★★★★

Rick Herrick’s book is a friendly, easy-to-read argument against “Evangelical Christianity.” Rick is a self-proclaimed Christian, but is unable to promote the Bible as a history book to be read literally. Welcome to the club, right? The back cover promises a “hard-hitting attack against Christian fundamentalism,” but I really didn’t get that feeling. Instead, Rick presents common sense reason after reason for replacing fundamentalism with Jesus’ dream of a “Kingdom of God.” Rick never does precisely nail down his own vision for the Kingdom, but love plays a pivotal role.

Rick’s views are down to earth and should strike a chord with most any thinking person. From a scholarly viewpoint, I didn’t read anything terribly profound or original. Any Bible scholar is aware of the Bible’s more talked-about contradictions and disproven claims, and Rick doesn’t delve much deeper than this. But Herrick knows his Bible, he knows Israel’s history, and he has a knack for writing simply, presenting commonplace arguments that should convince any Bible reader of its errancy. It’s a pretty quick read, but Herrick doesn’t need deep research or complex theological arguments to make his point; fundamentalism just simply doesn’t hold up under even a cursory examination.

This is a book for any Christian who has read too much of the Bible to embrace its portrayal of God, yet shares an appreciation for their Christian heritage and an awe for the mystery of love.

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?

//Long ago, a minister asked me to explain this verse. Many have used this verse to discourage interfaith marriage or marriage to an unbeliever. I was no minister, so I felt a bit proud to be asked my opinion, but I didn’t have much to say. I think I muttered something about how two people sharing a yoke needed to be working equally hard, or one would hold back the other.

Actually, Paul was referring to the law. Deuteronomy 22:10 reads, Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together. Why? Because sharing a yoke together would cause both animals discomfort in plowing. It was not that they couldn’t or wouldn’t share the same yoke, but that it would be painful.

Paul’s advice, it seems to me, is not to shun unbelievers as potential partners but to be aware that “plowing the field” together will be a painful process. Doesn’t matter whether you’re the ox or the ass.

★★★★★

TRIPP! Tripp, I’m beggin’ ya man, please keep me on your list of reviewers for future books! I haven’t laughed this hard in a long time. Needless to say, I got absolutely nothing done yesterday.

Tripp’s quest to find God by first finding the devil may be as serious as it is bizarre, but it’s just so doggone funny. Tripp confesses that you can’t find God through philosophical argument, but then proceeds to search for Satan in precisely that logical manner, scheduling interviews with a number of religious (and anti-religious) figures. Along the way, Tripp finds Satan in a malfunctioning microphone, a cranky kitty, and a buncha God-robbin’ poor people who think it’s more important to eat than tithe. In fact, Satan hides just about everywhere—except around those darn Satanists—but each interview just adds to Tripp’s frustration in not being able to get a tangible hold on the slippery critter’s pointy tail.

Tripp can’t handle incongruity, by the way. He starts getting about as cranky as Cindy Jacobs’ possessed cat, and then has a hard time harnessing his cynicism, which leaves a lot of bewildered interviewees in his wake.  His research steers inexorably and frustratingly to an anticlimax, a Devil wearing nada, until, finally, trooper that Tripp is, he decides to go all in. He agrees to sell his soul to the Devil. No big deal, he figures: His belief in the soul has been dashed. He prepares a devilish concoction of soundtracks to hold him for several long lonely hours, locates a suitable “dirt crossroads,” sketches out a devils trap in the dirt, and waits to see if his offer will entice the old dragon. Hey, this is suddenly turning scary, because beneath Tripp’s now-nervous humor lies an undercurrent of serious flirting with the occult. It’s now or never. And what happens next is …

… aw, I can’t tell you. But my smile disappeared in the final pages, as a philosophical answer to Tripp’s search for Satan and God bubbled up from the underworld.

Job 9:7, He commands the sun, and it does not rise;

★★★★

Yikes! Noe comes out of his corner with fists swinging in this one. If we wanna save the world, we better listen up. Noe gives us 18 short, passionate exposés highlighting his psuedo-preterist interpretation of scripture.

Most of them are a little too feisty for me, so I didn’t connect quite so strongly with this book as I did with Hell Yes / Hell No, my first book by Noe. This time around, Noe has bypassed the balanced approach of presenting both sides of his arguments, and resorted to straight talk. He’s frustrated at the way Christian beliefs in the last couple centuries have shifted from postmillennial to dispensational premillennial views—with its teaching that the world is supposed to get worse and worse before Christ returns—and bemoans how this change “perfectly coincides and statistically correlates with the withdrawal of Christians from societal involvement, the rise of godless rule, and the decline of morality and public life here in America.” Noe believes our nation was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, with Christianity once the moral influencer in our society. He complains about the recent exodus of our youth from today’s churches, blaming improper teachings of what to believe.

