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Who wrote the Bible?

So yesterday, I attempted to discuss the whos, whens and whys of Genesis’s genesis, but I didn’t get very far. And by that I mean that I got nowhere. In this post, I’m hoping to address the “who” and the “when/where” issue. You sort of have to tackle them together, because they go hand in hand. Let’s start with the who question though.

Of course, an obvious answer would be that God is the author. That’s why we call it “God’s Word.” However, how he wrote it is a bit complicated. While possibly a surprise to some, it doesn’t appear that God himself dusted off some parchment and sharpened a quill and set himself to the busy task of penning Genesis through Revelation, only to drop the completed tome from the skies – gold leaf pages, leather bound, and in English no less – perfect in every way.

While we may have preferred to receive the Scriptures in that way, for whatever reason God chose human beings – fallible, limited, frail, time and culture bound people – to write and compile those things that He wanted to communicate to humanity. I’m not saying that Scripture itself necessarily shares in all the shortcomings of humanity, but it would also be a mistake to say that the Bible is devoid of human characteristics. Utilizing ordinary people wouldn’t necessarily have been my way of going about things if I were God, but apparently he has ideas of his own. I suppose to be a Christian means that I am to trust that he knows what he’s doing.

But back to the matter of which person wrote Genesis, as with all things Bible this is debated. The most conservative view of authorship of which I’m aware has Moses “writing” the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible). He certainly would have had the available time – forty years to be exact – as he and the nascent nation of Israel wandered around the Sinai wilderness.

Other views would tend to see the Pentateuch (and much of the Old Testament) as having undergone an editing process over some centuries and not coming into its final form until a few hundred years prior to Jesus’ birth. In this case, it might be more accurate to describe the “author” less as a writer and more of a compiler.

While I’m not necessarily put off by either of these options, some people get very nervous with the idea that the Scriptures may have undergone “editing” or revising. For some reason, we seem to think that the only means by which God could have faithfully communicated his Word to us is if there had been an unbiased ancient journalist present at the time gathering first hand observations. The facts and nothing but the facts. One can be certain that this was not how the Scriptures came about.

My own opinion is that the formation of the canon was a highly complex process that involved first-hand accounts, stories passed down over generations that were both oral and written, all of it re-worked in such a way to have a coherent message that spoke to the contemporary situation in which the writer/compiler found him or herself. It seems plausible (even likely) to me that much of what we have in Genesis through Deuteronomy was initially drafted by Moses himself, but that perhaps it isn’t until sometime around the Exile (or more likely the return from exile) that it came into the form that we more or less have today.

Of course, something like what I have just described must be the case, at least in part, in even the most conservative of scenarios. Moses wasn’t born until the Hebrew people were slaves in Egypt (i.e. Exodus 1), so for him to have written Genesis would have meant that he was strongly dependent on an oral tradition that had been passed on over centuries. The Pentateuch suggests that Moses and God frequently had some one-on-one time so it is possible he got the info he needed in some of those gab sessions. Even if that were the case, it doesn’t seem likely that he could have written Deuteronomy 34, since it records his own death. Someone else (Joshua?) must have finished things up for him.

Right? Right.

Ok, tomorrow we do some finishing up of our own and turn to the upshot on all of this. Namely, what does any of this have to do with the way we understand Genesis 12 and 15.

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audible sacraments

Quick one here. Finishing up with a final helpful thought from Scripture and the Authority of God by N.T. Wright. In his discussion of preaching the Word, he describes sermons as “audible sacraments.” And as an Anglican bishop, he is someone who doesn’t throw the “s” word around lightly. So here we go…

[Sermons] are not simply for the conveying of information, though that is important in a world increasingly ignorant of some of the most basic biblical and theological information. They are not simply for exhortation, still less for entertainment. They are suppose to be one of the moments in regular Christian living when heaven and earth meet.

Not sure anyone would ever describe my preaching as the meeting place of heaven and earth, but holding out that hope for my teaching ministry (or anyone’s) seems like a worthwhile goal.

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Father, Son, and the Holy… Bible?

Ok, so enough of semi-controversial YouTube videos. Time to get that flame inducing garbage off the top of the stack and get back to my bread-and-butter, boring reflections on biblical interpretation. So let’s turn to the non-controversial subject of inerrancy.

There are numerous ways of viewing the Scriptures that seem to get things a little out of whack. Some views are too high and make claims about the book that it doesn’t claim for itself. Others are of the opinion that it is a book no more inspired than any other great great literary work. And still others who wouldn’t even give it that much credit.

