Irony at 37th and Powelton

Practice what you preach, Philadelphia!

I don't have many artistic gifts, but from time to time I conceive of projects I would create if I did possess such gifts.

One project, for example, would be a better version of the above photo, more clearly highlighting the irony.

Which brings up another point. Philadelphia's roads are in terrible condition:

• The above intersection has been that way for weeks.
  
• I can think of at least three intersections where the stoplights at times don't work properly.
  
• It's not unusual to find sections of road blocked off because of giant potholes or ditches.
  
• When it snowed two weeks ago, it seemed the roads weren't treated at all. My car almost got stuck going down Chestnut St. Roads across the Ben Franklin in New Jersey were completely clear.

I can only conclude that the road condition highlights the desperate condition of our city's finances.

A book I'm reading now puts the current crisis in perspective. It's called "A Prayer for the City," and it's about Ed Rendell's first term as mayor of Philadelphia from 1992-1995. I've been amazed at how worse off Philadelphia was then. However, I've been struck by how similar the city's plight seems now.

For instance, Rendell's big challenge upon taking office was dealing with Philadelphia's unprecedented budget deficit. Mayor Nutter's has been the same.

It remains to be seen whether or not the roads were in similarly bad shape then.

Book Reviews: First Two Thirds 2008

My friend leighcia reads a lot of books. She posts reviews on her lovely blog every three months or so.

I read some books. I'll also try my hand at reviewing.

Not aware of, let alone feeling an irresistible urge to justify, the theses implicit in star ratings,* I'll use leighcia's scale, which I believe comes from goodreads:

* Didn't like it.
** It was okay.
*** I liked it.
**** I really liked it.
***** It was amazing.

On to the books:

Fiction

***** White Noise (Don DeLillo)
I read this book straight through without any prior knowledge of it except the title and that several friends loved it. So, after reaching the end, I was shocked to discover that it was published in 1985, the year I was born. The terrifying yet ordinary life which DeLillo depicts in this novel felt as true today as then.

Matthew's comment here (where I also rave) describes this book better than I could:

Don DeLillo is one of the few contemporary novelists good enough to have that paradigm-transference effect. He's an alchemist of the mundane --- but not in a mundane-becomes-sublime/exalted kind of way (which is how most postmodern creative people see themselves, because they don't believe in anything that's ACTUALLY sublime). Rather, in his work the mundane becomes ominous, forboding, paranoia-inducing (the supermarket scene!!!). I love that. It's the closest thing to fables or cautionary tales that the postmodern world has produced. Beware aimless floating on the sea of radio and television signals...

*** One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez)
Again at the behest of my friends, and again knowing nothing but the title and some loose idea that this was "magical realism," I read this apparently semi-allegorical novel about seven generations of the Buendía family in a miscellaneous Latin American town called Macondo. Márquez's writing knocked my socks off, especially in his interweaving of the magical with the real. However, without spoiling too much, I think the book could have as easily been titled One Hundred Years of Futility, and that made it less pleasant to get through. I also could have probably benefited from some more background.

Non-Fiction
**** The Omnivore's Dilemma (Michael Pollan)
To be fully honest, I only read the first three sections of this book, and not the final one about foraging.

Pollan gives a great overview of the American food system, in particular showcasing how industrial of an industry it is. While the book is most famous for its meditations on corn, the section on the grass farm was most fascinating to me. It describes a Virginia farmer who, through active management of livestock placement, exploits the full web of an ecosystem you might have learned about in biology class. His land is acre for acre more productive than the industrial standard, and comes off as far more in line with natural design and common sense. Descriptions of the FDA's forced establishment of the industrial standard were enlightening and infuriating.

***** Knowing God (J.I. Packer)
Every Christian should read this book.

*** Being White (Paula Harris & Doug Schaupp)
A book by white Christians for white Christians, this one seeks to exhort and encourage its readers to discover and realize the Gospel's vision for ethnic reconciliation. The book does well by insisting color-blindness isn't enough, that experiences displaced from majority culture are essential, and that white identity can be redeemed. For me, the section on racism was particularly challenging and deep-digging.

**** Shakespeare: The World As Stage (Bill Bryson)
I never really appreciated Shakespeare. Since I seemed to be the only one, and since Bill Bryson is one of my favorite authors, I decided to give this one a try. It was fantastic. Bryson is very funny and has a talent for taking simple facts and rendering them into a coherent, pointed picture. He draws inferences at once obvious and easily overlooked. The book is less a biography of Shakespeare than it is a book about how little we actually know about Shakespeare, and how much speculation has attempted to fill the gap. It developed in me an appreciation for the man's genius, and thoroughly laid to rest any silly claims that Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare, or didn't exist, or whatnot.

I saw a performance of As You Like It for free last Sunday in Clark Park and enjoyed it thoroughly, in no small part thanks to this book.

