Monthly Mash Up (July 2017)

Education doesn’t end when your time at school is done. It continues the rest of your days. Do this and you’ll continue to grow and mature over a lifetime, becoming smarter and wise with age. Do it not, and you’ll wish you had.

I stumbled across some outstanding resources in July and I’d like to share a few of them with you here. Below is a quote I’m pondering, three books I’ve read and four videos or documentaries I’ve watched. They each taught me some incredibly valuable lessons. Lessons that made me better and that’ll do the same for you if you let them.

Quote I'm Chewing On

“How you look is just as much a reflection of how you eat as how you train.” — Michael Mathews

You can’t out train a poor diet. This simple truth has us taking a fresh look at what we eat with a fine tooth comb. We’re tracking nutrient intake is a start but we’re also looking at food sources and timing to optimize our performance.  

What I'm Reading

  1. Bigger Leaner Stronger by Michael Matthews - I have been encouraged by the in depth look it takes to all aspects of training, especially nutrition.   

  2. The Warrior Ethos by Steven Pressfield - This short missive on the Warrior Ethos is a great reminder of the historical and universal truths found in every culture throughout history. A warrior is a warrior no matter where he calls home. That’s good news. Because we can do something about it. We can cultivate a warrior mindset.

  3. On Killing by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman - The world is not a perfect place. Things go wrong and often that puts lives on the line. What happens when and if that moment comes is important. Preparing yourself for that day is even more so. This book is part of that preparation. It will help you understand what happens when life and death hang in the balance.

What I’m Watching

  1. God’s Colonial Intent by Dr. Myles Munroe - This one was shared with me by a member of my community group and I immensely enjoyed it. If you’re looking for a little bit different spin on the overarching theme of the Bible, this one might be up your alley.    

  2. Creating Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard - How you make customers feel is the most important thing about your business. The better use you make of this truth, the healthier your bottom line will be.

  3. Fittest On Earth: A Decade of Fitness - Discipline is required however  you want to grow and improve. The athletes competing in the Crossfit games are perfect examples of this.

  4. What The Health - Watching this documentary earlier this month kickstarted a conversation around nutrition and exactly what we’re putting in our bodies. You may land on one side of the meat debate or the other, but films like this are often best used for self examination. They give you an opportunity to take a deep look at yourself.

What I Learned Listening to Tim Ferriss Interview Derek Sivers

I listen to the Tim Ferriss Show from time to time. I find Tim’s interviews compelling and his questions insightful. I’ve usually got a page or two covered with quotes and notes, after each episode. 

Tim interviewed Derek Sivers a while back, and it’s stuck with me. Remixes and different takes on the wisdom Derek shared spring forth from the stew of ideas swirling around my mind regularly. 

I’d like to share a few of them with you here today. Below you’ll find some of my biggest takeaways from their conversation. 

  • What you know doesn’t mean squat, it’s what you do consistently that matters. You must act.
  • Expect disaster.
  • Be expensive.
  • Think slow and deliberate.
  • Think long-term. You can do everything you want. You just need foresight and patience.
  • If you feel anything less than "Hell yes!" just say, "No." Otherwise, you’ll say "Yes" to many lesser things.
  • Busy is out of control. Lack of time is a lack of priorities.

Give their conversation a listen if you’d like some context to go with these quotes. I've linked to it below. There’s no telling what great idea it might spark down the road. 

Derek Sivers on Developing Confidence, Finding Happiness and Saying “No” to Millions

A Quick Look At The Story of Reality by Greg Koukl

In September of 2012 my life was deeply touched by a conference I didn’t attend. It took place at Watermark Community Church and they have made the main sessions available online for free. Let me pause for a moment and draw your attention to how marvelous those first two sentences are. A conference I was unable to attend touched my life because the church posted the messages on their website for free! At no other time in human history could those two happenings be true. I’ve watched, listened and poured over those messages many times since the fall of 2012. Each time I come away with something new and helpful.

The conference introduced me to the following list of names: Ravi Zacharias, Greg Koukl, Frank Turek, Dr. William Lane Craig, John Stonestreet, Dan Wallace. That list changed my life. Each name belongs to a man who makes the case for the truth and validity of the Christian story in their own unique way. Each man treads the ground only he can tread and blooms where he is planted, so to speak.

Among this collection, I am most grateful for the ministries of Ravi Zacharias, and Greg Koukl. They have enriched the lives of millions around the world in large part due to the explosion of technology over the last several years. Their respective radio broadcasts and the podcasts they become are excellent. Open another browser for a moment and go subscribe to Let My People Think, Just Thinking, and the Stand To Reason Weekly Podcast.

Greg mentioned his most recent book, The Story of Reality, on the STR weekly podcast late last year.  I found his previous book, Tactics, an indispensable resource for having meaningful conversations about my faith. I ordered Greg’s book as soon as possible expecting it to be little different.

