Scott Freeman

I finally have my site looking just the way I want it.

If you notice on the left hand side of the page there is a section called “Now Reading.”  You can click on any of those books to find out additional information about that book.

By clicking on the “recent books” or “full library” you can even access my (short) review and rating of each book I read.

What’s better is that if you then click through to the Amazon page and actually buy that book I will get a small royalty.

No pressure or anything.  It’s just that my kids have to eat.

Great place to start? Pick up “The Politics of Jesus.”  Great read. Seminal work.

Until I get that stupid (insert voice of Chloe and Cassie, “Daddy, you don’t say stupid”) sidebar to work here is my current reading list:

From the Library:

The Left Hand of God by Michael Lerner–Worth the read for his proposed Spiritual Covenant With America

American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation by Jon Meacham
Field Notes from a Catastrophe:  Man, Nature and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert–Can we keep ignoring this?

Coming this week from Amazon:

The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder –Funny, all the stuff I have read by Yoder, I have not read this, his definitive work.

Simply Christian : Why Christianity Makes Sense by N.T. Wright–Wright is one of today’s greatest living theologians.  I look forward to this latest offering.

After the Locusts: How Costly Forgiveness Is Restoring Rwanda’s Stolen Years by Meg Guillebaud

Kingdom Come: Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of David Lipscomb and James Harding by John Mark Hicks and Bobby Valentine.  The message of David Lipscomb is one that greatly intrigues me.

This should keep me busy for a couple of weeks.  Is there anything better than a good book?  Don’t answer that.

What about you?  Have you read any of these offerings?  If not, what are you reading right now?

I know this quote is long but I encourage to reflect on what is said. Don’t just react if you disagree, but prayerfully consider our need to reassess our faithfulness. It is from Michael Lerner’s tremendous, insightful and indicting book, The Left Hand of God:

When Jews were enslaved by Egyptian imperial power, they were subjected to genocidal measures on the part of Pharoah (who sought to kill all the male children), constant physical oppression, material deprivation, and religious repression. It was in this context that they responded to the death of the Egyptian army sinking into the waters of the sea by celebrating God as “a man of war: and proclaiming, “Your Right Hand O Lord, is Mighty in Power” (Exodus 15:3–6)

Yet history often shows that this is a difficult balance to maintain, because once one justifies using violence and domination over others in some circumstances to overthrow oppressive rule, one can develop a psychological proclivity for using violence to solve one’s pressing problems.

What the prophets saw, and what has happened once again in contemporary Israel, is that the Torah tradition could be used to justify a social order that was in many respects the exact opposite of the loving message of God. When the message of the Right Hand of God, developed for the powerless, is adopted instead by the powerful, existing inequalities and systems of oppression are ignored and calls for social justice, peace and nonviolence are dismissed as pretty thoughts about some future messianic era (for Jews) or a Second Coming (for Christians). Arguing that the “real world” is too dangerous for the demands of the Torah, the Prophets, and Jesus to be taken seriously, the powerful insist that the only path to peace and social justice is to impose their own religous vision on the whole world, and to accept cruelty and injustice as inevitable until that apocalyptic transformation has taken place. The purveyors of this distortion can always refer, as they always have, to external threats as evidence that the world is not yet ready for the transformative call of the Left Hand of God.

Jesus railed against the Jewish establishment of his day, like other prophets had done in their own time, and once again highlighted a commitment to the poor and the oppressed. Jesus insisted that people not duplicate Rome’s oppressive rule in the way that they treated each other. His followers and many early Christians understood this message clearly–understood, as did the powerful in Rome, that it was a revolutionary message calling upon the faithful to reject the power of tyrants and embrace the power of love, which would ultimately be more forceful than anything Rome could deliver. Just as the message of Torah was tragically turned into its opposite by “the religious” and their establishment, so Christianity, taken over by Constantine, became its opposite, a system that provided justification for the powerful while ignoring or even actively subverting the needs of the poor and the powerless…

These perversions of Judaism and Christianity took place in the name of the original vision, drawing on the texts and the justifications that could be found there because at one point those triumphalist texts had provided needed empowerment for the poor and the downtrodden, and had been a psychologically necessary buttress against despair.

In the United States, the powerful have appropriated God and religion to justify imperial rule around the globe. They are not intent on using power to rectify the situation of the powerless. On the contrary, as their domestic moves make clear, they redistribute wealth upward from the poor to the rich. The global system of capital that they have created has had that same impact, increasing the suffering of the powerless while empowering a small class within each society to act as the guardian of the interests of Western capital in third-world countries.

