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)

2 Samuel 24 - Part 1: Did God incite David to Sin? Did David see Jesus?

I have recently returned to Taiwan from 3 months of traveling. This was mostly my home assignment trip to the US to visit churches and supporters in a few different areas, but I also had the opportunity to visit relatives in southern Norway, and went on a governance training trip to Indonesia with some other international Christian school representatives and leaders.

I had a lot of "firsts" during these weeks on the road--first trip to Europe, first trip south of the equator, etc. Those experiences and ideas will no doubt percolate into future blog posts, if I can maintain a bit more discipline in posting. But first I want to do a post on an unusual passage in the history of Israel and an important statement King David makes in the midst of a stressful situation.

Today's post will be on two parts of the story which make this passage special and are worthy of closer attention, and the next post will cover a concept we seem to have all but lost in 2019.

I chose this picture of a statue of David because, somewhat poignantly, it no longer exists.

1. Did God incite David to sin?

2 Samuel 24 describes an unusual episode in Israel's history.
In this passage, Israel has angered God, and God punishes them by inciting David to do a census. Or does He? This idea of God "inciting" David, as the ESV and some other translations put it, is a little confusing. James 1 is clear that God does not tempt people to sin:

1:13-15 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

In dealing with fallen humanity, God frequently chooses to allow people's own sinful nature and predilections to run their course, or as in the curious case of Job, allows Satan to bring great loss and suffering into someone's life for a higher purpose in keeping with His own will.

David is certainly no stranger to sinful predilections--13 chapters earlier is the story of Bathsheba and David's plunge into deeper and deeper sin which began with sending out the army and "the king's men" but not going with them, and ended in David's assassinating one of those king's men in order to hide his royally-forced affair with the man's wife, and dragging Joab into it as a kind of accomplice.

Of course Joab already had a habit of murdering his and David's rivals (Abner, Absalom, Amasa...), but I do wonder if he felt some lingering guilt over his acquiescence to David on the horrible Uriah/Bathsheba matter. Either way in chapter 24 we find him willing to speak out when David again decides to do something he knows is a bad idea, in this case numbering the troops.

Why was it a sin?

There is no divine prohibition against a census, but it was not something to be undertaken lightly. Exodus 30:11-16 records God's instructions to Moses about doing a census, which requires small ransom that everyone must pay in exchange for their life, the precious metal currency being gathered from everyone and brought as an offering into the temple "that it may bring the people of Israel into remembrance before the Lord, so as to make atonement for your lives." (Ex 30:16) The taking of a census would thus reinforce to everyone that their lives belong to God, and would be a spiritual undertaking as much as a civic one.

We don't know if there was a ransom payment collection involved in David's census (some indirect evidence suggests it was not), but we know that David's advisers and Joab were firmly against the idea as soon as they heard it. Their unified reaction and Joab's pushing back and asking why the King wants to do this suggests that David was observably acting from the wrong motives, not to mention the way he stubbornly overrules them and pushes it through.

(Note: The commands about census-taking also explicitly state in 30:12 that the punishment for neglecting the ransom collection would be a plague, which is exactly what ends up happening in 2 Samuel 24.)

Coming back to the dilemma at hand, if we know from James 1 that God does not tempt to sin, then what do we make of 2 Samuel 24:1? 

As is always the case, comparing two seemingly antagonistic verses against each other without investigating the rest of scripture to see what else can help us understand them could lead us into serious error. Therefore we ought to be aware of a parallel passage of scripture, 1 Chronicles 21. The first verse of that chapter reads as follows:

"Then Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel."

At first glance this might appear to be even more problematic. We have exactly parallel passages, one saying that God incited David to sin, the other saying it was Satan. Which one is it? Could it be both without abandoning the logical principle of non-contradiction?

First let's consider the theological solution which probably most rapidly comes to mind when comparing these two statements. We know God does not tempt to sin, we know that Satan does. We also know that Satan is ultimately subservient to God and cannot defy Him. We could understand this to mean that while 1 Chronicles 21 is being more direct in saying that Satan was the one who incited David, 2 Samuel 24 is emphasizing God's sovereignty and that God allowed this to happen.