I’d like to share with you a review of its reading. I rarely pay attention to subtitles, but find this one particularly helpful. It reads: How The World Began, How It Ends, And Everything Important That Happens In Between. This is as fine a summary of Greg’s book as I could think of.

Before we get too far down in our journey I want to draw your attention to the key word in that subtitle, the word important. This is a book that covers the most pivotal aspects of the Christian story. It doesn’t cover everything in detail but offers a beautiful telling of its major points. Greg does this by presenting Christianity for what all worldviews really are, a story.

Don’t get hung up on the word story. It is only meant to convey that it is an answering of the great questions each of us asks during our lifetimes. Where do we come from? Who are we? What's wrong with the world? Where are we going?

How we answer these questions forms the narrative telling of the world each of us believes. We all have one, and it determines nearly everything about our lives.

“Christianity is the Story,” Koukl said, “of how the world began, why the world is the way it is, what role we play in the drama, and how all the plotlines of the Story are resolved in the end.” Five words describe The Story: God, man, Jesus, cross, and resurrection. These five words constitute everything of import about the Christian worldview. Greg uses these five words as a plot line for his telling of the Story.

I find this a helpful simplification of the biblical narrative. It’s easy to remember and sets things in their proper context. Instead of slogging uphill you’re able to think through the aspects of the Story as they build on one another.

If you place anything at the center of the Story other than God, for example, you’ll have a hard time understanding the other details of the Story. “God is the first piece of the Christian Story,” Koukl said, “because the Story is all about him. God is the central character. The Story does not start with us because the Story is not about us.” While important and beautiful, you aren’t the center of all things. God is.

Likewise, a failure to put Man in his proper context leads to error. “Even though man is beautiful,” Koukl said, “he is also broken.” Something has gone wrong. The problem isn’t education, economic status or culture. The problem, as it turns out, isn’t external at all, it’s within. “The evil in the world is not out there.” Koukl said, “It is in us...The brokenness in the world starts with the brokenness in us.”

In The Story of Reality, Koukl places complex and intricate topics on a shelf we can all reach. Greg conveys what can be stumbling blocks on the way to truth, with the simplicity and clear-headedness of E.B. White. The puzzle becomes clearer and clearer with each new piece he adds until at long last we see it all come together. The puzzle he helps us put together forms a beautiful picture of the way the world actually is.  

10 Great Quotes from The Story of Reality

  • The correct answer to the question, “What is Christianity? is this: Christianity is a picture of reality. It is an account or a description of the way things actually are. It is not just a view from the inside (a Christian’s personal feelings or religious beliefs or spiritual affections or ethical views or “relationship” with God). It is also a view of the outside. It is a view of the world out there, of how the world really is in itself.

  • …evil is not the problem for Christianity that people think it is because it is not foreign to the Story. It is central to it. It fits right in. In a certain sense, the entire Story is precisely about how the world went bad and how it gets fixed.

  • Put simply, the Story starts with a Sovereign who creates a domain he benevolently rules over. There is a King and his “dom,” so to speak. There is a kingdom. This is what the Story is all about. The main theme is not love or redemption or forgiveness or even relationship. Those are all important parts of the Story, to be sure. They serve the theme in important ways, but they are not the main point of the Story. The idea that God owns everything and has proper authority to rule over everything he has made is the main point.

  • But a story being attractive and a story being true are two entirely different things. Never forget that.

  • Are humans not obliged to a higher law than the law of nature? Animals do what comes naturally. Humans should not…We are human beings with animal appetites that would tyrannize us if not restrained by higher law. The difference between “just doing what comes naturally” and principled self-restraint is called civilization.

  • We are not machines that need to be fixed. We are transgressors who need to be forgiven. We have not merely “made mistakes,” like getting our sums wrong when balancing accounts. We have sinned. And with sin comes guilt. And with guilt comes punishment. The sin must be answered for. It must be paid for. It must be paid for in some way. Atoned for, if you will.

  • The notion of a “vengeful” God strikes us as inconsistent with a God of love. This seems right at first, but the complaint is based on a misunderstanding. God’s love is not a thing in itself, so to speak, but is tied, like all of his attributes, to his goodness, the very goodness we are inclined to question when evil runs rampant. “Why doesn’t God do something?” we wonder. Yet we cry foul when we learn God will do something decisive about evil and we are the evildoers.

  • The God who began the Story, the God who made everything, is the same God who came down, who became flesh, who entered history as a baby born in Bethlehem. Jesus is a man, but he is also God. He is not a God, but the God. He is the man who God became. He is the one person who is completely human, yet fully divine.

  • Any adequate solution must solve the problem that needs to be solved, and singular problems need singular solutions. Some antidotes are one-of-a-kind cures for one-of-a-kind ailments. Sometimes only one medicine will do the job, as much as we may like it to be otherwise…This is why Jesus of Nazareth is the only way to God, the only possible source of rescue. He is the only one who solved the problem.

