Book Review: In Constant Prayer

In Constant Prayer is the second book in Thomas Nelson’s The Ancient Practices Series. (I previously reviewed the first book in this series - Brian McLaren’s Finding Our Way Again - here.) Robert Benson makes a powerful case for why every Christian should pray the daily office. Benson is a gifted and engaging writer. He does two things exceptionally well: he is able to explain a practice that may be unfamiliar to many mainline and evangelical Christians in a way that is both lucid and persuasive, and he writes in a way that really brings you into the conversation. He comes across as very humble and willing to be vulnerable. This is not a book written from an expert in prayer to people that the author is clearly on a pedestal above his audience. Instead, Benson writes to people who really want to make time for God, but often struggle to do so. And he writes not as someone who has found all the answers, but as someone who is willing to admit that he has often struggled himself to make time to pray the daily office.

The daily office is “in the simplest terms… a regular pattern and order for formal worship and prayer that is offered to God at specific times throughout the course of the day. Each set of prayers, known as an office, is made up of psalms, scriptures, and prayers” (9-10). Benson’s professed goal is “to open up some of the mystery of the daily office for those who have had little or no exposure to this ancient way of Christian prayer” (10). For Benson this is no trivial matter as he has become convinced that “if the Church is to live, and actually be alive, one of the reasons, maybe the most important and maybe even the only reason, will be because we have taken up our place in the line of the generations of the faithful who came before us. It will be because we pray the prayer that Christ himself prayed when he walked among us and now longs to pray though us” (72-73).

Perhaps the highest praise that I can offer for this book is that in a time when there are more books on prayer than any sane person could read, this is one of the books I would recommend to someone who seeks encouragement in their prayer life and who seeks some basic guidance for not thinking about praying, but for actually praying.

The book also contains a sample office of morning prayer. Since reading this book, I have begun praying this morning prayer and am considering purchasing one of the prayer books that he mentions in the book.

I would especially recommend this book to spiritual leaders who are finding that their own devotional life is drying up. Benson is very candid about the reality that we sometimes fail to make time to spend in prayer with God. He writes in a way that is not accusatory and he even includes himself in the group of people who sometimes fail. But he lifts up the daily office as a tested and well-worn practice that helps “the rest of us” grow in our relationship with God. If you are struggling with consistent time with God in prayer, or you are “stuck” in your prayer life, this book would be well worth the read.

Commenting Like a Christian…

I just read a very interesting post on Adam Hamilton’s blog Seeing Gray. Adam Hamilton has made the decision, at least for the time being, to turn off the comments on his blog. I can really sense his wrestling with the desire to create a place for people to dialog and listen to one another. Instead, it seems that a few people are monopolizing the conversation, and they are doing so in an unloving way.

I have been blessed during my time blogging to not find that this has been a problem… so far. But, I have also been surprised to find how rude, even hateful, Christians can be on Christian blogs or discussion boards. A few years ago there was one board I finally had to quit visiting, because I realized I always left angry and hurt.

I have not been following Adam’s blog closely enough to know what the comments were about that he found to be troublesome enough to make the decision to go ahead and turn off the comments. But, there seems to be something very mixed up going on in our understanding (and more importantly out practice) of faith when we feel justified bashing someone verbally because we do not agree with them on a particular issue.

This seems to point to a broader concern that I have with the universal Church. People on different sides of issues far too often seem to be unable to respect one another to listen carefully to what they are saying and try to understand where they are coming from. More specifically, I see this happening to some extent with the United Methodist Church - particularly in relation to the most controversial issues.

I am reminded of Wesley’s exhortation that though we may not all think alike, may we not love alike? Unfortunately, this is sometimes used as a justification for doctrinal indifference. This is not what Wesley meant at all. Wesley made a distinction between essential and nonessentials. I wonder if the first step for Christians in trying to find a way forward might not be to first take a major step backward. Maybe instead of talking about specific issues that we disagree on, could it be that we first need to make sure we agree on what the essentials are? Sometimes when I observe arguments between Christians, I wonder if there is anything they agree on.

For Jesus’ sake, may we rediscover the essentials of the Christian faith and learn to listen to one another, remembering that Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor in the same breath that he commanded us to love God.

Finding Our Way Again by Brian McLaren

“The purpose of the ancient way and the ancient practices is not to make us more religious. It is to make us more alive. Alive to God. Alive to our spouses, parents, children, neighbors, strangers, and yes, even our enemies” (182). This seems to be the central thesis of Brian McLaren’s latest book Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices. This is the first book in a new series published by Thomas Nelson called “The Ancient Practices Series.” The series consists of eight books dealing with ancient Christian practices. Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices, is the introductory volume in this series.

