Eat This Book: The Art of Spiritual Reading, Eugene Peterson, Eerdmans, 2006

Eugene Peterson, author of Eat This Book, believes that “by keeping company with the writers of Holy Scripture we are schooled in a practice of reading and writing that is infused…in awed reverence for the revelatory and transformative power of words…words intended to get inside us, to deal with our souls, to from a life that is congruent with the salvation that He has enacted and the community that He has gathered…Spirit sourced writing requires spiritual reading, a reading that honors words …as a basic means of forming an intricate web of relationships between God and the human, between all things visible and invisible…Reading then become holiness and love and wisdom” (pp. 3-4).  Peterson advocates Lectio Divina as the key to spiritual reading and describes spiritual reading from that perspective. He credits Barth, “at a time and in a culture in which the Bible had been embalmed and buried by a couple of generations of undertaker-scholars, with demonstrating the incredible vigor and energy radiating from the sentences and stories of this book.  He showed us how to read them” (p. 6).  From that approach to Scripture he also explains his own process and rationale in writing The Message.  For those who want to “rehydrate” a “dehydrated” (p.88) academic approach to the Bible, this is a good read.

                                                                        M.L. Codman-Wilson, Ph.D. 5/15/13

Some excerpts:

Eat This Book

“St. John (from Revelation) was pastor of marginal, politically, economically powerless Christians…His task was to keep their identity focused and their lives Spirit-filled, their discipleship ardent, their hope fresh against formidable odds – the living, speak, acting Jesus front and center in their lives…He wanted them to live, really live – outlive everyone around them (p.19).  His command from the angel was to “eat this book” – to digest the revelations of God so he could pass them on to his congregants (Rev. 10:9-10). “But John did get a severe case of indigestion. There are hard things in this book, hard things to hear, hard things to obey. There are words in this book that are difficult to digest…When we only try to systematize it to fit our own little theories or summarize what the Bible teaches, then we don’t have to read it anymore, don’t have to enter the story and immerse ourselves in the odd and unflattering and uncongenial way in which this story developed, including so many people and circumstances that have nothing to do, we think, with us” (pp. 64, 66).

As the canon of the Old and New Testament was decided on,  the “best minds of the church…established the authorial character of the Holy Scriptures as personal in the person of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Because it was personal, it was also relational, which meant that all reading/listening of Holy Spirit required personal, relational participatory reading/listening…This rich, alive, revealing God as experienced in Father Son and Holy Spirit personally address us in whatever circumstances we find ourselves, at whatever age we are, in whatever state we are (pp.27-28).  [Yet] “it is entirely possible to come to the Bible in total sincerity, responding to the intellectual challenge it gives or for the moral guidance it offers or for the spiritual uplift it provides and not in any way have to deal with a personally revealing God who has personal designs on you” (p.30).  Peterson decries “the replacement Trinity made up of my Holy Wants, my Holy Needs, my Holy Feelings…” The new text is the Holy Self, not the Holy Bible…Without God’s Word, firmly established at the authoritative center of our communal and personal lives, we will flounder. We will sink into a swamp of well-meaning but ineffectual men and women who are mired unmercifully in our needs and wants and feelings (pp. 32, 35).

“The text for Christian living and therefore for spiritual theology is set within the spacious contours of this Jesus-welcoming, Spirit-anchored, God-defined and Trinity framed contest is the Bible, our Holy Scriptures” (p. 40). “Spiritual theology, using Scripture as text, does not present us with a moral code and tell us ‘Live up to this.” Nor does it set out a system of doctrine and say ‘Think like this and you will live well.’ The Biblical way is to tell a story and in the telling invite: ‘live into this”…That story…broadly conceived is the story of following Jesus…That is the meta-narrative that embraces or can embrace all stories” (pp. 43, 46).

The need for proper exegesis

“As  we make our way through this story, finding our lives in this story, following Jesus, we find ourselves from time to time stopping or being stopped and paying attention to the details that make up the story…Exegesis is the discipline of attending to the text and listening to it rightly and well…Exegesis is focused attention, asking questions, sorting through possible meanings. Exegesis is vigorous disciplined intellectual work…There are verbs that must be accurately pursed, cities and valleys to be located on a map and long-forgotten customs to be comprehended…Exegesis is the care we give to getting the words right…These words given to us in our Scripture are constantly getting overlaid with personal preferences, cultural assumptions, sin distortion and ignorant guesses that pollute the text. It is useful for readers of the Bible to keep company with some of our master exegetes: the easiest way to do it is to use their commentaries…I relish in a commentary not for bare information but for conversation with knowledgeable and experienced friends, probing, observing, questioning the Bible text…Exegesis does not mean mastering the test; it means submitting to it as it is given to us” (pp.50, 52, 53, 54, 57).

Lectio Divina

“Liturgy is the means that the church uses to keep baptized Christians in living touch with the entire living holy community as it participates formationally in Holy Scripture…Liturgy prevents the narrative from of Scripture from being reduced to private individualized consumption.” (pp. 73, 75).  “Lectio Divina is the deliberate and intentional practice of making the transition from a kind of reading that treats and handles, however reverently, Jesus dead to a way of reading that frequent the company of friends who are listening to, accompanying and following Jesus alive…Lectio Divina is a way of life that develops according to the Scriptures…There is a sense in which the Scriptures are the Word of God dehydrated with all the originating context removed…Lectio Divina is the strenuous effort to rehydrate the scriptures...holding their original force and shape, maintaining their context long enough to get fused with or assimilated into our context” (pp. 85, 88-89).

“Lectio Divina comprises 4 elements: Lectio – we read the text; meditatio – we mediate the text; oratio – we pray the text; contemplatio – we live the text” (p. 91).  “Meditatio is the discipline we give to keeping the memory active in the act of reading. Mediation moves from looking at the words of the text to entering the world of the text…which is far larger and more real than our minds and experience…Mediation is the aspect of spiritual reading that trains us to read Scripture as a connecting, coherent whole, not a collection of inspired bits and pieces…Mediation is rumination – letting the images and stories of the entire revelation penetrate our understanding…Meditation discerns the connections and listen to the harmonies that come together in Jesus” (pp.99-102).

Oratio – is “prayer…as we respond, answer, converse, argue, question God” (p. 103).  Peterson advocates the Psalms “as the primary text for prayer” since they cover all the human experience and emotions. “We pray what we read” (pp. 104-105, 108).

            Contemplatio is more broadly defined than its stereotypical misunderstanding of quiet and seclusion; it is living what we read…living a life formed by God’s revealing word” (p. 113).

Language and Translation

“Aramaic was the official language of the Persian Empire (and as such pushed Israel’s Hebrew language to the sidelines). It served as the primary language of Jesus and his early followers…The translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, [however] is our first complete translation. Whereas in translation into Aramaic we have only bits and pieces,...the translation of the Scripture into Greek is complete – the entire Hebrew Bible – and then some...This Greek translation was the Bible for the first Christian church. The Septuagint translation was held in enormous respect and honor by the Jewish and later Christian community. They believed that the same Spirit of God at work in the writing of Scripture is also at work in the translating of Scripture…The discoveries of Greek fragments that describe daily life, using the same Greek that is in the  New Testament are irrefutable evidence that the language of our New Testament is primarily the language of the street…It was the [vernacular] language in which men and women were finding themselves addressed by the Holy Spirit in the thick of everyday life….Yet when the King James Translation put out a version of the Bible that became a literacy classic, they skillfully and thoroughly shifted the tone of the language from the roughness of Tyndale’s translation (‘that any 8 year old plowboy could understand) to the smooth speech of the royal court” (pp. 122, 126, 129, 151, 152, 163.)  Peterson laments that shift.

