How Starbucks Is Helping Me with My ADD

As many of you know, last year I was diagnosed with Attention Deficient Disorder. On one hand, that is a strange thing to discover about one’s self at age 37. On the other hand, it explained a lot. I mean a lot.

This is what it is like: In my head there are always 10 radio stations playing at full volume. If at any given point you were to me ask what is going on around me, I would be able to tell you the gist of the three conversations behind me, how many people walked in the door, and the basic layout of the room.

But I may not be able to tell you what you just said to me, because I was distracted by those other things.

And because of that, I am easily overwhelmed by even basic tasks: You may see a room that needs to be picked up. I see each individual toy (where do they even go?) and every DVD that is missing a case (why are they missing their cases?) and the carpet that needs to be vacuumed and the couch needs to be fixed and a light bulb needs to be replaced and the furnace filter that needs to replaced (where do I even buy filters?) and…and…and… That is I when shut down, push some stuff in a pile, and call it good.

Not surprisingly, working at Starbucks, with the fast pace, constant distractions, and unending line of drinks can be very difficult. Taking my Ritalin is a huge help, but when I am “on bar” (making the drinks), it just isn’t enough.

After a particularly difficult shift, I asked my boss how she keeps focused when things get so busy. Her advice has become one of the most helpful “life management” tools I have ever received:

“Only focus on two drinks at a time.”

I don’t need to think about the decaf-triple-venti-ristretto-mocha six drinks down the line or even the grande-extra-caramel-caramel-Frappichino I’ll make next. I only need to focus on the two drinks I am working on now. That’s it.

Maybe that sounds painfully obvious to you. But when I even think about something as simple as folding a pile of laundry, my pulse goes up and I am paralyzed by chaotic mass of socks and underwear. I am a learning to take a deep breath and remind myself, “Two drinks at a time.” I only need to think about grabbing all of the underwear and deciding while I will pick up next. That’s it.

How about you? Does this sound painfully familiar? What techniques have you learned to help you cope with life?

Or if you know someone who is ADD, does this help you understand them?

Our Big Christmas Pageant for God

Frankly, I have never cared for children’s Christmas plays: Predictable presentations of the Christmas story, tone-deaf kids singing along with prerecorded music into mics that always teeter between feedback and inaudible, and fawning parents rushing up to record the whole mess.

At least, that was the case until four years ago when my daughters started being in our church’s Christmas plays.

Last week my oldest daughter owned her role of “Baby Goat” and my youngest daughter rocked the air trumpet from the mouse choir. If you don’t think that is awesome, well then you can just be excused from humanity.

What made the difference? Those are my girls up there. They are mine and I love them. Not because they do everything right or because it was a Tony worthy performance, but simply because they are mine.

As God looks down on our mediocre performance here on earth, I have to imagine he feels about the same. If I (as imperfect and sinful as I am) love my kids regardless of how good they are, how much more does God love us in our failures? Sure, he wants to see “go and sin no more,” but his love is not earned by our perfection. He loves us because we are his.

Merry Christmas to you and yours, and may you feel his glowing love surrounding you this season.

Wishing you a merry Radically Normal Christmas!

I am convinced that one of the most important ways to have a Biblical, God-honoring Christmas is to have a lot of fun. [1]

Really. Stick with me for while I explain.

On one hand, it is normal (as in “the ‘normal’ tendency to undervalue God”) for Christmas to be all about celebrating: Food, drink, presents, more drinks, and a staggering credit card to show for it.

On the other hand, it is radical (as in the “‘radical” tendency to undervalue this life”) to make Christmas only about Jesus. Am I the only Christian who gets nervous every time I hear someone say “Let’s put Christ back in Christmas”? I worry that “they” won’t be happy until Christmas is nothing but Christ.

In contrast to that, it is radically normal for Christmas to so thoroughly intertwine celebration and Jesus that we don’t know where one ends and the other begins. Nor do we care.

Buried in all of the OT laws about what not to eat and how to deal with mildew in your house are instructions on how to have a great party. For instance:

And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, “This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn or weep.” For all the people wept as they heard the words of the Law. Then he said to them, “Go your way. Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.” (Nehemiah 8:9-10 ESV)

“This is holy day,” God says, “so have a great time! Have some prime rib, break out the port!” This theme is repeated again and again: Festival after festival, holy day after holy day, are filled with celebration. We have 10 legal holiday and 4 non-legal ones; Israel had 28. It makes one wonder, why does God command so many parties?

