Ancient Truth | Modern Sound

The Amazon Kindle is changing my life.  I have spent a lot of time on my own these last 18 months or so.  I don’t like it.  After 25 years of marriage and 18 years of children I can vouchsafe the biblical quote, “it is not good for man to be alone”.  I miss my helper and guide, Karen; and I miss Jack, Kate, and Hope.  Of course together they confuse me by all talking at the same time and make fun of me that I cant keep up with them (poor father …….).  But I cant live without them.

For Christmas Karen gave me an Amazon Kindle which is quite simply the best gift I have ever had.  For a reader like me it is like manna from heaven.  Of course, unlike manna, it is not free, but I would have paid twice the price for this thing.  It is an electronic book reader but I predict it will be more than that, it will become a cultural force like the iPod. 

Lets take a tour round by Kindle.  On it I have both the NIV and King James bible (the King James bible has never been surpassed in terms of its language - God definitely seems like God when he speaks in King James English).  For reference I have Roget’s Thesaurus which I admit is completely unusable on the Kindle.  Currently I am reading “The Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follet - a wonderful read.  Also on there and already read are, “The Blue Knight” by Joseph Wambaugh; “Moscow Rules” by Daniel Silva; “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Stig larsen, and “Extreme Measures” by Vince Flynn.  Oh, and also on there, for my little girl Hope’s reading pleasure, “Twilight” by Stephanie Meyer.

So much for the spiritual and the entertaining.  On the more educational side I have “The Ascent of Money” by Niall Ferguson; “Gomorrah” by Roberto Savia; “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell; “The Reason for God” by Tim Keller; and “10 Big Lies about America” by Michael Medved (a bad book and bad use of the $5.99 it cost). 

I wont share with you the periodicals I also pick up occasionally.  Suffice to say I always have my nose in this thing and I can always find an excuse to buy more books for it too.

I am writing this in my house in Leiden, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leiden ) which during the middle ages and through the reformation was part of the great revolution in learning in continental Europe.  About 350 miles south is Strasbourg where in 1440 Johannes Gutenberg invented something that we would recognise as a printing press.  This machine allowed people who would have seen only one book in their life (a bible, probably chained to an alter) to ownbooks.  This unbelievable opportunity changed the course of history and gave access to learning to a mass audience.  The world changed because of Gutenberg’s machine. 

I count 15 books currently on my Kindle.  In the “Kindle 2″ there will be capacity for approximately 150 books and the ability to play audio books and mp3 files.  I don’t know if this is a Gutenberg moment but it seems to me a moment when a piece of technology arrives at the right price-point, with the right combination of features, at the right time.  That is, an iPod moment. 

As a final thought, think about this.  I downloaded the NIV bible in less than 2 minutes to my Kindle - does it change my attitude to the book itself to have it in such consumable form?

Holy Week continues and over the last couple of days I have finished off a couple of books on my Kindle (the post is coming on that piece of wonder technology). 

I read again the latest book by Tim Keller, “The reason for God: Belief in and Age of Skepticism”.  I was just as impressed second time around and I paid more attention to the last part of the book which seems to be written especially for those who seek reasons for God or perhaps just seek faith.  The strength of the book is that it helps the seeker (or the believer!) think about faith in a way that is honest to the difficulties but open to the one conclusion so left out of our modern world.  That is, that there is a God, that God loves and cares for the world, indeed loves and cares for human beings specifically, and has secured a relationship between man and God forever.  Keller, I think, especially helps by trying to help the questioner understand, “Just what exactly is my problem?”  In many ways Holy Week exists within the church year to draw questions out of us but if they remain questions without answers then what’s the use? 

The other book I finished off this week is “Outliers”, by Malcolm Gladwell.  This is a book that is profoundly stimulating, but for me, in the end, not quite convincing.  Gladwell writes the book to show that even those we see as true performance outliers amongst us are really the product of endless small but profound advantages acquired by being at the right place and the right time.  There might be such a thing as genius but it is not what we think and, the book contends, change how we think about how genius is created and we can unleash more from among us.  It is, in fact, a deeply hopeful book.

But I was not convinced.  Gladwell comes from a Christian family (I do not know if he is a Christian himself) and their story is itself a wonder.  Going from poor to privileged was for his family truly a journey through opportunities that were there at the time but soon gone.  In the case of Gladwell’s ancestors yes those specific opportunities were there today and gone tomorrow.  But would there not have been others?  The impressive part of his own story to me is not the opportunities which happened to come along but the unshakable belief in something, in the possible, in his parents and grandparents.  It seems to me that belief is the thing that delivers more than anything else the outlier destiny and that belief for Gladwell’s parents seems to be a belief in God our Father.  Of course there are other stories in the book for which there is no Christian thread but in each case there is the thread of belief, belief that tomorrow could be better than today, and that next week could be better still.  There is also a belief in work (Gladwell calls it “meaningful work”) which points to at least to belief in life being purposeful and having meaning.  And I think at this point we get back to Tim Keller.  Belief, purpose, God.  How do these beliefs come about?  Don’t they point to something?  As Keller might say, are these more clues which point to God?

The greatest clue about God however is the at the end of Holy Week.  The Christian contends that the world was made right at Easter.  In Christ’s wounds our woulds were salved.  In Christ’s isolation from the Father our isolation ended.  In His condemnation we received forgiveness.  In His brokenness we were made whole. 

 ²⁵“Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about my Father. ²⁶In that day you will ask in my name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. ²⁷No, the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. ²⁸I came from the Father and entered the world; now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.”

 ²⁹Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking clearly and without figures of speech. ³⁰Now we can see that you know all things and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

At Easter so may we all believe.

The Christian life is a counter cultural world.  This is never more true than with forgiveness.  This a world where forgiveness is for the weak.  But the Christian knows, or should know, that forgiveness is a deeply practical tool for living.  Forgiving your fellow human being of his shortfalls is a sure way of helping you understand your own.  Not to mention the sheer benefit of not carrying around with you the burden of every little thing that gets up your nose or every unbearable load that is the remnant of past sins.  Forgiveness is practical everyday living stuff.

It is in that sense that I am able to say that I forgive our President for giving Her Britannic Majesty, Elizabeth II, an iPod with his own speeches on it.  As a good friend of mine has said, “dude, if he was chocolate he would eat himself”. 

God forgive us all ……..