In describing how he was led to translate The Message, Peterson says “I had this truth-probing idea, a blaze of beauty, a passionate love” that turned my life inside out but the people in my church weren’t getting it” (p. 133). So he began to write Paul’s thinking in Greek in Galatians into “the ‘American’ that they spoke when they weren’t in church, the words and phrases they used when they were at work on the job, at home playing with their children, out of the street…all the time trying to preserve the sharp edge of Paul’s language in the vernacular” (p. 135).  He wrote The Message as a working pastor to connect the truth of God’s word with the everyday lives of his people.  J.B. Phillip’s Letter to Young Churches was what spoke most deeply to Peterson in this regard. “Phillips gave me a Bible I could read – and I read and read and read. He introduced me to the world of Scripture, not just its words; he immersed me in its marvelous sentences, helped me to feel the impact of the metaphors” (p.174).

“I am very conscious that I am in a vast company of translators – teachers in classrooms, pastors in pulpits, parents around the supper table, writers in languages all over the world, baptized Christians in workplace and social gathering past imagining – all of us at this same work, collaborating in translating the Word of God, reading and then living this text, eating this book and then getting these scriptures into whatever language is heard and spoken on the street on which we live” (p. 176).

The Message, as well as Eat This Book, is all about living the text as it is understood in people’s vernacular common-day language.

Unfinished, Richard Stearns, Nelson Books, 2013

Unfinished, is based on a powerful balanced exposition of the Great Commission and a call to the Church to spend its energies on this unfinished task given to it by Christ. The gospel Stearns advocates is balanced – with the call to proclamation of the message of salvation as well as the need to live that message in social action – caring for the poor, the hungry, the sick, the broken and afflicted in the world.  Stearn has strong chapters on God’s big story, the mission of God, the role of the Holy Spirit, the Body of Christ and the importance of spiritual warfare.  A must read in missions.
Richard Stearn’s book,

                        M.L. Codman-Wilson, Ph.D. 5/6/13

Some excerpts:

Churches in the Global North have lost the fire and zeal of the early church

“The first disciples were on fire…The gospel had implications they understood…But 2000 years later the Christian movement, especially in the Global North, has lost its sense of urgency…Christians today seem to have lost the fire to change the world…If we are not personally engaged in God’s great mission in the world, then we have missed the very thing He created us to do…God created you to play a key role in his story…- a love story: The story of Scripture is the story of a Father’s love for his children. It is the story of a Father faithfully reaching out to the children who rejected him. It is a story of a loving God who never gives up” (pp. xxi, 12, 24).

“Jesus left earth after his resurrection because there was something critical he intended for his disciples to do. There was some unfinished business for his church to take care of… If we are to build our lives on the foundation of God’s truth, we must learn to see the world as he sees it.  Should we not weep for what he weeps for and treasure what He treasures…We are to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (pp. 36, 45).

Stearns speaks of 3 kingdoms – The Magic Kingdom (epitomized in Disneyland but seen in our first world prosperous churches; “most Magic Kingdom Christians don’t know much about the Tragic Kingdom; in fact, they go out of their way to avoid it”), the Tragic Kingdom (where grinding poverty and suffering and injustice rule) and “God’s kingdom (where people live under God’s sovereignty and rule, where they are equal, where the attributes and values of integrity, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, faithful justice and love rule, where people are loved and valued equally…and where Christians are to invite others to join them...But “the passion and vision seems to have faded…The great mission given to us by Christ lies unfinished.” (pp. 50,49,51, 53, 54).

Deciders and Disciples

He also speaks of 2 kinds of so-called Christians – deciders and disciples.  “Disciples imitate their Master’s life. They seek to embrace their Master’s mission and serve their Master’s purposes…Deciders make  a faith decision in Christ so they have eternal life and their ticket to heaven…Deciders have their own plans for their lives and invite Jesus to bless them.  Jesus had some harsh things to say about deciders (Lk.4:46, Mt. 7:21-23)...Jesus did not say ‘Go and make deciders of all nations. That gospel lacks the power to change the world and win it for Christ…It is not enough for us simply to enlist [in God’s army]; we are called to join the battle…We are to submit to God’s rule in our lives…We lay every other priority in our lives at his feet – our ambitions, our careers, our relationships, our possessions, even our families must be laid at his feet to do with as he wishes…We are also to be part of a community of faith that is based on the foundation of God’s truth, governed by God’s principles, unified by God’s Spirit and committed to being God’s ambassadors in the world. We are called to populate heaven – to invite others into God’s kingdom.” (pp. 53,59, 60,69, 71, 73, 74.)

God’s GPS

“God’s GPS is to follow Christ, live as Jesus lived, love as Jesus loves and proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God as we are sent into the world as his ambassadors…God is at work in our world and He bids us to set our GPS to join Him…We have the great privilege of being the hands and feet of Christ in a hostile and hurting world…doing things that demonstrate that we are made in God’s image” (pp.110,111,115). 

“The Holy Spirit is the single enabling power that now makes it possible for ordinary human beings to be transformed and live differently than was ever before possible…God uses the Holy Spirit like a GPS as an inner voice, an inner compass that will provide the information we need to navigate successfully through our lives…To find God’s specific calling for your life in terms of his overall mission you first must commit to God’s agenda, put God’s priorities above our wills and replace our priorities with God’s priorities.” Then pray, prepare in the Word and in community, obey, act and trust God’s control (pp.121, 124, 134-141).

We are all like dominos.  “Most of the stories in the Bible illustrate the incredible impact of ordinary people willing to be used by God, setting off a chain reaction that had profound significance later…Whoever you are and wherever you are placed, know that you were placed there by the King to accomplish his good purpose (Phil.2:13)…God has called each of us to follow him and join him in his Kingdom missions, to play a role in the great story he is writing” (pp. 146, 157, 160).  God does this corporately through the church. 

The role of the Church

“The chief purpose of the church is to bring glory to God by accomplishing the Great Commission pronounced by Jesus…Make no mistake; God’s people have been called to a task and the church’s responsibility is to equip them for it. The church has been given the ministry of reconciliation and Christ has commissioned us as his ambassadors…To do this the church must adopt a revolutionary mind-set.  We are indeed to topple the prevailing regimes that have oppressed the human race since the fall” (pp. 163,165). Churches need to serve as Kingdom outposts through worship, modeling the new trust, new values, new practices of God, discipling people to become effective ambassadors for Christ in the world, mobilizing them to accomplish what we have been given to do and going and doing it (pp. 167-168).  The problem is that North American churches have become “anemic and weakened” (pp. 167,168,170).

