It's a John Eldredge book about the humanness of Jesus. Eldredge looks at the life of Jesus and explores His personality, contending that Jesus' divinity did not leave him without a sense of humor, righteous indignation, or even intellectual playfulness.

The Good: This book is a strong call to know and love Jesus, and understand Him especially in His humanity. Eldredge wants us to understand Jesus is fully human, not in the abstract sense but with a real personality. As with all of Eldredge's books, reading it also conveys the warmth of the author's good wishes towards his readers.

The Questionable:
It is nothing against John Eldredge to say that I sometimes struggle to enjoy his style. I have a sort of hyper-rational personality, which means a lot of his friendly overtures and low information density leave me feeling pleasantly impatient, for lack of a better term. It's a good book and a good reminder, but it could be half its length. Jesus is a real person, but He is different from what Eldredge imagines too, because the reality of a person is never like what we imagine a person to be. I am content to not need to fill in those gaps (I have written about the danger of doing so based on popular conceptions, artistic traditions, or our imagination) but for people who need some godly imaginative aids here then Eldredge's book is a good candidate.

The Bottom line: If you struggle with seeing Jesus as a kind of concept or figurehead, or unapproachable symbol of righteousness, etc. then this book should be sufficient to flesh Him out as a real, lovable person, someone who knows us and can be known.


28. Life Together - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Background: For a while now I have been working on a new ministry strategy based on all my experiences on the neighborhood church plant I've spent a few years helping with. Part of this new strategy will involve a team who lives a life of obedient discipleship, and while thinking about that someone mentioned this book and it sounded like a timely reading.

Thoughts:
Bonhoeffer starts the book with a reminder, frequently commented on in our time, perhaps less so in his own, that Christian life is designed to be lived in community. It seems Christianity in the West is highly bifurcated -- there are traditions in which Christianity and community are more or less identical, and those in which community is viewed as an optional part of your "personal faith." There are parts of the Church that in recent years have rediscovered and specialized in community. I suspect they would engage with this book the most enthusiastically, since it's mostly not a pitch about Christian community--one because it's Bonhoeffer, who doesn't waste time persuading when it's clear he is correct (heh), and two because he rightly takes the importance of Christian community as a premise and spends a lot of the book talking about the details of community, how daily life ought to look like, all kinds of practical bits that I hadn't ever given a lot of thought to, and many that I don't necessarily agree are essential.

Bonhoeffer does tend to lapse into that mode where he's going to tell you exactly what the wrong ways are and what the right way is, in detail. When it's Bonhoeffer doing this, often one wants to respond with "Amen!" But in this book he tends to do so for questions of practice. (Can one legitimately assert a particular universal orthopraxy for Christian community?) The points in the book where he begins passionately espousing specific ways to tackle the adventure of doing Christian life together took a bit more effort to get through, since they were practical but written for his own readers (one gets the feeling of reading over the shoulder of his original audience). The ending chapters were very good, however.

The Bottom line: It's Bonhoeffer, and his topic is as relevant today as it was when he wrote it. Very much worth a read and some contemplation.


29. Taliessin through Logres

Background: After my deep dive into the fiction works of Charles Williams in February, I went back to read one of his long poems. I was probably too tired to appreciate it fully, but I'm not sure I'm poetically fluent enough to enjoy it either way.

The Basics: A multi-tiered poetic journey into Arthurian epic which links the Matter of Britain with a poetic ideal of Byzantium.

The Good: A fellow Inkling with Charles, Logres is the name C. S. Lewis uses for "England within England" in the Arthurian context he establishes in That Hideous Strength. Some of those ideas are mirrored in the tale of Taliessin.

Charles Williams is a mad genius, and his long, several-part poem plays with historical and mythopoeic ideas in the context of Arthurian legends and a metaphor of Europe as represented by a human form and truth as represented by geometric realities.

The Questionable:
I found a guide to reading this series of poems online. The guide recommend several readings just to get started on appreciating it and waiting to try to figure out anything close to the author's intended meaning(s) until deep into this process. That may be a joyful task for some, but it has truly been observed that Williams' poetry is not very accessible. What that means for me is that I have to be in a certain mindset to enjoy this kind of poetry, and for me the very particular mindset required to absorb and enjoy Williams' poetry in this work comes perhaps not even once a year.

The Bottom line: Poetry that's too advanced for me to fully enjoy, but sitting under a waterfall can certainly be an enjoyable experience in itself without needing to understand where all the water is going.


30. The Shape of a Pocket

Background: During her summer visit to meet my family in the US, my fiancee needed to find a certain author's original quote for her write-up of an art exhibition here in Taiwan. We found the author and the book on Amazon and I bought it out of curiosity, intending to read it later. It waited for a few months while I was busy with the things described above, and then I had time to explore it. It was a good decision, far from my usual reading habits but a book that I enjoyed very much.

The Basics:
A collection of essays by John Berger on a wide variety of topics in art and culture. This includes his interesting, indirect correspondence with the revolutionary leader Marcos of Mexico's Zapatista movement.

Thoughts:
It's an eclectic array of subjects, from Frida Kahlo to Egyptian death paintings, written by someone who finds everything he writes about fascinating. That in itself makes it enjoyable.

John Berger is something of a "super-leftist," and his ideological companions by extension include the greatest mass murderers of the 20th century. But reading him is a reminder of all the strengths the Left once possessed and by which Leftist thinking became de rigueur throughout western academia. He is possessed of those morals which propelled the leftist revolutions and the idealism which led many to join them.

More to the point of this published collection, his writing reveals a quiet yet lively mind which enjoys solitude and contemplation, yet he writes with a passionate love for humanity and the common struggle of man as he understands it.

There are some portions of the book written as transcriptions of radio talks, which work less well in print than as a radio address, and what Berger intends as the humorous bits have to be experienced vicariously.

The Bottom line: This collection of essays by a British leftist thinker on various artistic and political subjects and his own unique perspectives was enjoyable for me in the way that a couple of the museums I visited in Europe this summer were; I'd never have gone to that place just for that museum, but in seeking things to do in that area, I found some fascinating things worth further contemplation.


That wraps up part II of this review, I'll save my top book recommendations for the end of that part III.

Reviewing Every Book I Read in 2019 - Part I

2019 has been a busy year with lots of life changes, but I did find time to read a few books along the way. Most books I read on the Kindle app (yes I enjoy the sensations of physical books as well but they accumulate quickly in small apartments and are fairly expensive unless you plan on reading them multiple times). Audible has proved a great way to enjoy books on the go as well.

What follows is a mini-review on nearly all the books I read this year, which will serve as a kind of journal of the year as well. Perhaps in this list you'll find a new book or two to enjoy in 2020.

I will note that I didn't include weekly or special Bible readings on this list, though my focus this year was Genesis through Ruth, and also the 4 gospels and Acts.

This post (Part I) covers the first half of the year, when I branched out and read some books unlike my usual reading habits.

January

1. Can't Hurt Me: Master your Mind and Defy the Odds - David Goggins (Audible)

Background: January saw me exhausted after the holiday ministry marathon and a year of big life changes. After a meeting in southern Taiwan, I took a couple days off and continued south to Kenting national park, to a guest house I have stayed at in the past, a short walk from the ocean. I had encountered David Goggins (on youtube iirc) and heard a bit of his story, which inspired me to go find his book, very different from my normal reading/listening material (as the list below will show)

The Basics: Goggins has an unbelievable life story of rising from a very difficult and abusive childhood to become an ultra-marathon runner and join the Navy Seals, in the process becoming an athlete with incredible fortitude and mental control. The book is his own perspective on his life and struggle to achieve his ever-more-challenging goals to find how far human endurance can go.

