Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who’s there

I believe in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and I believe that as believers we are His, and He is ours.  He is personal and He is personal to us.  Nevertheless, there is always the danger of Jesus getting too personal if you will.  In such a case, Jesus becomes a wax figure that we shape to our personal preferences.  Jesus is not personal in that sense.  He is the Jesus of Nazareth presented in the four Gospels, the Messiah foretold by the Old Testament, and the Lord of Glory declared by the Apostles.  He is that Jesus and not another.

Matt Mikalatos’s Imaginary Jesus is about this problem in our approach to Jesus.  This short, breathless, semi-autobiographical novel is a raucous comedic chase through time and space (mostly Portland) as one man’s mental idols of Jesus are destroyed and he comes to meet the real Jesus of Nazareth. And there are a lot of imaginary Jesus’s in this book: hippie-Jesus, conservative-Jesus, liberal-Jesus, televangelist-Jesus, masculine-Jesus, and a whole lot more.  To see how it all works you’re going to have to read the book.

I don’t read many books in one sitting, but I did this one.  It’s not a perfect novel.  I don’t know what Mikalatos has written before, but this is a good showing.  In the midst of some whiplash leaps in the story, there are flashes of great insight, profound points, and worthy dialogue.  It is pointed, purposeful fiction with dashes of apologetics, rebuke, and exhortation combined.  Yet it holds together well and keeps you turning pages because you simply have no idea what is going to happen next nor how the story will end.

I will warn you that if talking about Jesus in the midst of satire and sarcasm smacks of sacrilege to you then this book is not for you.  Mikalatos is comedic, satirical, and witty.  Lots of so-called Jesus’s herein meet their demise.  But their demise is justly due. One of the chief reasons preventing people from meeting the real Jesus is that they have a false image of Christ in their mind.

This is an exercise we need to be prepared for, one that even Christ himself warned us of: ”See that no one leads you astray. ⁵For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray.” – Matthew 25:4b-5 (ESV).  It could be that the false Christ we follow is one of our fabrication.

Thus, Mikalatos gives us this parable to parade all our possible false “personal Jesus’s” before us and show us our mental idolatry.  He challenges us that the real Jesus may be very unlike the one we have constructed. The point is that at the end of the day there is only one true Jesus, and He is not one of our own making, but is the King of Kings crowned with thorns, wounded, crucified, and resurrected for our healing.

Imaginary Jesus by Matt Mikalatos is available here.
This review is voluntary, I did not receive a review copy, though I did read the free Kindle version.

Steven Pressfield is known for a number of highly acclaimed novels of historical fiction, particularly Gates of Fire, as well as The Legend of Bagger Vance. In The War of Art, Pressfield turns to the task itself but does not limit himself to writing.  Instead, he looks at creative endeavors of any kind and the hard, disciplined work required of it.  As Pressfield himself says the wisdom offered here is useful for anyone trying to write their first book, earn a Ph.D., get fit and healthy, or start a business.  The effort and discipline required to get things done is the same regardless of the domain.

Pressfield divides his work into three parts.  In the first, he tackles the artist’s main enemy: resistance.  Pressfield pulls no punches: we as individuals are own worst enemies.  Resistance is deceitful, it seems to come from without, but actually arises within.  It is self-sabotage.  Resistance is personified: “resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work.”  And resistance will never stop.  You never get over it or past it except for brief periods when the ideas flood in and the creative juices flow unhindered.  But this kind of flow never arises accidentally, and you can not count it.  Resistance will be there always wooing you to stop your work.  One of the chief manifestations of resistance is procrastination though certainly not the only one.

We don’t tell ourselves, “I’m never going to write my symphony.” Instead we say, “I am going to write my symphony; I’m just going to start tomorrow.” (21)

In the second part, Pressfield turns to combating resistance.  He covers the absolute importance of daily routine, handling failure, limitations, and criticism, as well as adopting an attitude of professionalism.  As long as you consider whatever you’re doing as just playing around, you’ll never finish what you start.  He opens this section with a soundbyte from the fifth century B.C. attributed to Telamon of Arcadia: “It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life.”

In the third part, Pressfield discusses getting beyond resistance.  He points to the experience of so many artists, writers, and thinkers, of experiencing the free flow of work when the ideas flood the mind and the work becomes a joy–for a time.  This experience Pressfield calls the Muse.  Here I must warn you that Pressfield subscribes to a spiritual mysticism of sorts, though certainly not a Christian one.  So beware, there are certainly some bones to pick out.  Nevertheless, what he has to offer on hard work, discipline, and creativity is worth picking through.  Indeed my copy is heavily underlined.