There are 5 reasons:

1.      “A great concern for belief (right doctrine) over practice

2.      Replacing exhortation with explanation – pastors are more like spiritual cheerleaders than drill sergeants…

3.      Turning inward rather than outward –focusing on our needs rather than the needs of those outside the church…

4.      Allowing apathy to replace outrage. We no longer feel the heat of outrage against things that anger God…

5.        Promoting the institution over the revolution. We have gone from being fishers of men to becoming ‘keepers of the aquarium’” (pp. 170-175).

“Church needs to be a verb – the church in action…But there is an enemy…It is critical for the church to understand that it is, in fact, caught in the midst of a great cosmic struggle between God and Satan….The Great Commission is Jesus’ call to storm the gates of hell and to liberate His children…It requires us to wage war against the forces of evil. With Satan defeated at the cross and Christ now the head of his church, we can see the Great Commission as the battle orders given by the Supreme Commander to the forces under His command, the church, to go and finish the fight.” (pp.179, 182, 184, 196) .

“We go out into the world assaulting the gates of hell by loving our neighbors – even our enemies. We go to the broken and ragged places to comfort the afflicted and bind up the brokenhearted. We carry the message of new hope into our workplaces, schools and town halls. We bind up the wounds of abuse, exploitation, addiction and alienation with acts of forgiveness and healing…We see value in the worthless, find strength in the weak and anoint the downtrodden with significance. We are called to care for the widow, the orphan, the alien, the stranger – to lift up justice and fight economic disparity, to speak up for the voiceless and hold our governments accountable, to challenge racism and bigotry, to be generous with our money, to live lives of integrity.  We seek to right every wrong and bring every thought captive to obedience to Christ” (p.198).

Join God’s Kingdom revolution

“The Father’s great rescue mission is gaining momentum…He has written you into the story, located you carefully in time and place, equipped you with unique gifts and talents, empowered you with his mighty Spirit and bid you join his great Kingdom revolution. He has invited you. It’s time to RSVP…It’s a call to live as Jesus lived, to love what Jesus loves and treasure what Jesus treasures. It is a call to forsake all else and follow Him…In God’s expanding Kingdom there is no unimportant job and no unimportant person.  Every one of his spiritual dominoes is positioned to ignite a sprawling chain reaction that will echo through the years.  But that first domino must fall. Your domino must fall” (pp. 199-201, 215).

Teatime in Mogadishu: My Journey as a Peace Ambassador in the World of Islam, Ahmed Ali Haile, Herald Press, 2011

Teatime in Mogadishu, My Journey as a Peace Ambassador in the World of Islam, from his mother who “cherished the more pacific love of her people and communicated these values through her many parables and proverbs” (p.21).  But he “found that ultimately it was the gospel [of Jesus Christ] that could end the cycle of retribution as it was absorbed by Christ and his cross and the Holy Spirit who through the church reconciled people to God and to each other”. He says: “My call in writing this book for both Muslims and Christians includes a deep appreciation for my Muslim background and my family and bears witness that when I met Jesus and the church I came home…That is what this memoir is about…This memoir is an invitation to listen” (pp. 10, 12, 13, 15). It is a compelling tale of a Christian converted out of Islam who has spent his life as a peace ambassador in Jesus’ name within Islam. Ahmed Haile learned peacekeeping, described in his recent book

M.L. Codman-Wilson, Ph.D. 5/1/13

 

 

 

Journey Toward Understanding the Gospel

“As a faithful Muslim believer I enjoyed living within the security of the house of Islam. I believed in the supporting pillars of belief (in God, the prophets, the books of revelation, angels and the final judgment) and I faithfully practiced the 5 pillars of duty (the confession, prayer 5 times a day facing Mecca, giving alms to the poor, daytime fasting during Ramadan and a once in a lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca)…Yet I was perplexed at the insistence that Muslims must believe all the books of God – the scrolls of Abraham, the Torah of Moses, the Psalms of David, the Gospel of Jesus the Messiah and the Qur’an.  We Muslims had the Qur’an but I often wondered where those other books could be found. I wanted to read what I had to believe in” (pp. 24-25).

The pre-Islamic influences in his upbringing included “the heritage of peace-making…It also included Christian and Jewish beliefs and practices…Among my people these Christian and Jewish influences were interwoven with the Islam of my family – including the sacrifice of lambs and the belief that the blood of the lamb heals the sick… A slaying of a lamb is an important part of pre-Islamic reconciliation.  The head of the person charged with wrong is restored through the substitutionary offering…By eating the lamb together both the victim and the offender seal the covenant of peace that is possible after the aggrieved are satisfied that justice has been done. This covenant also includes forgiveness… It  helped prepare me to believe in Jesus as the Lamb of God” (pp. 25-27, 91).

When he was a teenager, Ahmed became deathly ill with cerebral malaria and was taken to a SIM hospital in his hometown Bulo Burte. A missionary nurse gave him a Bible story book on the story of Joseph.  It was a story he had heard from the Imam teaching from the Qur’an.  He continued to study the Bible secretly and ended up at a SIM doctor’s house, Dr. Marc Erickson, to study the Bible. There Ahmed invited Christ into his heart. He was 17. When he returned to school in Mogadishu, Erickson put him in touch with other SIM and Mennonite missionaries. They started him first in the book of James “because of its themes of justice and righteousness” (p. 33). Then they moved to a study of the Gospel of Luke and Acts. “Jesus amazed me. So did the life of the early church. I felt at the depth of my being the tug of Jesus and the winsome attractiveness of the church as a fellowship of forgiveness and reconciliation.”  Next he studied 1+ 2 Peter and “recalled how my father would sprinkle the blood of sacrificed lambs on the lintel and posts of our door of our home…In the study of Hebrews I gained deeper insights into the mystery of the atonement centered in the sacrificial self-giving of Jesus, the Lamb of God, for our forgiveness and redemption” (pp. 33-35).  In studying the book of Philippians I “met a Christ-centered faith and worldview that was truly transformative…Meeting Jesus meant counting my proud heritage as rubbish because Christ is so supremely wonderful. He is the suffering servant Messiah” (p.50). He says of his journey: “As a Muslim I really wanted to know God. In Jesus I met God as my loving heavenly Father. I yearned for the assurance that my sins were forgiven. In Jesus I knew my sins were forgiven. I longed for the assurance of eternal salvation and now in Jesus I knew that heaven was my destiny. I am grateful for the ways Islam prepared me to hear and believe in Christ” (Gal. 3:23-24) (p. 35).  The analogy he uses comes from his background among Somali camel herders who are nomads.  “Their home travels with them. There is a center pole with ribbing all around it which joins at the top of the center pole and a  woven mat which is thrown over the ribbing as the protective roof.  Jesus Christ is our center pole (in the cross). We who believe are the ribbing…We are also the woven mat as the Holy Spirit weaves us together in the bonds of love and Christ’s grace.  Christ is now my home… I have never looked back” (pp. 35-36).