The Good: Goggins' story is very compelling, and he tells it straight. It was what I needed to hear "on a secular level" during a very tired and demotivated period, though I didn't go all the way and actually work on the transformational challenges he listed at the end of each section. Your own problems and roadblocks will probably seem less daunting while listening to Goggins' forceful encouragement to not let life's challenges stop you. Goggins' well-known "40% rule" is a good concept to internalize. (When you think put forth all the effort you can, you're probably only at 40% of how far you could really go if your mind wasn't holding you back)

The Questionable:
Note: If you get the special audible version, the unusual interview format of the audio book may be off-putting to some. The friend who helped him, while deserving props for being part of the inspiration of the project, also interjects randomly into the narrative to ask questions or occasionally offer his own perspective, and this can be distracting. However I did very much appreciate that the audible narrator is Goggins himself telling his own story, vs. having someone else read it.

Reviews for this book mention that Goggins' relentless drive leads to a very self-focused narrative, and by the end of the book it does get a little tiring. But Goggins never claims to be a well-rounded individual with healthy relationships, he's someone who takes on endurance challenges and persists far beyond most people's physical limits.

Note that there is a certain level of profanity, which didn't bother me given the context (he's talking about getting into the Navy Seals and running dozens of miles on broken bones, etc.), but just mentioning it for those who find it a problem for various reasons.

The Bottom line: If you need or want a "get up off the floor" kind of book from the life experience of a guy who not only got off the floor but came up out of the basement (carrying a piano on his back), this might be it. Not a light or casual read, but it will probably motivate you to get in better shape or get back into the workout plan you slipped out of, and might help you view your own problems and challenges from a different perspective.


2. Bandersnatch - Diana Glyer

Background: And now for something completely different... I've always been a fan of Lewis, Tolkien, etc., and in late January I spent a bit of time reading up on the history of the Inklings, which led to finding this gem.

The Basics: The author invested much time and effort combing through the correspondence of Inkling members, with decades spent studying their work, to piece together a fuller picture of the group, the individual members, and how it evolved over time than I had encountered before. Here you will learn specifics like how C.S.Lewis seriously influenced the development of the Lord of the Rings, but also more information on lesser-known members of the Inklings which were important to the group itself, and what they thought about each others' work.

The Good: There are books out there which delve into the Inklings, but this is among the best. As a serious Tolkien geek, I was delighted to find bits of information about Tolkien's thoughts and creative processes and how the Inkling community shaped his work, despite Lewis' famous denial that Tolkien's work could be influenced (from which comes the title of the book -- "...you might as well try to influence a Bandersnatch!") Glyer does a very thorough job of showing that Lewis' breezy denial wasn't entirely accurate, and he had deep and significant influence on the direction of the LotR story at a pivotal time early in its creation.

The Questionable:
Not really much downside here. Anyone interested in the Inklings, how the Lord of the Rings series was written, etc., will find much of great value here. The work the author put into this is obvious, and the fruit her effort yielded is fascinating and enjoyable.

The Bottom line: If you like C.S.Lewis, read this book. If you like J.R.R.Tolkien, read this book. If you are interested in the Inklings, read this book. If you are interested about how literary-minded people can influence each others' work in positive and occasionally negative ways, read this book. If you have ever dreamed of being part of a group like the Inklings, definitely read this book!


3. Mere Christianity - C.S.Lewis (Audible)

Background: At the very end of January, having enjoyed some time learning more about the Inklings, I got the audio book of Lewis' Mere Christianity, a book I have read quite a few times.

The Basics: Created from a series of talks Lewis gave on the nature of the faith, Mere Christianity touches on a broad range of topics regarding God, Faith, and what it means to be a believer. The original format results in a comfortable, conversational style, and it's a good reasoned defense of the faith starting from universal principles.

The Good: Lewis is a master of speaking reasonably and coherently about the Christian faith, both about the faith itself and what it's like to be a Christian in the world of his day. To me the most deeply valuable concept here is Biblical Christianity presented as the foundation of one's worldview rather than dependent upon it, a point every believer in this age needs to internalize and keep in mind when facing the barrage of ideologies and viewpoints promoted to us on a daily basis.

The Questionable:
In the half a century since this book was published, the issues society wrestles with have shifted, and thus certain parts of the book are aimed at problems that are less urgently in focus now. There is also a British emphasis on "reasonableness" which is pleasant and edifying but I wonder how C.S.Lewis might have re-written the book had he lived longer and seen the dark societal fruits of the cultural revolution the US and England were going through at the end of his life.

The Bottom line: This is a book all English-speaking Christians should read at some point (it doesn't necessarily translate outside of its language and cultural context well, but that does not diminish its value within those contexts, even several decades later). If you have not read yet it, you should; you are likely to find your understanding of what it means to be a Christian to be strengthened or clarified in various ways by Lewis' clear-eyed thinking and explanations. It's not a long read, and it was a pleasant audio book experience with a good narrator.

February

4. - 9. Six Novels by Charles Williams (The Place of the Lion, The War in Heaven, Many Dimensions, The Greater Trumps, Descent into Hell, All Hallow's Eve)

Background: To wrap up my Inklings kick, I delved into the work of a very important Inkling who is not well known or read today, Charles Williams. As Chinese New Year break had come around, I had several days' time to read, and went on a deep dive. By the time I came up, I'd read 6 novels and decided he has a mad genius.

The Basics: Charles Williams was a prolific member of the Inklings. His works were recognized by T.S.Eliot for their unique talent, but his style is deep and less accessible, and thus their popularity have not endured as have the classics of Tolkien and Lewis, though much of his writing was well known and received in his day. Williams tends to blend and fuse societal and historical archetypes together with spiritual concepts (especially the idea of "substitution" -- as Christ did for man on the cross, but brought into all kinds of different human situations), with a dark-ish plot that builds wildly to a crescendo often involving conflict on a spiritual as well as material plane (and fusing them together) until all culminates in a kind of enraptured apotheosis where anything might happen.

The Good: Williams is an excellent writer, and his fiction is deeply poetic. He skillfully weaves stories that invoke spiritual warfare in a very different manner than someone like Frank Peretti did at a later era--they are always from the human point of view, whether humans as pawns of darkness, attempting to use it for selfish ends, or offering themselves as servants to it, and humans resist with faith and usually a dose of courage and good humor (they are British novels after all). For those who have read C.S.Lewis' "Sci-fi" trilogy, the last book is his attempt to copy Williams. (He was only somewhat successful, but that's a good thing in many ways)

The Questionable: The fiercely poetic nature of Williams' writing can make following the plot become quite a challenge once one nears the climax. One needs to read on a different level, bearing in mind the images and associations carefully built throughout the novel which later begin running rampant and transforming and revealing hidden significances. The novels are not easy reading and they can get very dark (depicting occult rituals, etc) when setting up the novel's antagonists, though darkness is always overcome by the inevitably triumphing light. You will probably find yourself asking "what is going on here" at some point in each novel. For evangelical readers, the way Williams writes about Christianity may seem quite strange or even absent depending on the book, as he is often invoking archetypes of the faith and biblical metaphors rather than the direct approach one usually encounters. This may not be very satisfying if one prefers clarity and explicitness.

The Bottom line: If you have some time, are feeling "literarily courageous" and don't mind things getting dark before the light triumphs, and want to tackle some books that will introduce concepts and images to your mind that you'd not expected to encounter in a member of the Inklings, you might want to give one of these books a try.


10. Bamboo Bends - Sheldon Sawatzky

Background: After Chinese New Year ended we resumed our normal ministry schedule. I was sent this autobiography of a retired missionary to Taiwan by his son who I am connected to through some responsibilities on the field.

[Note: This is neither "When Bamboo Bends" nor "The Bamboo Bends," two other books available on Amazon at the time of this review.]

The Basics: A Mennonite missionary writes his life story including many years of work on the mission field in Taiwan, using the metaphor of bamboo, which in the face of storms, bends and flexes rather than standing stiff and breaking.