A little bit of grammatical ambiguity in 2 Samuel 24:1 helps unite the two passages as well. The Hebrew text of 24:1 does not directly say "God incited David," it has a verb with an unclear subject. God's anger burned and David was incited, and there aren't any other actors directly mentioned in the sentence, leading English translations to either supply the subject of the verb as "he" (God) or for the NASB "it," as in "God's anger incited David."

We certainly cannot interpret the grammar to say that God wasn't involved in David being incited, but putting the two passages together along with what we've seen in Exodus, we can construct a fuller picture of the situation, which would sound something like... "God's anger burned against Israel, and it (this anger) was expressed in allowing Satan to incite David against Israel by holding a census in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons, against the counsel of his advisers, thereby bringing guilt and divine punishment on the whole nation."

2. "The Lord said to... the angel of the Lord"

One might ask why Israel should be punished for David's sin. There is a sense in that in that era, and indeed in most eras, a king represented a nation to a much closer degree of association than our so-called representative democracy represents us. Even today we use the capital city/seat of government of a nation-state or global organization to stand for the whole thing (Washington, Brussels, Rome...). Both things are examples of  synecdoche (using a part to refer to the whole) which is a very commonly used literary device in scripture.

In this particular case, though, we need not delve too deeply into why and how a king could spiritually represent his nation, because the beginning of the chapter states that the reason for the entire incident was that God was angry with Israel and punished them in this particular way.

A real mystery we can only speculate on, based on previous chapters, is what kind of sin Israel had fallen into which brought this punishment upon them via the fallout from David's sinful obstinacy. It's a reminder that with great authority comes great responsibility--as the anointed leader of all Israel, David's sinful proclivities have the potential to hurt not only himself but the entire nation. As the divinely-appointed king, he can function in obedience as a sort of avatar for divine guidance, but also in sin as an instrument of divine punishment.

David immediately regrets his sinful decision, and in his repentance he seeks another function performed by kings in many cultures; that of mediator between God and man. Again unusually, God offers David the choice of 3 punishments. David does not quite choose, but wisely says direct punishment from God, who is merciful, will be better than punishment via Israel's enemies, who are not. David knows God's character, and indeed God relents from the full punishment as the angel of judgment approaches Jerusalem.

What kind of angel was it?

We get some interesting indirect information about the relationship between God and angels scattered around the Old Testament -- Satan's appearance before God along with the other "sons of God" (Job 1); the lying spirit given permission by God to deceive the prophets in Ahab's time (1 Kings 22); the mysterious divine council and condemnation of the "gods"/sons of God (Psalm 82).

Now we have an angel in this passage (verses 15-16) whom God commands to cease and David apparently glimpses (v17), though it's not clear if he saw the angel itself in some form or the effects of it as the plague progresses through Israel. The way the passage reads immediately reminds one of the angel of death in the final plague of Egypt, which has been represented in Hollywood media in precisely that vague and ominous way, as a lethal and sepulchral fog or cloud. Yet the phrasing of the passage suggests the angel's location can be observed and it is at least somewhat anthropomorphic; if it were some kind of otherworldly poison cloud blowing through Israel or a personification of a viral contagion, one could hardly speak of it standing beside the threshing floor of Araunah. As usual, we shouldn't trust pop culture depictions when the Bible gives us a window into the unseen world.

To make matters more confusing, in verse 16 this angel is called "the angel of the Lord," a title which when preceded by the definite article ("the angel of the Lord," not just "an angel of the Lord") seems to indicate a theophany is taking place: an appearance not only of a messenger angel but of God himself in visible form. Many believe these are Old Testament appearances of the Son (Christ), since seeing the Father in His full glory meant death for fallen humans.

We are rapidly getting into detailed trinitarian theological territory here which is beyond the scope of this blog, but a careful exegesis here means that it is at least possible that it is the Son executing judgment on Israel. The One whom David prophetically sees ruling Israel and smashing His enemies with a rod of iron, David literally sees executing righteous punishment on Israel. If our interpretation is correct, it's an astonishing scene: the mortal king of Israel sees the divine king of Israel, his own descendant in the flesh and the One who will sit on his throne forever.

The Lord said to my Lord...