Christian influences in Nairobi

When Somalia was overtaken by a Marxist revolution, Ahmed fled to Kenya. He arrived in Nairobi and immersed himself in “three distinct streams of Christian spirituality: East African Mennonite, Somali with Muslim background and exuberant Pentecostal where miracles of healing and transformed lives were a normal expectation of weekly worship” (p.46).  The mosque down the street from the Mennonite center where he lived and volunteered was “Sufi, a mystical stream of Islam that is often quite open to people of other faiths. This Sufi movement is a quest to experience God; traditional Islam focuses on submission to the will of God but not on experiencing God.  Sufis are often intrigued with the gospel, for indeed Jesus and the ministry of the Holy Spirit fulfill the yearnings of Sufi spirituality. Sufi communities are often recognized as communities of peace. Our center was the presence of a community of peace centered in Christ. We developed good relationships with the mosque congregation” (pp. 46-47). 

In Nairobi, when Ahmed was only 20, he and his Mennonite friend David Shenk developed a Bible study course for Muslims called The People of God. (It is being used around the world today).  “It was a narrative study of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Whenever we felt that the Quran and Islam had signs of the gospel that were pertinent to the biblical narrative, we elaborated upon those signs – i.e., Jesus as the Messiah, the Torah as the Word of God.”  Yet Ahmed’s own journey of discipleship was a long process: “Within my Muslim worldview, God is utterly transcendent and sovereign…. My Muslim worldview insisted that the incarnation and the cross were impossible compromises of God’s sovereignty and power; yet, [he learned], the incarnation and the cross are the soul of the gospel…Islam objects to the cross because God is sovereign and never affected by our sin.  Muslims believe that the crucifixion of Jesus as described in the New Testament is an illusion. God rescued Jesus from the cross. Therefore, Islam misses the triumph of Christ crucified and risen over all the powers. Islam has not comprehended that God so loves us that he enters our sinful world as the Suffering Servant, the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for this sheep” (pp. 48, 51).

Through his childhood, teenage years and young adulthood Ahmed was immersed in an enormous diversity in cultures, religions, and the world of ideas as he journeyed from the broad-mindedness of his father’s background, through the Christian diversity in Nairobi, to schooling in America. “Through it all he says, “the church has been my primary integrative community…The direction of my journey is my home in Christ …and the church is the community of reconciliation that Christ is creating…A dimension of the church is its calling to conflict transformation…Ultimately it is Christ who is the Healer and authentic Reconciler …The gift I was bringing back to Somalia was to be an emissary of Jesus” (pp. 66-69). 

Christians called People of the Messiah

When he returned to Somalia as a peace-keeper, the Christians he fellowshipped with called themselves People of the Messiah because the term Christian “included connotations of alcohol abuse, loose living and being western [from the church in Somalia under British and Italian rule].  In the Muslim world the settled assumption is that nothing good can come from the West…As a member of the church I sought to be a sign of the incarnation within the Somali/Muslim community. The break-through happened when
Somali leaders ate in my home. They had accepted my presence as a disciple of Jesus within their community” (p. 80).

The Uniqueness of his Peace-Keeping Within Islam

Ahmed felt Islamic law could not be used for peace because of its retributive justice.  He represented restorative justice.  He did so “within the pre-Islamic context of restorative justice and the Old and New Testament visions of shalom, linking this pre-Islamic understanding to “the cross of Christ since Christ alone can authentically transform the inner springs of hostility and hatred within a person” (p. 92).

Ahmed was struck by a rocket attack from a Somali warlord intent on killing him.  Ultimately he was rescued from Somalia in the midst of raging ethnic war and flown back to America. He was miraculously healed and began a series of consultations and speaking engagements in North America on restorative peacekeeping.  These ultimately led in 1994 to his return to Africa to teach at Daystar University in Nairobi for 15 years.  He taught on Jesus Christ and the distinctive peace He brings, on the traditional (Islamic) peace-making practices as signs that prepared people to receive in fullness the peace offered by Christ in his life, death and resurrection, and on the significance of the cross in authentic reconciling peacemaking” (p.118). In 2009 prostate cancer forced him to retire to the United States. 

Ahmed and his wife Martha’s goal is that his memoir “will help all of us grow in appreciation for one another’s faith journey… and many more will be drawn into the hut where Jesus is the Center Pole” (p. 129).

The Pastor: A Memoir, Eugene H. Peterson, Harper Collins, 2011

The Pastor, A Memoir is Eugene Peterson’s accounting of how his own pastoral calling emerged and was shaped in the context of American culture which he says is “competitive, consumerist” and often complacent, …where “God talk” has replaced people’s real engagement with God in “lived theology” (The Pastor, A Memoir, Eugene Peterson, Harper Collins, 2011, p.242).  He discovered he had many thoughts about the vocation of pastor he had to “unlearn” and many aspects of worship and the church itself he had to revise so his congregational experience of salvation was grounded in the models of Scripture.  He wrote his book “to give witness to pastor as the person placed in the community to pay attention and call attention to what is going on right now between men and women, with one another and with God…Knowing God in this place…Knowing what God’s doing in kairos time” (pp. 5-7).  Peterson’s odyssey and writing style is colored by story and “inductive imagination” (p.85). It may bring refreshment to pastors who find that the church “has twenty different ways to kill you” (p.210) and who want to be “unbusy” (p.278) enough to genuine walk beside their people, “reinforcing an awareness and receptivity of the people of God to the presence and gifts of God” (p.181).

                                   Reviewer: M.L. Codman-Wilson, Ph.D., 4/23/13

Some Excerpts:

Being a Pastor

“My work assignment [as a pastor] was to pay more attention to what God does than what I do and then to find and guide others to find the daily, weekly, yearly rhythms that would get this awareness it our bones” (p.45)…I was going through the motions in my work. But was I God-awake? Was my soul awake?” (p.73)  In seminary my “theological world expanded through Barth from learning (and talking) about God and getting the truth of the gospel and getting it right to focus on the lived quality of the Christian life…Listening to God…, participating in God’s action of salvation” (p.90).  “My joy as pastor [at the end of his 30 years in the pastorate] was the daily blending of ordinary and salvation life…the incredible company of friends following Jesus, and creating forms of worship and hospitality that unobtrusively subvert the secularity and individualism of the culture” (p. 308).

Green Berets in the church?

“What I was not prepared for [as a pastor] was the low level of interest that men and women in my congregation had in God and the scripture, prayer and their souls. Not that they didn’t believe and value these things, they just weren’t very interested…My imagination had been schooled in the company of Moses and David; my congregation kept emotional and mental company with television celebrities and star athletes. I was reading Karl Barth and John Calvin; they were reading Ann Landers and People Magazine…I had the image of a congregation of Green Berets for Jesus. No half-Christians, no almost-Christians, but the real thing…People came but no Green Berets…I had a lot of sorting out to do” (pp. 104-105).

The Place of Stories

“I began to learn that congregation is a place of stories – the stories of Jesus to be sure but also the stories of men and women…I learn my stories in company with others. Each story affects and is affected by each of the others. Many of these others are distressed, in debt and discontent – or out of tune, angry, rude or asleep. This complicates things enormously but there’s no getting around it…Yet every once in a while a shaft of beauty seems to break out of nowhere and illumines these companies. I see what my sin-shaped eyes had missed: Word of God shaped, Holy Spirit-created lives of sacrificial humility, incredible courage, heroic virtue, joyful suffering, holy praise, constant prayer, persevering obedience – Shekinah. And sometimes I don’t – Ziglag (David’s village base…made up of people whose livse were characterized by debt, distress and discontent)” (pp.106-107).

