The Christian life is a race. Through the gospel, God summons us to sustained and persevering effort. He empowers his children by grace, his free and undeserved blessing through Christ. But he does not carry them to heaven on flowery beds of ease. Faith is a living, athletic grace. God's mercy motivates them and energizes them to press on and to overcome great obstacles.

Christ blazed the trail before us. He now calls us to follow him to the end (Heb. 12:1-2). Looking unto Jesus---that is how we persevere. In him is everything we need.

But realistically speaking, Christians are not always pressing forward with their eyes fixed on Jesus. Sometimes they wander off the narrow path and become disoriented. Sometimes they fall down and injure themselves. They may be tempted to give up on following Christ with all their hearts and to give in little-by-little to the world around them.

To the confused and injured runner, I say: God can help you. You can finish this race---and finish it well.

Age-Old Problem

What is backsliding? Backsliding is a season in the life of a professing Christian when his sin grows stronger and his obedience declines. Not all sin is backsliding. The Christian life is a constant cycle of sin and repentance, all under the atoning blood of Jesus. But at times the cycle of repentance is broken for a while. This is backsliding. It could lead to outright apostasy or falling away from Christ, thus showing that the person is not saved. But by God's grace not all backsliding is deadly to the soul. Our Physician can heal fallen runners.

Healing begins with diagnosis. The most dangerous injury is one where you do not recognize how serious it is. Many Christians are like people who know something is wrong with their bodies but refuse to go to the doctor until a friend forces them to---or until it gets so bad they have no other choice. Sadly, avoiding diagnosis can be deadly. The infection turns into gangrene. The cancer metastasizes and spreads. Early diagnosis can save your life.

Backsliding need not involve any big, scandalous sin. It often begins with coldness in prayer and a sense of indifference towards the Word of God. We may blame the preacher, but in reality something bad is happening inside our hearts. An inner corruption begins to grow, like a rotten potato spreading decay to other potatoes in the bag around it. Soon our attitude begins to stink. Hypocrisy and pride rise up in our hearts. We become impatient, discontent, and quick to anger towards people. Though we profess to be Christians, we find ourselves drawn to the world.

What bitter fruit comes from such backsliding! Even while we invoke the name of the Lord we bring shame and disgrace upon him. If you are truly God's child, then the Father places his hand of discipline upon you until you repent. Your life becomes like smoke that darkens and poisons the atmosphere of your home and your church. Others follow you on the descending path away from the Lord---your friends, your children. Unbelievers use you as an excuse to stay away from church. O, how evil are the results of backsliding!

But there is hope for the backslider. God especially describes his grace to backsliders in Hosea 14. God is so amazing! Even though our backsliding insults him, dishonors him, grieves him, and pushes away his love, still he calls us to return to him. This requires repentance: coming to grips with the badness of our sins against God and turning away from them to the Lord with a firm resolution to follow his commands. It requires turning from our reliance on ourselves (and other mere men) and renewing our trust in Christ alone. Such trust does not use Christ as a means to get something you want, but rests in Christ as what you want above all else.

Means of Grace

In order to help us to renew our faith and repent of our sins, God gave us the means of grace. God gave us his Word to meditate on, prayer to claim his promises, and public worship to meet with him and his people. God also uses afflictions and human accountability to help us to grow, calling us to respond with submission. If you are serious about getting back into the Christian race, you must use these means. These are not methods by which we save ourselves. When you grasp hold of the means by faith, you discover that Christ has grasped hold of you.

Our spiritual Physician has potent medicines to heal his people from their injuries and get them back on track to finish the race. These are none other than the graces he purchased on the cross and took up in the resurrection. Christ really is all that we need for spiritual life today, and eternal life in glory. He renews our experience of justification, sanctification, and adoption. He revives our souls and makes us fruitful again. His grace is sovereign and sufficient.

The day started normally enough. Peter and John were walking to the temple to pray. This is apparently something they did every day, the type of thing religious people from time immemorial have done. Peter and John then stepped through the Beautiful Gate to enter the temple area and passed a few beggars, as they did every day. And most of these beggars, either by sign or word, pleaded for some money.

This is a reasonable thing for a beggar to do. And the reasonable expectation is that religious people will feel compassion and toss the beggar a few coins. This is something religious people have done from time immemorial.

We don't know what Peter and John usually did in this situation. One might suppose, like us, they sometimes ignored the beggars, and sometimes gave up some spare change. But this time, Peter sensed a shift in the wind, the arrival of the Spirit, which signaled that some holy chaos was about to be unleashed.

He told the beggar he had no money, but he could give him this: "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!"

One can easily imagine a snicker coming from bystanders. Or maybe the lame man sarcastically thinking, Right. How about just a few coins, mister?

Peter acts as if what he said is perfectly sensible, and he grabs the man's hand and pulls him up off the ground. The man's feet and ankles "were made strong" in the very act of Peter pulling him up, so that the man, halfway up, now leaps up, and walks with Peter and John into the temple.

This becomes no ordinary prayer meeting: the man is alternately "walking and leaping and praising God" and clinging to Peter and John. Pandemonium broke out as people, who watched the man "walking and praising God," now "were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened." So "utterly astounded" were they, they also "ran together" with Peter, John, and the healed man to Solomon's Portico.

It was another one of those moments when the Holy Spirit turned reasonable religion---with its mundane expectations for piety and morality---into something extraordinary.

Miraculous Religion

We prefer reasonable religion. Reasonable religion has taught us to pray and give alms. Miracles are possible, we formally acknowledge, but then again, we don't like to be disappointed. So our prayers are not so much for divine and miraculous healing but for wisdom for doctors and nurses. Or we just raise money to build clinics.

We do this, of course, because miraculous religion has deservedly gotten a bad name. It may be true that the holy chaos of the Spirit made some miracle possible. Someone prayed for another who was healed, and before you know it, some preacher is exhorting people to claim their miracle. They start pointing to all those verses that seem to imply that the only thing stopping us from more miracles is lack of faith. They open crusades and tell people to "expect a miracle," acting as if the whole business were under our control. That leads inevitably to disappointment by sufferers, and the discovery of not a few charlatans. So we run the faith healers out of church, and get control of things again.