The Religious Right allies with and provides much of the ideological cover for this development. It allows the powerful to worship their own power and then, taking the work of their own hands, declare it the God to be worshipped by all. This is pure idolatry. It allows America, the most powerful and arrogant of all the arrogant and powerful nations that exist today, to identify itself in its own mind with the oppressed children of Israel and thus to imagine that its use of force is divinely sanctioned.

It is long past time that we re-examine the prophets for what they have to teach us about Kingdom, Idolatry and chosenness.

One of my greatest thrills in life is going to the library with no expectations and finding great books to read.

Call me a nerd.  I can take it.

The past few months I’ve been mired in Taylor Branch’s masterful trilogy on America in the King Years. It was startling to realize how little I had been taught about the Civil Rights Movement growing up.  If you never have, then please read these books.

In between those installments, I was catching up on the more “theological” stuff on my shelf: Themes of the OT, Understanding Jewish Culture, N.T. Wright, Dallas Willard, etc.

Now, I take a break from all that.  It’s time for a little lighter reading. Yesterday I went to the Library and picked up these books:

The Wal-Mart Effect : How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Works–and How It’s Transforming the American Economy by Charles Fishman.  I have a love/hate relationship with Wal-Mart.  This book, so far, strikes me as a balanced assessment of the beast that is Wal-Mart.

Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids by Maia Szalavitz .  I am completely ignorant about the contents of this book.   It is apparently a look at the “tough-love” approach to teen boot camps and what-not.  Looks promising.

An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography by Paul Rusesabagina.  I am really looking forward to read this, although I disagree with the title.  Rusesabagina is no ordinary man.  He is a hero and everyone should read his story.  It humbles me to think that people live through the emotional equivalent of Hurricane Katrina every day in Africa.

That should last me a week or so.  What are you reading right now?

From a year of studying the Old Testament:

1. We often view God as Creator in the past tense.  I’m afraid that we approach those initial 6 days as the totality of His creating.  But there is so much that He is still doing.
2. I’m struck by the cyclization of the Israelite people: from Exile to Exodus to Establishing to Establishment/Evil back to Exile.  I don’t have this fleshed out completely, but I believe there is much warning for us in that.
3. You can preach Jesus from every single book of the OT, a worthwhile study of the enormity of “The Word.”
4. God and the Israelites were not on the same page when it came to the temple.
5. God and the Israelites were not on the same page when it came to the nation.
6. God and the Israelites were usually not on the same page.
7. I wonder how often we are on the same page with God.
8. The Prophets may well be the most misinterpreted segment of Scripture.  Over and over, preparing my sermons, I saw other preachers drawing parallels between Israel and the United States.  This is a flawed, and ultimately, unhealthy exegesis.  The modern day parallel is between Israel and the church.
9. All institutions will fall.  All that remains will be those faithful to Him.
10. God loves the poor and the forgotten.  He really loves them.
11. God is angered when we ignore the poor and forgotten.
12. God is angered when we give our allegiance to anything over and above Him.
13. He is so incredibly patient.
14. Don’t be on the wrong side when His patience abates, however.  The “Day of the Lord” is a frightful thing for the idolatrous and oppressive.
15. God is as graceful in the Old Testament as He is in the New.
16. Jesus was, and is, the ultimate in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.
17. Jesus would ultimately turn upside down the Israelite notions of Kingdom, Nation, Rule, Law, Politics, Temple, Sabbath and Community.
18. I believe He often does the same thing with our 21st Century Western notions of those things as well.
19. While He was, and is, King, in the minds of many He was the anti-King.
20. Reading the Old Testament with Messianic expectancy is a beautiful under-taking.
21. Our stubborn refusal to regularly take spiritual inventory of our own lives should slow us from being too condescending to the immorality of the Jewish people.
22. He is God.

I have so many more thoughts, but that’s enough for now.  What thoughts do you have?

There are currently 4 CD’s I cannot get out of my player.  Check them out:

All the Roadrunning by Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris: This album was 7 years in the making and it was worth every minute of the wait.  Their voices meld together beautifully to produce a somewhat restless symphony.

Living with War by Neil Young: The other extreme from Roadrunning, this album was recorded in just 3 weeks.  However, it is no less potent and is not for the faint of heart.  It is protest music at its finest.  Young is channeling the protest spirit of the ’60′s.  Again,  be warned.  It is not a timid album.

We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions by Bruce Springsteen: Speaking of protest music, there is no artist living today that has made a more indelible impression on the landscape of music as activism than Pete Seeger.  While breathing new life into these folk staples, Springsteen pays proper tribute to the legend and legacy of Seeger.