“Congregation is not defined by its collective problems. Congregation is a company of people who are defined by their creation in the image of God, living souls…not problems to be fixed but mysteries to be honored and revered…My work is not to fix people. It is to lead people in the worship of God and to lead them in living a holy life” (pp.136-137).

His own church plant on the outskirts of Baltimore, MD., began in the basement of his house.  It was dubbed “the catacombs church” (p. 118).  They met there for 2 ½ years, “enough time to free both myself and my congregation from the lingering romantic crusader and consumer images of church…Enough time to have our imaginations cleansed of church-that-looks-like-a-church illusions and to have the Holy Spirit paradigm shift established…The catacombs served us very well as we found our formation as a worshipping congregation…We were understanding it as the formation of salvation detail by detail, day by day in the bodies of men and women and babies, neighborhoods, homes, workplaces…The salvation of the living was being created in our neighborhoods” (pp. 129,172,177).

The Badlands

But after the joy of building a new church building together, there came six years of decline. He called it The Badlands with “congregational passivity…flat and completely self-satisfied in the wake of our achievement” (p.210). In that time the temptation was to find another church but he chose to stay with the people and sought a “widening circle of mentors (living and through books) who taught him ‘this is what it is like to pray, to live a life of faith and love to be detached from a life of self and become souls free for God’”(p.231).  “In the Badlands I had been incrementally realizing that there is far more to this Christian life than getting it right [doctrinally]. There is living it right…Living it means working through a world of deception, of doubt and suffering, a world of rejections and betrayal and idolatry” (p. 230). In those barren years he and his wife learned to keep the Sabbath (“a protected day to simply pay attention to God ourselves…to let God be God for us, to develop habits of being present to God at all times and circumstances” (p.221). He also developed his dual identity as a pastor and a writer. “In the Badlands the act of writing was assimilated into my pastoral vocation, revealing relationships, drawing me into mysteries, training me to imaginatively enter the language world of scripture…and the language world of my congregation, their crisis and small talk, their questions and doubts, listening for and discerning the lived quality of the gospel in their lives” (p. 239).

The Message

That vocation of writing ultimately led him to write The Message: “The translation, The Message, grew from the soil of 30 years of pastoral work”… when I tried to “get the lived colloquial quality of the ancient Hebrew and Greek originals into the American words and metaphors and syntax my people had been using all their lives” (pp. 303, 302).

Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Freebooks, 2010

There are “three barriers to the process of integration [of Muslims families into the West]. The first is Islam’s treatment of women. They are reared to become submissive robots…devoted to the sexual pleasures of their husbands and to a life of childbearing. They have limited education so they are unable to prepare their own children to become successful citizens in modern western societies. Second, Islamic attitudes toward credit and debt and the lack of education of women about financial matters means they are unprepared for the obligations presented by a modern consumer society. And third, the socialization of the Muslim mind: they are reared to believe that Muhammad was perfectly virtuous and that moral structures he left behind should never be questioned. The Quran is considered infallible…That makes Muslims vulnerable to indoctrination in a way that followers of other faiths are not. Moreover the violence that is endemic in so many Muslim societies, ranging from domestic violence to the incessant celebration of holy war, adds to the difficulty of turning people from that world into Western citizens” (p.xxi.)  “The three institutions in the West which could ease the transition into western citizenship are (1) public education which calls immigrants to the same high standards of critical thinking that are its strength, (2) the feminist movement which should help the Muslim woman find her voice and protect Muslim women from physical harm when Muslim men use violence, and (3) the Christian church when it focuses on God’s love and tolerance and the figure of Jesus Christ” (Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nomad, A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations, Freebooks, 2010pp. xxii-xxiv).

Review

Ayaan Hirsi Ali makes the message of her book Nomad clear: “The West urgently needs to compete with the jihadists, the proponents of a holy war, for the hearts and minds of its own Muslim immigrant populations. It needs to provide education directed at breaking the spell of the infallible prophet, to protect women from the oppressive dictates of the Quran and to promote alternative sources of spirituality [especially Christianity]. (Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nomad, A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations, Freebooks, 2010,p. xxv).

Ayaan has written this book for Western readers further endangering her own life.  She writes to expose the dangers and abuse of Islam. (She has told of her own departure from Islam in her previous book Infidel. As a result she now has bodyguards day and night.) “But,” she says, “ I have decided not to stop writing, not to stop drawing attention to the plight of Muslim women and the threat that extremists post to free thought, free speech and democratic governments. In a way those threats…have given my voice more legitimacy” (pp. 113-114). Legitimacy she has, as an insider raised in a strict tribal Somali Muslim culture.  She has experienced first-hand the clash of cultures between Islamic values and Western values.  Her book is a must-read for those who are engaged with Muslim peoples.

                                                Reviewed by M.L. Codman-Wilson, Ph.D. 4/17/13

Some excerpts:

The social fabric of Islam in immigrant communities in the West

In Europe, immigrant Muslim “people had left their countries of origin only to band themselves together here, unwilling and unable to let go, where they enforce their culture more strongly even than in Nairobi…They had brought their web of values with them, halfway around the world”(p. 12).  “Islam dictates that a man must command obedience from his women, from his wives and daughters  and they must submit to him…This belief is part of a larger one – that individuals don’t matter, that their choices and desires are meaningless, particularly if the individuals are women. This sense of honor and male entitlement drastically restricts women’s choices. A whole culture and its religion weigh down every Muslim but the heaviest weight falls disproportionately on women’s shoulders…The Muslim veil, the different sorts of masks and beaks and burkas are all gradations of mental slavery…The veil deliberately marks women as private and restricted property, non-persons…It restrains them, confines them, grooms them for docility. A mind can be as cramped as a body can be” (pp. 15-16).  “According to the Quran a woman’s husband is permitted to beat her (4:34) and decide whether she may work or leave the house; he may marry other women without seeking her approval and if he chooses to divorce her, she has no right to resist or to keep custody of their children …A strict interpretation of Islam is preparation for bigotry, violence and oppression” (p.134.)  “I believe the subjection of women within Islam is the biggest obstacle to the integration and progress of Muslim communities in the West… Many Muslim parents believe that a Western education corrupts the Muslim way of life. In truth it does…A program of sustained education in curiosity and independent thought is a program of sustained erosion of the Muslim way of life…To resist subjugation and the denial of rights, an expression of resentment and anger are not  enough. You must speak the language of these oppressors and have the clarity of mind to identity the principles that justify the oppression and dismantle them intellectually” (p.160, 162). 

“Polygamy creates a context of uncertainty, distrust, envy and jealousy.  Rival wives and their children plot and are often said to cast spells on each other…Obviously mental instability has biological factors …but it is also affected by the culture we mature in, the tactics and strategizing of survival we develop, the relationships we have with others and the unbearable dissonance between the world we are told to see and the world in which we actually live” (pp. 25-26). “Immigrants from the tribe and blood line and activists of prosperity share a common delusion: they believe that it ii possible to make this transition [to living in the West] without paying the price of choosing between values.  One side wants change in their circumstances without letting go of tradition; the other, overcome by guilt and pity, wants to help the newcomers with the material change but cannot bring themselves to demand that they excise traditional outdated values from their outlook (p.80). “Immigrants’ lack of clarity about where they stood on the core issues of sex,  money and violence – their failure to recognize that where they live geographically must change where they stand ideologically – has led to human tragedies of disease, debt and death.  I too was ill prepared for the West. The only difference between my relatives and me is that I opened my mind” (pp.80-81).