But notice: there's not much difference between reasonable religion and miraculous religion: both are attempts to bring the unexpected work of the Spirit under our control. In the one case, we've made healing the province of our doing---train up doctors and nurses and build clinics. And in the other case, we've made healing the province of our attitudes---have more faith!

If we try to tame miracles, even more so do we try to tame grace. Reasonable religion has taught us not to take grace too seriously. We give a few alms of moralism to silence the desperate cries of the guilty and get on with our prayer meetings. If we were to stop and give people Jesus Christ himself---well, you never know who would start showing up at church, maybe a bunch of crippled human beings. Before you know it, they'll be on the church membership roles, and then they'll get nominated for the church board. My gosh, who knows what policies they might promote? Or what type of people they'll attract. Pretty soon we'll have to open a homeless shelter, and start ministering to prostitutes and drug addicts.

In fact, when a church starts attracting such people, you can be sure that holy chaos is at work. Most churches are happy with making people a little better, tossing a few alms of spirituality at sinners. The Holy Spirit comes along and announces that the church's business is helping the lame walk and the blind to see and to bring life to the dead.

Judgmental About Grace

To be sure, some churches are known for proclaiming grace. But unfortunately for some, grace has become a mere principle. You can tell it's become such when they start using grace to bludgeon people who don't talk about grace the way they do. Some people can get awfully judgmental about grace.  Again, notice what is happening. If reasonable religion tries to control grace and rein it in with moralism, the religion of grace tries to control by means of a principle. It justifies all behavior by pulling out the grace card and waving it---and condemning people who don't. It is a principle that we control, and it is this principle that orders our life.

But biblical grace is not a principle. You cannot have a relationship with a principle. You cannot disappoint a principle. You cannot be forgiven by a principle. You cannot love a principle. You are in control of principle from start to finish.

Grace is first and foremost a merciful gift of a loving God. This gift is very personal, offered to us each and every time we fail to live as the very personal God has called us to live. Grace is the offer of a very personal forgiveness by a loving heavenly Father who cares deeply about everything we do.

And to receive this grace is to know freedom from the colorless expectations of a merely moral life, with its predictable and dreary consequences, and to know instead the extraordinary liberty of the children of God.

**********

This article is an excerpt from Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Power of the Holy Spirit (Baker).

N. D. Wilson's 2009 book Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl is a rambunctious and creative roadmap for why things are the way they are. The recently released film, or bookumentary (funny how my Word processor doesn't recognize that word), is no different. Shot in obscure locations, the film features cinematography that is just as energetic, jumping from one angle to the next. Wilson is witty, emotional, and sermonic.

Destabilizing Skeptics

In C. S. Lewis's famous set of lectures, The Abolition of Man, he takes aim at the Innovator, who dismisses traditional values (think, Judeo-Christian) as silly and old-fashioned. Instead, he wants values based on instinct, so long as they do not conflict with the preservation of the species. But, Lewis argues, if you take away everything that regulates what we we ought or ought not do, then ethics based on the preservation of the species has no footing. As Lewis writes, this new ideology is a "rebellion of the branches against the tree."

Lewis is no presuppositionalist and probably relies on natural law more than what most presuppositionalists are comfortable with. But he often argues like one. He destabilizes skeptics and puts opposing world views on their heels.

Don't hear me saying Wilson is this generation's C. S. Lewis---he's only in his early 30s with a few children's novels and a pop philosophy book under his belt. But he is a creative arguer like Lewis. He's funny. He knows the consequences of ideas and recognizes the faulty assumptions his opponents hold concerning God, evil, and creation. And he does all this in the film while buying and eating a hot dog.

We could possibly be picky and take a shot at Wilson's part on hell. He comes back at those who think it's unkind or cruel for God to send people to hell. Wilson argues that hell is just God giving us what we want. It would be unkind, he says, for God to force us to be in his presence when we despise him.

That's certainly not the entire picture the Bible presents of hell---some may even say it's a distorted picture, since the Bible presents hell as God's active judgement against sin, casting people into hell and actually taking away what they want (see especially Matthew 13:42). But in Wilson's defense, he is not giving an explanation of the doctrine of hell, but simply showing that the assumptions his opponents hold don't support their conclusions.

Word to Frustrated Apologists

There's a danger, I think, for Christians to watch a film like this and then feel equipped against every skeptic friend. Wilson makes it look easy. He waxes eloquent against skeptics---you'd think Richard Dawkins has the intelligence of a wet rag.

But the problem is, in most cases, life isn't a monologue. Our friends and co-workers often ask questions that makes us pause, wishing that Chesterton, Lewis, or Wilson would've answered that one for us. Or we try to recycle arguments from our apologetic heroes, and they end up sounding like a strange, Weird Al Yankovic parody version of the original.

Yes, we should labor to be clear and persuasive in our defense of the faith. We should be thankful for such lucid and sensible apologists like Wilson. But let's not expect that having just the right Flannery O'Connor allusion or citing a timely Nietzsche quote will somehow bring skeptics to their knees, confessing their foolishness in dust and ash. Instead, we should trust that the gospel and God's wisdom about reality is sufficient in order to give a defense of the hope that we have in Christ.

Wilson's new bookumentary is an excellent explanation of the world around us. It's good entertainment. Church small groups to college freshmen will be edified, giving us every reason to believe the truthfulness of the Bible and doubt those who stand in opposition to it.

Several years ago Michael Pollan, the best-selling author of some excellent books on food, hunted and killed a wild California pig as part of his effort to prepare a meal hunted and foraged in the wild. After shooting the pig, he walked to it, knelt, and touched it, saw its blood flowing onto the ground, and experienced a surge of emotions, including pride, relief, and happiness.

The other emotion he felt (but hadn't expected) was gratitude. But, in Pollan's words, gratitude "for what exactly, or to whom? For my good fortune, I guess . . . but also to this animal, for stepping unbidden over the crest of that hill, out of the wild and into my sight. . . . More than the product of any labor of mine (save receptiveness) the animal was a gift---from whom or what I couldn't say---but gratitude seemed in order, and gratitude is what I felt" (The Omnivore's Dilemma).