It may seem somehow "insufficiently monotheistic" to have the Son carrying out just judgment on Israel and the Father relenting and telling Him to stop. Yet this passage is not at all a divergence from how scripture describes the Trinity, and indeed how the Father and the Son speak. As we think of the possibility of a Christophany in this passage, let us consider a connected thought expressed by David himself in Psalm 110 verse 1, one later referenced by Jesus himself and confirmed as being about Himself:

The LORD said to my Lord, "Sit at My right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool."

Later in the New Testament we have passages like John 5:19-23, where Jesus says the Father judges no one but has entrusted that to the Son, and that the Son "can do nothing of Himself unless it is something He sees the Father doing." So many passages lead us back to the divine mystery of God's Trinitarian nature; my personal conviction is not to use my fallen imagination to construct pictures or conceptions that are certainly false and almost inevitably heretical, but to let scripture speak correctly for itself, just as basically all the science book diagrams of what an atom looks like are wrong or at least misleading in different ways, but the equations that describe it are correct.

At very least, let us think deeply on Jesus' words and on Psalm 110 and this passage in 2 Samuel. Bringing these passages together, and understanding how "the Angel of the Lord" may be interpreted, I can only conclude that this indeed may have been an Old Testament glimpse of God in a more complete Trinitarian sense than we often see in the Old Testament, one that King David mentions prophetically in the Psalms and perhaps witnesses personally in the midst of his sorrow at the judgment of Israel.

What do you think? Have you heard other takes on this passage? Let me know.

Whether what David saw was a special kind of angel or a Christophany, he heeds the words of the prophet Gad and builds an altar in that place where he saw Him. That altar, and the exchange between David and the owner of the threshing floor, will be the subject of Part II.

A Closing Window of Opportunity?: Bringing Millennials and Gen Z into the Great Commission

(Hello everyone. I've been traveling a lot this summer, and have been able to spend a few weeks in the US for the first time in 3 years. My post today is on a topic which I feel is important for the North American Church, and very relevant to the future of Global Missions from this part of the world.  While there has been great concern over how younger generations now have largely stopped attending church, I submit that this is because attendance was indeed the issue of concern when leadership and ownership should have been. You may disagree with my analysis of how we got here, but we are here. I believe we don't have to stay here, however.)

Don’t Get Them Confused: Millennials vs. Gen Z

Every couple of decades, a new generational cohort comes along, with a fresh outlook and worldview, and sometimes very different assumptions and expectations from those of their predecessors. Millennials were the hot topic for years, with their marked differences from previous generations and defiance of many long-standing US cultural institutions. No longer now the college kids frequently targeted for criticism by their elders, even the youngest Gen Y/Millennials are already getting past their mid-20’s. The college students of today are not Millennials but Generation Z, who have already been exerting their own unique influence on society for years now, albeit to less media fanfare.

People tend to break down the generational differences between Millennial and Gen Z in certain ways: Typically Millennials are regarded as idealistic and concerned with the great events and causes of their time, while Gen Z are seen as more pragmatic and focused on their own day-to-day lives. Millennials have been slower at setting up their own households and pursuing a stable income compared to previous generations, preferring to invest their time and resources in other areas. By contrast Gen Z seem more interested in achieving financial independence, and even starting their own businesses. Most Millennials had the internet from a young age, with smart phones coming later, while Gen Z are mobile device natives who have grown up regarding wifi as a basic resource.

Some more comparisons of Millennials and Gen Z.
This chart was a better summary than most I found.

Rather than compare these stereotypes against each other positively or negatively ("Gen Z are harder workers" "Millennials are more relational"), I believe it’s more helpful to understand them as natural preferences developed at different periods of recent history:

Millennials were the first generation to have access to the online social world at their disposal from a young age, and so there is an innate desire to connect and unite. Inherited material resources and optimism from the Baby Boomer days also provided a context where society seemed to moving forward; Millennials understood their responsibility was to keep that going and make the world a better place, and a great many feel that this is indeed the purpose of their lives.

By contrast, Gen Z grew up in the post-9/11 era, more destabilized, pessimistic, and less prosperous. They feel the stress of financial anxiety more keenly and don’t consider society to be progressing forward. Thus rather than worrying about making the world a better place, they tend to focus on achieving personal security in the midst of uncertain times.