All this can be set right by jettisoning our “dumbed-down Christianity” and reading the scriptures for what they say. When Jesus promises the new age will arrive “within a generation” (40 years), we need to take him at his word, and recognize the role that the war of 70 AD played in Christian history. Let it be known that, while I’m no preterist, I do sympathize with Noe’s view. You cannot lift the New Testament out from the shadow of that horrendous war. We do the Bible a disservice by pretending its writers prophesied a time in their distant future.

Noe has some legitimate arguments, but so does the other side. He points out, for example, that in the final verses of Matthew Jesus promises to never go away again, and concludes that Jesus won’t be coming back because he never left in the first place. Of course, the book of Acts says just the opposite, that, as Jesus ascended, he promised to be right back. So, Noe compromises by explaining that Christ comes and goes as he pleases. It’s true that Hebrews says Jesus “will appear a second time,” but Noe points out that this doesn’t confine Jesus’ comings to only two.

My purpose is not to argue with Noe (his staunch belief in the Bible as everywhere true would leave us with little common basis for debate) but to point out that there are at least two sides to every argument, so believers who consider the Bible inerrant will be forever squabbling because of the varying beliefs of its writers. Noe is at his best in arguing the urgency of the first century Christian message and its dream of a Kingdom, but I couldn’t share his analysis and admiration for the Book of Revelation as the highlight of that Kingdom. Revelation, he says, is “the only source that unveils and reveals Jesus in his present-day, pertinent, and full exalted, glorified, transformed, transfigured, and transcendent reality. … This is the Jesus each of us, today, needs to meet, know, and take seriously.”

Ugh, not me. Frankly, Revelation is a literary masterpiece, my favorite book in the Bible (I published a book about it a year ago: www.thewayithappened.com), but its Jesus is ugly and icky. Revelation’s vengeful pipedreams could have derailed Christianity; thankfully, the Johannine Community out of which it sprang discovered it was better off leaning on John’s Gospel … the gospel of love.

So, okay, it turns out that Noe and I have our differences. Yet I must admit, his book and its 18 theses are well worth reading. His research is deep and relevant. More than anything else, Noe’s new argumentative book does indeed highlight how the Bible should not be “dumbed down,” how it deserves to be read carefully and thoughtfully. By the time Noe reaches his 18^th exposé, he has circled around to where he and I, even with our vastly different Christianities, are in harmony. In his final chapter, titled Your Worldview, Noe discusses Jesus’ paradigm and the Kingdom of God. This is what Christianity is all about! When will we stop “futurizing” the Kingdom and start living it? While I can’t quite walk Noe’s pathway of staunch preterism and inerrant scripture, I applaud its destination, and dream of the day when all Christians share Jesus’ vision of a Kingdom. If Noe’s pathway leads us there, we could do far worse.

Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.

★★★★★

Well, it’s Sunday, and there’s no football. The Superbowl is over. Desperately clinging to another passion (NFL football) and hoping to excuse it as religious reading, I picked up Tim Tebow’s book. Tim, the latest God-fearing sports sensation.

Don’t let me fool you: This is a football book, not a book about religion. More than anything else, you’ll be reading about Tebow’s football experiences, including his remarkable college career. Tebow’s success in football boils down to one thing: an obsessive drive. He simply cannot slack off. “When we think we can do less than our best, when we think others are not watching, we’re cheating ourselves and the God who created us.” But it’s more than wanting to do right by God. Tebow just can’t accept losing. His mantra: “Somewhere he is out there, training while I am not. One day, when we meet, he will win.”

Here’s the deal: Much as I wince at athletes who praise God after every touchdown, I wound up really liking this Tebow fella! Yes, Tim feels the need to evangelize, given the special opportunity he has been given in life, but his religion is grounded. He may print Bible verses under his eyes when he plays, hoping for a camera close-up, but  he doesn’t consider himself God’s answer to the world. A couple typical Tebow quotes:

“I know it sounds dumb to be praying over a football game … I’m not sure God is into who wins or loses .. But since my parents raised me to pray about anything that’s on my heart, I pray—even if some of those things are trivial in the overall scheme of things.”

“People often seem to think that when you’re following the Lord and trying to do His will, your path will always be clear, the decisions smooth and easy, and life will be lived happily ever after and all that. Sometimes that may be true, but I’ve found that more often, it’s not. The muddled decisions still seem muddled, bad things still happen to believers, and great things can happen to nonbelievers.”

Yeah, the season is over, and Tim Tebow, the unlikely master of miraculous comebacks, couldn’t pull a rabbit out of the hat when it really mattered this year. His faith in God notwithstanding, we now head into the off-season wondering if he’ll even remain the Anointed One in Denver. Tebow never lost his trust in God, but has he lost the trust of his coaching staff?

As Tim says, “I don’t know what my future holds, but I do know who holds my future.”

And when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas, and drew [them] into the marketplace unto the rulers