It's a sacred moment for Pollan, though he seems unable to connect the dots to God. He feels grateful to the pig, but also to someone (Someone?) for giving him the pig. In the end, he seems content to simply record the emotion he feels and leave it there. But what a moment and what a remarkable description! This passage feels like a groping toward the gospel. Pollan even articulates an awareness of grace---the pig was a gift more than a product of his labor, and his role was mainly receptiveness. The terminology sounds like some New Testament descriptions of the gospel. Someone has supplied a free, unexpected, and undeserved gift, and it feels right to be thankful. It's perhaps unusual to find a hint of the gospel in a description of a secular, liberal, "foodie" intellectual killing a pig. But there it is.

Shine More Brightly

There are even clearer hints of the gospel in another perhaps unexpected place: the Book of Jonah. I say unexpected because the events described in Jonah took place about 800 years before Jesus, there is no explicit mention in Jonah of any Messianic figure, and the main character of the book is a recalcitrant and sinful man. But Jesus himself invites us to look for hints of the gospel in the Book of Jonah.

He does so by referring to his own death and resurrection as "the sign of the prophet Jonah" (Matthew 12:39) and by comparing Jonah's experience with his own ("for just as Jonah . . . so will the Son of Man"). This suggests that the shape of Jesus' experience is roughly similar to Jonah's experience. If we know the stories of both Jonah and Jesus, we can immediately see the similarities. The raging sea and the cross are both places of desperation and death. The fish and the tomb (in which both Jesus and Jonah lie for "three days and three nights") are (quite unexpectedly in each case) a step along the way toward life after death. In both cases, God is the one responsible for this new life---he tells the fish to deposit Jonah on dry land (Jonah 2:6, 10) and he exerts his great power to raise Jesus Christ from the dead (Ephesians 1:19-20).

Jesus sees Jonah's experience as analogous to his own. You might say that in this case, the New Testament's use of the Old Testament (i.e. Jesus' reference to Jonah) actually points to the Old Testament's use of the New (i.e. Jonah's story embodying hints of a greater story to come---the redemptive events most central to the gospel itself).

Are there other hints of the gospel in Jonah's experience? Jesus' self-comparison with Jonah invites us to ask this question. I think the answer is yes. Most of these hints, however, come by way of contrast between Jonah and Jesus rather than comparison. This is not surprising. It's easy to imagine that the story of a wayward and disobedient servant of God would more naturally point by negative example toward the perfect servant of God who perfectly fulfilled his mission. Jesus himself says he is "greater than Jonah" (Matthew 12:41). The similarities between Jonah and Jesus show us the glory of Jesus and the gospel, but the differences cause the gospel to shine even more brightly.

And the differences are many. For instance, although Jonah describes his experience in the sea and the fish in terms that sound like death (Jonah 2:1, 5-7) he didn't actually die in the raging sea or the hungry fish. That's because his mission was to preach, not to die. By contrast, Jesus' mission was to preach and also to die. Thankfully, Jesus had more than a near-death experience. He really did die (John 19:34; 1 Corinthians 15:3). Because he did, there's a gospel to preach.

Moreover, the reason Jonah came close to death was because of his own sin. He himself says this to the sailors on his ship: "I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you" (Jonah 1:12). In fact, throughout the book of Jonah, we see the pagans in the story acting more honorably and righteously than the prophet. The prophet who despises non-Jewish peoples and wishes them harm (Jonah 4:1-2) is the recipient of their sacrificial kindness (Jonah 1:13). The prophet who is slow to experience a change of heart (and it's not clear that his heart has changed even by the end of the book) sees pagan sailors (Jonah 1:16) and pagan Ninevites (Jonah 3:10) repent and draw closer to God. Jonah's near-death experience is clearly because of his own sin. The cause of Jesus' death is utterly different. He dies not because of his own sin but because of the sins of others (2 Corinthians 5:21). The righteous dies for the unrighteous (1 Peter 3:18).

Jonah didn't willingly choose to enter the raging sea or the belly of the fish. He was thrown into the sea by the hands of the sailors (Jonah 1:15), but he knew it was actually God casting him into the sea (Jonah 2:3). And it was God's decision, not Jonah's, that Jonah would enter the fish: "And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah" (Jonah 1:17). In the case of Jesus, it is clear that God sent him to the cross (Acts 4:27-28; Romans 3:25; 8:32). But it is equally clear that Jesus willingly chose the cross: "For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord" (John 10:17-18).

Jonah grudgingly obeyed God after his near-death experience in the fish and went to Nineveh to preach, although his heart still wasn't in it (Jonah 4:1-3). Jonah's almost-death was intended by God to win his obedience. But Jesus' death was his act of obedience: "For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous" (Romans 5:19). After the fish, Jonah's work was just beginning; God gave him a second chance to fulfill his commission (compare Jonah 1:1-3 and 3:1-3). But at the cross, Jesus could say his work was finished (John 19:30). God's redemptive plan was accomplished through Jesus' obedience. With less-than-ideal material to work with in the person of the prophet Jonah, God sovereignly used Jonah's disobedience to draw people to himself (Jonah 1:16).

What happened to Jonah and Jesus after the fish and the grave? Jonah's "resurrection" left him in an inglorious pile of fish vomit on the shore (Jonah 2:10). Jesus rose gloriously from the dead (Romans 1:4) and ascended into heaven, to the right hand of God (Ephesians 1.20-23). So although Jesus went lower than Jonah (he actually died), his ascent was infinitely higher.

Different Preachers, Different Responses

All these differences make surprising the very difference between Jonah and Jesus that Jesus himself highlights: the responses they received. The people of Nineveh accepted Jonah's post-fish preaching humbly, immediately, and completely. They repented when they heard his warning. Not so the people of Jesus' generation. "The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here" (Matthew 12:42). Although Jesus doesn't say it explicitly, the implication is clear: his own generation by and large did not heed his message.

Why does this comparison between Jonah and Jesus matter? It matters because it points us to our perfect Savior, a Savior who willingly died for our sins (rather than his own) and was then raised from the dead by God into unimaginable and eternal splendor. He was rejected by many of his own generation, but will be praised forever by his people. This is the gospel according to Jonah.