Beneath These Fireworks by Matt Nathanson: This album was released three years ago and is Nathanson’s first major label recording.  I just recently discovered him and this is pure singer-songwriter excellence.  He has rocketed up into my top 10 artists on the strength of this disc alone.

One other recommendation: are you looking for a great book about the mystery of Jesus? Do you want to understand Him a little more than you do?  You could go for The Secret Message of Jesus by Brian McLaren and find a few good tidbits.  But it is, to me, incredibly uneven and a trifle boring.  Opt instead for The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is by N.T. Wright.  This is the far superior book.  It’s 7 years older but much more concise and captivating.

What about you?  What’s on your turntable?

Or, Bombshells

In making the transition from youth ministry to the pulpit, I threw myself into honing the “craft” of preaching.

I submerged myself into learning how to be a better preacher, how to engage the text, and repeat the process on a weekly basis.

I focused on learning how to counsel and minister to adults. I finished my Master’s Degree, as well.

As a result, I missed a lot of what was going on around me. I stayed up on politics but missed out on all the conversations that were “emerging” at the time. It wouldn’t be until I felt more comfortable as a church pastor that I would engage those conversations. But, that’s another story.

During the ramp-up to Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL), I was an ardent supporter of military conflict. I longed for us to go into Iraq.

Killing a few Muslims, I thought, was a good thing. I even taught a class at church that perverted Just War Theory enough to justify our invasion into Iraq.

I didn’t really care if there were WMD’s there or not. I just hated Muslims. For me, that was reason enough to go. Toby Keith was my favorite theologian at the time.

My hatred was not Christ-like nor was it holy. But, as I talked about a few weeks ago, I had become good at re-writing the words of Jesus to fit my tastes.

In early 2004, I was standing in my local library (I would go broke feeding my book jones, otherwise). One of the small joys in life is discovering a book that you know nothing about.

On the shelf, was a work titled Mere Discipleship: Radical Christianity in a Rebellious World. Two of my all-time favorite books are Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I was struck by the melding of these two titles, so I picked up the book. I immediately noticed that the author, Lee Camp, was a professor at Lipscomb University, a Church of Christ School.

Taking that book home and beginning to read it was a bomb-shell for me. It was a call to righteousness and discipleship that I was not prepared for. I had heard of John Howard Yoder, who greatly influenced Camp, but had not read any of his work.

I would like to say that I quickly grasped everything, but I didn’t. I was still too hate-filled for the idea of truly following Jesus.

I loved war too much to contemplate peace.

I invoked my rule and gave up after 50 pages.

But Camp’s words would not let me go. For, I knew, that they contained truth, that the kingdom I was a part of was not an earthly one made with human hands. My allegiance was in Christ, not a nation. I had even preached against the dangers of nationalism.

I went back to Camp’s book again. And again. And again. It is one of the foundational works in my life. It has served to lead me to the writings of Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, and others.

More importantly it drove me back to the gospels, to examine the Nazarene anew, to see with fresh eyes the radical words of a Jewish firebrand.

It was this work that began to propel me toward re-examining my faith. I began to ask some hard questions and found that the answers shamed me.

I was a Christian, but I was not like Christ.

Next: Becoming 3/4 of the man I once was

(For an excerpt from Camp’s book, click more) continue reading…

Is it bad, as a preacher, that I don’t read all the must-read Christian books?
Is it bad that, after studying all day long, that I don’t want to read the lastest Lucado? OK, that’s a bad example. Is it bad that I don’t want to read the latest title churned out by mainstream Christian publishing?

Don’t get me wrong. I still read a lot of Christian material. I spend all day in commentaries, the text itself, etc. I just finished Garry Wills’ What Jesus Meant and thoroughly enjoyed that. I read anything by Yancey, McLaren, and a host of others (There’s a lot of great scholarly Christian writers out there. Alas, they aren’t on the best-seller lists).

But often, at the end of the day, I want something else. Here is what is on my stack right now:

• Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Journey Into Manhood and Back Again by Norah Vincent. Vincent goes undercover to see what life like a man is truly like.
• American Vertigo : Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville by Bernard-Henri Lévy. Views of America by a Frenchman? Come on! That’s great stuff.
• Pillar of Fire : America in the King Years 1963-65 by Taylor Branch. I just finished Parting the Waters : America in the King Years 1954-63, the first volume in this trilogy, and found it to be one of the best books I have ever read. I can’t wait to delve into this volume.

So, am I weird? If so, what should I be reading? What are you reading right now?