As you might guess, true to my father’s Buddhist roots, I hold something of a Middle Way. I trust the Scriptures and hold what I think many would call a high view of Scripture. I read it, study it, memorize it, attempt to live it, teach it, and so for some it might appear that I border on bibliolatry.

I do consider myself to be an inerrantist, but I’m pretty sure my definition of inerrancy would be so unrecognizable to those who are proper biblical inerrantists that I would be excluded from the club. So as with most things religious (I’m going to start using this word to describe myself more, heh), I guess it all depends on who is doing the defining. My belief in God’s inspiration of the Word is going to be too high for some, but it is probably deemed too low for others.

Almost time to cue N.T. …

Over the years, I’ve grown less concerned with the actual mechanics of inspiration, and more concerned with the role the Scriptures are meant to have in the life of the church and world. Wright’s book on the Bible, Scripture and the Authority of God, helps to clarify a host of issues surrounding our understanding of the text. And in typical Wright-ian fashion, he puts forth something that is somehow ontologically lower, but effectually higher than your typical Bible believer. You get a little of that here…

The apostolic writings, like the ‘word’ which they now wrote down, were not simply about the coming of God’s Kingdom into all the world; they were, and were designed to be, part of the means whereby that happened, and whereby those through whom it happened could themselves be transformed into Christ’s likeness.

This way of understanding Scripture gives full weight to the importance of proclaiming the Word. Without getting mired in sticky debates about whether it is “true” or not, one can still hold to the legitimate belief that Scripture is one of the primary means by which God reveals himself to the world in a powerful way.

As the following quote suggests, recognizing that the proclamation of  the Bible (or even simply reading it aloud) as a powerful means of calling God’s purposes into being is about as high a view of Scripture as one can hold…

The creator God, though utterly transcendent over and different from the world he has made, remains present and active within that world, and one of the many ways in which this is so is through his living and active word. This reflects God’s own nature on the one hand; it is a natural and normal thing for this God to speak, not some anthropomorphic projection onto a blank deistic screen! On the other hand, it reflects the fact that, within God’s world, one of the most powerful things human beings, God’s image-bearers can do is to speak. Words change things – through promises, commands, apologies, warnings, declarations of love or of implacable opposition to evil. The notion of ‘speech-acts,’ which we referred to already, is fairly new in philosophy. It would not have surprised the ancient Israelite prophets.

Words change things. How much more so when they are the very words of God?

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approaching the word

In a couple weeks, our church is starting a new series of messages in which we are planning to preach through the whole Bible. Ambitious, I know.

How much time would you guess we have given ourselves to complete this little project?

Ten years? Three years? One year?

How about a little over three months? Ok, so what sounded “ambitious” now sounds plain dumb. Obviously, we aren’t planning to cover every single verse. We’ll be skipping whole chapters. Most of our favorite Bible stories will remain untold. No Joseph and his colorful coat. No Samson. No David and Goliath or Bathsheba (why do we love that story so much). In fact, whole books are going to be left untouched. Leviticus, Ruth, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, most of the prophets, to name a few.

So where do we get the nerve to think that we are preaching through the Bible in any meaningful way? Well, if preaching through the Bible means detailed analysis of every single verse, then we are going to fail… epically so. No, our aim is something paradoxically less and more.

Our intent and hope is that we would know the story of the Bible. The overall flow. The narrative of God.

Not just our favorite stories. Not the Ten Commandments. Nor Psalm 23, the Lord’s prayer, and John 3:16.

Think more forest and less trees.

The truth is that people are better equipped to explain what the Harry Potter series is about than what the Bible is about. There are reasons for that being the case, and I’m not going to take the time to delve into all that. But needless to say, we think that becoming familiar with the grand narrative of God’s activity in human history is a worthwhile use of our time on Sunday mornings. Not just for pastors, but for everyone who would seek to faithfully live out that story.

I’m all for sustained rigorous systematic study of the Scriptures. I’ve given a good chunk of my life to it, and I think probably more people should than do. But we are talking about knowing and living the story of God faithfully in our age. It would be possible to commit ourselves to knowing the details of God’s word and miss the point of what Scripture is about and for in the first place.

So with a series of messages looming large on the horizon, I’ve been thinking (again) about how we engage the Scriptures and how they are meant to function in our lives. Really, this whole post has been just a lengthy introduction to some insights from a certain familiar British New Testament scholar. A few months ago, I read his book entitled Scripture and the Authority of God, and I was reminded of a couple things he had to say.