D. A. Carson reflects on the ethics of suicide and assisted suicide in this new book (contents listed below):

John F. Kilner, ed. Why the Church Needs Bioethics: A Guide to Wise Engagement with Life's Challenges. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011. (sample PDF)

Here's an outline of Carson's chapter ("Wisdom from the New Testament," pp. 188-205) with some excerpts (formatting added):

The case before us presents two primary bioethical questions: (1) Is it right to forgo reasonable medical treatment and thus die more quickly than would otherwise be the case (Dave)? (2) Is it ever right to take active steps to hasten death (Mary)? . . .

1. Some Biblical Priorities

1.1. The Body

1.2. The Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus

1.3. Sin, Suffering, and Death

[T]here is a legitimate place for outrage. On the eternal scale, death is "not the way it's supposed to be" (to borrow the title of a book by Plantinga). . . .

[D]eath may be the last enemy, but it does not have the last word. Christ has already beaten it. . . .

I would have died at least three times had it not been for modern medicine.

1.4. God

1.5. The Holy Spirit, the Church, Communal Hope, and Common Grace

1.6. Interpretive Clarifications

2. Some Pastoral Reflections in the Light of New Testament Themes

2.1. Expectations

We should always be horrified by evil, but never surprised by it; similarly, we should always be horrified by suffering and death (it is not the way it's supposed to be), but never blindsided.

2.2. God and the Image of God

First, do you really want a god whom you control? Do you want a god like the genie in Aladdin's lamp---very good at granting wishes but always under the control of whoever rubs the lamp? And second, how will you measure God's love? Will you measure it by assessing how much you get your own way? Or will the measure be a bloody cross on a little hill outside Jerusalem two thousand years ago?

2.3. Leaving a Heritage

When my own wife was desperately ill with cancer, early on we sat down and frankly told them of the disease and how serious it was. We told them that they could ask any questions they wanted, and we would answer truthfully. We also told them we would not burden them with every medical detail, or with ambiguous medical results or painful uncertainties, but we would never lie to them; and whenever there was reasonably clear news and direction, we would explain things to them as fully and faithfully as we could. . . . There can be no substitute for truthful speech with one's children.

2.4. Historical Perspective

2.5. Prudential Wisdom

It is difficult, however, to imagine any situation when Christian prudential wisdom could justify withholding food and water on the ground that it is withholding medical treatment, if that food and water is itself life-sustaining. Medically sanctioned starvation of a patient must not be glossed with words that make it less than a regimen of starvation. . . .

We do not thereby merely affirm the sanctity of human life and conclude that suicide and assisted suicide are morally questionable under the given conditions, but assert that in the light of the gospel, comprehensively understood, suicide and assisted suicide become unthinkable.

3. Some Public Policy Reflections in the Light of New Testament Themes

Yet the mandate to love one's neighbor demands that we try to put in place laws and cultural norms that are good and healthy for society.

Related resources by D. A. Carson:

1. How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006).
2. "Dying Well," in Be Still, My Soul: Embracing God's Purpose and Provision in Suffering: 25 Classic and Contemporary Readings on the Problem of Pain (ed. Nancy Guthrie; Wheaton: Crossway, 2010), 113-17.
3. Talks on suffering and the problem of evil

Tina Fey’s book Bossypants is somewhat like an episode of her TV show, 30 Rock. The show defies genres, sometimes driven by romantic comedy, sometimes by classic sitcom ensemble dynamics, and sometimes by seventh-grade bathroom humor. Her book, in similar form, ranges from a poignant memoir to absurd comedy. It’s foul-mouthed, honest, and a touch insecure, which is probably also true of Fey.

One of the pleasant surprises of Bossypants is Fey’s reflection on leadership. Having spent many years under the mentoring of Lorne Michaels (creator of Saturday Night Live), Fey has gleaned a tremendous amount of wisdom on leadership and creativity. In her chapter “A Childhood Dream, Realized,” she recounts eight things she learned from Michaels, and I was struck by the parallels (of a very different scale, of course) between getting ready for Saturday Night Live and getting ready for Sunday morning.

So here, for you, is my adapted version of Fey’s eight lessons, with a particular slant towards the work we do as pastors, getting ready for Sunday.

Lesson One: “Producing is about discouraging creativity.”

Fey describes how the many creative minds who make up a TV show’s crew (set dressers, costumers, props managers, effects directors, and more) require a leader who can discerningly restrain the gifts of their team. Without good leadership, without good restraint upon these gifts, the show descends into a cacophony of overdone costumes, props, scripts, and acting.

Sunday morning can be similar. The guitar player has a new pedal he wants to use, the audio engineer has an idea for looping echoes, the multimedia tech has found some fancy new backdrops with puppies that dance to the beat of “Your Grace Is Enough,” and there’s a line out your door of people who want to do solos, skits, interpretive dance, and something frightening called “Clown Communion.” (You can’t make this stuff up, folks.)

The gathering is a catalytic moment for the whole church. It’s meant to be an encouraging, covenant-renewing, Christ-exalting experience. It takes a discerning pastor to drift through the endless sea of voices calling for their songs, their ideas, their stylistic decisions to take center stage. Sometimes the best thing a pastor can do is discourage creativity, calling people to simply focus on the ministries of Word and prayer.

Lesson Two: “The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready, it goes on because it’s 11:30.”

Fey says, “You have to try your hardest to be at the top of your game and improve every joke until the last possible second, and then you have to let it go” (p. 123). A live show like SNL has a no margins for “fixing it in the editing room” or endless rewrites. Sound familiar?

The pressures we feel heading into Sundays can be extreme. We need to edify the congregation, confront unbelief, comfort the hurting, and get the lighting and sound cues right, all while fitting in preparation between marriage counseling appointments, church discipline cases, and conversations with staff.

The fact that time simply runs out is countered by an equally helpful word of comfort. Fey says, “What I learned about ‘bombing’ as an improviser at Second City [a Chicago-based comedy troupe] was that bombing is painful, but it doesn’t kill you” (p. 123). The same thing goes for Sunday. Some sermons, some worship services, sail right out of the park. Some are like Ambien, and our congregation is glad when they’re over. We can only hope our church heeds the admonition of the author of Hebrews, “Don’t give up meeting together.” Even so, it’s not worth losing sleep. Sunday will come around again, and agonizing over our misses (or our “hits” for that matter) is just another form of narcissism.

Lesson Three: “When hiring, mix Harvard nerds with Chicago improvisers and stir.”