Thoughts: This is a well-written personal account which could describe the lives and callings of so many missionaries who heeded the call to Go during that era. Coming from a stable, mid-western background, a missionary goes to Taiwan with the desire to serve God. He meets challenges on the field as best he can, sees some successes and disappointments, marries and raises children overseas, earns his PhD, teaches at a local seminary and moves into denominational leadership and eventually retires having participated in the wrapping up of the Mennonite work in Taiwan. Through it all he remains appreciative of small blessings, and remains a loyal member of his denomination and mission board. He is willing to speak up about certain issues he felt were handled improperly or where he was misunderstood at the time, and does a good job of reflecting the complicated nature of missions work in general, not glossing over the negative but always balancing it with accounts of fruit and God's faithfulness in difficult times.

To me the story was valuable for another specific reason: 

As a missionary in Taiwan, I live and work in the context of the legacy of missionaries and mission efforts of Sheldon's era. I never had the chance to meet him personally, but he and many elderly, seasoned missionaries were retiring from the field in the years I first began to visit and fall in love with Taiwan. They left behind a legacy of gratitude in the local church, yet also a vacuum in their wake as they were not replaced by younger missionaries. It was very meaningful for me to read the entire life story of a missionary to Taiwan, and understand the challenges of field prior to my arriving, and the worldview and mentality with which the previous generation of missionaries approached their ministries.

Today we can think of a few things we wish had been done differently, and so it's especially important that we read these stories, and understand to what extent they were pioneers and to what extent they built on the foundation laid before them in turn. These men and women invested their lives on the mission field, and their work bore kingdom fruit and left unsolved problems as well.

For Millennials, the idea of leaving behind unsolved problems for future generations can be a very uncomfortable one, and the idea of being a simple worker for whom that kind of big picture responsibility is simply not on the radar is not always well received. (Indeed, even many church leaders today seem to have embraced with disturbing enthusiasm an unbiblical picture of collective guilt based on even more tenuous associations.)

Thus in 2019 it's more important than ever to hear what our predecessors have to say, and understand them in their own context. Missionaries have never been superheros. These men and women were not cultural or language experts as they went onto the field, though many ended up quite knowledgeable in both areas. There was no over-arching or meta-organization to decide or direct what missionary efforts in an unfamiliar culture should probably look like, or to best predict how work done in certain ways would either aid or frustrate the efforts of subsequent generations of missionaries. Indeed, there is not much like that now either, and probably cannot ever be, and only with the internet have those kinds of meta-level conversations become more prevalent and accessible to a wider audience.

Most missionaries of that era worked hard and faithfully in ways that made sense at the time, as Sawatzky's book depicts, and if hindsight has provided us with insights to which they did not have access, let us not sit on this helpful information and fail to work as hard and as faithfully as they did.

The Bottom line: Some of the details of this book may not be of great interest to anyone not already possessing some knowledge of Mennonite or Taiwan missions history, but I think it's valuable as a well-written account of a life spent serving God overseas. The missionary task is described well by Sawatzky who provides an honest and well-balanced account of the particular joys and challenges of the missionary lifestyle. For that reason I would recommend it to a wider audience who might not otherwise know of it.

March/April

11. Confessions - Saint Augustine of Hippo (Audible)

Background: Having read so many hundreds of pages in February, and with Spring ministry increasing, I did more listening to podcasts and less reading in the following weeks. I did, however, finally tackle a book I had only skimmed many years ago as a high schooler: Saint Augustine's Confessions. I had been unable to get through it at that time, but an audio book with a good reader turned out to be the secret for making it all the way through.

The Basics: Saint Augustine confesses the sins of his youth, and describes his journey to faith. It takes some endurance to get through it all, but there are many points of interest along the way.

The Good: This is a classic literary work of Christendom, and so there is an argument that one "ought" to read it. Either way, I found much of the content surprisingly applicable to our own time. In Augustine's day there are a host of worldviews and spiritual traditions that are competing for attention, and as he describes them one comes to realize that indeed "plus ca change, plus ce la même chose" (the more things change, the more they stay the same). We have our own hedonistic and gnostic rhetoricians today, and Augustine's experience and rejection of them can give us insight into how to face these arguments many centuries later. (There is a particular incident I can only describe as Augustine well into his faith journey, meeting the Jordan Peterson of his day and realizing his rhetorically powerful platitudes are still not enough) Augustine's philosophical interests also lead to some musings on the nature of things from a Christian worldview along the lines of natural philosophy, which I found interesting as well.

The Questionable:
I suppose I'm not supposed to question Augustine, but basically it's a long book and Augustine is a pretty emotional guy. While full of insightful self-critique, in the process of confession he does indulge in what I'd call "wallowing" more than once or twice, and some sections become repetitive. Listening to an audio version helped, as I'd be very tempted to skim past large sections were I reading it in print, but miss some valuable points in doing so.

The Bottom line: To be a well-read Christian, or for a deeper understanding of the philosophical foundations of the West, this is one of those books you need to read. If you commit to it, you are likely to be surprised by many valuable insights about God, the nature of the human soul, the struggle to believe in a pluralistic and rhetorically challenging society, and one very famous figure's journey to faith.

May

12-16. The Dark is Rising series (5 books) - Susan Cooper

Background: For someone who has read quite a lot, the scope of my reading is not as wide and diverse as it could be. For example, I have read the Chronicles of Narnia series several times through, but couldn't point you to any comparable series. I have also become interested in how children's literature inculcates cultural and religious values in each generation. One series written in the 90's which takes aim at the Narnia series was His Dark Materials trilogy, which was publicly acknowledged to be an "anti-Chronicles of Narnia." I had heard enough about that series to decide not to bother with it, but I had heard references to an older series for children/young adults called the Dark is Rising, written within 15-20 years of the Narnia books, and decided to check it out.

The Basics: A classic sort of "chosen siblings" tale deeply rooted in English history and mythology, it has that much in common with the Narnia tales. Where it's totally different is that Cooper writes a very pagan tale where the "Matter of Britain" (King Arthur, Merlin, etc) figures are present and importantly involved, yet Christianity as such is almost totally absent.

The Good: The books are fairly well-written, and they weave together lots of historical and cultural threads with a loving treatment of the local folk culture of the British Isles which has increasingly been lost.

The Questionable:
I have found that Western writers who reject Christianity and try to substitute their own worldview very consistently have a kind of systematic weakness underlying their work; they're trying to ignore not merely the elephant in the room, but the elephant on whose back the palanquin of the West is partly balanced, but trying to get you really excited about some much less comprehensive and fundamental belief system. Materialist atheists are the worst at it, but tradi-pagans aren't much better. Thus I can't take seriously a book or a series with scenes like the following: A clergy member recognizes the tangible presence of evil outside his church, and very sensibly prays to God for protection. In most fantasy books nowadays, this would be treated in a pluralistic way; the pastor's faith would help to fight off the evil or at least delay it, but a buddhist priest or "good guy shaman" would be just as helpful. But this series was written in the 60's, and the British cynicism towards their national church is in full swing, thus the reaction of the main characters is a knowing smirk. "We know the truth about the universe, and it's not your nice little Church of England homilies, but pray if it makes you feel better." But what do they have that's considered superior to faith in the living God, the Messiah at whose Name every knee shall bow in all the universe? On the basis of what greater power will they throw out everything from the conversion of the Roman Empire to Handel's Messiah to holy communion on the moon? Are they atheists who believe it's all superstition and only science can solve this problem? Not even that. Instead they have amulets, and bits of poetic incantations, and wise nature lore, etc. Either the author has simply never been exposed to genuine Christianity (sadly quite possible in England both then and now) or she's being willfully silly.
Having rejected the Biblical metanarrative and Christian worldview, the conclusion of the series is rather weak as well, as all we're left with is nature and the vague elemental forces behind it moving through great cycles. There's no evil, just "dark" and no good, just "light," and neither is inherently friendly to humanity, though light is biased toward freewill and dark is biased toward oppression. Perhaps for people unaware of the Christian worldview, "we've done enough to hold the dark at bay for another long cycle of years" is a satisfying ending. But when compared against the story of Christmas, it gets blown out of the water, something that Lewis captures well in the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The victory of Christ is awe-inducing when one understands what is going on; in comparison, "dark-ish-ness defeated temporarily by old wisdom and the elementary power of nature invoked correctly" simply doesn't have any urgency at the cosmic scale Cooper is staging it in by the end.