First, who doesn’t want their kids to have fun? The best part of parenting is not making them do their chores or disciplining them. It is when those things are done and we get to play with them or watch them play with each other.

Second, the festivals were designed to associate joy with God. Because joy comes from God, happiness, in its own right, is God-honoring and has the power to draw us to God. This is how I see it: God knows that we cannot fathom the eternal joy of himself, so he gives us earthly joy not as a substitute, but as sample. A good Christmas celebration will be a good sample of joy in God.

Sadly, most people think that God is dull and Satan fun, but a good radically normal Christmas will dispel that notion.

It is a damnable heresy that removes tangible joy from our faith. In our day and age, Satan has led more people astray with this nonsense than better defended doctrines. If people don’t find it in God and his channels, they will go elsewhere.

There is a lot more to be said about this subject (in fact I will be preaching about it on Sunday), but I say all this wish you a truly merry Christmas!

 

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[1] This is an abbreviated version of my Christmas sermon: http://bit.ly/tgmv181

Book update

Has it really been a month since my last post? My goal is bi-weekly, but life happens, doesn’t it?

In this case, life has included being a pastor, making a lot of lattes, enjoying being husband and father more than I ever have, AND working on Radically Normal (I have dropped “The” and “Christian” from the title, made it too long). I am just about done preaching through the main ideas of the book , which has forced me to keep the material more practical than theoretical.

You can read or listen to the sermons on my church’s website: www.tgcconline.com.

Along with that, I have been working on a book proposal and learning about the industry. Turns out, publishers and agents don’t really want to be sent completed manuscripts, they want a proposal, which provides them with the gist of the book as well as some sample chapters.

So here is the current plan: I am taking two weeks of vacation (from the church, not Starbucks) at the end of the year to complete the book proposal, then I will start looking for an agent. At the same time, I will also work on building my “platform,” getting my name out there in the internet world.

If you have any connections or suggestions in this process, I am all ears!

Josh

What the Bible REALLY says about alcohol…

When my book is published, I am fairly certain that the chapter “Drinking to the glory of God” will be the most controversial. It may be what requires me to self-publish! But I also believe it will be one of the most important because so little Biblically sound things have been written on the topic. That is my opinion of course, but I wrote this little post to show the Biblical research I have done on the Bible’s attitude on alcohol, in its own words.

The Study Itself

I began by doing a search on every place where the words beer and wine (and any other synonym I could find for alcohol) occured. I ended up with 215 verses. I then notated each verse. The main thing I looked at was the Bible’s basic attitude (“Biblical Stance”) towards it, using a scale from 2 to -2. Obviously this was slightly subjective, but I think I applied it fairly.

• 2: Clearly positive view of alcohol. Includes when it is described as a blessing from God (Deut. 7:13), its removal marks a removal of God’s blessings (Deut. 28:39) or it is given as a sacrifice for God – if God approves of it, it must be pretty good (Exo. 29:40).
• 1: Neutral but somewhat positive view of it (Gen 14:18).
• 0: Neutral or “Not Applicable.” Includes when it is used as an analogy for something else (Gen. 49:12).
• -1 Neutral but somewhat negative view of it (Gen 39:32ff) or when it is part of a Nazarite vow, hence it is fasted from for a period of time (Num. 6:3).
• -2 Clearly negative view of alcohol (Prov. 20:9). By and large this is when is being misused (more on that later).

At the same time, I also looked at some other elements of interest (labeled “2^nd Data” for lack of a better title):

• A: Used as an allegory or in a non-literal sense (37x).
• B: Seen as a blessing from God (25x).
• BR: Shown as an example of a blessing of God’s removed (13x).
• S: Given as a sacrifice to God (22x).
• D: Drunkenness or actions directly related to (23x).

Finally, I noted whether the issue was alcohol itself or misuse thereof (“Misuse” this was notated with a “0” for “no” and a “1” for “yes”). This assumed that is was possible to use alcohol properly, but given that God himself directed its use (such as with his sacrifice), that seemed a safe assumption.

Conclusions

In order to get a true sense of what the Bible thinks about alcohol itself, I decided I needed to remove the places where it was being used as an analogy for something else and the places where it is being misused (drunkenness, for instance is something the Bible clearly condemns; there is no need to research that). That left 135 references, which broke down thus:

• Clearly positive (2): 65x (48%)
• Neutral, but positive (1): 27x (20%)
• Neutral (0): 21x (16%)
• Neutral, but negative (-1): 18x (13%)
• Clearly negative (-2): 4x (3%)

These results, as well as having studied all of these passages and the specific nature of the -1 and -2’s leads me to this conclusion: The Bible is overwhelmingly positive about alcohol when it is used as intended. Or as I say in my sermon:

“It is radically normal to view alcohol as a blessing when used to God’s glory but a curse when misused.”