Personally I have experienced the sense that a certain large block of people used to have a voice and influence in the way society as a whole runs, but that it's a sort of privileged group that requires a certain level of social integration and sufficient personal resources, and as society fragments, that group has shrunk drastically and no longer speaks for the majority of society. (Although many senior Americans still imagine that this consensus exists, and try to fight political battles to regain control over it)

Growing up with mostly Boomer parents, many Millennials could at least have witness this world by proxy, and infer that top-down influence was the most effective way to steer society in a better direction. (An increasingly leftist progressive media also assume this as a first principle and communicate accordingly) By contrast, I submit that Gen Z, with mostly Gen X parents who were increasingly outsiders (both inadvertently and by their own jaded and system-weary choice) to that broadly influential social club of "people whose opinion matters". Gen Z also grew up in an increasingly fragmented society, and have little conception of that kind of social integration and inherited influence which existed in the past. Thus the idea of top-down influence obtained by collective process makes less and less sense; they are growing up in an un-integrated society, and each goes their own way as seems best to them. We have arrived at situation described at the very end of the book of Judges: 

"At that time the Israelites left that place and went home to their tribes and clans, each to his own inheritance. In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit." - Judges 21:24-25

A Missed Opportunity: Unled Millennials

That may be the condition of society, but let us shift our focus specifically to the Church and Global Missions and how they could be blessed by these new generations: Millennials seek to work in community to bless the world, and they understand the great value of mentoring. Meanwhile Gen Z are focused workers who aren’t afraid to start building amidst uncertainty. These are not only both valuable mindsets for the mission field, but the two are also naturally complementary.

It would be a pity if current leadership in the Church and mission sending agencies missed out on these God-given strengths, but sadly for the Millennial generation this has already happened. The passionate but often naive idealism of Millennials met a prosperity-addled Church in love with its comfort zone, with leaders focused on maintaining an acceptable status quo or still fighting the culture wars of previous decades.

It has been widely observed that Millennials are all but unanimous in their desire to make a difference in the world. Yet, at church they often encountered a lazily fatalistic mentality which insisted things will simply get worse until Jesus comes, simultaneously conflating social and spiritual authority, and thus was increasingly disengaging from the world as popular culture drifted further and further from Bible-belt culture. Few leaders actively recruited maturing students into the great work Christ left us to do, but expected loyal attendance without any undue boat-rocking or change-making, or simply gave over spiritual responsibility for tomorrow's elders and deacons entirely to youth groups, so the adults could continue in their accustomed ways undisturbed. It’s not surprising then that when secular voices told Millennials a more optimistic and empowering tale--that change was coming and necessary, and by working together students like them could indeed make a better and more just world than that of their elders--Millennials allied themselves excitedly to those causes instead, and abandoned church attendance en masse.

For Millennials who did find their way into missions, surveys showed an interest in innovation and teamwork, and their highest priority was to find a seasoned missionary to connect with relationally and be mentored by. Yet arriving on the field they frequently ran into entrenched and outdated ideas and methods which had persisted less due to any bad motives than simple inertia. A sink-or-swim/hands-off mentality often prevailed over missionary mentoring, leading to widespread discouragement and burn-out.

Millennials only partly deserve their reputations as snowflakes.
As always, there is also some projection in those accusations...

It’s Not Too Late: Bringing Millennials into the Fold

Millennials are already changing global missions by their relational and technological focus (and willingness to totally reject defunct narratives and systems) but churches and sending agencies need to find more ways to channel their passion and desire to make a difference. Mentoring, mentioned above, is an urgent and crucial need. Millennials deeply desire to be mentored and led into ministry by people they respect, and then work hard to make a difference there; whether in the workplace or full-time ministry, they have consistently refused to be treated merely as the next batch of workers with an obligation to show up and maintain status quo. Mature believers who have been working actively for the kingdom of God should reach out to Millennial singles and couples and guide them into obedient service, not wait for them to appear.