We read scripture in order to be refreshed in our memory and understanding of the story within which we ourselves are actors, to be reminded where it has come from and where it is going to, and hence what our own part within it ought to be.

I had a few more quotes from the book, but as is my custom I’m going to string this out over the next few days.

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a diseased picture of God

A while back, I came across a review Ben Myers did of Rob Bell’s Love Wins. The review is perhaps more generous than I might have been, but it is worth reading.

What really stood out was his clear and succinct rationale for doing good theology as opposed to “bad.” As one who believes that theology is of first order importance, I share with you part of what Myers had to say…

There’s nothing trivial about bad theology. A diseased picture of God will inevitably produce symptoms in our thoughts and feelings, in the way we live and relate to each other, in our whole way of looking at the world. Family life, sexual life, friendship, work, leisure, creativity: all these parts of our experience are deeply shaped by the way we think about God. I often meet people who are still nursing wounds from the theology they imbibed as young children, people who are recovering from the worship of a bad god.

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Scripture and the Authority of God by N.T. Wright

I’m thinking of renaming the blog “Four for Friday,” because that’s about all I’m able to make time for these days. So I’m sneaking a quick one in just before Friday to try to maintain some blog-cred.

Another alternate name could be “N.T. Wright Fan-Boy,” since that’s about the only other thing I talk about around here. A friend of mine was reading Wright’s Scripture and the Authority of God and asked if I had read it. Much to both our surprise, I hadn’t. He said he was finding it challenging and would love hear my thoughts on it. Never needing much of any encouragement to read more Wright, I promptly ordered it and dove right in. As chance would have it, I finished it up this past weekend, a day or so before this same friend tied the knot.

As you might suspect, the book is good. Really good. Wright successfully (IMHO) navigates between the warring conservative and liberal advocates in the “Battle for the Bible.” One group of Christians argues for a kind of inerrancy that the Bible doesn’t really seem to affirm about itself. While the other group writes off the Bible simply a man-produced piece of literature and therefore no more authoritative than “Chicken Soup for the Soul” or “Harry Potter” or Oprah or whatever.

Or as Wright says it himself…

Much of what has been written about the Bible in the last two hundred years has either been following through the Enlightenment’s program, or reacting to it, or negotiating some kind of halfway house in between.

So many good thoughts and not really anytime to unpack them, so I’ll just fire away a few more memorable quotes and let the chips fall where they may.

On how the Word is authoritative…

The apostolic writings, like the ‘word’ which they now wrote down, were not simply about the coming of God’s Kingdom into all the world; they were, and were designed to be, part of the means whereby that happened, and whereby those through whom it happened could themselves be transformed into Christ’s likeness.

On role that “religious experience” should play in constructing truth…

We could put it like this. ‘Experience’ is what grows by itself in the garden. ‘Authority’ is what happens when the gardener wants to affirm the goodness of the genuine flowers and vegetables by uprooting the weeds in order to let beauty and fruitfulness triumph over chaos, thorns, and thistles. An over-authoritarian church, paying no attention to experience, solves the  problem by paving the garden with concrete. An over-experiential church solves the (real or imagined) problem of concrete (rigid and ‘judgmental’ forms of faith) by letting anything and everything grow unchecked, sometimes labeling concrete as ‘law’ and so celebrating any and every weed as ‘grace.’

Ok, there’s more – always more – but that’s enough to try and wrap one’s brain around for one day. Oh, one other thing. Scot McKnight also recently wrote a bit about the book. Lot’s more interaction over there.

See you tomorrow with some insanely great music in hand.

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Always Wright

Don’t get flustered. I realize it is Friday (our very last according to some). I will be getting around to our beloved Four for Friday a little later today.

But first, I wanted to drop some wisdom on the reading masses. It is no secret that I have a man-crush on N.T. Wright. I don’t think he knows everything… but pretty close to it. Anyway as chance would have it, I came across two articles written by him. Both well worth reading.

The first is a piece he wrote on “The Rapture” nearly ten years ago that someone thought fitting to resurrect in light of our pending doom.