***** Getting a Grip on Your Money (William C. Wood)
Practically speaking, the best book I have ever read that wasn't written by God. Just having graduated college and without the foggiest idea what to do with my finances, I feel this book told me all I need to know to manage my money wisely and shrewdly for life. Wood is an economist with a long history of helping people with their money. He lays all of his cards on the table, even maintaining a web site to keep the advice current. The goal everywhere is eliminating worry rather than blind accumulation of wealth. Every page drips wisdom that is centered on common sense, an acute knowledge of human nature, and the Gospel.

Buy it on Amazon for the best $2 you've ever spent.

--
Average rating: four stars. Not bad.

*Read the comments here to see what I'm talking about.

Even a Few

In need of hope.

I'm reading a great book about the role of Christians in the city. Author Ray Bakke, raised in rural post-World War II Washington state, became the reluctant pastor of a congregation of hundreds at the age of 23. In the 1960's he moved to Chicago, an explosive place at an explosive time, and remained there for the next 30 years.

In a chapter entitled "Can We Save a City Like Sodom?" Bakke discusses the transformational power of even a few Christians living in and for a city, as well as the widespread withdrawal of Christians from cities in the second half of the twentieth century.

Bakke writes:

When I became a pastor in Chicago [in 1965], my first community service was the funeral of the neighboring pastor and wife two blocks down the street from the church. They had been stabbed to death during the night in what is still an unsolved crime. One of their three preschool children stopped the postman at the door the following morning and plaintively asked, "Can you wake up my daddy?" As I described the situation to my mother later that week, she asked - doubtless thinking of my own little boys - "How long are you going to stay in Chicago?"

I replied, "As long as I can count on other believers here. If I can't, I'll run far and fast."

From Ray Bakke, "A Theology As Big As the City" (1997), pg. 41

When a 23-year-old aspiring teacher was murdered in Philly recently, my mom asked me if I really wanted to live in Philadelphia. I told her that if everyone who was able to leave the city were to do so, things would be even worse for those who couldn't get out.

Bakke believes that the welfare of a city is contingent on the presence of God's people within it. Indeed, he notes Jesus calls his followers salt (a preservative) and light (exposing, eliminating darkness). Genesis teaches us that Sodom* could have been spared by the presence of ten of God's followers (18:22-33). Indeed, in Jeremiah we learn that Jerusalem could have been saved by even one seeker of the truth (5:1).

So I think Bakke is onto something. If God is who the Bible says he is, cities desperately need His people, any of His people, to live in and for them, to death if necessary. And those who do so must unite in their purpose, or all will be adrift.

These principles are the those that lead me to seek employment in Philadelphia now that I have graduated. It's time to put my money where my mouth is.


On a final note, contrast the importance of this call with the widespread response of the church when things have gotten rough in the cities:

I don't need to tell American Christians that we live in a day of large-scale Christian withdrawal from large sections of our cities. The people running away from Los Angeles are bumping into the people running away from Chicago, somewhere in Colorado's pristine mountains, or so it seems at times. The results: social gaps grow, God is furious, and our nation is at risk (44).

We have a history of flight and failure, not to atone for (for Jesus has done that), but to learn from. Let us boldly approach the throne of grace and find our Lord's heart for his city:

Can we save a city like Sodom? Of course we can, and we must. Thankfully the preserving effect of a few righteous people is much more widespread than we might think (46).

"For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be removed and be cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says."
Mark 11:23

*It is a common misconception that God destroyed Sodom primarily because of sexual immorality in the city. Ezekiel 16:48-50 reveals that the primary reason God destroyed it was that though the people of the city were economically prosperous, they did not help the poor and needy. Is there any city today in which this neglect is not widespread?

E-mail to Penn InterVarsity, 5/31/08

The visual representation of an abstract concept! Ahhhh!

Subject: Summer Reading

Hello friends,

I write to you this afternoon from my porch in southeastern Pennsylvania. Thunderstorms from earlier have rolled away and it's fresh and cool and pretty out.

You may have heard us at various times in the previous year prattle on about the importance of community. You may not have quite understood what the big deal was. It seems a simple concept, and our emphasis on it may not seem very profound. After all, don't we all live in community? Our school is in the city, and most of us further live in communities within College Houses.

The truth is that while community is a really simple idea, when it functions it has profound power to transform those who live in it. Community is not just an agglomeration of people; it's what occurs when those people take on a collective identity and life together. In real sense they become part of one another and their web of interactions changes all who are involved.

"Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another." - Proverbs 27:17

That might sound a tad on the creepy side to you. I think twinges of creepiness come from examples we've seen where acquiring a collective identity has meant relinquishing an individual one. We've seen streams of Nazis marching in lockstep. Communist propaganda seems to advocate this relinquishment. And there's always the Borg Collective from Star Trek.

But the paradox of Christian community is that individuals lose none of their individuality in joining it. On the contrary, as we collectively acquire more of an identity together, our individual identities are actually enhanced. We become more ourselves.

This is the mystery that we are talking about when we encourage community. It's something that must be experienced to be fully understood, but take my word for it when I say it's a marvelous thing indeed.