As a generational cohort, Millennials are often criticized for delaying traditional milestones of adulthood, but that also means they are less tied down than previous generations at this point in their lives. This means it’s late but not too late to bring them back into churches and onto the mission field. The fact that they haven’t shown up doesn’t mean they never will, but it will take relationship building and invested leadership, not expectations of immediate changes in habits or ideological leanings as a sign of spiritual development. As Millennials have children and settle down, they won’t lose their desire to make a difference in the world, and families serving together can be uniquely effective on the mission field too. (Especially in the supportive and relational ministry environment in which Millennials seek to serve).

Coming and Already Here: The Challenge of Gen Z

With all the media focus up till now on Millennials, it’s important to recognize Gen Z are not a hypothetical future challenge, but an opportunity facing us today—they are already graduating college and beginning to enter the workforce. Having initially dropped the ball with Millennials, how can the Church and sending agencies avoid doing the same for another generation?

Fortunately, some lessons learned with Millennials will benefit Gen Z as well:

• The connectivity of the digital age is now increasingly an integral part of operations.
• In recent years many sending organizations have scrambled to catch up to the 21st century and are now moving into better and more flexible positions to work with modern missionaries.
• A mentality shift from waiting for qualified workers, to active recruiting and guidance.

All these things will help reach Gen Z, who will present new challenges to missionary recruiters. They tend to lack the deep Millennial passion to see change in the world, and also increasingly lack background understanding of the legacy of the Church and the missionary task. They are focused on working hard to reach personal goals in a fragmenting society. For them it may often be necessary to start from the beginning and explain why missions is important, why we do it, and what spiritual growth and other benefits they will personally experience as a result of obedient service. ("What's in it for me" is a self-centric question, but a very human one that the Bible anticipates and teaches us to grow beyond)

Gen Z missionary candidates will probably be less likely to come in with a Millennial-style crusading ideological stance on issues of gender, privilege, etc. but will be accustomed to that language and have a live-and-let-live approach; again it will be important for someone with a deep understanding of scriptural (and not merely "conservative christian") teaching on these topics to explain via authentic dialogue (not a long monologue) why a doctrinal or faith statement, etc., has certain firm language on these topics, or why it's absent. (Be sure to include informative graphics and not only text in the explanation)

It is probably also best to share real examples of kingdom opportunities and give them a clear picture of what they’ll be doing (The “it’s complicated, just show up with a willing heart and figure it out” mentality makes a lot less sense to digital natives who may prefer to simply video chat with their future coworkers in the field and get some answers directly), and explain what skills would be helpful to acquire before going in. Lastly, Gen Z members seem not to expect as much hand-holding as Millennials, but they need mentoring and discipling just as much whether they ask for it or not--and they shouldn't need to ask to receive it. In a healthy church culture, it should be the default.

We Millennials and Gen Z are the experienced kingdom workers of the future, but still largely the unrealized opportunity of the present. May we submit ourselves to Christ as obedient servants of His gospel, and may the Church rise up and embrace the opportunity to establish a healthy generational relationship of mature believers actively discipling and guiding their younger brothers and sisters in Christ!

An INTP on the Mission Field - Wormtongue or Elrond?

Returning to the INTP series...

Back when I set out on my journey to the mission field, I noticed that there were not many people of my personality among my fellow travelers. To be sure, not all were extroverts, and my seminary was known for attracting former engineers. To be an INTP is not merely to be an introvert, however, but to be very interested in certain things few other people find compelling, and find real challenges in certain tasks most people find routine. That's true of every personality in one area or another, but for INTPs that tends to play out in ways that don't mesh naturally with the missionary lifestyle. It doesn't mean incessant navel-gazing or a robotic inability to empathize with others, but it does mean social energy is a resource that must be conserved wisely, and some time away to ponder the theory of everything (preferably in a high-altitude spot with a good view but also shade) is necessary every so often.

While I have written in the past about the specific struggles of being an INTP or my own experiences of working on the mission field as an INTP, today I want to challenge INTPs in a certain way which certainly doesn't only apply to INTPs. (Even you Enneagram people will get something out of it) To do that, we're going to first look at two well-known characters from the Lord of the Rings:

Grima Wormtongue: The Deceitful Hoarder

In the Rohan plotline of the Lord of the Rings hexalogy, we meet the subversive character of Grima Wormtongue. He is a servant of Saruman who is sabotaging Rohan from within while Saruman's forces ravage it from without. Grima is portrayed in a compelling way by Brad Dourrif in the Peter Jackson trilogy, although he's more Tim-Burtonesque than what I saw in my mind's eye reading the books. He wouldn't be a very effective tool of evil if his appearance and wardrobe screamed "tool of evil", and to some extent we've all been falsely trained by Hollywood to think evil looks like that in real life. Here the words of Lewis in his preface to Screwtape ring true:

The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.