More could be said and a number of great quotes given but the book is short so I don’t want to ruin it.  It’s a brief book, and very much a swift kick in the seat of the pants.  It won’t give quarter to laziness or indolence nor playing the victim or blaming others.  For me this is the necessary counterpart to David Allen’s excellent Getting Things Done (GTD).  GTD provides a whole system for tracking your work, organizing your projects, and simplifying your to-do lists, email, and the rest of your work.  But The War of Art is the missing piece.  It is one thing to get organized, simplify, and create a neat system but forward movement is something altogether different.  How many times have you put off that project saying you’ll do it after you clean your desk?  So you clean your desk and feel good but quit for the day! No!  You’ve not yet really begun until you’ve made forward progress.   This is where Pressfield’s little volume is most useful.  Read it and get to work.  Now!

Donovan Campbell wanted to lead men.  However, he didn’t know that until before his senior year at Princeton when  he decided to take officer training school to add one more notable bullet point on his resume.  While there he had the honor of being screamed at by Marine drill instructors, and left hating the place.  However, he could still hear the Marine drill instructor screaming in his face, “Candidate, the currency in which we trade is human lives.  Do you think you can handle that responsibility?”  After graduation Campbell decided that he could handle that responsibility and that he actually desired it.  So with Princeton University in his rearview mirror, Campbell forsook the path of corporate career, and enlisted in the Marines with a passion to lead men.  He was determined to enter an environment where he could not hide behind his pedigree, academic record, or mere potential.  So he joined the Marines.

Campbell served one tour of duty in Iraq as an intel office but upon coming back home in late 2003 begged for a command position.  It was finally granted and he was given the first platoon of Golf Company of Marine Battalion 2/4, nicknamed Joker One and hence the title of the book.

The book begins with Campbell’s decision to join the Marines and the reasons for his choice which are very well-explained.  This is a good point to say that the book is loaded with a good bit of gung-ho patriotism and a basic faith in God that pervades the story.  If you can’t handle such a positive appraisal of either and particularly the combination of God and country then perhaps you should pass on this one.

Nevertheless the story is a gripping narrative of the American soldier in combat during the war in Iraq.  Campbell’s platoon was in the very heat of the 2004 insurgency in Iraq.  The 2/4 was stationed in Ramadi which was a key battleground like it’s neighboring city of Fallujah.  The tour of 2/4 in Ramadi lasted from April to September 2004 during which the insurgency began and gained momentum barely letting up during their time there.  In fact, it was after their departure that the Marine force was doubled and tripled in order to put down the insurgency.

One of every two soldiers in Golf company became casualties before September’s end and the 2/4 gained the status of being the Marine battalion with the highest casualties since Vietnam.  Campbell led his 40-man platoon in mission after mission climaxing in a harrowing account of losing almost all hope.  He nearly broke down completely but came back just shy of the breaking point.  He made it through to return home and later to go on and serve in Afghanistan.

I listened to the book mainly just to get an account of what combat was like for American soldiers during the Iraqi insurgency so that I could better understand my country, its armed forces, the Iraq war, and the times in which I live.  That is, to achieve more of a front-row seat to events in Iraq than that received from the news.  For that, I think the book served the purpose well.

The book however went far beyond that.  I was surprised by the strong element of faith and brotherhood.  Thoughtful reflections on leadership, life and death are found through out.  Amazingly, the climax of the entire book is an interesting passage on the evidence of love among the men with whom he served.  While that may sound strange in a book on Marines, it is not at all strange in the context of true leadership and the bonds of brotherhood in which each soldier lays his life on the line for the man next to him.  Indeed, he found that leadership is all about serving, as he himself stated early in the book, leadership is basically “serving others to an increasingly great degree.”

All in all a good read if you enjoy this sort of thing.  And a warning: as with most accounts of modern combat, there is plenty of salty speech.

Rice succeeds at what is a very difficult task. First, she takes on a story with events and elements that many readers likely already know, and yet she paints with such careful strokes of writing that it is a delight to read as it unfolds before you. The events of the birth and childhood of Jesus are woven together effectively, many of them indirectly so that they unfold for the reader as if for the first time. My intuition and imagination would never have thought of someone writing the life of Jesus from his point of view, and yet it is this very method that is so effective. While reading I vacillated between thoughts like, “this is really strange, very weird—she is writing historical fiction through the eyes of the Lord,” to thoughts on the other hand, “wow, this is really making sense of the story; it must have unfolded something like this.”