The Bottom line: Don't get these books for your kids unless you want them steeped in a very pagan worldview. They might serve as interesting stories for older students who have shown sufficient discernment and can discuss the worldview and cultural/historical aspects. But if you want a fascinating take on Arthurian Britain in a context that acknowledges the pre-Christian mythos of England but recognizes the lordship of Christ (and also brings in the dark religio-scientific influences we've been seeing lately in the world), check out C.S.Lewis' book That Hideous Strength.


17. Taiwanese Folktales - Fred H. Lobb

Background: After the preceding foray into English folk mythos, I was motivated to learn a bit more about the local folk stories here. I started to re-read the biography of the most famous missionary to Taiwan (George L. Mackay), still revered with statues in northern Taiwan, and at the same time I stumbled across a reference to this volume. There isn't a huge amount of literature available in English about Taiwanese culture in specific, and this book probably isn't the best way to begin that journey, but it was an interesting series of stories, demonstrating both local particularities but also universal fairy tale tropes.

The Basics: A collection of folktales, Lobb has helpfully organized them into sections based on the legacy culture (Hakka, etc), and included some modern ghost stories at the end. He's also included notes which mention variations on the tales and some anthropological information.

The Good: These are not someone's opinions, but local stories, so they are "raw cultural data." Reading them can help explain local culture in indirect and sometimes archetypal ways, versus a book on the history of the region. As a set of stories that aren't likely to be told much nowadays, there is some value of having them collected, and available in English.

The Questionable: It's a random collection of tales, and some are much more interesting than others. Some seem to be derived straight from the pages of the Brothers Grimm, except for the East Asian setting, while others are very Chinese, like the drowned ghost a man befriends yet manages to keep from stealing anyone's body. Some are dark and violent, but again, so are the European fairy tales which haven't been Disneyfied.

The Bottom line: This may be more of a niche book, which I'm specifically interested in due to living in Taiwan. However hats off to Lobb for his work in bringing together and publishing the collection, and for anyone interested in Taiwan specifically or East Asian fairy tales in general, this might be a valuable addition to your library.

June

18. The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War - Ben Macintyre (Audible)

Background: An overwhelmingly busy Spring warmed into summer as my home assignment loomed on the horizon, and someone recommended this book to me. I can't remember who it was, but I'm grateful as it was a fascinating, true account of Cold War spycraft which kept me entertained on many subway rides around the time of my engagement to my fiancee.

The Basics: The story of the Soviet KGB spy-turned-counter-spy Oleg Gordievsky, his motivations and handlers, how he was eventually outed by a Soviet-paid mole in the CIA, and the hair-raising adventure of eventually getting him out of Russia and into the West.

The Good: The title doesn't lie--this probably really is the greatest espionage story of the Cold War. It has spies, counter-spies, moles, failed and successful operations-within-operations, competition and cooperation between MI6 and the CIA, and the KGB, fake identities and even cool custom spy gear, and it's all a true story. I listened to the audiobook version, and recommend it as a very good book for listening vs. reading.

The Questionable: Not much to say here. It's a detailed historical book with a lot of Russian names, perhaps reading it would be less enjoyable than listening to it as I did.

The Bottom line: If you only read 3 books about the Cold War spy vs. spy era, this should probably be one of them.

First half of 2019 - Winners:

The two winners for the first half of 2019 were Bandersnatch, and The Spy and the Traitor. I highly recommend both, and suggest getting the second as an audiobook.

(Continued soon in Part II)

5 Years in Taiwan: 5 Personal Lessons Learned

(This is the second post in a 2-part series. The first was primarily about the missions side of things, and this one is more focused on personal lessons that have come with my time on the field)

In today's post I'd like to explore 5 personal lessons I have learned or have been in the process of learning over these past 5 years. Some of these are deeply personal struggles, and I share them not to talk about myself, though self-expression is always part of a personal blog, and not as a form of emotional catharsis, but in hopes that other people can identify with and possibly be helped by some of it.

1. The Effectiveness of Simple Endurance through Time

When we are struggling through challenging times in our lives, one of the fastest ways to succumb to temptation is to start believing the thought "this is never going to end." The preemptive despair that comes with this way of thinking encourages us that current decisions don't matter when weighed against the overwhelming suffering of our mental or emotional anguish continued forward in an erroneous hypothetical straight line for the foreseeable future, like a hockey stick climate graph.

It it sometimes true that grievous or painful situations aren't going to undo themselves. Some tragedies are permanent, at least in this mortal life. However, when we say "this" is never going to end, a big part of that "this" is our mental state at the time. There's the false implication that I'll always feel about this situation the way I do now. But being time-bound creatures, that's not usually true.

It's not true that time heals all wounds. Some wounds fester with time. But when facing pain with an attitude of faithful endurance, even if all the future brings is as inadequate a solution as learning to avoid that painful spot in one's memories, that is still a very different place than the pain being fresh and comprehensive and the mistaken conviction that it's a permanent state of affairs.

Being someone who spends a bit too much time in my own head, mental anguish is particularly hard to deal with, especially being an INTP who tries to "solve" the anguish by thinking it through, leading to unhelpful rumination sometimes punctuated by the painful emotions breaking through regardless.

But one thing that can really only be learned by experience is that as time passes, things change. Although there are certainly more and less healthy ways of dealing with something by letting time pass (it takes wisdom to know when to let change happen passively and when to be proactive), if one can simply endure the storm, taking refuge in God's promises, even the biggest personal typhoons blow past eventually.

2. Internalizing a Mentality of Antifragility

If you've read many of my past posts, I am a fan of Taleb's concept of fragility vs. resilience vs. antifragility. One application of the idea can be seen in comparing glass, rubber, and living bone. A hard shock shatters fragile glass, while rubber simply bounces back and is unaffected. But broken bones can heal back with a denser structure than before at the fracture point; in response to damage the bone didn't simply return to normal, but grew stronger there.

For an even simpler example, consider the dandelion above. If a strong gale blew through a piece of land, a stiff but fragile elm tree might lose a limb or even fall over entirely, while a tough and resilient willow could bend with the wind and come out unharmed. However a patch of dandelions would actually prosper greatly by having their seeds blown across the entire countryside. (Yet a spritz of weedkiller could end them, while not greatly affecting the large trees. Everything is fragile to something)

Things to which the adjective antifragile can be applied, actually need shocks and damage to grow healthier and stronger, and peace and protection aren't helpful for growth, just as dead calm days don't help the dandelions to spread their seeds, and periods of peace and affluence can be dangerous for the Church. (I have written in the past how the Church is an antifragile institution)

There are lots of ways this mentality can be applied (Taleb was initially focused on the stock market). But living on the mission field certainly provides ample opportunities. Consider church planting; a "fragile" ministry approach would be borrowing a lot of money to buy a large and beautiful building for a growing church to meet in. Any damage to that building is your achille's heel, and you are in a financially tenuous position. Our little church plant is more resilient, partly through its small size and relational focus; if the community center we meet in closed, we could meet in my coworker's home, or pack into my smaller apartment if necessary. Some people drop off the radar temporarily, but holiday events or special activities bring them back and can be a chance to reconnect. An antifragile model of church-planting is harder to envision in the strategic sense, though I'm working on it. (Persecution can function in that way, but I believe persecution as a church-planting model is best left to God in His infinite wisdom.)