The second is a lengthier more recent article written on Bible translation. It seems that 2011 is going to be an interesting year in the world of Bible translations. The venerable King James Version is celebrating it’s 400th year anniversary. The NIV is getting a fresh update. And Wright himself is offering up his own translation of the New Testament. This article is well worth reading every word. I can’t begin to unpack every issue he touches on, but there are many. Here’s a taste…

Translations must be concerned with accuracy, but there are at least two sorts of accuracy. The first sort, which a good Lexicon will assist, is the technical accuracy of making sure that every possible nuance of every word, phrase, sentence and paragraph has been rendered into the new language.

But there is a second sort of accuracy, perhaps deeper than this: the accuracy of flavour and feel. It is possible, in translation as in life, to gain the whole world and lose your own soul – to render everything with a wooden, clunky, lifeless “accuracy” from which the one thing that really matters has somehow escaped, producing a gilded cage from which the precious bird has flown.

You really should read the whole article.

If any of this sparks an interest in getting more into the mind of one of the world’s foremost New Testament scholars, as always I recommend starting here…

Readable and Insightful

So good. Really.

Alright folks, now time to crank out some Four for Friday. I will resist the urge to theme it around the end of the world.

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favorite spot (continued)

I left off a few days ago talking about my favorite spot… within the pages of a really good book. At least one person took issue with my “spot” not being a more substantial location. Like I said at the outset, I felt like the question was vague enough for whatever creative license a person felt inclined to exercise. So maybe my spot is really an activity. My activity might end up being a spot. No need to split hairs.

Plus, as I sometimes have to point out, I do whatever I want around here.

Like write about boring theology books. Which brings me back to my recent favorite “spot”. Here it is…


Thrilling, I know.

You might be tempted to jump to at least two conclusions about this book based on the cover and title alone.

First, you might think that what you will find on the inside is some pretty heady stuff. And you would be right. As usual, I make no apologies for books written on a college (or perhaps in this case graduate school) reading-level. It is ok to every now and then read books that are a little ahead of us. It doesn’t necessarily mean they are good. Or that they are even “right”. It does mean we’ll need to work a bit more. And that’s ok. There’s a reason that the Harry Potter series was a best-selling phenomenon, and that this one, well… isn’t.

One could also be lead to believe that because of the above statements that the book is cold and lifeless. On that count, you would be dead wrong. This book spans the gamut… How we engage culture? What does it mean for the Spirit to speak through the text? The importance of community? How our destiny informs our present? Of course, it does so in an attempt to answer the question suggested in the sub-title.

“How does one engage in doing theology in a post-modern world?”

I can tell that you aren’t sold. Let come at it a different way.

Have you ever been suspicious of the certainty that some religious people/institutions/organizations exhibit when it comes to explaining “truth?”

If you answered “yes” (and let’s be honest, you most likely did), then that “certainty” with which you have a problem is what this book calls foundationalism. And that “suspicion” of yours more or less demonstrates that you are most decidedly a “post-modern” person… whatever that is.

I can see we are getting nowhere fast, so let’s wrap up with a few choice quotes…

“Disengagement from the objectified world formed the foundation for the modernist ideal – namely, individual autonomy – understood as the ability to choose one’s own purposes from within oneself apart from the controlling influence of natural and social forces and hence to create one’s own identity or self.”

And…

“The contemporary acknowledgment of the relationality of personal identity suggests that the divine image is a shared, communal reality. It implies that the image of God is fully present only in relationships, that is, in ‘community’… the doctrine of the Trinity asserts, throughout all eternity God is ‘community’ … According to the New Testament, the focus of this image-bearing function is humans-in-relationship but, more specifically, the church as the foretaste of the new humanity … Only in community can we truly show what God is like, for God is the community of love, the eternal relational dynamic enjoyed by the three persons of the Trinity.”

For some, this might sound more than a little familiar. I may have shared a thought or two along these lines last Sunday.

But to get to the goods, one occasionally has to work through slightly denser material. Like this…

“The Christian tradition is comprised of the historical attempts by the Christian community to explicate and translate faithfully the first-order language, symbols, and practices of the Christian faith, arising from the interaction among community, text, and culture, into the various social and cultural contexts in which that community has been situated.”

Well, there’s more. So very much more. But at this point, I would recommend that you just take it up and read it for yourself.

P.S. I would be remiss if I didn’t share that this book was given to me nearly ten years ago by a student in the youth ministry I helped lead in Seattle. So Jeff, a heartfelt ‘thanks’ goes to you for putting such a wonderful book into my hands. It has been a breath of fresh air.

P.S.S. Stan Grenz (one of the authors) unexpectedly passed away a few years back. Nevertheless, he was fairly prolific and managed to write more than a few books during his lifetime.  If the two or three that I’ve read are any indication of the quality of the others, I imagine that they are all good.