Second, she takes on a very serious subject matter impinging on real history, theology and church doctrine—things people get quite prickly about—and she does so quite effectively and believably. This is certainly historical fiction: the dialogue, many of the characters, events, and scenes are created by Rice as substance to cover the thin skeletal structure of events that we have from Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2. Yet the novel is faithful and convincing, indeed it is a very historical fiction.

For one, the political, social, and religious realities of the early first century are excellently sketched into the storyline. It is one thing to know the historical and cultural facts, but this novel provides historical and cultural feeling. One can put one’s feet in the dust of Nazareth’s streets, smell the Sabbath dinner prepared beforehand, see the running water of the mikvah, feel the wind blow over the Galilean hillsides, experience the push and pull of a throng of worshippers in the Temple at Jerusalem, smell and see the blood of sacrifices, and sit attentively through the Sabbath synagogue service. One also experiences the Jewish mindset, their longing for hope, their faithfulness to God and the Law, their customs, and their immersion in a world foreign to them even in the midst of their own land. Indeed, one character cries out, “we’re in exile in our land” (p. 68). Of course there are several different groups within Judaism of the period, and so we see how Jesus’s family likely fit among them. Furthermore, one continually feels embedded into the story of God’s people, just as the Jews view themselves to be in the unfolding drama of God’s mighty acts.

Into this texture, Rice weaves the historical figures of the Gospels as well other historical persons and events of the day. At nearly every hand, I found Rice’s choices plausible and possible. For instance, she places the family of Jesus in Alexandria, Egypt which is very likely. Interestingly, Philo of Alexandria makes an appearance and the infamous golden eagle incident is mentioned. Her use of all the sources available to us about Jesus is also respectable. She uses some information from extracanonical works about Jesus, which though of questionable origin, is used responsibly, and she is very faithful to the Gospel accounts of Matthew and Luke. Though I disagree with her assessment of the relationship of Joseph and Mary, I understand her perspective and adherence to her Church’s doctrine. At least, she made the relationship believable, if unlikely. Her familiarity with the scholarship of the Gospels, Historical Jesus research, and of the Second Temple period is evident throughout. Her account of acquainting herself with biblical and historical scholarship in the author’s note is quite fascinating.

The actual story of Jesus is carefully revealed scene by scene. She carefully hides many of the actual events to us, and we discover them how Jesus would have learned of them: through his family, friends, neighbors, and his own observations. This is very much a story of discovery, the most amazing story of personal discovery in history. Jesus, piece-by-piece, puts together the story of his life, his identity, and his purpose.

In Eugene Peterson’s book, Take and Read, he relates a number of books of all kinds—commentaries, theologies, prayer books, biographies, novels, poetry—that have been of use in his spiritual journey with Jesus. I must say that Rice’s Christ the Lord will become one of my companions on my journey. I genuinely feel strengthened by it. It gives me a sense of earthy spirituality in the rhythm of Jesus’s family serving God yet living real, hard working lives while seeing their lives through the story of God and Israel. Some may be bothered by her approach and by the earthiness of it’s spirituality, and by the fact that Jesus discovers who he is over time.  In other words, this view of the Incarnation make rock your theology.  However, the authenticity of Christ’s Incarnation is here shown to be so touchable, real, and actual without lessening the impact of His divinity.  God’s kingdom is coming to down to earth – walking feet down on dirt-floors and muddy roads.

It is commendable that Rice comes to the Gospels as an unashamed believer in them, and she handles them reverently, carefully, and creatively. Her approach may be a first among historical fiction literary works on Jesus and it is the strange sense of wonder and weirdness of Rice telling the story of Jesus through his eyes and the way she tells it that make this such good reading.  I have attempted not to spoil any of the plot for you, so go get it, read it, enjoy it. Among the stacks of needful and necessary pounds of textbooks on the Gospels—introductions, surveys, histories, and such—this is exactly the kind of book that can breathe new life into one’s study of the Gospels and send one back to the God-breathed accounts found in the New Testament Scriptures ready to see with new eyes the story of Jesus.