Michaels has always staffed SNL with “hyperintelligent Harvard boys” and “visceral, fun performers,” an alchemy that consistently results in better comedy. The Harvard contingency “checks the logic of every joke, and the Improvisers teach them how to be human. It’s Spock and Kirk.”

There’s a need for a similar alchemy in any church leadership team. At Sojourn, we’ve seen the most beautiful things happen when “Harvard” (in our case, a traditional, theologically educated leader) comes together with the “Improviser” (an indigenous, homegrown leader). It’s not an either/or (though it’s often treated that way); it’s a great team dynamic.

Lesson Four: “Television is a visual medium.”

Fey writes, “It basically means, ‘Go to bed. You look tired.’ . . . Your ‘street cred’ with the staff [because you burned obscene hours] won’t help anybody if you look like a cadaver on camera. . . . It’s not vanity, because if you look weird, it will distract from what you’re trying to do. If you look as good as you can, people will be able to pay attention to what you’re actually saying.”

Writers in a show like SNL or 30 Rock work absurd hours, cramming every waking moment they can with writing, rewriting, and re-rewriting. Pastors aren’t much different. In fact, we’re notorious workaholics. We bask in the glory of fawning parishioners who extend their sympathies for how tired we are, how overworked, how stressed.

Richard Foster once said that for some people, the most spiritual thing we can do is take a nap. Pastoring, preaching, leading in worship—they’re all visual. To put it another way, people are watching us, and sometimes the best thing we could do is get some rest. Being haggard impedes our ministry in more ways than one.

Lesson Five: “Don’t make any big decisions right after the season ends.”

In the church, this can look like the end of a grueling holiday season, a particularly trying counseling case, a building campaign, or any of a myriad of initiatives. It’s wise to give some space and breathing room after such a grueling season before we make any big career or strategic decisions for the church. But as Fey notes, “The most interesting thing about this piece of advice is that no one ever takes it” (p. 127).

Lesson Six: “Never cut to a closed door.”

Fey says, “This can mean a lot of things: Comedy is about confidence, and the moment an audience senses a slip in confidence, they’re nervous for you” (p. 127).

This is a particularly great tip for worship leaders. Nothing is more distracting than a song ending without a clear transition plan for the next moment in the service. Band members start tuning their instruments, vocalists stare at their shoes, and the congregation gets a tingling feeling of fear. Plan the details of your gathering well, not for the sake of showmanship, but for the sake of leadership. Help people remain confident that their leaders on the platform know where they’re going in the journey that happens on Sunday morning.

Lesson Seven: “Don’t hire anyone you wouldn’t want to run into in the hallway at three in the morning.”

This pretty much speaks for itself. Bill Hybels, in Courageous Leadership, talks about hiring people on the basis of three C’s: Character, Competency, and Chemistry. In this point, Fey is talking about that third element—Chemistry. “If they’re too talkative or needy or angry to deal with in the middle of the night by the printer, steer clear.”

Lesson Eight: “Never tell a crazy person he’s crazy.”

One of the questions I’m often asked about Sojourn Music relates to this. People wonder why so many talented musicians came together in one church, when most churches are struggling to find enough musicians to stay afloat. I often wonder myself—I feel extremely blessed to work with the team I have at Sojourn. Part of my answer to “why” relates to this principle: The same person who suggests nightmarishly bad songs for your Easter service, strange ideas for puppets, or shows up looking like he has never, ever bathed might nonetheless be gifted to serve in ways that deeply bless the congregation. In fact, in my experience, the more talented members of a creative ministry (like music) often display grander and more frightening crazy streaks.

The challenge for a good leader is to skillfully help them feel heard, encouraged, and welcomed in spite of the strange ideas that occasionally bubble to the surface. Lorne Michaels, Fey says, has a unique way of steering those folks in ways that keep them from feeling ashamed or unwelcome, while keeping the crazy streak from shipwrecking the show.

It takes a unique leadership style to put together a show like SNL. Its sustained relevance, creativity, and prestige (with varying degrees) for 35 years, and the window Fey gives us into Michaels's leadership shows us why. It takes a willingness to make space for creative people to be who they are, while keeping a strong central focus. It means embracing limits like time and sleep, and attention to details.

While the parallels between SNL and church ministry are certainly limited, I’ve found these lessons from Michaels incredibly helpful. There’s a culture he’s created that welcomes a certain kind of person, and if our churches want to make room for creatives, there’s a lot to learn.

In the world of cinema, there are two basic kinds of people: those who “go to the movies,” and those who love the art of film itself. For the latter group, the release date of  Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life in their respective city was tantamount to a high holy day. Malick—the reclusive director—has only made four films in the past 40 years before this current release. Each piece has in turn been critically acclaimed. The Tree of Life was certainly no exception to the rule, receiving the Palme d’Or at Cannes, the festival’s most prestigious award. This all took place despite the fact that Malick did not personally appear in support of the film at Cannes (although he was there), and refuses to do any publicity.

Confession: I believe that The Tree of Life is a masterpiece and a deeply important film. As someone who teaches courses in philosophy of film, and having seen the film multiple times myself, I have repeatedly told all interested parties that this is not a film for the folks who like to “go to the movies.” In fact, I have actively discouraged people from going to see it. Terrence Malick is a highly philosophical auteur filmmaker whose works defy the traditional conventions of dialogue, narrative, and story arc. Complicating matters, however, The Tree of Life stars three of Hollywood’s biggest names: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain. Consequently, people have shelled out their hard-earned dollars and filed into the theater to see a blockbuster. They were in for a rude awakening.

Each time I have seen the film, I have felt like I was entering a zone demarcated for spiritual warfare. It opens with an epigram from Job 38:4,7 ("Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation . . . while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"), and immerses its viewers into what I can only describe as an intense experience of emotional vertigo for the next two and a half hours. The film arrests the individual’s senses at every level: intellectual, psychological, and visual. The cinematography is stunning. The portrayals of the O’Brien family, set in 1950s Waco, Texas, provide what can only be described as the most moving repristination of childhood ever captured on film. The voiceovers from the film’s protagonist, Jack, confront the audience directly with the existence of God.