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not done yet

Somehow, over the past month or so, four different books on Christian spirituality found their way into my hands. It isn’t that unusual for me to read that sort of thing, but it is strange that I would read four almost back-to-back so narrowly focused on one particular issue. The question that each was answering in their own way is “What does it mean to be a Christian?” Now you might think that it shouldn’t take me four different books to help me answer this question. Doesn’t there come a time when one doesn’t have to read any more books about it? I’ve been involved in ministry for nearly twenty years now. So haven’t I figured it out yet?

I suppose as the answer is both ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ I certainly have some convictions about what the Christian life is suppose to look like, but I don’t have all the answers. And each of these four books challenges me to look with fresh eyes at things that may have been previously ignored concerning the journey of faith.

While each brings a unique perspective, all four writers agree on at least one thing… that being a Christ-follower is about more than being able to check off the “I prayed the prayer” box. You may not be familiar with this sort of Christian spirituality, but it basically says that once people pray the “sinner’s prayer,” they have arrived. God has no further work to accomplish in an individual’s life. He or she is now “saved.”

Not that any of the writers are against that sort of thing. They probably even think that praying that kind of prayer is a fine sort of thing to do.  And yet, each was very clear to affirm that the Christian life is certainly about more than that. Much more.

So in an effort to turn this into a post that is actually helpful, I’ll offer up a few words about each book.

Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
by David Platt
(sample chapter)

I would largely agree with what my good friend Bobby had to say about it, so I’ll be brief.

The sub-title says it well. This book is meant to wake the church up to the reality that the version of Christianity that much of the West has bought into looks a whole lot more like the American Dream than Jesus. Perhaps you are familiar with the phrase “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” This book does the second half very well.

If you were to ask the average Christian sitting in a worship service on Sunday morning to summarize the message of Christianity, you would most likely hear something along the lines of ‘the message of Christianity is that God loves me.’ Or someone might say, ‘The messages of Christianity is that God loves me enough to send his Son, Jesus, to die for me.’ … ‘God loves me’ is not the essence of biblical Christianity. Because if ‘God loves me’ is the message of Christianity, then who is the object of Christianity? … Me.


Follow: A Simple and Profound Call to Live Like Jesus
by Floyd McClung
(sample chapter)

This book’s sub-title is half true. This is a clear cut, no nonsense approach to one’s life with Christ.  After reading a sentence or chapter, no one is in any way left scratching there head saying, “I wonder what he meant by that?”  McClung says what he means and means what he says. I would put this in the hands of anyone who has recently begun their journey with Christ, has an earnest desire to grow, and wants some handles on moving forward.

While long on simplicity, I feel like it comes up short on profundity. This book is so clear and certain, that I think it doesn’t do justice to the mystery and wonder of who God is. While I would whole-heartedly affirm that God is a God of order, I would as strongly argue that life with God can’t be reduced to formulas or bullet-points. I in no way think that the author believes that it can. I do think he has succeeded in making the complicated accessible. And that’s a good thing. Sometimes.

So this is our choice: Either we model ourselves on gods of our own making, or we allow God to mold us into His image, the very model of which is Jesus. Which will it be for you?


One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow
by Scot McKnight
(sample chapter)

I meet with a group of men on Monday mornings, and this is the one we are working through right now. These guys more or less trust me. So when I suggested we read and discuss it, no one balked. That is until they got to the first chapter. It was all about chasing after our dreams, and I could tell that they were inwardly rolling their eyes. For a couple, their outward expressions matched their inner feelings. “Really, we’re going to talk about our dreams? That’s original. Doesn’t nearly every book on Christian spirituality sound that same tired note.”

However, I had the benefit of having read the entire book. And what I knew was that McKnight’s re-look at the Christian life is broader in scope than the others I had recently read. There are fewer stones left unturned. And as this book seeks to expand one’s understanding of who Jesus is and what it means to follow him, it lends itself well to discussion. Not just discussion of the ideas, but the way in which our lives intersect the issues being raised. We’ll see.

When I hear Christians describe the Christian life as little more than soul development and personal intimacy with God, and I do hear this often, I have to wonder if Christians even read their Bibles.

Ouch.