Of course that leads to the question “How can we drink to God’s glory?” For that, I encourage you to listen to the sermon, or else wait for the book to come out!

 

In case you are interested, here is the Beer and Wine Study. If you don’t have Excel, you can download a viewer from Microsoft here. This is a rough draft so I apologize for the spelling and grammatical errors.

What the Bible REALLY says about joy

When I finally decided to stop talking about it and actually start writing my book The Radically Normal Christian, my first step was conducting an extensive study on the word “joy” and words like it throughout the Bible.

As I looked at the total context of how the Bible (and hence God) views joy, my own thoughts and opinions were reshaped – I was pushed to emphasize earthly joy more (not less) in light of what the Bible teaches. So while I’ll only site this study a handful of times in the final project, it forms the basis my book and makes it what it is. I think this study is one of the things that gives this book such a unique perspective.[1] To my knowledge, no other study like this was been publicized.

The Study Itself

Regarding my methodology: I basically used Bibleworks to create a search of every synonym of “joy” I could think of, working from the ESV translation but referencing to the original languages to help develop the word list.[2]

That gave me a list of 1,100 verses, from which I removed about 350 verses that did not seem to apply, taking the list down to 730 verses. This sifting was a challenge and I know that at several points the decision was arbitrary. The criterion was basically “does this verse seem to express some joyful type experience?”[3]

This sheer number of references to joy is itself very significant. By contrast, “love” in all of its forms occurs 650 times (without being filtered for irrelevant references). Grace and mercy about 350, right and righteous 900, just and justice 375, law and commandments 750 (all unfiltered). This alone tells us that happiness is a big deal to God, which makes the relatively small amount of attention it gets all the more glaring.[4]

From there was the simple, but time-consuming, process of notating each verse. I tracked the following information:

1. What was the Biblical stance toward the joy? I broke these down into four categories:

• C: Commanded (e.g. Lev. 23:40)
• N: Neutral/No comment (e.g. Gen. 31:27)
• NP: Not commanded, but treated as positive (Exo. 18:9)
• NN: Not forbidden, but treated as negative (e.g. Judges 16:23), or else it includes a negation “not enjoy” (e.g. Prov. 18:2)

2. Who is the subject? Who is the one rejoicing? This was divided into five groups:

• S: Individual, a specific person (e.g. Gen. 30:13)
• H: Humans (non-specific, typically Israel in the OT, but I work from the belief there is a carry over to us). This also used for an individual if it was a generic individual (e.g. Lev. 23:40)
• G: God (e.g. Deut. 30:9)
• W: Wicked people or a specific wicked person (e.g. Esther 5:9)
• N: Nature (e.g. 1 Chr. 16:33)

3. What caused the joy? What kind of joy was it? [5] This broke down into four categories:

• S: Spiritual joys, not things of this earth – in the end these are joy in God and the things of God (e.g. Ps. 2:11)
• E: Earthly joys, not manifestly spiritual (e.g. Ps. 104:15) [6]
• S/E: Dual joys, where it seems to be a mix of spiritual and earthly joy (e.g. Prov. 11:10 where the joy is both in righteousness but also the earthly happiness that comes from “no more bad guys”)
• W: Wickedness, people being happy doing bad stuff (e.g. Prov. 7:18)

Conclusions

This being done, I entered all of my findings into an Excel spreadsheet and then used Access to sort and evaluate the data. Here are some of the more notable findings:

• The total number of reference to joy is evenly spread throughout the Old and New Testament.[7]

• Most of the “approved” joy in the OT comes either partially or entirely from earthly things (58%).[8]

• In NT, that number drops to 5%.[9] This supports my theory that the OT emphasizes earthly realities and the NT spiritual ones.[10]

• Four-fifths of the time that God is seen as being joyful his joy is in earthly things, his creation. The vast majority of the 15 “S” joys are in righteousness or God’s character.^[11]

The most important conclusions, for the sake of my book, are that 1) Joy and happiness are really important to God, and 2) God fully expects and desires for us to enjoy both the things of this earth and the things of heaven, to delight in him and in his gifts, which is basically the point of my upcoming sermon, “Radically Normal V: Is God Your Only Joy?”