Recently, there has been quite a bit written about a third way that goes beyond the polarizing options between conservative and liberal or left and right. McLaren, however, writes that “more and more of us feel, more and more intensely, the need for a fresh, creative alternative - a fourth alternative, something beyond militarist scientific secularism, pushy religious fundamentalism, and mushy amorphous spirituality…. The challenge of the future will require, we realize, rediscovery and adaptive reuse of resources from the ancient past” (5-6)

As a result, McLaren’s book, and the series of book that he is introducing, seek to flesh out this “fourth way” by reaching “beyond a reductionistic secularism, beyond a reactive and intransigent fundamentalism, and beyond a vague, consumerist spirituality” (6).

I always enjoy reading McLaren’s work because he is a gifted writer. His conversational style and his ability to bring you into the story that he is telling make it easy to go along with him for the ride that he wants to take you on. He has the ability to make you feel as if he is actually speaking directly to you saying, “Hey, here are some things that I have been thinking about. Let me show you what I am seeing and see what you think about it.”

Finding Our Way Again is certainly no exception to McLaren’s ability to engage the reader and invite them into a conversation. McLaren is at his best in the chapters where he explains the ancient practices of katharsis, fotosis, and theosis. In these chapters he explains these concepts by asking the reader to imagine themselves to be “a young spiritual seeker who has just come into possession of a time machine… You come to a monastery and are given a hospitable welcome. You meet with the abbess, a short, wrinkled, slightly hunched-over woman who walks with a stick at a pace that exceeds the speed limit you would imagine for a wrinkled, slightly hunched-over woman” (148). I suspect that most authors would not be able to pull this off in a believable way. However, at least for me, I read this passage and never blinked. Before I knew it, I was fully absorbed in this new world with an abbess from the Middle Ages explaining these ancient practices through very ordinary stories and exercises.

In this volume, at least, McLaren also seems to occasionally overstate his case. I found his argument for “Why Spiritual Practices Matter” in the second chapter to be the least convincing of the book. The chapter begins with a focus on the role that I play in forming my character that seems to tend toward works righteousness. The notion of sin that is presented seems to be one where sin is the result of bad habits that come from my not tending the soil of my character closely enough, rather than something that is deeply ingrained within each one of us and cannot be uprooted by our own efforts, but only by the grace of God.

I also thought that McLaren was a little too anxious to make these Christian practices applicable to everyone, whether they are a Christian or not. He writes, “In these two ways, then, paying attention to ‘life practices’ is worthwhile for everybody, those who consider themselves spiritual and those who don’t: first, because nobody wants to become a tedious fart, and second, because nobody wants to miss Life because they’re short on legroom and sleep in economy class [a reference to a story he just told about being on a long flight in economy class]” (17). To be fair, McLaren does immediately qualify this by saying “I haven’t told the whole story though… Spiritual practices are ways of becoming awake and staying awake to God — that’s the third reason” (17-18). But still, the argument seems to be a bit of a reach. His argument seems to be analogous to saying that everyone should play basketball because nobody wants to become overweight and die of a heart attack. There is a difference between making the case for the importance of a good diet and exercise and universalizing the importance of one particular type of exercise. I may be misunderstanding McLaren’s argument, but it seems that in wanting to try to find something universally beneficial about the ancient practices, he would either fall into the trap of universalizing practices that are specifically Christian (Would non-Christians agree that there is a benefit to following the liturgical year?) on the one hand, or watering down the specifically Christian content of the Christian practices and making them nearly unrecognizable on the other hand.

Aside from the arguments I found to be distracting in that particular chapter, there were several statements that stuck with me and stirred up visions, thoughts, and dreams within me that remained long after I closed the cover of the book. Here are two of my favorites:

I think that’s part of what’s going on in this time of change and transition. Old sectarian turf wars are giving way to a sharing of resources — heroes, practices, flavors, and styles of practice. And this, in a way, is itself a new practice, namely, the sharing of previously proprietary practices. We might say that Christianity is beginning to go ‘open source’” (58).

I also really appreciated McLaren’s discussion of the way that God’s Spirit moves within institutions and how the work of God’s Spirit cannot be contained or hampered by bureaucracy. He discusses the work of William Wilberforce and others in England who worked to end slavery, despite the vigorous defense of slavery by the Anglican Church. “Their fledgling movement grew in the spaces between the institutional structures of their day, not within the structures themselves” (134). This conversation leads to the profound insight that “When any sector of the church stops learning, God simply overflows the structures that are in the way and works outside them with those willing to learn… God can’t be contained by the structures that claim to serve him but often try to manage and control him” (136-137). McLaren follows this up with the powerful question: “Are we a club for the elite who pretend to have arrived or a school for disciples who are still on the way” (137)?