Antifragility is also a very helpful mentality for a person doing cross-cultural ministry. Every mistake I make in the language that anyone points out is a chance to improve, for example, while no mistakes being pointed out doesn't help me even though it feels good. Likewise, every ministry approach we try and see little to no success in is a learning opportunity. Note that this is not just the ministry equivalent of seeing the silver lining or the opposite of eating bitter grapes: It's not a method of self-consolation, it drives you to try out new ways of saying things and try new ways of doing ministry so that stagnation can be avoided and growth obtained through temporary failures and setbacks.

One example of internalizing that mentality comes in is how to deal with the minor failures. If I act embarrassed or offended whenever Chinese mistakes are pointed out, that's discouraging my friends and others from pointing them out. I may save a little face, but I don't learn or grow. Instead I try to maintain and convey the opposite attitude, of a learner who appreciates being corrected. So instead of a "silver lining" approach where at least through making mistakes I learn something, I want and welcome those corrections.

The same is true for ministry work. If I focus on results and how well the church plant or a particular ministry is going, I may get discouraged and feel I'm not a good enough church planter when things don't go according to plan, spiritual fruit seems scanty, or attendance is low. If on the other hand I remember that I'm learning how to plant a whole new church in Taiwan, a difficult task that a fairly small number of people currently alive have experience in, then it's clear that trial and error is absolutely necessary to grow.

In that context, things that don't work well, or even unpleasant surprises, are helpful in ways that things which go smoothly can't be. Recently I've been increasingly able to recognize when setbacks are not just the way life/ministry goes, but are actually helpful progress or even blessings that I would have missed if I'd not changed my mentality in this way.

3. Progress in the Battle against Procrastination

My list of life achievements reads well, but I've missed out on a lot of potentially fun opportunities and experiences along the way. This is partly because I'm an introvert (and that fun weekend trip sounds great but I have a stack of books and some hot tea on standby to recharge my batteries), but probably more so because I have often been plagued by procrastination. I could always get the important things done, for example an important paper in seminary, but by not arranging my time well early on, and waiting too late to start, it wouldn't be a good representation of my paper writing capabilities because I didn't give myself enough time.

Or so I thought. Actually it was an excellent representation of my paper writing capabilities, because being able to start the writing in a timely fashion counts as part of those capabilities. This is a huge realization I've had in the past few years; there is no hypothetical talent. Thinking that someone who is great at writing but never applies themselves is a tragic waste is only somewhat true; if they can't make themselves write they're not great at writing. Or perhaps one could more accurately say they are great at writing snippets and bits of things, but that's a pretty common talent, actually. Whatever wherewithal great writers possessed to actually get lots of words on paper wasn't the "final step" in their talent but a crucial component of it.

At some point I realized my procrastination, when it kicked in automatically, was largely due to a kind of reflexive perfectionism. I don't want to reply to that work email yet, I want to think about precisely how to craft my response. I don't want to message that person and see about meeting tonight, I didn't sleep well last night and don't want to come across as frazzled or my Chinese to be subpar because my brain is too tired.

It took a combination of patiently using logic with myself and some life experience to recognize that other people's expectations aren't that high. They don't want a precisely phrased email in which I have communicated exactly what I want to say including the right connotations, they just want a basic reply to their query and may not spend any time analyzing it enough to notice the connotations at all (They don't have INTP velociraptors that chew on whatever ideas other people bring up). The way I come across when tired isn't all that different from how I normally come across, and most people don't care that much either way. Etc. Etc.

I also realized that trying to be perfectionistic about certain things meant they consumed time that should be allotted for higher priority tasks, and it also kept certain processes stuck and delayed that I could have been benefiting from all along had I settled for an "adequate" step B and continued on to C and beyond.

I'm still fighting this battle, but this past year especially I've made a lot of progress. Writing this section feels a little vulnerable and is certainly humbling (it seems silly to be like this compared to many other people who just do things and get on with their lives) but I hope it may be helpful to other people who struggle with similar tendencies.

4. Improving Goal-focus with Goal-awareness

Despite dealing with the issues described above, I am a very goal-oriented person and this has helped me do some things that required long-term focus and determination. I have also found along the way that while big, long-term goals tend to stay out in front of us, it's easy to lose focus of smaller goals in the process of daily life.

To use a humorous but perhaps very relevant example, I have always had trouble remembering people's names. I might meet several people at a party or event and come away remembering small details about our conversations and things they mentioned about themselves, but only remembering the names of 2 or 3 of them.

There are lots of tips floating around for getting better at this, and my problem isn't a bad memory. It's that I don't set a little goal of remembering the person's name ahead of time. Whatever little mental prompt that ought to be there doesn't happen automatically. All it takes is a brief self-reminder to register each person's name when they say it, then confirm it at some point later. If I can remember to do that, the names are not a big problem.

This can be true in our spiritual life too. When temptation beckons, or when we're tempted to skip a Bible reading or have a bad attitude about something, sometimes all we need is a moment of awareness--is this my goal? In the story of my life, is this how I'm choosing today's page to read?

5. Stepping through Anxiety into Faith

Being a very goal-oriented person as mentioned above, I have frequently struggled with anxiety. I have found that anxiety has an almost purely physical component which I'm susceptible to (gut health issues, etc. Though that's kind of a chicken-egg problem) but is also connected with the process of setting and reaching difficult future goals.

Anxiety arises in that distance between your good goal or destination and your lack of certainty about your ability to reach it. It's as if stepping from one stone to another across a fast-moving river (with a waterfall immediately downstream), you can only do it in slow motion, and the stone your foot is descending toward keeps wavering in and out of existence.

In that kind of situation, with the anxiety gathering like storm clouds full of electrical potential, any incident, thought, or situation can act like the tall tree or building which brings down the lightning of panicky thoughts and in more serious cases can even activate the fight-or-flight reflex.

For me, setting a big and long-term goal like "I'm going to be a long-term missionary in Taiwan" is easier than it is for some other people. I can take a goal like that and break it down into a strategy for getting there, and feel confident that each step along the way that relies on me can either be accomplished straightforwardly, or I can learn how to. (Having been homeschooled does help with that mentality, I think--I know I can teach myself what I need to know as long as the information is available)

But that very determination to reach a far-off and worthy goal means saying, to that part of you that wants to be tired, that wants to change to a more comfortable or easier goal, that isn't sure you're cut out to live so consistently outside your comfort zone, that wants to remind you of all the things outside your control that could happen to ruin your goal, that it needs to either cooperate or keep silent. It means thrusting down doubts or nervousness and moving forward step by step. But those doubts and nervousness and exhaustion don't always really go away. Sometimes they sink down into your unconscious, and take revenge later in the form of irrational anxiety.

I have learned, then, for someone who struggles with anxiety, your gut is not always to be listened to. That deep feeling of certainty, correctness, or warning, that any intuitively-minded person is familiar with, can be hijacked by anxiety and turn into a false alarm beacon warning that something is deeply wrong when nothing is more wrong than usual. The more you try to use logic and rational thinking to calm yourself down, the more that haywire intuition insists that you wouldn't need to be doing that if something wasn't already wrong.

But your gut is another form of intelligence too. Even for people with strong anxiety, it's not a good rule of thumb to simply always do the opposite of what your gut is saying. Thus there is another kind of wisdom one must cultivate; to know when your gut's alarm bells are giving you an important warning, and when it's just burnt popcorn.

That wisdom can grow, put down roots, and produce fruit, under the bright light of faith. Some people facing anxiety and uncertainty try to have faith "in the universe," that on the whole there's a kind of big goodness out there, or a sort of automatic karma calculator, which will help things work out for you as often as not, especially if you can keep a positive attitude. (New Age thinking, but it's so prevalent now that the adjective is outdated.)