Legendary Reactions

Reactions to The Tree of Life have already become the stuff of legend. Some respond to what they are seeing with deep, sensate weeping. Others grow visibly angry and verbalize their protests before storming out of the theater. Still others emerge from the auditorium in a state of shock. But everyone leaves talking about what they have just seen. Personally, I felt the right response for me afterward was a period of silence.

Film criticism has fallen decidedly on hard times, and nowhere has this been more evident in the reviews of The Tree of Life. Although Roger Ebert has heralded the film as the most ambitious film he has seen since Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, reviewers have struggled to wrap their minds around Malick’s magnum opus.

For secular audiences, the content borders on offensive given the work’s explicit theism and anomalous ending (e.g. is this an evocation of the afterlife or not?). The general line of attack for them has been: “Malick has taken on the meaning of life, but we remain very piously unconvinced by what we perceive as his ‘answers.’”  Perhaps more enlightening are those who apply a Freudian/Lacanian grid to the story, referencing the Oedipal impulses they see tacit in Jack’s relationship to his father and his mother.

Christian reviewers, by way of contrast, appear almost desperate to figure out what every scene “means” in the film. We would like to believe that Malick’s genius is a catalog of one-to-one correspondences with orthodoxy, ready-made for illustrative sermon material. To be sure, there is plenty of fodder for such interpretations: the nature vs. grace dichotomy, the explicit and latent references to Scripture, the themes of darkness and shame versus light and love, the seemingly weak church and pale Christ juxtaposed to the youthful passions of Jack, and the redemption/reconciliation sequence that closes the film.

The whole work overflows with theological intensity. For example, what other filmmaker besides Malick would have such a high view of the sanctity of human life so as to suggest that the significance of one child's birth can only be understood in light of the totality of the universe's creation? And what do we make of the sequences with the older Jack among the skyscrapers of Houston? Could it be, as one colleague suggested, that you can go running from your emotional and psychological "stuff," but sooner or later, your "stuff" is going to come looking for you?

But whereas we are driven to do theological analysis on The Tree of Life, I wonder if we might be missing the film’s own internal governing hermeneutic. Terrence Malick transports the individual into the pure feeling and wonder of existence in light of our experience. Could it be that the analogue for this film is not Western Christianity, but rather Eastern Orthodoxy? Is The Tree of Life meant to be dissected and explained, or does the filmmaker intend for us to think of his piece as an icon, transporting us into another world in which restoration, reconciliation, and grace are not scorned by mockers and enervated by skeptical disavowals?

High Priests of Culture

Recently, philosophers have begun asking the question of whether or not film has/will become a new form of thought itself. In his massive two volume work on Cinema, Gilles Deleuze argues that film is not merely a medium for communicating messages or stories, but also a means to fuse thought and image together in an instant of ecstatic realization. Similarly, Jacques Rancière has written that film gives us the ability to do something that ideologies have wanted to do for centuries: make the abstract and unrepresentable, representable. It has the potential to combine image, sound, and thought into form that has a distinctive power to explain the world around us.

If these analyses turn out to be apt, then The Tree of Life may well be remembered as a turning point in the importance of how we think about film itself. It may well accelerate the feeling of many people today that their aesthetic experiences through the arts are religion enough for them. Anton Chekov once reflected on his ambivalence toward the theater and the “high priests of the sacred art”—that the actors show us how to live, what to do, and who to be. Today, there can be no doubt that the high priests, priests, and acolytes of our culture are the producers, directors, writers, and actors. As film increasingly presents people with opportunities to replicate certain aspects of religious experience, we must pause to reflect upon the growing reality of “theater as temple.”

This phenomenon puts us back, curiously enough, in the position of the ancient Mediterranean world, in which Greek dramas brought together the worship of the gods, the understanding of the state, and the norms of society. In such a world, we have no choice but to repair to the foolishness of preaching, return to what Luther called the “poor tokens of the Word of God alone” . . . and hope at the end of the day that Terrence Malick is on our side.

There are many who write better, clearer, and more persuasive reviews than I will ever produce. But, as my byline says, my duties at The Gospel Coalition include editing book reviews. At some level, I have to be able to say to a review, “Yes, that works!” or “No, let’s try something different.”

But I know you are a demanding reader who expects more from me than simply how to write a review that works. You want to know the stuff that turns a review that simply works into a review that’s great. And on the occasion of the launching of our new book review site, this is as good of a time as ever to give some answers to that question.

I want to ensure you that these mysterious “great” reviews do exist and not just in the world of Forms. There are excellent reviews that can shift the entire discussion on an issue much faster and more effectively than the book itself. Some reviews are thigh-slapping funny, much to the expense, unfortunately, of the authors. And then there are the reviews that when you are done, you say to yourself, “Yes! That’s what I needed to know!” So don’t assume that book reviews are only dull necessities.

But like every popular self-help book, where the title over-sells the content, I may not have the combination for greatness to offer. But let me give some suggestions that will certainly point you in the direction where greatness dwells.

(1) Forget everything you learned in seminary.

I could tell you horror stories of seminary students sending me the review they just handed in to their New Testament professor to see if we’d like it for publication. I’ll have more to say about this below, but Bible colleges and seminaries do not train you to write a readable, much less great, review. Chances are, their guidelines tell you to do the opposite of what you should to produce interesting reading. For there is a foul motive behind academic style manuals: to ensure the review never exposes that there may be an actual person behind the reviewer!

(2) Answer the question everyone is asking.

The obvious example is Love Wins. Is Rob Bell a universalist or not? That was the question, right? It won’t always be as obvious as Bell’s book. But you should try to find the key question people are asking about the book and, then, try to answer it.

And do not just answer the question of whether the author is right or not. That should go without saying. But ask the deeper questions. Here’s one more example. Christian Smith—you know, the “moralistic therapeutic deism” Christian Smith—is coming out with a book soon entitled, Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood. Surely, he is talking about the fruit of the youthful “therapeutic moralistic deism” crowd from Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers who are transitioning into adulthood. Just what is this “dark side”? What implications does this have for the family, marriage, or even the economy? Does Smith answer these questions?

(3) Don’t over-summarize.