All in all, I found this book to be worth the read because it is another important invitation to enter into a conversation about what it means to be a Christians and what it means to be a part of the Body of Christ. May this book and McLaren’s ministry help disciples who are still “on the way” find their way to God through the ancient practices that McLaren and the other author’s in this series seek to resuscitate.

A Helpful Perspective on Jeremiah Wright

I received a link to this article in an email today. One of the things that I thought was interesting is that it was a part of Christianity Today’s daily email, but it was written by Jason Byassee, who is assistant editor of the Christian Century. Byassee reminds evangelicals that Jeremiah Wright is evangelicals’ brother in Christ. The article is also honest about the ways that Wright’s recent actions have further damaged Obama’s efforts to secure the Presidential nomination of the Democratic Party. I found it to be thought provoking and worth the read, and I commend it to you.

Red Letter Christians by Tony Campolo

Tony Campolo has never seemed to be someone to shy away from controversial issues. It came as no surprise, then, that he dealt with “Hot-Button Issues” like gay rights, abortion, and immigration in his latest book Red Letter Christians: A Citizen’s Guide to Faith and Politics. Campolo’s book comes out along with several other recent publications (see my previous review of Jim Wallis’ The Great Awakening) that deal with faith and politics just in time for Christians to digest before they cast their votes in the 2008 Presidential election.

Campolo argues for a biblical approach to politics that goes deeper than mere party loyalties. He writes, “In reality, conservatives and liberals need each other: Conservatives maintain many lines that should never be crossed, while liberals destroy many lines that should never have existed… On some issues, Red Letter Christians are conservative and on others we are liberal. Neither end of the political spectrum has a corner on the will of God” (36-37). Campolo does not just hope to elevate the dialogue beyond seeing the world through red or blue glasses. He argues that “instead of using power to mold public policies, [Christians] should endeavor to speak with authority to those in power” (37).

Before Campolo argues for a specific understanding of politics, he argues for a particular understanding of what it means to be a Christian. Based on the title of the book, Campolo argues that “red letter Christians” are “committed to living out the things that Jesus taught” (22). In other words, the words spoken by Jesus in the Gospels, which are printed in red letters in many versions of the Bible, are lifted up as of particular importance for those who claim to be followers of Christ. This book, as a result, seeks to craft a particular approach to politics that is always faithful to the teachings of Jesus as revealed in the four Gospels.

This approach leads Campolo to articulate a fresh approach to politics that avoids many of the traps that Christians from the far right and far left have fallen into. In fact, Red Letter Christians articulates an approach to politics that will at times delight conservatives and liberals. Of course, this also means that conservatives and liberals will also be frustrated at times by the recommendations that Campolo makes. Ultimately, Campolo asks us to judge his politics not by how well it fits within a Republican or Democrat platform, but by how faithfully it puts the teachings of Jesus into practice in the realm of politics.

I found myself challenged by this book from the very beginning. Campolo argues that in order for Christians to be respected by non-Christians within the political sphere, they must “first serve the needs of others in sacrificial ways, especially the poor and oppressed” (40). Serving the other sacrificially is in itself a pretty radical concept for the way modern politics works. Whether I was reading the issues Campolo discusses under the “Global Issues,” “The Hot-Button Issues,” “The Economic Issues,” or “The Government Issues” I was challenged to reexamine many of my previously held political convictions in light of the teachings of Jesus. One of the things I really like about Tony Campolo is that he often confuses the stereotypes about evangelical Christians. In one moment he criticizes the current President, but in the next he reminds the reader that the situation is often much more complicated than it is presented in a sixty second television spot. Sometimes imperfect people have to do the best that they can in very difficult situations. This is helpful for me to remember before I judge any politician’s decision without giving adequate consideration to the complexities and real difficulties they faced in coming to the decision they made.

In some ways, I finished the book feeling more confused about the ultimate practical consideration that I brought to this book when I began reading it: Who should I vote for in the upcoming Presidential election? There is not a candidate that we could vote for that would even come close to advocating the “Red Letter Party Platform” in its entirety. Ultimately, I see this book as an important contribution because it sets aside many of the previous assumptions of the religious right that did not seem to be coming from Scripture, and it returns to the teachings of Jesus as found in Scripture. It is to Tony Campolo’s credit that he seeks to be faithful to these teachings above all else — even when it is inconvenient.