In case you are interested, here is the Excel version of my study. If you don’t have Excel, you can download a viewer from Microsoft here. This is a rough draft, filled with spelling and grammatical errors galore. Sorry for that, but I was not about to edit almost 750 entries!

You are welcome to share this study, though I would appreciate credit and a link back to this page. If you edit the file, please note that you have done so.

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[1] Let me qualify that – this study along with a hermeneutical approach that refuses to marginalize the Old Testament but treats it an equal companion to the New Testament. Without that approach, we could simply dismiss the most of what the Bible says of earthly joys by saying “That’s just in the OT” as David Platt (et al) basically does in “Radical” (p. 117 and footnotes).

[2] In case you are interested, here is the complete list (“*” represents a wildcard, allowing variations on that word to found): Joy*, Enjoy*, Happy/Happiness, Blessed, Glad*, Delight*, Rejoice*, Pleasure*, Exult*, Jubilant, Thrill*, Satisfy*

[3] Most problematic was “blessed/blessings” word group (barak in Hebrew) which typically means to bless or be blessed but sometimes implied happiness in light of the blessings. In the end, I kept the occurrences where humans (as opposed to God) were the receivers of the blessing and the use was basically synonymous with “happy is…” (cf. Ps 1:1).

[4] For instance, Girdlestone’s “Synonyms of the Old Testament” doesn’t even have a section on joy. Huh?!? On the other hand, let me add that John Piper (pulling from C. S. Lewis) brings joy back into the limelight with his “Christian Hedonism.”

[5] These designations were the trickiest. For instance, does salvation in the OT count as “spiritual” (as we would think of it)? Or as earthly since the original readers were typically thinking of being saved from their very literal enemies? I did my best to make assignments based upon the original context, not anachronistic readings. Obviously, these designations are also subjective – even now looking back through the list I am tempted to change some, but I know that once I start, I won’t want to stop, and this study is sufficient for its purpose.

[6] Arguably, all true joy makes its way back to God (in fact, I do argue that in my book), but for the purpose of this study it is far more useful to designate a given joy as earthly or spiritual.

[7] OT: 555; NT: 185; therefore the OT has 75% of the references and comprises roughly 77% of the Bible.

[8] OT: 357 times not “done” by God and either commanded or approved of (70% of such Biblical references)

E: 157 (44%)

S: 149 (42%)

S/E: 51 (14%)

[9] NT: 150 times not “done” by God and either commanded or approved of (30% of such Biblical references)

E: 8 (5%)

S: 142 (95%)

S/E: 0

[10] However, I strongly stand against any suggestion the NT “updates” the OT, as if God was cool with earthly joys during the OT era, but during the Intertestamental era he slaps his anthropomorphical forehead and said, “What was a I thinking?!? I need to tell them to stop with the earthly joys!” Rather, the OT and NT complement each other and we would be incomplete without either. See my post “Reading the New Testament but not the Old fosters a stoic, hyper-spiritual Christianity.”

[11] I bring this one up as an illustration of the shortcoming of systematic theology. In his book “The Pleasures of God,” John Piper says, “What I want to try to show in this chapter is that the happiness of God is first and foremost a happiness in his Son” (The Pleasures of God, p. 26) and then goes on to say that “We may conclude that the pleasure of God in his Son is pleasure in himself.” (p. 42). In other words, God greatest joy is in himself. Is this true? Perhaps. But since the Bible doesn’t express itself that way, we should be reluctant to do so. This, in my mind, demonstrates the necessary evil of systematic theology: it attempts to answer questions the Bible doesn’t ask with language that the Bible doesn’t use and hence creates emphases foreign to the Bible. I fully believe that systematic theology is vital, but it must be used with care.

Reading the New Testament but not the Old fosters a stoic, hyper-spiritual Christianity

My upcoming book, “The Radically Normal Christian” is driven by a very radical premise: The Old Testament is as much the Bible as is the New Testament.

Actually, that’s not so radical – it’s is basic, orthodox Christianity.

But Christians act as if the OT is not really the Bible. We treat the OT like the preface to the Bible. You know, that part that no one reads and doesn’t even get real page numbers. But to Peter, Paul, James, and the guys who wrote the NT, the OT was their Bible. If you asked them, they would say the OT was the Bible and their writings were the appendices added to the end to explain some pretty important implication of God becoming a man a dying and raising from the dead.