The growing presence of radical Islam in the West

“Muslim schools [in the West as well] emphasize religion more than any other subject. Students are taught to distance themselves from science and the values of freedom, individual responsibility and tolerance. The establishment of a Muslim school…gives Wahhabis and other wealthy Muslim extremists an opportunity to isolate and indoctrinate vulnerable groups of children…As more dawa (proselytizing) missionary work is done by revivalist groups financed by Saudi Arabia, Muslims in America are becoming much more hard-line” (pp. 136,138).  “Probably half the mosques in America have received Saudi money and many (perhaps most) teachers and preachers of Islam have been supported by Saudi charities…I believe it would be a grave mistake to be complacent about Islam in America.  According to the Mosque Study Project 2000, regular weekly attendance at mosques almost doubled between 1994 and 2000 and active association with mosques quadrupled…In the U.S., 50% of Muslims age 18-29 say they attend mosque once a week…In a 20007 poll by the Pew Center 50% of U.S. Muslims said they think of themselves as Muslims first and Americans second.  26% age 18-29 said suicide bombing was justified as a measure to defend Islam.  That is one quarter of the adult American Muslims under 30 and no matter how you count the number of Muslims in American (estimates vary from 2 million to 8 million), that is a lot of people” (pp. 138-139).

The threat posed by radical Islam is both internal and external…There is a process [through the Muslim schools and teachers] that radicalizes whole communities so that they will aid, abet, support and accommodate jihadi attackers. Now, teaching at the Mosques (and through the week in study groups) has a revivalist edge…and the content is political…If you are a Muslim you are instructed to submit, not to question. Then, when preachers speak to you about returning to the pure, true path of jihad and personal morality laid down by the Prophet Mohammed,…they’re building on layers of a mental structure that you have imbibed from your parents, your community, your childhood Quran teacher.  Thus the stage preceding radicalization in the Muslim mind, the stage when ‘regular’ Islam is taught, is very important. Although the teachings at first focus on prayer, charity, and fasting, the method by which Muslims learn is rote and believers are not allowed to question the text or any saying of Mohammed.  After years of an uncritical attitude toward Islamic teachings in general and a demand for obedience, the Muslim mind is ready, prepared when the radical agent shows up…Radical Islam is sold in steps…At first it is marketed as a program for virtuous behaviors, for goodness. Then you are encouraged to befriend other Muslims and increasingly shun the “infidels.” The whole rancid subject of violent jihad is broached only in the later stages. But the prehistory of radicalism is a soft brainwashing in submission – the real meaning of Islam – from birth” (pp.139-142).

Violence issues

“Muslim children (both boys and girls) are taught the merits of physical aggression…For my sister and me to take my brother seriously and acknowledge his authority, he had to use physical violence. This we regarded as quite normal” (p.188). “My work in Holland as a translator took me frequently to the courts and prisons. Almost all the cases involved assault and murder. All the perpetrators were male. And all, among the immigrants, were Muslims…In the Muslim family politeness, friendliness and charity are regarded highly…but conformity to Allah’s will is held in even higher regard. And violence is regarded as a legitimate means of enforcing that conformity…Violence in Islamic culture remains an integral part of the system of social discipline” (pp. 190-191)…The Quran says kills the infidels, ambush them, take their property, convert them by force, kill homosexuals and adulterers, condemn Jews, beat the disobedient wife, treat women as chattel…Islam is imbued with violence and it encourages violence.” (pp. 201, 197).

Honor killing of girls is approved of by Muslims (including those in the United States) if a girl sullies the reputation of the family by refusing to an arranged or early marriage, by association with a man, by talking on the phone with a man or even going on Facebook (pp. 219-221).  Yet Western feminists don’t speak up again it because of ‘cultural relativity.’…When Western feminists do speak out against male oppression, they have always focused on the sins of white males. “They manifest an almost neurotic fear of offending a minority group’s culture, thus providing men of color an escape route…We need to challenge and bring down the tribal honor-and-shame culture as codified in the Islamic religion…In America Muslim girls may be pulled out of school by their parents, violently punished at home on a routine basis, obsessively watched over and forcibly married or even murdered in the name of honor. Such basic, brutal violence of women’s rights must be confronted head on and effective measures to protect Muslim girls urgently devised” (pp.225-232).

Remedies

“Enlightenment is the way to open the Muslim mind…I seek the possibility of legitimate individual critical review of Islamic dogma …Islam is built on sexual inequality and on the surrender of individual responsibility and choice. [By contrast] every important freedom that Western individuals possess rests on free expression…The rational process that developed today’s Western values says ‘Go. Inquire. Ask. Find out. Dare to know. Don’t be afraid of what you’ll find’… Knowledge is better than superstition, blind belief and dogma” (pp.205,207,213,214).

“When the multiculturalists affirm the value of tribal lifestyles, they help immigrants postpone the pain of letting go of the anachronistic and inappropriate. It locks people into corrupt, inefficient and unjust social systems even if it does preserve their arts and crafts. It perpetuates poverty, misery and abuse” (pp. 212-213).

“Multiculturalism and relativism are rampant in Western institutions of learning…Many contemporary Western thinkers have unconsciously imbibed the toxin of appeasement with the ideas of equality and free speech. They give chairs in the most distinguished and best institutions for higher learning to apologists for Islam…The Saudi and Qatari sultans make large donations to western universities but these come with strings attached. Their curricula are increasingly politicized; they promote Muslim centers on campus and actively educate and evangelize for Islam while the West sits back and does nothing…We need – urgently – to offer an alternative message that is superior to the message of submission” (p.242).

“I have a theory that most Muslims are in search of a redemptive God. They believe in a higher power and that this higher power is the provider of morality, giving them a compass to help them distinguish between good and bad.  Many Muslims are seeking a God or a concept of God that in my view meets the description of the Christian God. Instead they are finding Allah…They have been told that Christians have misunderstood the real God, Allah…But most Muslims don’t know the content of the Quran nor the truths about Christianity. Christians have stopped teaching people in Muslim countries because of the bitter resistance from the local Muslim clergy and political elites…So the Muslim masses are insulated from all alternative religions” (pp.239-240).

“Just as European governments and other civil society groups underestimated the intentions of the radical expansionist agents of Islam, the churches, both Catholic and Protestant, neglected to offer the new Muslim immigrants the spiritual guidance they sought…Muslim Brotherhood members, by contrast are tireless in their efforts [of proselytizing].” They offer every type of social help needed in the immigrant community, including “cassettes of sermons along with DVDs of desperate martyrs…They give money and bring medicine – all for Allah. But Allah wants something in return for all this charity. He wants submission of will, mind and body so total that these kids who are saved from the streets and drug addiction are persuaded to commit jihad against the infidel…Can the various churches of Christianity help stem this rising tide of violent Islam?...The imams are now preaching to a growing number of immigrant populations in the West their siren song of jihad...The churches have not tried to fight either the massive wave of conversions of traditional Muslims to fundamentalism or the smaller wave of conversions of people from historically Christian communities to Islam. The reason seems clear: the Vatican and all the established churches of northern Europe believed naively that interfaith dialogue would magically bring Islam into the fold of Western civilization. It has not happened and it will not happen” (pp. 246, 245, 247- 249).