But the universe doesn't have its own consciousness, and it's not your friend. Indeed, an argument often used against Christianity is the painful and seemingly nihilistic experiences many humans endure during their short (and often foreshortened) lives. You can't swerve from this to immediately claiming faith can have "the goodness of humanity" or "the positivity of the universe" as its object.

The perplexing nature of our world that can contain such beauty and such pain simultaneously is one reason I am a Christian. While the Bible does not explain many things we are curious about, it does explain exactly how the world arrived at this paradoxical state of interposed pleasure and suffering, beauty and ugliness, hope and despair. Anxiety comes from living in this kind of world, while maintaining worthy goals you strive to achieve despite uncertainty and recognizing many events are beyond your control.

Anxiety is not necessarily a lack of faith, then, although increasing faith is a good remedy for it. It can sometimes just be an overcharged recognition that the world is not okay, and it doesn't actually have any safety rails, only well-worn tracks and wilder cliffs that are no sure guarantee of security or danger. Yet, we still have to live in it, and with some amount of courage we can live with joy too.

Anxiety-prone people don't really have the choice to suddenly become that kind of person whose happiness partly stems from not contemplating possibilities, though as I mentioned there are physical aspects which can be improved. Perhaps more accurately, I don't want to shift "sideways" from being something who overthinks things, to someone who has figured out how not to think about things as much. I want to progress on, in faith, to being someone who can use overthinking for God's glory, but has the trust and courage to not suffer the side effects of anxiety, etc. These years God has given me some valuable puzzle pieces, which have helped me see the bigger picture, and step out of the back-and-forth struggle of trying to solve anxiety by thinking my way through it.

One step on the path to overcoming anxiety for me was thus a sort of Molon Labe*; yes my life could be uprooted and my goals undone at any point by events beyond my control, but I choose to wait until that happens and let it be a nasty shock that I deservedly experience grief and anger over, and not live in that anxiety ahead of time, as if that will somehow lessen the pain if the shock ever comes.
(* The famous Spartan response to the Persian Emperor's demand to surrender their weapons -- "Take them, if you can succeed in coming to do so")

Do people cling to anxiety for that reason, believing it's somehow paying down the deposit of future pain? I don't know, though at times I felt that was the unspoken lie I was being told. But I do know we can choose instead to climb out of our foxholes and run forward, even though life is like a battlefield where many soldiers don't survive based on their skill at arms but on where the enemy arrows or mortar shells shot into the sky randomly come down or don't. Because God is there, and all shall be well, even if an arrow strikes down into the middle of your goals, or health, or even life.

I am still making my way across that river, and on the mission field the stepping stones are not always clear. Sometimes it feels more like you have to wait for a log to float down the stream to make any forward progress. But each step is a step away from ignorance about the painful reality of life on this earth, not into despair or into comfortable apathy, but toward the firm foundation of faith that "whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul."

It is well.

5 Years in Taiwan: 5 Missionary Lessons Learned

(This is the first post in a 2-part series. This one is focused on missions, and the second post is more focused on personal lessons and realizations that have come with my time on the field)

A couple weeks ago marked the 5th anniversary of my arrival in Taiwan for long-term service. I was so busy I almost forgot about it altogether, and didn't do anything special to celebrate the occasion, but it's still a noteworthy date for me. Each of the 5 years here has been quite different, and come with its share of surprises, disappointments, and small successes. In this entry I'd like to share some things I've learned as a missionary over those years.

1. People in other metacultures think differently from you (in different ways than you think they do)

I spent a lot of time reading and researching the culture of Taiwan before I came to do full-time ministry here. I also had lots of short-term experience, probably quite a bit more than the average missionary coming into a culture long term. All that was only very partial preparation for understanding the different worldviews and ways of thinking that are prevalent in Taiwan, however.

What I found was that understanding a metacultural (metacultures like "Western" "Islamic" "East Asian" overly greatly diverse individual cultures to be sure, yet there are also meta-level commonalities and core values, and deeper differences from each other) level difference in thought is much more complicated than simply taking the way you would think about something and substituting a different cultural priority or core value. That's because the differences are not always parallel. People don't think as you think, just with different habits and priorities; you may run into people of greatly different cultures that you "click" with very naturally due to similarities in the way you think, and you may encounter people whose entire way of thinking seems to be a mystifying black box, with what comes out not seeming to be connected to what goes in.

My girlfriend and I have coined a useful term (useful for us, at least) in Mandarin for this idea, 想法法. (The way of your way of thinking) This differs between different personality types too, which is an added layer of complication beyond cultural differences. Using the Myers-Briggs types, for example, there are scenarios where a German or Korean ISTJ would react in very similar ways and "get" each other's way of thinking, where befriending the Korean ISTJ or a Korean ENFP early on in one's move to Korea might result in wildly different ideas about "how Korean people think."

So it's not as simple as saying "In this situation, I would be prioritizing clear communication to solve the problem but a Chinese businessman might be prioritizing indirect communication to save face." That's not wrong, but it doesn't go deep enough, because you are thinking of it as prioritizing clear communication to solve the problem, but the Chinese businessman, while probably aware of his own desire to save face, does not necessarily think of it as prioritizing indirect communication, just talking as one does in these situations. Furthermore he has his own personality, and in the complicated interaction of cultural worldviews and communication styles with individual personality and past experiences, it's hard to say which is the "head" and which is the "neck."

All that is to say, it's wise to understand cultural core values, and also wise to understand they're just one important piece of the puzzle. You want a fuller picture to navigate by, when at all possible.

2. Sometimes what we call culture fatigue is really environmental fatigue (and sometimes it's just fatigue)

More or less all long-term missionaries go through a stage called culture fatigue, which isn't the "shock" of early arrival but when those troublesome bits of the culture that are especially tiring or problematic for you or in your particular ministry context start to wear you down over time.

I've noticed, though, that the parts of "life here" that I find especially tiring are generally only partially related to the culture. For example, as I write this, New Year's Eve (Dec 31) was last night. There were some scattered fireworks and firecrackers, but the rain mostly kept things down. But if Chinese New Year's Eve this February falls on a good clear night, it will be firecracker armageddon. That one night of noise is cultural, and sleep is more or less impossible before 2 or 3AM.

But that's only the one night. Getting to sleep any night at my old apartment could be tough, because of the cars or motorcycles accelerating over the bridge near my apartment. In the U.S. there might be some rules about mufflers and things which would make a slight difference in noise levels, but not much. Essentially it's not a cultural problem at all, it's because my ministry area is near the edge of a metropolis of 7 million people. Living near a main road in a major U.S. city wouldn't be that different.

Many things we put down to culture shock are like that. It's not the culture, it's that as missionaries we have mostly chosen to live in a different environment than the ones we grew up in, or would choose to live in as adults. There are aspects of that environment that are rewarding and fascinating, and some that are inconvenient or exhausting.

Beyond that, I've noticed that when I'm exhausted, I'm in good company here. It's not as if everyone here has things good and I'm the outsider forced to struggle. Life is hard for many people, and Taipei is full of people working long hours for never-rising wages. The rampant insomnia, seasonal pollution, sometimes overcrowded metro stations, and capriciously steamy hot or clammy cold weather are all things we face together. It is true that I gave up a comparatively comfortable and less exhausting life in the States to live here and do what I do, but I knew that would be the case, and my life here is full of conveniences and comfort unknown to missionaries here decades ago, or in many other parts of the world.

So now when I'm exhausted, I don't think "I need a break from Taiwan," because it's not really about what's different about life here, and everyone else is tired too. What I really enjoy is a break in Taiwan, to do those things that made me fall in love with the place to begin with.