Easy Company entered the Second World War in the early morning hours of June 6th, 1944, being responsible for clearing the way for the landings at Utah Beach.  They fought through the Normany Breakout and were then pulled out for a period of R&R.  They then made a second combat jump in the ultimately doomed Operation Market Garden.  When the Germans attacked in December 1944-the Battle of the Bulge-, the 101st Airborne was moved in place to hold the line at Bastogne, Belgium.  Easy Company was at the very front of the line and held the line for days against the best of the German Army while running low on ammunition and without proper winter gear through deep snow and freezing temperatures.  They then participated in the counterattacks to eliminate the bulge in the line and on through the crossing of the Rhine.  Late in the war they were moved into Bavaria, by which time the German Army had largely lost its will to fight.  They were there to uncover parts of the Dachau concentration camp.  At the very end of the war they were ordered to lead the way into Berchtesgaden, the town in the Bavarian Alps where the leaders of the Nazi party met and had homes and stored a great deal of personal artifacts, art, and wealth.  At the top of the mountain was the famed Eagle’s Nest-the retreat of Hitler himself, and they were the first ones in.

By the end of the war, Easy Company had spent well over 120 days on the very front lines in combat conditions.  The size of the company at full-strength was 140 men.  Of the men who fought in the unit, 48 were killed in action, and over 100 wounded, some wounded multiple times.  Numerous awards were given to the men of Easy Company.

Much of the story revolves around the leaders of Easy Company.  Lt. Herbert Sobel, despite his harshness, put an indelible stamp on the unit as the company commander during training at Camp Toccoa, Georgia.  Dick Winters led the company in Normandy and through Operation Market Garden.  Winters is the tactical field commander par excellence, capable to lead in the midst of battle, and connects with the men.  He won the Distinguished Service Cross for his leadership in battle.  And eventually the company again found good leadership in the bold Captain Ronald Speirs.

Several themes run through the story.  One of them is the tight camaradery of soldiers fighting side-by-side: “Comrades are closer than friends, closer than brothers” (p. 19).  Pvt. Kurt Gabel described this  phenomenon:

“Groups of threes and fours, usually from the same squads or sections, core elements within the families that were the small units, were readily recognized as entities…. This sharing…evolved never to be relinquished, never to be repeated.  Often three such entities would make up a squad, with incredible results in combat.  They would literally insist on going hungry for one another, freezing for one another, dying for one another.” (p. 19)

Ambrose quotes J. Glen Gray to say:

“Organization for a common and conrete goal in peacetime organizations does not evoke anything like the degree of comradeship commonly known in war….At its height, this sense of comradeship is an ecstasy….Men are true comrades only when each is ready to give up his life for the other, without reflection and without thought of personal loss.” – p. 20

Another is the vital role of leadership in battle.  While the soldiers of Easy Company were exemplary, much depended on the company commander whose personal leadership directly affected the morale and effectiveness of the whole unit.  Dick Winters, commenting on Sobel’s brutal style said, “You lead by fear or you lead by example.  We were being lead by fear” (p. 24).  Winters had a very different style and shared Lt. Harry Welsh’s opinion: “officers go first” (p.  36).  That was Winters style and it was recognized by all:

“He made one right decision after another, sometimes instinctively, sometimes after careful deliberation…. He provided not only brains but personal leadership.  ‘Follow me’ was his code. He personally killed more Germans and took more risks than anyone else.” (p. 155).

One should not assume that Ambrose is denigrating any other unit that saw action in the key battles Easy Company participated in.  Rather, understand that he is providing a view into the experiences and actions of combat for the American soldiers of the Second World War through the eyes of a small-unit that fought in numerous key engagements of the war and proved their mettle in battle through their leadership, comradeship, lives, and blood.

I commend to you Band of Brothers. it is well-written, flows easily, and is a wonderful testament to the American fighting men of the Second World War.  It renewed and deepened my appreciation and thanksgiving for the men and women who fought to end the evil that was the Nazi Empire.  Such evil doesn’t run up a white-flag of surrender at the behest of flower-toting envoys of peace.  It is not in the nature of evil to do so.  There is a reason that the Nazi Swastika does not fly over the capitols of Europe today and it is in large part due to the willingness of warriors like the men of Easy Company.  Citizens who loved peace and yet responded to the call to arms.  They were willing to pick up a rifle and learn to stop the enemy and drive him back.  And in battle, when home was distant and ideals driven from the mind, they always found a reason to stand, fight, and sacrifice if for nothing else but the brother standing next to them.