Whatever his appearance, Grima is a subtle and dangerous opponent, as Gandalf observes. After Gandalf arrives at Edoras and breaks Saruman's spell over Theoden, Grima is (somewhat surprisingly, in the context of the story at that point) spared and given a horse to leave. Even at that point, the soldiers of Rohan seem to view him more with contempt than fear, not comprehending how much damage he has done. Theoden does not order him executed but gives him the option to show loyalty or be exiled. In the end he spits on that offer and runs off to join Saruman.

Grima Wormtongue's story has many interesting parallels to Smeagol/Gollum:
- Both are characters who serve the cause of evil individually for their own reasons, and both are bound to their masters by means other than force (Gollum due to his enslavement to the ring Frodo bears, Grima due to fear and guilt).
- Both also "lose" precious magical artifacts: Gollum literally loses his precious, Sauron's ring of power, and Grima loses a palantir (magical seeing-stone) for Saruman by hurling it out of Orthanc at the protagonists assembled below. 

- Both were originally good or at least neutral, and in choosing evil consistently became twisted into something unlike their original selves. (Gandalf says to Theoden about Grima: "once it was a man, and did you service in its fashion.") 

- In the end, both characters are spared when they could have been executed, and eventually attack their master for more or less the very reason they've been serving them. (Gollum when ring-lust overcomes him, and Grima when his fearful hatred finally tips to the side of hatred). 

- In another odd connection, Grima is actually killed by roused-up Hobbits who are taking the Shire back after he snaps and kills Saruman with a knife. (In the movie version which dispenses with this part of the story and moves Saruman's death to a much earlier scene, Grima is shot by Legolas)

Also similar to Smeagol/Gollum, Grima is a thief (who likes to accuse others to hide his own guilt): His crimes are not only limited to spying for Saruman and functioning as a sort of proxy by which Saruman's corroding influence on Theoden can be locally amplified (whether very obviously in the films, or more subtly in the books); he is actively working for the downfall of Rohan in whatever ways he can, and this extends to pilfering and thieving as well.

Grima apparently acted partly out of greed; Saruman had promised him spoils after what he assumed was his inevitable victory, which possibly included Eowyn as well (I may not be alone in thinking in that case victory would have ended Grima faster than defeat did). Apparently he had begun this spoil-taking preemptively: When Grima is forced to retrieve Theoden's sword, it is remarked that "many things men have missed" are found in the trunk where he had stashed the sword away. This is purposefully not elaborated upon by Tolkien, but one assumes that the various other things are items of real or symbolic strength which have been stolen away by Grima. Ahead of Saruman's assumed victory, he couldn't keep his hands off of the most valuable things he could find when the opportunity to steal them away and hoard them presented itself. 

Elrond of Imladris: The Wise Giver

Let us now consider an extremely different character in LotR: Elrond the Half-elven, Lord of Rivendell (called Imladris by the elves)

It wouldn't be helpful here to spend lots of time on Elrond's backstory, so let's summarize by saying Elrond and his brother Elros were born back in the Elder days, the children of a rare and specific High Elf/Historically Important Human marriage. They were given the option to choose their fate, whether to be Elven or Human (in Tolkien's world the afterlife works differently for the two groups, so being "mixed" wasn't an option), and Elrond chose to be of the elven kind, later becoming Lord of Rivendell, important to the plot of both the Hobbit and LotR, and holding one of the three Elven great rings. (His brother chose to be human and founded Numinor, of which Aragorn is the last descendant of the line of kings.) 