  • Here is the Story’s solution to the problem of evil: perfect justice for evildoers, perfect mercy for the penitent; evil banished forever, and everlasting good restored.

C.S. Lewis once described Christianity as a big tent. Christians may differ on some of the ancillary aspects of doctrine, but there are many things on which they agree. Koukl's concerns in The Story of Reality are with these points. He translates the Christian Story into terms both believer and nonbeliever alike can understand. He does so in compelling a fashion as you’ll find anywhere.

The trouble is that even many “Christians” are unaware of how the entire Story fits together. They have other puzzle pieces mixed into their box and have left many of the pieces scattered on the ground. Whether that's’ you or you’re curious about how the Story coheres to reality, The Story of Reality will help you put it all together.

More Resources from Greg Koukl

Four Things I Learned Reading The Way of the Writer by Charles Johnson

 

My wife and I were at Barnes and Noble to return a book we’d received three or four copies of as gifts. I meandered through the aisles on the hunt for a new addition to my ever-growing collection of books. What should catch my eye, but Charles Johnson’s The Way of the Writer. It drew me in as I fanned its pages for the first time, landing on a spreadsheet in its middle, but more on that in a moment.

I tossed the book onto the stack of dozens like it when we got home. I figured I’d get to it months down the road, but my curiosity got the best of me. Within a few hours I found myself kicking back with it in one hand a pen in the other.

Johnson approaches the art of writing in much the same style as Stephen King in On Writing. The Way of the Writer serves as part memoir and part instruction manual on the craft of writing. Instead of coming from the perspective of a famous novelist, it flows from the pen of an academic. Johnson has much to share even in the early pages of this work. I’d like to share four of my biggest takeaways with you here.

1. Writer’s Notebook - When someone mentions something two or three times it's important. Johnson refers to his writer’s notebook at least a dozen times throughout the book. On its third appearance, he explains that it is a “collection of images, ideas, scraps of language, character sketches, overheard conversation, and so forth.”

I find this to be such a plain and excellent idea, that I’m ashamed to admit I hadn’t thought of it sooner. Of course, a writer should be writing down what pops into their mind at all points of the day. Relying on memory alone isn't enough. I’ve carried a notebook with me for some time now but writing down bits of overheard conversation hadn't crossed my mind. I’ll have to be more diligent in my eavesdropping moving forward. I can't think of a better way to train my ear for true and real uses of language.

2. Quotes Spreadsheet - I landed on page fifty-two while first flipping the book’s pages. It contains a spreadsheet of what the American Book Review once considered the top 100 first lines found in novels. I thought it was a gathering of quotes and lines from various books upon first discovery. It wasn't but that didn't stop me from running with the idea. I created a spreadsheet for collecting everything I’ve underlined, copied and enjoyed in pieces of writing. Below is a smattering of entries so far in my reading of The Way of the Writer:   

  • To the degree, then, that I believe the health of a culture can be measured by the performance of those who speak and write its language. If that thesis is credible, then perhaps we should be worried by the coarseness, vulgarity, and at times obscenity that we encounter so often today in American speech.
  • The problem, as I see it, with vulgarity is that it is unexpressive, a failure to reveal things in a fresh way. Rather than liberate our perception, vulgarity calcifies it.
  • 90 percent of good writing is rewriting.
  • Writing well is the same thing as thinking well, and that means we want our final literary product—story, novel, or essay—to exhibit our best thought, best feeling, and best technique.
  • I write, first and foremost, in order to discover and clarify things for myself. (And that's why I write a lot; there are countless subjects I want to explore in this vast, mysterious universe we inhabit.) If I couldn't do that, then I wouldn't write.
  • Most of the ideas expressed by writers today are not new. Far too many writers are simply unaware that an idea they believe is original was actually thought and expressed—and presented with eloquence and sophistication—more than two thousand years before they were born. Writing well is thinking well. That necessarily involves knowing—and caring about—the best thoughts of others.

3. Interviewing Idea - “At the end of 2010,” Johnson said, “the poet E. Ethelbert Miller, who was recently inducted into the Washington, DC, Hall of Fame for his contributions to literature and public life, presented me with a proposal that at first glance might have seemed preposterous. He asked if he could interview me for an entire year.” What an incredible idea! Think of all you could learn about an individual, their work, and view of the world. It is a project boiling over with possibilities to take a deep dive into another’s world. I’m not 100% sure how I’m going to use this spark of inspiration, but it will at the very least involve an interview or two.

4. New Words - “A literary work is first and foremost,” Johnson said, “a performance of language” Fewer words from his pen have rung truer halfway through The Way of the Writer, than these. Johnson’s love for ornate language is on full display throughout his writing. On at least three different occasions, I’ve had to pause and research terms he’s used. Words like oeuvre are opportunities to learn and play with parcels of language I haven’t encountered.