Christians have a long history have having a hard time understanding the OT and ignoring it:

• Marcion removed it from the Bible.
• Many say that it is all the old covenant and we are now under the new covenant.
• Others say that the purpose of the OT was to simply to prepare us for Christ and the NT.
• Most people just ignore it, except for the stories and one-liners that we like.

But none of this matches how Jesus and the Apostles treat the OT. They quote from it, base their lives and theology on it. Jesus himself says:

 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5:17-19 NIV

Yes, “they” say, but he did accomplish it, so now it is abolished. But even a basic understanding of the OT demonstrates that not everything was accomplished. Pieces of it were accomplished and removed, such as dividing line between Jews and Gentiles (hence the removal of circumcision and kosher laws that divided us). Furthermore, the Apostles didn’t think the OT was abolished. It’s very telling that the Epistles almost never quote Jesus, but they quote extensively from the OT.

This whole idea that the OT is equally authoritative and applicable to us is very important for many reasons, but here is one thought that I hope will forever changes how you read the Bible: Because NT wasn’t written to replace the OT but to add to it, the NT author wrote assuming that you would also read the OT. The NT authors were silent on many topics because they assumed you would read the OT and there was no need to repeat:

• They barely talk about parenting because it is in the OT.
• Little positive instruction is given on sex, it’s in the OT.
• They say very little about work and ambition, it’s in the OT.
• There’s very little about day to day life, it’s in the OT.

One of the biggest difference between the OT and NT is the OT tends to emphasize earthly, temporal realities and the NT the spiritual, eternal realities (see my post “What the Bible REALLY Says about Joy” for an interesting case in point). It is very telling of God’s perspective of earthly life and heavenly life that he included both in the Bible. Separate from each other, they are both out of balance; together they give us a complete picture. The authors of the NT could emphasis the spiritual side because they knew the OT would balance them out. Little did they know we would stop reading it!

Can you see how important it is for us read, study, understand, and apply the OT as well as the NT? A Christianity that is weak on the OT will be too concerned about the spiritual and not concerned enough with the earthly. A NT-only Christianity is a weak, stoic, hyper-spiritual faith that is too focused on the eternal and not focused enough on the here-and-now.

That is a radical statement, but I stand by it.

Is the OT harder to read than the NT? Yes, I freely admit that, but it is well worth the effort.

I would encourage you to spend time in Proverbs and Psalms to begin with (follow the links for introductory sermons on both those books). Or read Genesis and learn lesson from both the failures and successes of the patriarchs, and enjoy the gritty earthiness of the stories. Or read Leviticus and enjoy the drama of God’s relationship with Israel (I think that was a particularly interesting sermon on the subject). I would also recommend that you use a good study Bible (the Zondervan NIV Study Bible and The ESV Study Bible are my favorites) to help you understand some of the tricky parts.

But whatever you do, read the Old Testament and the New Testament.

(This post is revised from my sermon “The Radically Normal Christian, II: Work, Ministry, and the OT” in which I use the OT to show the nobility of hard work and how it fulfills the our first “Great Commission.”)

Stoic or Indulgent?

I have just posted my first sermon in the “Radically Normal Christian” series: Stoic or Indulgent?

Are you a Stoic or Indulgent Christian? Check it out!

I would love your input!

About my upcoming book, “The Radically Normal Christian: God Shouldn’t Be Your Only Happiness”

Growing up in the church, many of us had an impression that if we were really spiritual, we would be perfectly happy celebrating Christmas simply reading the Nativity story in an undecorated room – no tree, gifts, or special dinner (shouldn’t that money be given to the poor anyway?). [1]

This is unmitigated nonsense. It’s driven by (among other things) an appalling ignorance of the normal, godly life promoted in the Old Testament. In this book I attempt to correct the modern (and by modern, I mean “for the past 1,800 years”) Christian tendency to undervalue the things of this life and the happiness God planned for us to enjoy here. At the same time, I remind us that God is the source of joy and any attempt to find complete happiness here will ultimately be unsatisfying.

I talk about being “radically normal” because, speaking broadly, Christians can be divided into two groups, Stoic Christians and Indulgent Christians:

Indulgent Christian tend to appear worldly, caring more about being happy now than pleasing God.

Stoic Christians tend to appear very spiritual, placing their emphasis on God, heaven, and spiritual happiness.

Indulgent Christians look very normal to the rest of the world.