“I believe we now need [in the West] a Christian school for every…Quran school where children and young adults learn only…the message of the Brotherhood…The churches should do all in their power to win this battle for the souls of humans in search of a compassionate God, who now find that a fierce Allah is closer at hand….The churches need to step up to the challenge of providing new Muslim immigrants with the concept of a God who is a symbol of love, tolerance, rationality and patriotism.  They need to organize, to map the Muslim communities and start a tireless campaign to convince Muslims that a constitution of freedom is preferable to a constitution of submission” (pp. 250, 251, 253).  They need “to go into Muslim communities, provide services just as the radical Muslims do: build new Christian schools, hospitals and community centers…teach hygiene, discipline, a work ethic and also what you believe in.  The West is losing the propaganda war” (p.238).  

 

The Heart of Mentoring, David Stoddard, NavPress, 2003

David Stoddard, who has done extensive mentoring of men, particularly in the business world, makes this distinction between coaching and mentoring: “Coaching typically is skills driven, short term and focused on behavior while mentoring is relationship oriented, has a long term scope and is holistic, meaning it is broad enough to address facets of the whole person” (David Stoddard ,The Heart of Mentoring, NavPress, 2003, p. 11).  His book contains 10 principles that he feels get to the heart of successful mentoring: (1.) “Effective mentors understand that living is about giving. (2.) Effective mentors see mentoring as a process that requires perseverance. (3.) Effective mentors open their world to their mentoring partners. (4.) Effective mentors help mentoring partners find their passion. (5.) Effective mentors are comforters who share the load. (6.) Effective mentors help turn personal values into practice. (7.) Effective mentors model character. (8.) Effective mentors affirm the value of spirituality. (9.) Effective mentors recognize that Mentoring + Reproduction = Legacy. (10.) Effective mentors go for it!” (p.207). Those principles are well explained and illustrated.  He sees “mentoring as a function of the heart” (p. 40).  He writes not a “how-to book but to provide over-all principles…which can serve as a framework, but how you mentor someone else has to come naturally, fitting your unique personality and style [and the one you are mentoring]…No two mentoring relationships are alike. Even if there were some sort of mentoring mold out there somewhere, you would have to throw it away because it wouldn’t fit the next person you mentor” (pp. 194, 197). That understanding makes his book easily adaptable for the vast number of people God calls to this special coming-alongside, encouraging and shaping ministry.

                                                                        Reviewed by M.L. Codman-Wilson, Ph.D., 4/ 10/13

Some excerpts:

Helping another fulfill their potential: “Mentoring involves helping others to discover and pursue their passions, recognize and deal with their pain and sort out their priorities.”  It’s a “partner relationship” because it’s “something you do with someone…working toward a common goal: personal growth and achievement…It’s an opportunity to give of ourselves, our experiences, our expertise and our gifts and take advantage of opportunities to help someone…be all that they can be.” Good mentoring is not self-centered; it is other centered. “Mentoring is a function of the heart” (pp. 25, 29, 32, 40). One question Stoddard asks is: “If you lived in a perfect world and money was not an issue, what would you really love to give your life to?”  Then help the mentoring partners tinker with their answer and explore its feasibility in the real world”(pp. 98, 95).

Perseverance : “Mentoring requires perseverance…it’s an opportunity to take a journey with another person in traveling the uncharted path of life.  It’s a commitment to the process…no matter how long it takes…We can’t have a microwave mindset, expecting fast results…We stay by our mentoring partners even when it appears nothing is happening in his life. We don’t give up on them even though they may give up on themselves…The mentor needs patience to watch the mentoring partner wrestle through issues at the slow plodding pace of a novice without jumping in to fix it” (pp. 45- 47, 51). However, “even though this is generally a long-term time commitment, whenever I meet with someone [at the beginning of a mentoring relationship], I let the partner know either of us can walk at any time if we don’t think our time together is profitable…I put the ball in his court…the initiative for continuing the relationship is his” (pp. 53, 54).

Sharing your life: “How do you get into your partner’s world so you can be the maximum help? You get into their world through yours…When the mentor demonstrates an ability to relate to what the mentoring partner is going through, that creates a safe environment for openness and honesty...We need to walk beside someone and be their friend and help that one build confidence, credibility and competence…This requires a high degree of emotional intelligence (the ability to relate to people). Mentors are authentic…They share their own weaknesses and failures…Our candor greatly enhances our credibility and their trust in us” (pp. 62- 63, 66, 68, 69). [Therefore], never mentor from behind a desk;…listen with your heart not just your head;…ask the right questions;…avoid quick fixes and don’t teach above where you live” (i.e., a single man teaching on marriage) (pp74-76). “Humility is the substance of character…As a mentor we can help our partner catch humility as we share failures as well as successes from our own experience” (pp. 142, 154).

Comfort: “Be willing to walk with the mentoring partner through the winds and waves of adversity…When the partner is overcome with intense feelings – the kind that tie their stomach in knots – it helps when we can show how deeply we are moved and respond to them with similar feelings…What GenXers have shown me is pain – life torn by broken promises, broken relationships and broken dreams…They want to feel someone is truly listening when they talk about their struggles” (pp. 103, 107, 112- 113). “Help people find meaning in their pain…Be real…short on words and long on service” (pp.118- 119).

Priorities in balance: “Established values act as a filter that determines priorities…Priorities provide balance, a sense of order and control…The more balanced our lives, the happier and more productive we are…The challenge is to articulate and affirm what our values are, then take steps to honor those values in a practical sense – in other words assign priorities to them….Values are a means for separating the bad from the good and the good from the best” (pp. 123-124). “A values filter is a way of sifting through the myriad choices and opportunities that confront us, allowing only those endeavors and pursuits that align with and support our values (the priceless aspects of their lives) to pass through” and minimizing “the tyranny of the urgent” (pp. 125, 134). 

Spirituality: “Effective mentors affirm the value of spirituality – it’s the fuel that drives the engine…This is about a relationship with God.” His “spiritual context is the Bible” (pp. 159, 165). “As a mentor have your spiritual life in order…Share your spiritual story…Then encourage your  mentoring partner to investigate and examine the actual source of their spiritual roots”…and invite them “to check out Jesus and the Bible for themselves” (pp. 170-172).

Legacy: Stoddard asks each mentoring partner ‘What will your legacy be 100 years from now? What positive impact will you have on others after your death?’...We need to start with a vision for what we would like to see happen in the future and work backward…focusing on the values and principles we wish to impart…We build into others who will in turn invest and build into others. [This is reproduction.] His equation is “Mentoring + Reproduction = Legacy” (pp.175, 179, 185 ) “In a real sense mentoring is leadership – leading a mentoring partner to self-discovery, self-fulfillment and paradoxically selflessness” and then encouraging him or her to turn around and mentor others” (p.188).