"If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. " - 1 Corinthians 12:26-27
(Read all of 1 Corinthians 12:4-27 for all of the classical Biblical passage on community.)

I write this to all of you today to invite you into a facet of our community that you can participate in even over the summer. I'm of course talking about - blogging!

Blogging is something I'm passionate about. A group of blogs can provide many of the same functions as an in-person community, and in some cases they do an even better job.

Blogs can be incubators of discourse. They allow people to present ideas in a format often better thought out and more communicative than in-person discussion. Comments sections and other blogs allow people to respond and have conversation.

Posters and readers alike learn and develop ideas significantly faster than is often possible in person. The result? We learn more about who we are, who we'd like to be, and what we want to do in the world. Iron sharpens iron.

Now, our in-person community of InterVarsity also has a collection of blogs associated with some of its members. As is also evident when we come together in person, they display the wonderful variety in individual identity that God has given each of us.

As I said, these blogs provide a vibrant opportunity for growth in community even now over the summer. I've included a directory and short description of many of these blogs.

And if this is the sort of thing you're interested in, I encourage you to join in on the fun. Don't let any feeling that you don't have value to contribute stop you - as with our fellowship at large, I'm certain that is not the case.

"To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." 1 Corinthians 12:7

Yours,
Nick

[Note: Here's another e-mail that I could have made into a post but was just easier to leave as-is.]

E-mail to Bill Grassel, 1/1/2008

Bill.

Subject: White Noise

Hey Bill,

I just finished White Noise. Great book! You can recommend reading or movies to me anytime.

As my latest attempt to integrate reading into life as a student, the book was somewhat of a failure. I got through most of the first part laboriously, a couple of chapters at a time, in the weeks after you gave it to me. I read "The Airborne Toxic Event" over Thanksgiving and "Dylarama" in the last two days, fitting with my previous pattern of binge reading over vacations.

Looking back, I'm not sure which part of the book I liked the most. It was more the consistent voice and themes across the three parts that I loved. I was somewhat detached from all of the discussion of death in the final part, since thanks to Jesus I need not fear death (though I think I fear dying...it's easier not to fear death when it does not appear to be imminent).

I read the final 100 pages today, so that's what's freshest on my mind, but there were a couple of things in it that really stuck out to me. The protagonist's long walk with Murray and their dialogue about death, and how it is wholly unnatural and wholly bad and not apparently necessary, was a blast to read. I also loved the faithless nuns, who just say "Do you think we are stupid?" to questions of belief, and the dialogue about how nonbelievers need believers. "They are sure that they are right not to believe but they know belief must not fade completely." It's so true.

Ah, the notion that postmodern life obliterates any question of God or the supernatural. Do you think it's a recent thing? I think on one hand there have always been atrocities and great suffering that challenge an all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful God. On the other hand, I think the current flavor of materialism or naturalism or whatever you want to call it is relatively new. The wholesale and universal acceptance of Darwinism as the explanation for our existence and the larger illusion (and illusion it is!) that science disproves anything that is unseen and not governed by the four fundamental forces of physics is prevalent and quite poisonous to belief.

But you know and I know that everyone knows God to some degree, and people reject Him fundamentally not because they have insufficient evidence but because they want to be their own bosses. However, I think the climate of the times gives people the excuse they are looking for not to pursue such questions seriously, as if they have been decided once and for all by great men of the twentieth century.

I went on a bike ride in the midst of my reading. I was struck as I noticed the way my mind would try to describe the things around me the way Don DeLillo would. Do you notice as you read for a long time that your thoughts afterwards are crafted to resemble the narrative style of the author?

What's really interesting about this pantomime to me is I noticed things that I would have never noticed otherwise, like the really faint flutter of a flock of birds overhead. Perception of everything is altered, as you interpret raw sensory data first through the lens of the author and second from your own in a reactionary way, weighing and testing what the author has to say about reality.

So when you read a book, the author is really handing you the set of goggles with which he or she views the world. If you're like me this effect wears off after a while, but like the stretching of dough it doesn't return to exactly the state in which it began. It's changed slightly but perceptibly, and over the course of many stretches the form is drastically changed.

So one ought to be careful about what one reads, because one's mind becomes like that of the authors whose works one beholds. This is how you become a Marxist, by holding up Marx's goggles to your eyes and saying, "This makes sense!"

Think then about reading the Bible. The authors in question are, on one level, great men who intimately knew God, and on another level, God Himself. By reading the Bible we put on the goggles of not just the author, but the Author, and our mind becomes like His as we learn to see His creation as He does. What a privilege, and what a desirable discipline!

I am a Christian, not principally because I seek to escape the terror of my death, but because I hold up Christ's goggles to my face, and everything makes sense. As C. S. Lewis said, "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

Happy New Year.

Love,
Nick

[Note: I've been thinking of making this e-mail into an essay for this page since writing it, but I found that it already articulated most of what I wanted to say. I have only barely edited the writing for this publication.]