Stoic Christians look very radical and for that reason Indulgent Christians tend to idealize them, even though they don’t have any real intentions of being one of them.

The difference between Stoic and Indulgent and between Radical and Normal largely comes down to the question, “What makes you happy?” Is your happiness in eternal things or temporary things? But that is not an either/or question; neither Stoic nor Indulgent Christianity is Biblical.

Without realizing it, we have allowed our ideas of mature Christianity to be more influenced by Greek philosophy than Biblical perspectives.[2] For instance, the church began to devalue sex early on; it was just so physical, too close to ungodly lusts. By the 4^th century, St. Augustine spoke highly of married couples who practiced abstinence within marriage (“True love waits, and waits, and waits…”). Believe it or not, the medieval church basically said it was okay to have sex with your wife, but not okay to want to have sex with her.[3]

We scoff at this view of sex, and rightly so, because all of that is clearly unbiblical: Compare it to the Song of Solomon which unashamedly delights in sexual desire. Fortunately, the modern church is correcting its low view of sex. But here is the question of the hour: What other God-given earthly joys do we still undervalue or even forbid?  A good meal? A glass of wine? A competitive football game? A relaxing vacation?

I don’t want us to adopt the indulgent values of our world, nor do I want us to be so stoic that we can’t enjoy God’s good gifts nor relate to the world around us. Instead, I believe the Bible calls us to be Radically Normal. We look normal, yet scratch below the surface and we are radical:

We enjoy possessions and the things of this life, yet they do not posses us.

Food and drink bring real joy, yet we don’t use them to fill a void.

We excel at our jobs and are ambitious, yet they are not our identity.

Our family and friends are central parts of our life, yet they stand in distant second to our loyalty to God.

Ever the preacher at heart, my book won’t float in the theological stratosphere, it is deeply practical. The core of the book is five key principles which I explore in the context of the everyday things of life (such as owning stuff, being weird for Jesus, our entertainment, and having a “secular” job). The principles are:

1. God wants us to be (mostly) normal.
2. The Old Testament tends to addresses temporal, earthly things and the New Testament eternal, spiritual things. If we don’t read them both, our faith will be unbalanced.
3. God wants us to enjoy this life as much as possible without being distracted from him and the next life.
4. God’s commands are meant to lead to joy, not misery.
5. This world is temporary but not meaningless. God will renew creation, not destroy it, so what we do here matters.

It is my hope that when my book is completed, it will profoundly change how you look at this life and the next, and that you will be left deeply enjoying both more. In the end, The Radically Normal Christian will be a guide to deep and lasting happiness.

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[1] Granted I’ve never heard this taught by anyone per se, yet whenever I give this example I see many knowing nods. Why? Because we were taught that the more spiritual and less materialistic Christmas was, the better. This is true, to an extent, but we were never given a “cap.” When was Christmas spiritual enough? It must be (I reasoned) when all unspiritual things were removed.

[2] We don’t realize how deeply our faith has been influenced by the Early Church Fathers, for good and bad. The Fathers were in turn deeply influenced by Greek philosophy, specifically Neo-Platonism. In contrast with the profound earthiness of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, Neo-Platonism devalued this world as a shadow and overemphasized the next as real.

[3] Case-in-point: In the Canterbury Tales, the pious wife all but apologizes for having sex with her husband, but the adulterous couple has a great time. If you want some light bedtime reading, the Word Biblical Commentary’s “Song of Songs” edition has some great material on the church’s view of sex up until the modern era.

The Greatly Misnamed “Read a Book a Week” Project: Onward

The time constraints of being a bi-vocational pastor have pretty much eliminated my goal of reading a book every week, but I am still reading quite a bit, so as I read something worth sharing, I will try to post it here. 

Title: Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul

Author: Howard Schultz

Category: Leadership

Rating (out of 5): 4 (Very useful) Re-Read: Yes

I got a free copy of this book when I became a Starbuck’s partner (i.e. employee), which was nice because I was already considering purchasing it.

To begin with, Onward is simply an interesting story. Starbucks founder Howard Schultz stepped down as CEO when the company was on top. But as the recession hit, Starbucks found itself in deep trouble — expanding too fast and losing sight of its vision even as the “$4 coffee” became the symbol of excess. Schultz steps backup as CEO desperately hoping it it not too late to save Starbucks.

Along the way, he has many leadership lessons to share, including the dangers of success, which tends to hide the cracks in the foundation. Well worth reading!