Soulprint is all about finding your unique identity in God. At the beginning he says that we make mistakes in trying to be other people, and we may never actually find out what we were created to do.

I love the main point of the book… the message is absolutely necessary. It’s just so chock-full of semi-unique cliches that there are times that I can’t handle reading it. And I feel bad saying that because I really like Batterson, but that’s just my own personal reading style.

He also makes a point about having character and integrity..something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. He basically says that to truly understand who you are in Jesus, you first need to have the character of someone who follows Jesus. Building integrity is the first thing on the list of finding your divine calling.

Great message, not-so-great writing — in my humble opinion.

When I got his book, I stared wearily at the subtitle, “Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality”. I thought to myself, “What a liberal hippie…”. Turns out I couldn’t be more wrong. This book falls into a slim category of books that are most influential in my life. The common thread among these books is that they deal with one main theme: how awesome and how central Jesus is.

I’ve had enough of church growth and in-depth theology to get the gist of it, but I never get tired of books like Mere Churchianity that simply discuss the importance of putting Christ at the center. He goes through and tells us the basics of Jesus — those things that we can know for certain and take to the bank. He lists about four or five things that should shape Christians, but what stuck out most was the section on discipleship.

Spencer makes the point that Jesus was always in the process of making disciples. So our questions about being a Christian should focus on that… What is the process of discipleship? How does a disciple live? Those are to be life-shaping questions that we spend serious time searching out answers for.

Spencer is NOT some kind of liberal hippie, as I’m sure a lot of Christians will sadly label him, even posthumously. He desperately loves Jesus and wants the church to portray an accurate picture of him…not a an image born of rule-based religion. He is also unafraid of calling out those that lead people astray of the real Jesus. If we could all have an attitude a little more like the Internet Monk’s, we might all be better off.

The Next Christians started out just a little pessimistic for me.. He carries a quite negative view about Christianity right now — although I would mostly agree with his take. It’s a portrait of the church that I’ve seen before among younger people.

The second part is what really caught my interest. It was quite similar actually to another book I’ve read called Younger Evangelicals by Robert Weber. It is essentially a sociological look at what Christians will look like for the next few decades. For people like me (twenty-somethings) these characteristics are relatively easy to spot. I can this book being quite useful however for church leaders that may be ready to start handing off the baton to us young whipper snappers.

Lyons discusses our generation as being creative, communal and counter-cultural. (Is it a coincidence these are all “C” words? Probably not…) My question for the author is what are the next steps? Awareness is absolutely the first step to anything, but what next? Will our mode of church change? Will the way we do social justice change? What about the Christians who don’t fall into these categories? There are certainly Christians who will retain the characteristics of past generations… I dare say they might even comprise the majority of Christendom in America. Lyons may well be speaking to a very particular brand of Jesus followers.

What do you think?

• For some reason, this dude thought it was necessary to steal 40,000 hotel coat hangers. Yeah, you read that right.
• Does language and vocabulary influence culture? Wall Street Journal with the article.
• Extremely thought provoking public art. I’ve read a lot about military suicide lately…
• Think the U.S.-Mexico border is a dangerous place to be? Think again.
• I live in the farm-heavy Midwest so this NPR article about the difficulties of making a living as a farmer caught my attention.
• There was a really awful chemical spill in Hungary this week. It’s flooding towns and killing people. Absolutely Horrific. Here’s a photo gallery as well. The red stuff is toxic chemicals. Think about that for a second and pray for Hungary.

That’s all I got this week. Enjoy your weekend!

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As a Christan, the question “Why?” does not go away. Why did they have an affair? Why was I raped? Why did (insert family member) die? Why did she break up with me? Why was I fired? In that sense, we are no different than non-Christians. God never promises to answer the why question, and in fact it probably won’t be answered. Not until we meet Jesus, anyway. So what sets us apart? What makes our God different the every other god out there? Where is my Jesus in the process of pain?

The simple beauty is that God meets us in those places. And only He can truly restore us. We foolishly turn, however, to everything else we can think of…
Affirmation.
Alcohol.
Sex.
Television.
Our spouse.
Our friends.
Basically any distraction we can think of. But in the end those things don’t restore do they? In our hearts we know that. All they do is push our hurts deeper into the darkness. Those things will resurface. They will pop up at inconvenient times and force you to go where you should have gone all along.

It is in getting on our knees and admitting that we don’t know a damned thing and letting the Creator of the Universe into our hearts that He will then begin to restore us.

It is like a very powerful storm that is dissipating. It’s a slow process that does not happen instantly. First the clouds on the edges will wisp away, and the center will go from black to gray. And the process repeats itself. The fringes slowly dissolve as the core becomes lighter and lighter, until finally, after much destruction, the sun shines brilliantly forth onto humanity.

Those other distraction only serve to fester the storm, like fuel to a fire, making the final clearing process that much harder and longer.

Let us no longer worry about finding answers that won’t come. Let us instead ask simply for God’s presence… His
Beautiful,
Comforting,
Healing
Presence.

Amen.