3. The Church may be part of the problem, but it's also the point (and the only lasting progress)

The Church is an easy target sometimes. With 2000 years of history and immeasurable impact on the world, the power and influence that accumulates in the earthly shadow cast by the kingdom of God has attracted many sinful people who did terrible things in the name of Christ, let alone the fact that believers with careers that place them in the public eye often come under heavy spiritual attack and commit grievous sins.

All this is fodder for those who want to commit the genetic fallacy and tar the Church with the sins of her individual saints (plus pretenders and wolves in sheep's clothing), as if middle-schoolers failing or cheating on their math tests should cast some kind of doubt on the legitimacy of number theory.

That being said, the Church in any locale has her problems and dysfunctions, and local churches can abound with them. Taiwanese churches have their share as well, both systemic problems sometimes accidentally introduced by missionaries doing the best they knew to do years ago, and problems in individual churches where people ought to do better, but have other priorities, just like sinful but redeemed people in any part of the world. (If I can name two examples of problems I see in churches here, one is a reliance on materials or programs from outside of Taiwan; plenty of both are available from Korean and Western churches, and little to none of it was developed in Taiwan for the needs of Taiwan. Simply translating it to Chinese doesn't make it locally effective. Another problem is that there are too many very small churches with a pastor or minister who can barely keep things going, and a congregation--often grandparents plus a few dutiful children or grandchildren--that expects all spiritual work to be done by the pastor, while most young people flock to a few large churches with better resources and an effective student ministry. Neither of these problems are anyone's "fault," but they both contribute to gridlock in effective church growth here)

When attempting to make any plan work smoothly, it's typically best to involve as few people as possible. When attempting to make any plan work smoothly when working cross-culturally with churches and church leadership, well, just don't expect that. If it didn't develop organically in the churches themselves, it probably means trying to change church culture and habits. It's not impossible, and there are wonderful success stories, but it can be tough and messy at the best of times. I've even see cultural insiders with good reputations trying to pitch ideas and completely failing because they didn't understand the culture and leadership attitude of that particular group of churches.

Due to all this, there are times when missions organizations find it easiest to work outside the domain of the local church, doing their own thing and answering to their own leadership, and interacting with churches when it's part of the strategy, or when conditions are favorable. Sometimes this happens automatically with apostolic-type church planting, in new areas where there are few or no churches to cooperate with. Perhaps too frequently, church planting is done apostolic-style because of the churches nearby.

While it's true that some churches simply aren't ready, willing, or able to cooperate effectively, we must never lose sight of the fact that the local church is the Body of Christ, incarnated in a particular area. When missionaries leave, whether to another field, retirement, or to permanently cast off the perishable, the local church, however it is, remains. One of our top priorities should be figuring out the best way to leave it healthier than we found it, yet not in ways that introduce dependency on outside resources.

4. Church planting is less about the plan (and more about the planters)

As we've tried different outreaches and activities for evangelism and to grow this little neighborhood church, two things that have become apparent is that 1) there wasn't a strong plan at the outset on how to plant the church, but also 2) that it wouldn't have mattered much because in our context, so much is based on factors we can't control. What rapidly also became apparent is that church planting is a holistic spiritual challenge that requires experience and discipline in a variety of areas. Neither my local coworker nor I had participated in a church plant before, and the past few years have been... highly instructive.

What became glaringly obvious in hindsight, after some experience, was that our team wasn't diverse enough to tackle evangelizing our neighborhood ad hoc. If you're planning an outreach aimed at families (recognizing that that mainly means moms and kids here, with the occasional dad making an appearance), you need female coworkers who can follow up with the moms that show up, and who have at least some spiritual gifting and preferably a little experience in doing so. As a youngish unmarried man, but also a foreigner here, the people I'm able to follow up with are a more selective group, and not one that typically showed up for the kinds of events and outreach strategies we used.

Temporary additions of short term workers have filled in some of the gaps in our "potential discipleship coverage", but their return home generally saw the people they attracted disperse. With a good impression of our ministry and Christians in general, to be sure, but still absent. As my Taiwanese coworker once sagely remarked, "guanxi doesn't transfer": the relationships you build with people over time can't be transferred to a coworker when it's time to leave just because you were working for a common goal.

Some basic lessons for any new community-based evangelistic ministry emerge:

1. The team should look roughly like who you're trying to reach

(Compatibility for follow-up and future discipleship should be built in, not a happy accident that requires special acts of grace to see)

2. The team should be stable, or have a stable supply of shorter term help

(And have a plan for how their period of service fits into the long term ministry goals)

3. There should be ties to the local church, however local that needs to be

(If your church is the local church, it's still a good idea to reach out to others when applicable)

4. The team should determine which things can be experimented with, and which can't be redone

(Example: Your first outreach event in a neighborhood will leave a lasting impression. People who meet you will talk to other people. Those times and events need more planning to make sure they are in line with important ministry goals, or you'll be making things tougher for yourselves at the start.)

5. We can do this (better)

When I went to seminary, I had the sort of idea that after 2000 years of perusing the same scriptures from every possible angle, what theology could be humanly known had been pretty much worked out (with, of course, various schools of thought on certain doctrines and the meaning of certain scripture passages) and we were going to learn it. What I learned instead was that while the dogmas and central doctrines of the faith have been established since the councils, there is in fact much work to be done. For example, efforts are ongoing to find period manuscripts to help decipher the hapax legomena, the words only mentioned once, to bolster our interpretations of them. The internet has provided a way for people to easily access exegetical tools and communicate biblical knowledge (enabling the promulgation of weird and apocryphal ideas to be sure, but also exposing isolated church communities to basic sound doctrine), and furthermore the task of rightly dividing the Word of God is always a new adventure, since new generations with fresh worldviews and priorities are always being born to learn of and experience God and His unchanging truth for the first time.

I had wondered if missions was not similar; if over hundreds of years of taking the gospel into different cultures, and often over a hundred years of experience in different mission boards and sending agencies, some basic effective gospel strategies and organizational wisdom had been accumulated, and the main difficulty would be the doing of it, the on-the-ground work of learning the language, building the relationships, etc.

Not so. What I found instead is that each wave/generation of missionaries comes with their own backgrounds and preconceptions, and the cultures they go to reach are sometimes changing faster even than their home cultures. (Taiwan is one example. The societal change over 3 generations here has been more like the change over 5 generations in the U.S.) What "worked so well" (I don't use quotation marks to question the truth of the statement) when some missionaries arrived seems bafflingly unfruitful when new missionaries arrive decades later, because it's a new generation witnessing to a new generation. The wine needs to be transferred to new wineskins, at times and frequencies and in ways that only wisdom, experience, and careful observation can determine well, and those things don't often line up in the joyful and stressful confusion of cross-cultural life and work. Sometimes highly motivated missionaries do great work for the kingdom, then retire, leaving a hole which cannot really be filled (and too often there was no plan or attempt to do so).

These things can't really be changed, not to mention that much kingdom fruit can only be seen when the Spirit begins to do the work we can't; so many "successful strategies" are merely a case of a mighty wind filling all sails faithfully raised, not that that particular design of sail is the one that should be used everywhere. There is a very frustrating lack of reproducibility for anyone with a business or technical background. It seems common to revert to that mentality, and seek shelter in those kinds of strategies and ministries where results can be reliably obtained through human effort.

But on the other hand, many changes in the world and society are not detrimental to the missionary task, yet missionaries have not yet, or only just, begun to make use of them. To keep up our theme of this post, here are 5 examples:

A. Use the powerful language learning tools that exist

The days of landing in a new country daunted by the prospect of a new language and enduring a stressful and possibly tearful ordeal acquiring the new language, "like drinking from a fire hose" as many vividly describe the process, in many cases can and ought to be over.