If it’s not poor writing that kills a review, it's often the misguided inclusion of too much summary. Here is another sour consequence from our seminary courses. Some forums, particularly academic journals, want more summary than we prefer on this site, while other publications have no use for them to all. But if you want to ensure that nobody finishes your review, then offer a chapter-by-chapter, detailed summary. Trust me, it’s hard enough for editors to not look for the quickest distraction.

Well, stop it! You are belaboring your readers for no good reason and working too hard in a strategy that produces no good fruit.

A review is close to greatness when the author minors on summary and majors on interaction and reflection. A good rule of thumb is to give your readers a sense for the book's main argument and then include whatever context your interaction and reflection require. You don’t need to prove that you’ve read the book. Your readers will give you the benefit of the doubt, I promise.

(4) Show the consequences of an idea.

This is an important but dangerous point. It’s important, because ideas have consequences, and if a review is going to further the discussion, then the reviewer must show where the book’s conclusion leads. It’s dangerous, because in order to show consequences, the reviewer must make reasonable assumptions—stress on reasonable—and, unfortunately, reviewers don’t always have the logical equipment or forward-thinking ability to make this work. We should never be afraid to call a spade a spade, but many authors have foolishly been called heretics or accused of other egregious sins because of unreasonable assumptions.

Nevertheless, reviewers should warn their readers of bad and unfortunate consequences of ideas put forward in books.

There you have it. As I mentioned before, I don’t have the formula for greatness, but you should now have a sense of its substance. I am aware that there is probably more to be said, and what I’ve said could have been said more eloquently. But what many readers of reviews intuit I have tried to put into words.

Woody Allen still believes in movie magic. His latest film, Midnight in Paris, requires no CGI or pyrotechnics to transport his main character, Gil (played in great neurotic bursts by Owen Wilson) back to the jazz age of the 1920s. Only the sound of church bells marks the change, when suddenly an old car appears and Gil is whisked inside, taken to a roaring party where Cole Porter sings at the piano and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald draw Gil into his world.

It’s Gil’s dream coming true. Gil is an American writer who once lived in Paris and regrets ever leaving. Instead of inspired years walking the Paris streets, he moved to California, became a very successful “Hollywood hack,” and is now poised to marry the self-centered Inez, played brilliantly by Rachel McAdams. Inez wants to enjoy their trip and go back home, marry, and settle down to a luxury life in Malibu. While she and her obnoxious mother press Gil to buy $18,000 dining room chairs, his heart departs for the Paris streets, and Allen presents the city to us in all its glory, unapologetically showing off the clichés of the city with beautiful cinematography. David Denby, writing about the film in the New Yorker, observes, “[Allen] seems to be saying, “Yes, these are clichés, but they’ve become clichés because this is the most beautiful place on earth.”

Wandering, Wondering

During their trip to Paris, the rift between Gil’s romanticism and Inez’s realism is continually exposed, and they begin drifting in different directions. Paul, an old flame of Inez’s, shows up with a strong dose of pseudo-intellectualism, using the streets and museums as a prop to continually pontificate. Everyone who runs across him finds him pedantic except Inez, and the rift between her and Gil grows wider. (Like other pseudo-intellectuals in Allen’s films, Paul is thoroughly skewered before too long.)

Each night Gil returns to the streets, and finds himself again in the 1920s, wondering aloud about his career, his novel, and his discontent. Gertrude Stein, the Fitzgeralds, Salvador Dali, and Ernest Hemingway listen, encourage him, and welcome him into their inner circle. Corey Stoll is hilarious as Hemingway, perpetually talking about death, love, and courage, swilling wine and asking if anyone will fight him. He confronts Gil’s weakness and fear, challenging him to make the brave decision, whatever that particular decision might be. One scene in particular seems like a glimpse inside the mind of any artist (or perhaps even Allen himself), where Gil airs all of his fears about success and failure in work and love, and Hemingway confronts him in bursts of characteristic prose, pushing him onward.

When whisked away in time, Gil doesn’t escape to the real roaring twenties. Instead, it’s an idealized world, perfectly tailored (by either his imagination or the power of movie magic) to prepare him to make his bold decision (ending his dead-end engagement and leaving his career as a movie hack). It’s a funny take on providence; something had to intervene to prepare Gil to make the fearless decision. For him it comes from the affirmation of Gertrude Stein and the punch in the gut from Ernest Hemingway. Artists battle fear constantly; fear their work is actually bad, fear they’ll be rejected, fear they’ll be forgotten. Allen’s world of the twenties seems like a laboratory for overcoming that fear.

Nostalgic Longing

Of course, real life doesn’t work that way, but we can be reminded by this fairy tale of the value that community contributes to creativity. We need mentors (like Stein) and brutally honest critics (like Hemmingway) whom we allow to speak into our work. This, of course, is true in any field, but is particularly true for creatives.

Gil eventually meets Adriana, a beautiful girl who’s taken up with Picasso. Just as he begins to dream of staying with her in the twenties, she confesses her own nostalgic longing for the turn of the century, the “Belle Epoque,” which she sees as the golden age of Paris. When they’re magically drawn back into that era, Gil begins to see that any era will be unsatisfying “because life is a little unsatisfying,” as he tells Adriana. In a moment that is pure Woody Allen, he says, after all, “these people don’t have antibiotics.” Thus Gil’s romantic love of the past is revealed, ultimately, to be escapist and disappointing.

Still, he finally follows his dreams to stay in Paris, and by all appearances, is better and happier for it. Romanticism points to a deep discontent in the human heart for a better time, a better age, and a better way of living. Creative angst is a powerful force, driving an inventor to build a better widget or an artist to tell a better story. It can also be an endless rabbit trail that leads us to conclude with the author of Ecclesiastes that there must be something more satisfying than money, power, and sex.

Allen’s conclusion—in this film and others—is lowered expectations. There is no “Golden Age,” only life, which was as full of dissatisfaction in the past as it is now. Christians shouldn’t be too quick to toss this conclusion off as fatalistic or too humanist. We live an incredibly narcissistic time where our expectations for life, love, marriage, and happiness are grandiose. We throw holy water on narcissism and count on our religious lives to generate the results we want. We romanticize all kinds of “Golden Ages” or “Golden Relationships,” imagining that Christian celebrities and leaders have the perfect lives we want, wishing we could step into their world, and imagining that the right combination of circumstances and religious obedience could earn them for us. “If I were married to (blank),” “If I worked at (blank).” Such narcissism needs the gospel to remind us that there has yet to be a “golden age” or a perfect situation, and that sin’s effects make all of life “a little unsatisfying.” We would do well to simply expect a little less.