Rivendell/Imladris is an interesting place; in the Hobbit it is treated a bit more lightly, with elves singing in trees and Elrond the sage leader of a "homely house" at the edge of wilderland, who primarily helps the Dwarves figure out a map. In the Lord of the Rings and connected works it is described further as one of the three major strongholds of the Elves in Middle Earth, alongside the Shipyards which protect the elves access to the journey west across the Sundering Seas to the Undying Lands, and Galadriel's woodland stronghold of Lothlorien. Rivendell is important enough that it is mentioned in Tolkien's additional writings that Sauron had been hoping to mobilize Smaug and the goblin armies of the north against it, had Smaug not been taken out by Bard in the events of The Hobbit and Dale subsequently re-established as a stronghold that eventually limited Sauron's northern campaign.

Rivendell is described by Bilbo, who ends up living there long term after his departure from the Shire, as "a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all." It is the only place Aragorn could call home, the place where the shards of Narsil were preserved as revealed in dreams to Boromir and Faramir, along with many other things not to be found anywhere else in Middle Earth.

As the Lord of Rivendell, Elrond is wise and conservative (somewhat unlike the Jackson films' take on his character), but willing to generously provide precious gifts and important advice from the accumulated bounty of his house as appropriate.

Matthew 13:52

Having looked at those two characters, let's take a look at the truth of scripture. Specifically Matthew 13:52, which reads as follows: 

"And [Jesus] said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."

Jesus says this in the literary context of a string of parables, including some of the most famous and quickly recognized parables in the gospels (the sower and the seed, the wheat and tares, the mustard seed, etc.). After the disciples ask about the meaning of the wheat and the tares parable, they claim to understand the next three parables Jesus tells (treasure in the field, pearl of great price, fish in the net). At that point Jesus gives the statement above.

He uses an unusual expression here: "The scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven." In Jesus' day, the profession of scribe doubtless had attracted some INTPs; the job was to record and accumulate information. (Though the legal and administrative responsibilities that came with the task might have scared them off again) In the gospels we typically see the scribes at odds with Jesus, but here he speaks of scribes who are trained for the Kingdom.

There is much wisdom densely packed into this statement. The scribe needs to be trained in order to be like the master with treasures to offer. The training needs to be kingdom training, not merely scribal training. Yet a scribe is already trained to handle religious law carefully and correctly. When someone trained to handle important information carefully is then trained for the kingdom, truly he will have old things and new things to offer, from the redeemed "palace of his mind" of which he will be the master if he learns to take every thought captive for Christ.  

Two Paths for an INTP:

The Matthew verse has always reminded me of Elrond, Master of the House of Rivendell, with great treasures from which he brings forth new(er) and old gifts to aid the cause of Good. And his gifts are not always material, but also good counsel and wisdom, like the scribe above can offer. The opposite of Grima, he does not steal from others to hoard away, but accumulates good things to provide help and succor to others. He does not infiltrate and manipulate, he establishes and maintains.

Elrond himself doesn't take the front lines (not by the timeline of Lord of the Rings, except as part of the White Council). His main role is to be master of Rivendell and to maintain that strong place, described in the Silmarillion as a "refuge for the weary and the oppressed, and a treasury of good counsel and wise lore."

Similarly, an INTP is usually not going to be charging into the front lines full of battle fury, and that's not necessarily where you want an INTP. An INTP is not likely to show up with an army behind him either; the gifts of charisma and natural magnetism and strong-willed leadership that's not afraid to break a few eggs to make an omelet or chew out a subordinate when they need it are not the forte of an INTP. (Though it's quite likely this hypothetical leader's strategic war council has an INTP or three)

On the mission field, however, those who charge in furiously are likely to burn out just as furiously, sometimes leaving a mess that longer-term workers must labor to clean up. And those leaders who can inspire natural loyalty and dominate their subordinates may fail at the servant leadership and humility which seeks not to create a personal empire but to serve and build up the local church, to watch less qualified and gifted leaders struggle and encourage them rather than taking charge. 

By contrast, an INTP will be seeking to impose structure on disorder, to accumulate knowledge and wisdom, to determine what is most valuable and focus their limited energy on obtaining that. Above all, to understand, in a cohesive and articulate sense, what is real and true, to further grasp reality through this, and then to pass on this knowledge to others in useful ways. 