I met many exchange students from China while in seminary in Dallas (many of whom found Christ and joined churches while there, praise God). I was surprised at how good some of their English was; it wasn't just a large memorized vocabulary, but they had a strong and natural command of conversational English. I asked them how their English had gotten so good before they came to the U.S., and a few replied matter-of-factly that they'd done video chat classes with teachers in the U.S. for a while before leaving China.

So many tools are now available for widely-spoken languages that once missionaries are officially in the preparation phase for their mission, there's not really any reason not to start learning the languages then. In a new environment and culture, there are so many other challenges to face and lessons to learn that letting the full brunt of new language acquisition hit at that time is best avoided if possible. These days it can be possible.

I recognize there are two major exceptions to this: 1) When you are transferring from one field to another. Learning a language at the outset when highly motivated is one thing; adding another language on top of that one while transitioning from one busy ministry field to a less familiar one is another. 2) When you need to learn a local language, not a global one. That still doesn't stop you from video chatting with locals months before you leave, but it means fewer materials are available, and preparation for distance learning needs to be set up ahead of time.

However what I'm arguing for is more a change in attitude. Build language learning into the process of Going, and decrease its status as a barrier to people wanting to serve. I have been told that, being at least somewhat gifted with languages, I'm underestimating the stress and challenge it is for others. I understand that it's not the same for everyone, since for example as a naturally reserved introvert making new friends cross-culturally is fairly challenging for me, where it's easy for some others. But that just underlines my point; if learning languages doesn't come naturally for many people, why not make full use of the wide range of tools modern technology places at our disposal?

B. A Culture of "discipling Your replacements"

One way to reduce the impact of experienced missionaries leaving big gaps in their wake, would be if a Timothy or a bunch of them were already there when it was time for Paul to go. This is certainly no easy task, and would require a massive time and energy investment. I also know that some missionaries serve in capacities that would make this difficult. However we see both Jesus and Paul using a strategy not of "taking time away from their own ministry to disciple others", but of taking people with them to do what they do.

If a culture of discipling and mentoring (a loaded word, there's probably a better one) as an essential component of ministry was built into our missions mentality, we wouldn't view it as "taking time away from our primary ministry responsibilities" to disciple, but would always be seeking friends to minister alongside us, and discipleship would happen through that, not in spite of or apart from it. 

I believe 5 years in is not too early to be thinking about this, and it's something I want to work on in 2019. If I had to leave in 5 more years, who would step in to continue the work? Or would I simply leave, taking not only the accumulated knowledge and experience of those years with me, but leaving an empty hole in the midst of the relationships I'd invested in during those years?

What if instead I had already been inviting both newer missionaries and younger people to work alongside me for years already, who can build those relationships as I do (and perhaps faster than I do), and step in to lead those ministries when I'm not available? (And be ready to lead their own) It seems worthwhile to make this a priority to a far greater degree than I've personally seen on the field, both in and out of church.

C. Millennials are natural missionaries, but need leadership

My generation, especially its younger cohort, is continually decried as fragile and unmotivated. They have left the Church in droves, and seem to have an inexplicable lack of interest in avidly pursuing the American dream. What does motivate them, to a large degree, are causes they perceive to be worth investing one's time and energy in. It grieves me that the Church missed this. At a time when an idealistic generation was growing up with the connectivity of the internet ingrained in their psyche and a peak of post-WWII resources behind them, the Church said something along the lines of: "Sit tight, we've pretty much got this Church thing figured out smoothly. Just keep showing up for the sake of showing up and some day (very far in the future), all this can be yours."

Meanwhile the World said: "Hey, young, inexperienced idealists who want to make your mark on the world. Have you noticed how unfair the world is? Let's fight injustice together!" Secular ideology provided a cause that seemed worth fighting for. The Church at first reflexively avoided this thrown-down gauntlet, and nowadays seems to be belatedly trying to gain credibility by jumping on the social justice bandwagon. (It's like much of the Church lives in a bubble 5-10 years thick. But I digress.) But it nearly lost a generation in the process, at least for now. (Only time will tell what older millennials will decide to do)

What many Millennials seem quite willing to do at any time, is reject American dream-style materialism in favor of joining causes that seem more important, on becoming the change they want to see. That's one component of a missionary spirit, but so much of it got wasted on whatever internet cause de jour or social marxist movement took the place of the soul-transforming calling that Christ has laid upon every believer. There is no power that can make the world a better place than regenerated souls on their way to another world while focused on His kingdom. Why were we not led by mature believers into that perilously joyful adventure? Is it too late to start now? (I don't think so)

D. Try more field-based recruitment

Missionaries tend to have some pretty good stories. We can also explain exactly what we're up to and how we need help, in ways that are tough for sending organizations or churches to do secondhand. Why leave most of the work of recruiting up to them? I know different organizations have different structures and procedures, but it seems natural for those who have Gone to invite others to join them in the good work that's going on.

A culture of fields or ministry focus areas keeping in better touch with their supporting churches and reaching out to others not merely to meet support requirements, but with the faithful expectation that God will lead some people who hear to come get involved with the work, might change the picture of shrinking numbers of missionaries in many fields.

Some fields in my organization have done this with success, but it took a concentrated effort and it also takes a certain number of missionaries involved to become "self-sustaining" in that sense. I believe in the Church of the 2020's, this will be an increasingly effective strategy, as it's likely that the culture in the West will continue changing in ways that make sending agency's work (and perhaps survival) harder, not easier.

E. Make it less... dramatic (?) at the outset

I am definitely speaking as a computer engineer-turned-missionary at this point, but I feel it's important to point out that the nature of long-work missionary work has a pragmatic quality to it. Yes, we seek to be all things to all people to win some, in cultures very different from our birth cultures, and it's a work only the Spirit can do in the hearts of those we seek to reach. Yes, I was "called" to Taiwan in that traditional sense that I wouldn't say is necessary to come serve God cross-culturally but definitely makes it easier in certain ways. (On the spectrum of "anxiously figuring out if you're heading in the right direction" vs. "gritting your teeth and enduring when it's tough" it pushes things much further toward the latter)

However, while a calling from God or deep conviction that inspires us to service can both push people out of the comfortable ruts of their normal lives and provide motivation when times are tough, emphasizing it so strongly and hyping up (for lack of a more respectful term) that decision to forsake everything and go to the ends of the earth, also throws up a huge barrier, one that may have been more appropriate for ages when missions agencies were focused on weeding out the unqualified from among their many applicants, not trying hard to connect with enough willing hearts and get them on the field to keep whole mission field areas from having to close up shop from lack of missionaries to continue the good work.

My own journey to the mission field certainly involved those moments of deep conviction to make the tough decisions to get here, but it was also partly inspired by visiting Taiwan and hearing missionaries share about very accomplishable tasks and needs, getting a more concrete idea of what actually needed to be done. My thinking before visiting any missionaries abroad was that I wasn't spiritual enough (or extroverted enough) to be a missionary. After visiting Taiwan and learning more, it became more a question of "Oh, there's a lot of good work for God's kingdom that needs to be done over there. It sounds like something I could learn to do... if I dare." The daring part is where some dramatic stories of God's leading and providence come in.

The World we live in provides a variety of well-defined life path options. Maximizing the comfort of your life, achieving noteworthy success, becoming the head of a happy and prosperous family, etc. As with so many things in the Church, it would be much more effective if instead of merely pointing at what the world offers/promotes and saying "missions means sacrificing all that," we actually cast a positive vision too, of what is gained and how deeply meaningful missionary life can be.

Missionary life is almost impossibly difficult at times, but life is like that anyway, even sometimes for people who spend most of their lives trying to avoid those kinds of difficulties. What better way to spend one's transient mortal life than in full-time service to your Creator, taking light into dark places, and sharing the beautiful truths of His word and watching lives be transformed by it?

The only things you can take with you to heaven are the friends God reached through you. If that's not a rational reason to jump in and get started in kingdom work, I don't know what is.