Here’s what I’ve been reading this week:

• Walmart stores are going local and getting smaller
• Auto-tuned news stories is my new favorite thing. This one has made me laugh at loud multiple times this week.
• Interesting article from CNN about children of divorce.
• Haiti still needs lots of help. People just don’t have anywhere to live.
• Here’s a poignant article from Chris Brogan about silence and productivity.
• 20 mustaches that changed history. Awesome.
• Great post on the lost art of conversation from one of my favorite blogs.
• A short little report on obesity in America from Time Magazine.

Disclaimer: I received this book for free as part of Thomas Nelson’s BookSneeze program. I am in no way obligated to give a positive review.

Beyond Opinion, by famed Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias is a collection of essays dealing with how to defend Christianity based on what are perceived as the major threats to the religion. Post-modernisn, Islam, Eastern religions, science and rascal youngsters are just a few of them. I really respect many of the essayists, especially Alison Thomas (I’ve heard her speak before) and Alister McGrath (this guy is a stud theologian).

Having said that, I do not care much for the book. It is incredibly heavy and academic, which I often enjoy, however I’ve never been all that interested in studying apologetics. My favorite parts of the book are actually in the introduction, which Zacharias writes, and gives an overview of how Christians should use apologetics, and more importantly live it out. He basically states that these defenses he presents are worthless if they are not embodied first.

I see the place for studying apologetics in the church. I’m just not one who is all that interested in being that person. There are certainly some basics people should know about how to talk about Christianity in rational and logical terms, but that’s not fundamentally what our faith is about. If people have those kinds of intellectual issues with the religion, simply appeasing their desire to argue and debate will not have much of an effect.

The book almost serves better as a primer of world religions and beliefs from a Christian perspective rather than providing concrete answers to the questions people have about the faith. If you are someone who is interested in apologetics, this is a book for you. I will keep probably actually keep it on my shelf as a reference tool should the need arise when I’m writing New York Times bestsellers in the future.

Other books by Zacharias: Jesus Among Other Gods, The End of Reason

Famed historian Stephen Ambrose is best known for writing Band of Brothers, which more famously became the HBO miniseries. I read one of his books two summers ago and enjoyed it enough to read some more of his work. I have recently had an interest in reading about history, and the story of Lewis and Clark has intrigued me for quite a while now. Surprisingly, there aren’t many books about the pair, and Ambrose’s seemed the most accessible for a non-scholar such as myself. I picked it up at the local library and went to work.

Getting started was a little daunting (no pun intended with the title). The book was thick and the words were small. The only saving grace was the short-ish chapters. It is certainly interesting though. It turns out to be a biography of Meriwether Lewis rather than simply a look at the Lewis and Clark expedition. This means you get a few chapters of his early life before you even get started with their epic trek west. It is slightly boring, but gives you the necessary context for the kind of person Lewis was (a bit crazy, after reading the book) and how he ended up captaining the journey.

As already mentioned, it’s a bit of a bear to get through. I must confess, I did not finish the book. I finished the expedition, but there’s another few chapters beyond that that I just couldn’t get myself to read. What makes it difficult is that Ambrose uses A LOT of direct quotes from the journals of Lewis and Clark. This part is wonderful in itself, and makes it much more authentic. For some reason, however, Ambrose does not translate them into modern English so we’re left with unintelligible spelling errors and Olde English. The result is not fun.

Having said that, the book is rather interesting. That is probably because the facts and story of the expedition are simply astounding. The things they encountered, often as the first white men to do so, are crazy, to say the least. That much itself will make you want to keep reading, even if you have to make yourself, as I often did. I have a natural interest in history, so I was able to do so. Those with no desire to learn about American history will not likely enjoy this book or have the desire to work though it. I do not judge you one bit. Perhaps Ambrose should stick to the war narratives we are used to from him. 

Other Books by Ambrose: Band of Brothers, Wild Blue, Citizen Soldiers

I’m assuming most of you have heard of this book, even if you don’t realize it. The Broadway musical has made it more famous than the book itself, but it was actually published 15 years ago, which seems ancient to my 22-year-old self. It basically takes our beloved tale, The Wizard of Oz, and flips it on it’s head to create a adult version which features philosophy about good and evil, racism, rights for minorities and somewhat too-frequent sexual episodes.

We are all familiar the Wicked Witch of the West, but we don’t know her background. Gregory Maguire attempts to fill us in. She is actually just a green-skinned girl named Elphaba who had an adulterous mother a preaching father in the land of Oz and a disabled sister to take care of. She was an educated woman, with a fierce passion for animal rights that basically dictated the flow of her life.

We don’t encounter Dorothy, Toto, Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion until the last few chapters, and honestly, they don’t really even feel all that relevant to the story. I may have even preferred those parts skipped over. It seems that Maguire inserts them in simply to tie back to the traditional story we grew up with.

The best parts of the book deal with an underlying issue of the origins of good and evil.Yes, I seek out a good plot in a book, but what makes it great is when it can force you to think about culture and society in fresh ways. It will, at times, make you rethink the very definition of good and evil and almost more importantly, how they are labeled.

How poor little Elphaba acquired the title Wicked Witch of the West will be up to you to find out.

P.S. This book is just part 1 of the 3-part Wicked Years series. I may at some point read them, but they’re not first on my list. If any you have read them, feel free to let us know how they are in the comments!

Other Books by Maguire: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Mirror, Mirror