Transforming Conversion: Rethinking the Language and Contours of Christian Initiation
by Gordon T. Smith
(sample chapter)

I think it important to make a habit of reading a book’s sub-title. They not only tell you what the book is really about, but also give you a flavor of the book itself. As you might guess, this is of the nerdier variety. Several years ago, I read another book by Smith on conversion called Beginning Well. I had never read an entire book on the subject. So when I saw this one, I thought “What more could he have to say?” The answer… plenty. I would recommend it for anyone who wants (or needs) to think deeply about the nature of conversion. Another book title could have easily been Conversion: 301.

God’s salvation is always portrayed in corporate terms, never to the exclusion of the individual, but always with the assumption that the individual is an integral member of a community of faith. Thus we cannot in the end conceive of or portray a biblical doctrine of conversion except with a distinctly ecclesial character. Religious experience, in other words, is never purely individual, personal, and interior. It will (and must) be individual, personal, and interior, but it will never solely be individual and interior. Further, it will not be individual and personal and interior unless it is grounded in the common experience of the people of God, unless it has a corporate dimension. True Christian experience is anchored in the common faith of the church, and it is the common faith that gives authenticity to our personal and individual faith. It is the church’s ancient and historic experience that gives meaning to our personal experience.

Yeah. What he said.

I guess what I really want to say about these books is that any of them are worth reading. It all just depends on who you are and where you are in your understanding of what it means to follow Christ. And since I’m not “done” yet, I’ll keep seeking out books that help me understand that journey better.

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The Wisdom of Stability

At my workplace, we recognize someone’s birthday by getting a piece of paper with their name printed on it and then co-workers write a word that we think describes the individual. Despite the fact that I’ve forgotten all the words on my sheet done a few months ago, I think it is a good thing to do. And while I could make a guess at what words found their way next to my name, I am fairly sure one word that many would affirm as descriptive of me didn’t make the list…

Detached.

It was likely avoided because most people would see that word as pejorative. I, on the other hand, wear it more like a badge of honor. There isn’t any sphere of my life where I can’t make a case for standing apart as being a good thing. Well, maybe one or two. But in my fantasized life of total detachment, those one or four things stay connected to me.

It is one of the many reasons I like traveling. When visiting a place, I’m not just seeing the sights as most tourists might. I’m evaluating… Could I live here? Or here? Or wherever? The act of being in another place (no matter how briefly) reaffirms for me that I’m not tied down. I’m not stuck. We could pick up and move at a moment’s notice. We could start over some place else.

And yet, I’m beginning to recognize what any moderately sane person intuitively knows even if they are unable to articulate it. Namely, that a constant state of restlessness – a perpetual hedging of bets – a sustained fostering of the “grass-is-greener” mentality is damaging. It is unhealthy for families. It holds relationships hostage. It keeps work undone. But worst of all, it leaves the soul divided. And so for several years now (and yes, it is taking years), I’ve been growing in my awareness that this dream of an un-pinned down life isn’t good.

I say all of this by way of introduction to a book that I’ve found particularly helpful in bringing clarity to the fog of ideas that has taken some time to accumulate in my own life.

This is a book about staying put. I suppose someone could (and probably has) written a book on the merits of “going.” And a fine book it would be. One can’t necessarily turn to the Bible and find an air-tight case for never leaving. Where would be be without some of the great goers of the faith? Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Paul. Even Jesus leaving the familiarity of the God-head in order to be with a broken humanity is predicated on his willingness to go.

And yet, this book on page after page offers exactly what the title suggests it will… wisdom.

Lots of it.

In the great tradition of Scripture’s wisdom literature (Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes), Wilson-Hartgrove’s insights aren’t true for any and every situation, but his words are ignored at our own peril.

In a culture that is defined by mobility and distraction, Wilson-Hartgrove guides the reader to the truths we know deep down inside of us to be right. We all long for rootedness, connectedness, sustaining a flourishing life for ourselves, those we love, and those we want to love. But this can only happen through the intentional choice to stay.

Or in his own words…

Stability challenges us to question assumptions of our hyper-mobile culture, but it ought not to make us immovable. Staying put and paying attention are, rather, dynamic disciplines aimed at helping us grow and progress towards wholeness.

However, what I appreciate most (and there is much to appreciate) about Wilson-Hartgrove’s work is his recognition that stability is about far more than physical presence. Physical presence in a particular place both contributes to and is a manifestation of presence with a particular God and particular people.

I wouldn’t recommend it to just anyone.  Not to kids heading off to college.  Or even young singles/marrieds who are searching for their place in the world.  But for those of us who think that the search can and should last a lifetime, consider afresh that your place may very well be right where you are.