So in terms of leadership, an INTP rarely leads by jumping to the front and rallying others to their standard (I'd love to hear real-life examples of what happened in those situations), but they will seek positions of influence and adequate resources to have at their disposal instead, so that their knowledge and understanding and strategic thinking can be seen as strengths.

Having arrived in this kind of situation, the INTP has two paths to take; we'll call them the Wormtongue path and the Rivendell path:

On the Wormtongue path, the INTP is a loner who seeks influence and resources selfishly or anxiously. Protection and influence can be found by joining a strong leader, and resources can be obtained by wit and stratagem at the expense of others if necessary. Grima seemingly had no allies or "team" in Rohan; as an individual he had already attached himself to a strong leader (Theoden) then betrayed him in favor of a more powerful one with more resources (Saruman). It was an intelligent and strategic choice in terms of personal benefit, but it was an alliance with evil. Underestimated by the strength-and-honor warrior culture around him, Grima had an eye for what was most valuable and had already begun to accumulate it for his own purposes. Doubtless he felt pride in strategically steering Rohan to its ruin, in being the unseen puppeteer, a temptation which many INTPs may especially feel, to use their intelligence and strategic thinking skills to manipulate events for their own security and a desirable outcome. In the end, however, forces beyond his control brought all his careful schemes to ruin.

On the Rivendell path, by contrast, the INTP seeks influence and resources as part of a coalition which seeks to bless and build up: not subversive but superversive. Rivendell didn't build itself, and Elrond did not move to Gondor and slowly take over, like Sauron in Numinor, though he could probably have done so in a similar fashion. Elrond did start with resources few others had, but he used those to build up a strong house (both a location, but also a company of people) which was a blessing to any who stayed there or who passed through. Simply by dedicating himself to being the master of that house as a sort of locus for what was good and true, maintaining "the old that was strong and did not wither," yet recognizing a new age was at hand, Elrond was a major influence for the powers of Good in Middle Earth. 

Seek for the Sword that was broken: In Imladris it dwells;
There shall be counsels taken, stronger than Morgul-spells.
There shall be shown a token, that Doom is near at hand;
for Isildur's Bane shall waken, and the Halfling forth shall stand.

The Last Homely House East of the Sea

And Rivendell was not merely a stronghold and refuge, it also stood for something greater than itself. It was not only called a "Homely House," but "The Last Homely House East of the Sea." This meant it was not only a place of refuge, a place of peace and light and truth, but it pointed to the origin of those things, and the place to which they would return: The True West, in Tolkien's mythos, the Undying Lands, where the servants of God lived, and where the elves desired to return. White shores, and a far green country, under a swift sunrise. The world as it ought to be. Aslan's country, beyond the farthest waves that grow sweet. What people got in Rivendell, then, was not merely rest and refuge, and perhaps wise advice, possibly precious gifts, but also a glimmer of that eternal light beyond the Sundering Seas. What they felt there was a taste of heaven on earth.

The world needs Homely Houses. It will need them more in the coming days. Whether an actual home or establishment, a group of like-minded people, or even few close friends who have accumulated resources and wisdom with the desire to bless and give refuge to others, these small strongholds of light will stand against the turmoil of the world as they have done since the beginning. These places of peace where a little taste of heaven on earth can be experienced stand like burning beacons in the dark for peoples who have chosen to forget the legacy of the gospel they once received, or who have never known it. 

I wish that every church could be a Homely House, which points to and communicates the reality of an Undying World beyond the Sundering Seas not only via the truth kept there, and hopefully shared faithfully there, but as fellowships of light and wisdom and richness and refuge and peace which give those who visit a taste of God’s country. Sadly, many are not like that at all. Sadly, some have this appearance (like one ancient and famous example whose strong stone vault endured a devastating fire last week and protected what was within) but the truth itself may be but little heard inside. But by God’s grace the two are not mutually exclusive, and need not remain so.

And while INTPs have their unique struggles, if they are trained for the kingdom, building up a house (a space, and a fellowship) from which may be brought out treasures old and new for the blessing of the saints and advancement of the kingdom is a task for which they are indeed well-equipped. If God has not yet presented a more specific path to you, I believe it's worth pursuing. Be trained in the kingdom, and build up a house. The path must be chosen daily, and the road will be long, but He goes with us, and before us, and follows after.

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.