Ironically Present

The irony is that such an acceptance actually frees us to be more present to our given circumstances. If an ideal world is impossibly out of reach, we may as well make the most of whatever place we occupy. Getting our head out of the clouds of “what if” can open our eyes to what’s really occurring around us, and it frees us to be fully invested in where we are.

It also gives us a greater reason for hope. Movies rarely tell the “whole” story. It could be that Gil’s decision to stay in Paris merely delays his ultimate unhappiness a bit longer, and soon he’ll be looking for satisfaction somewhere else. That would be true to life, but it’s not necessarily a good story. Happy endings in movies ring a little false because a million things can go wrong. The beautiful French woman Gil meets at the end could be a complete lunatic. Or he could get robbed on the Metro the next day. Or his book could flop.

We either have to see the happy endings of movies as deeply flawed, as though there were an asterisk indicating, *of course, great tragedy is inevitable in the near future. Or we could see them as indicative of the human heart’s need for resolution. Happy endings, in that sense, are always eschatological. While we acknowledge that there has yet to be a golden age, every time a hero rides off into the sunset or a couple finds love just as the closing credits begin to roll, it’s a stammering effort within creation to say, “Come, Lord Jesus.” It’s a whisper of hope, longing for the day when all of our stories find a satisfying and joy-filled conclusion.

That will truly be a Belle Epoque.

For many of us, summer brings a slower pace to life. We use the time to rest from some of our regular ministry labors. But summer need not be like those long school vacations where we worked to forget everything we learned in the previous nine months. Instead, with the help of some good books, summer can be a time of rejuvenating spiritual preparation. A little extra time can help us focus on longer books that would normally daunt us or free us up to read genres outside our usual literary fare. We might even pick up a few fun titles for a trip to the beach.

I asked a few staff members of The Gospel Coalition what they'll be reading this summer and why. Maybe you'll see something on our lists that will provoke your own interest. We welcome you to join the conversation in the comments with your own summer reading lists.

Collin Hansen, editorial director, The Gospel Coalition:

How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil by D. A. Carson

• This title has been sitting on my shelf for a while since I picked it up online on the recommendation of many friends. Recent events have helped me recognize the normalcy of suffering in the Christian life. But my response has not always demonstrated the faith I profess. I'm hoping this book gives me a stronger theological foundation to strengthen my response to life's challenges.

Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, edited by Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton

• I've seen this classic work of sociology and history footnoted so many times that I'm devoting some time this summer to finally reading it myself. The preface to the first edition opens by asking, "How ought we to live? How do we think about how to live?" These are questions Christians have been equipped by God's Word and empowered by the Holy Spirit to answer. But I suspect this analysis will expose that we, too, are complicit in a culture that challenges our Christian discipleship on various fronts.

America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation by David Goldfield

• This new history of the Civil War is one of many published 150 years after the horrible war's outbreak. I had been wanting to read this book even before I heard the author interviewed by Albert Mohler. But that discussion convinced me I needed to understand Goldfields's controversial thesis that Northern evangelicals should be blamed for provoking an unnecessary conflict with their unflinching self-righteousness.

Andy Naselli, administrator of Themelios and research manager for D. A. Carson:

The Lost Letters of Pergamum: A Story from the New Testament World by Bruce W. Longenecker

• This is one of the books I added to my reading list after reading Tony Reinke's "Life In the Greco-Roman World (Book Recommendations)." I profited immensely from reading Paul Maier's documentary novels on Pilate and Rome, and I'm hoping that this book engages my imagination to better understand the world of the New Testament.

Perspectives on Election: Five Views, edited by Chad Owen Brand

• I'm scheduled to teach a block course in September on the exegesis and theology of Romans 9-11, so I'm planning to read this book to help me better understand how different views handle Romans 9. I learn a lot from good debates, so I'm drawn to books framed with a debate-format.

Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell

• Many friends have recommended this book to me over the years, and the occasion of this new edition seems like a good time to read it. I recently enjoyed a five-part interview of Sowell (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), and this 80-year-old economist is as witty and insightful as ever.

Kathleen Nielson, author and plenary speaker at The Gospel Coalition's 2012 women's conference in Orlando:

Jonathan Edwards: A Life by George Marsden

• What finally compels me to read this biography through and through is having recently read and relished the journals of Esther Edwards Burr, Jonathan's and Sarah's daughter. I look forward to Marsden's comprehensive and much-celebrated portrayal of Edwards' family life, ministry, and body of work.

Darwin's Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get It Wrong by Conor Cunningham

• This book claims to resolve the disputes between believers in Christ and believers in evolution---a large and challenging claim indeed. Cunningham apparently speaks with an extremely witty and penetrating voice, one both welcomed by many and questioned by many. My aim in reading is to understand the issues and the questions with increasing clarity and biblical discernment, particularly in light of the growing acceptance of evolutionary thinking among evangelicals.

Ballistics: Poems by Billy Collins; Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy; The Help by Kathryn Stockett

• This is a diverse category for pure enjoyment. The Collins selection is a 2008 poetry collection. I reread Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles last summer and want to recall where he ended up with this later novel. And lots of friends recommended Stockett's novel, a story of African American maids and the women for whom they work, set in Jackson, Missippi, in the 1960s.

John Starke, editor for The Gospel Coalition and managing editor of TGC Reviews:

A Damsel in Distress by P. G. Wodehouse

• Wodehouse mastered the English language, and I try to read him (and others like him) as often as I can, hoping that somehow his brilliance can rub off on me---just a little of it. Wodehouse is funny and surprisingly perceptive about our human nature.

Athanasius by Peter Leithart

• Leithart's last book, Defending Constantine, along with many of his others, bring such a fresh perspective to any topic. He is often insightful and shrewd. Also, look for his book coming this fall on Dostoevsky.

Notes From the Tilt-a-Whirl by N. D. Wilson

• I've put off reading this book for long enough. I've just heard too many good things about it, and I've become more and more impressed with Wilson's writing. This seems like a fun, slap-it-on-my-Kindle, summer read.