“Getting started in mentoring is not so much a matter of how-to as it is a question of whether you are willing and available to come alongside someone and offer whatever help you can for that person to become all that he or she is designed to be.  Are you willing to go for it?” (p. 197).

GOD, Where are You?, Benjamin Kisoni, Hippo Books, 2012

Benjamin Kisoni’s new book GOD, Where Are You? is a contemporary example of the frightening struggles of life that many people face in our world of war and persecution and joblessness.  Kisoni’s story centers on life in the Democratic Republic of Congo and his efforts to simply survive amid the chaos of war.  It is a story of doubt and faith in the midst of suffering.  In the preface he notes: “The believer who said he liked suffering (because he knew how to fight and overcome it) – was he thinking only about the sort of predictable suffering we see in movies that we know will have a happy ending?...[But] the age old question remained:‘God, where are you when suffering overwhelms us?’” (Benjamin Kisoni, GOD, Where are You?, Hippo Books, 2012, p. x.)  Despite the seemingly endless setbacks Kisoni experienced, he weaves the silver thread of God’s control and faithfulness throughout his story. The honesty and realism of his book, written by an African dealing with the problems he faced personally in Africa, is a wake-up call to comfortable Christians in the West to understand the global plight of millions of people in other parts of the world today.

                                                            Reviewed by M.L. Codman-Wilson, Ph.D. 4/3/13

Some of Kisoni’s reflections:

As he was suddenly flown back to the Congo from Kenya in a single engine Cessna, the plane hit very turbulent weather and thick fog.  He thought they would crash and no one would know. He asked: ‘But why would God let me die in anonymity far from my family?...Who would mourn for me?’ I was scared…But God is above circumstances and adversity. I was reminded that I should not live paralyzed by fear, forgetting that He is in control. I must rely on Him when life is full of difficulties and turmoil rather than falling prey to my emotions” (pp. 4-5).

Church fights

In the Congo as the rebel soldiers gained ground from the south, the government soldiers turned against the people and began ransacking their homes. All Kisoni’s family’s valuable possessions were stolen. He said: “Acknowledging that I was a helpless victim of circumstances was all very well but this did nothing to solve the immediate problems of fatigue, hunger and insecurity”(p.11)...A neighbor intervened to let Kisoni use a Rural Health Unit’s truck  to take his family back to his hometown far to the south. There he hoped to find a job and food and safety. But he discovered there was fighting among his own people because of “the unequal distribution of positions of authority between tribes represented in the church” (p.20).  By refusing to take sides [he wanted to act as a mediator and bring peace] he was rejected by his people.  He said, “Sometimes we are obliged to pay dearly for decisions we make or positions we hold. I always thought that being on the right side would exempt me from troubles and would empower me to rally everyone behind what I considered a noble cause…But when evil has seeped deep into the fabric of society, it is difficult to eradicate… Extensive work needs to be done within each of us if we are willing to agree on some issues, laying down our egos and sacrificing our personal interests” (p.21).

Forgiveness

He finally went to the head of his clan and asked forgiveness for not fighting on his side.  “It takes courage to ask for forgiveness because you sacrifice your dignity. It also takes courage to forgive because you have to let go of the wrongs others have done to you and appreciate the person involved” (p.24).  He was poisoned as he was interviewing for a job, likely because the manager felt his own position was threatened (p. 33). For many weeks Kisoni had great pain and inadequate diagnosis and treatment. “When you’re sick, you feel alone, worthless, depressed, forgotten, out of the ordinary circuit of life. This is why we need to know we are loved and cared for. Fortunately, my friend was there to stand by me” (pp.30-31).

Unethical practices

In his desperation to find work, he and his friend went to the mines to broker with those who found gold. But they found the lifestyle of the miners devoid of any ethical standards. “They lived from day to day with no thought of tomorrow. All the relationships between men and women revolved around money, sex and drink…I realized that even though we may not even know that something is wrong, it can still destroy us. Our consciousness is crucial to understanding and managing suffering” (p.40).  He and his friend returned to their city but his joblessness and starvation were a constant threat to his family. Finally, after his “long journey through the desert of unemployment” (p.45), he was able to start a small business. Then he was approached by people who promised him easy money. They used witchcraft and Bible promises through which they had already defrauded many people.  But Kisoni did not fall into their trap; he remembered scripture verses that anchored him against the allure of instant multiplication of money.  He says: “It is good to seek relief from God when we are in need but we must also act responsibly towards others when all is well…If I had listened to the voice of greed, I would have been plunged back into suffering. Riches are not the ultimate purpose of our earthly existence” (p.50).

Response to murder

His brother, who was a successful philanthropic businessman, was murdered because of people’s envy of his success. He struggled with “why God had allowed this to happen” (p. 52). Then there was pressure on Kisoni to drop the pursuit of justice because the murder “had the complicity of some well-known people in the community”(p.52).  Kisoni knew “in my country the courts favored the one who paid the biggest bribe, regardless of the facts of the case.” Still, he issued a “strong warning to the civil, military and judicial authorities in the city not to meddle with the trial and reminded them that God is the Righteous Judge” (p.53).  As a result, he became a target for murder by that same band of thugs who had killed his brother.  His whole family came under similar threats.  At that point “I felt I had been abandoned by the God in whom I put my trust…In my anger…I wondered: Why was God silent when all these things were happening to me?” (pp.53-54). The trial went on for over a year, having become “a cash cow” (as the repeated bribes were making many rich) (p.55). Kisoni’s brother’s friend, who had been robbed by these same thugs, pushed Kisoni to kill the thugs in revenge. “His reasoning was logical and tempting. But it went against my Christian belief” (p. 56). Instead of retaliation, Kisoni and his family “created the Kisoni Foundation [in honor of his brother’s care for the needy]…The foundation helps war orphans and other children affected by war…We chose to respond to tragedy with blessing…to show that evil will never overcome good” (p. 57).

God’s control

Still, Kisoni had “a broad network of unknown enemies” (p.71). After repeated attempts on his life, his family urged him to flee the country. “As I thought about leaving, I wondered why God had allowed my life to be so full of difficulties. If I seemed to move past one set, more would flood in…And yet it seemed to me that God was still in control…of my life and of the consequences of my suffering” (pp. 61, 65).  He says: “Suffering is a sign that something is wrong with this world…Our strength lies in the ability to accept adversities, to mature through them and to find meaning in them” (p.72).  He believed God would protect him.  He also encountered “good people without whom my pilgrimage would have been an endless trail of troubles…God is using them to sustain the hope of others.” (p.75).  He cites the help of many such people as he came to the States, and ultimately got his refugee status approved and is now co-pastoring the International Christian Fellowship in Johnson City, Tennessee with a Liberian pastor.  That Fellowship is the realization of a dream he had had years before “to build a church…promoting reconciliation…This realization consolidated my trust in the Lord. I realized that none of the happy and unhappy events and the dangers of the past 12 years had been outside His control. I could be confident that he also held the key to future events, including the reunification of my family. All I had to do was submit to Him unconditionally and trust Him completely…I thank God for my sufferings. He has made Himself known to me by them and through them he has allowed me to comfort others. My life is a living testimony to God’s love, faithfulness and intervention in the life of those who hope in Him” (pp.98-99).