Holidays Approaching, Book Reviews Upon Return!

So my family and I are on hols from tomorrow afternoon. We're going to take a few books with us, although with four kids I'm not sure we'll get much reading time!

Here are a couple we'll be taking with us:

 My wife will do a guest book review of One Thousand Gifts which looks like a very interesting topic. I'll have a review of Gilead, a Pulitzer-Prize winning novel. So see you again on Monday week (Jan 30) for more Christian book blogging.   

Book Review: Home Tonight: Further Reflections on the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Henri J.M. Nouwen)

This book is (as mentioned in a previous post) a collection of Nouwen's conference notes from a three-day workshop he ran following his recovery from a nervous breakdown. It's been edited into book form by Sue Mosteller of the Henri Nouwen Society. The book is divided into three parts entitled 'Leaving and Returning Home', 'The Invisible Exile of Resentment', and 'Home is Receiving and Giving Love'. Each part has three chapters with workshop exercises at the end of each chapter under the headings of 'Listening', 'Journaling', 'Communing' and 'Practices'.

Right, that's enough of the intro. A previous post talked about my interest in stories of the broken-hearted, and so I will direct you there to give you the brief history of Nouwen's personal situation behind the writing of this book.    
  
Following his breakdown Nouwen found a path to recovery in meditating on the parable of the prodigal son from Luke 15. In particular, he became entranced by the painting of the parable by Rembrandt which you see below.

Things I Liked About the Book 
Personal Self-Discovery and Biblical Insight  
Nouwen gives us a very frank self-assessment. His academic background in Psychology gives him a really fascinating insight into his own behaviour and the parable too.

Nouwen is just so good at understanding himself, even if he isn't so good at being able to change his behaviour. He is very honest in saying 'I have carried within me the pain of loneliness and a nagging need for affection...I was always yearning for intimacy in my life' (xvii). Nouwen had always found it 'difficult to love freely without being selfish and demanding' (8). Growing up, he says 'I wanted to be a pagan so I could do all the things I wanted to do and not feel guilty' (20). Carrying such baggage and being such an intense person, Nouwen seems inevitably bound to reach the personal crisis in his life that he describes.

By addressing his own weaknesses so well, Nouwen can direct floodlights onto the parable of the prodigal son, giving us much greater depth and detail into each of the characters within it .

The younger son in the parable disrespectfully leaves his father, taking his share of his father's inheritance. The son then shamelessly squanders his father's wealth. With nothing left, the younger son realizes he must return to his father to survive. Yet despite his shameful behaviour and wasteful living, the son always knows that  

"I'm still the child of my father and of my mother. I still belong to my family. I still have a home where people who know me are alive." (p23)  

With this insight Nouwen points the reader to Jesus:

He claimed himself in truth, so that whether people wanted to be with him, listen to him, make him king, reject him, beat him, spit on him, or nail him to the Cross, he never lost the truth that he was God's beloved child (p25). 

An interesting observation Nouwen makes from the younger son's plight is that when we are sensitive to our own journey in Christ, we can soon see that 'we are leaving and coming back [to our Father] every day, every hour' (p26). We undertake a constant series of departures and returns from God although we always know we are members of God's family because of Jesus.

Nouwen then moves onto the older son's part in the parable. Nouwen himself was the oldest of eleven children, so he feels a definite affinity with the older son here. He makes a powerful point about the older son which may well apply to most of us as well:

We work tirelessly to present ourselves in a good light before others in the false belief that our identity comes from who we are in their eyes, or from what we do or what we have (p37).

Nouwen says that the common problem believers make in their lives is to keep thinking that they can find the first love (that is, the unconditional love of God in Christ) in their day-to day relationships with others. Nouwen says that the people in our lives can only give us a second love: that is, a love that is imperfect and conditional. Only God can love us unconditionally. To give an illustration of this, Nouwen talks about his own situation:

When I hoped for total self-giving and unconditional love from another human being who was imperfect and limited in ability to love, I was asking for the impossible (p33).     

Nouwen then spends time talking about the resentment and sense of obligation that drives the elder son in his service to his father, providing a parallel to the attitude of many believers today in their service and relationship to God.

It is very powerful and helpful for both pastors and anyone spending time in this parable to read the insights Nouwen has here. I was voraciously taking notes and pondering Nouwen's thinking in my own life.  

Some Irritations with the Book

I did have some issues with the book, but really they were more about the editing of the book than what Nouwen wrote about.

On virtually every page there is a sidebar with quotes about understanding the self. However they are not taken just from Nouwen's works but from a whole variety of different people including Desmond Tutu, Jean Vanier (founder of L'Arche), Gandhi and a sufi amongst others.

I found the quotes really distracting as they took me away from the intensity of the book's flow. I felt uncomfortable also with some quotes coming from people who were not Christians in a book that talks about the God of the Bible giving the author his means of survival and strength through his breakdown. Quotes from sufis and from Gandhi seemed inappropriate and watered down the gospel insights of Nouwen. In fact, in my opinion quotes from anyone except Nouwen were unhelpful, although well intended. So all in all, thumbs down to the quotes! The book easily holds its own without them.    

Conclusion
If you want to really get a handle on the parable of the prodigal son from Luke 15 and where you may fit within each of the characters within it, this is a very helpful book. Nouwen's own journey from breakdown to recovery, interwoven with his meditation on this parable, makes for a very moving and meaningful reading experience. The workshop activities at the end of each chapter give a great opportunity for practical application of Nouwen's biblical insights into your own life.  A wonderful book to read, dear pastors.

The Pile: January 18 2012

Every now and then I'll show you 'The Pile'. It's the pile of books I'm geared up to read. I wonder how this will change by the end of 2012!

Book Notes: Salvation Accomplished by the Son (Robert A. Peterson)

This book came in the post today. It was a free giveaway from a blog I read in the USA, so very grateful! It's basically a systematic theology book (specifically Christology) published by Crossway Books. It joins a queue of books to read this year!

I talked earlier about the aesthetic quality of a book being important in me picking it up and being interested in reading it: this passes that test. Beautiful. Will post on it after reading.  

The Apocrypha

If you were to look in the back of the Sunday Services Anglican prayer book above (a Sydney Anglican liturgical resource), you would find 'The Articles of Religion', otherwise known as the 'Thirty-Nine Articles'. The Articles are the doctrinal foundation and statement of belief of the Anglican Church.

In Article 6 ('On the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation') you will find this:

'And the other books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine; such are these following:
    The Third Book of Esdras.
    The Fourth Book of Esdras.
    The Book of Tobias.
    The Book of Judith.
    The rest of the Book of Esther.
    The Book of Wisdom.
    Jesus the Son of Sirach.
    Baruch the Prophet.
    The Song of the Three Children.
    The Story of Susanna.
    Of Bel and the Dragon.
    The Prayer of Manasses.
    The First Book of Maccabees.    The Second Book of Maccabees.'

In other words, most of the books of the Apocrypha are deemed to be suitable for reading 'for an example of life and instruction of manners', but not to be used in the formation of Christian doctrine nor in the canon itself.

I recall a Sunday last year where I'd looked up the sentence of scripture for the morning in the Australian Anglican Prayer Book and was given a choice of scripture verses and also a verse from Esdras! I chose to avoid the Esdras reading. On reflection, I will use it this year when that Sunday comes up again.

In a brief moment this morning I thought I'd follow up on the reason why the Apocrypha is largely not in bibles today, nor in most evangelical denominations' lines of sight.

This book above has been a very handy resource over the years, giving brief but thorough essays on a variety of theological topics. In the entry on the Apocrypha, it's noted that although the Jews denied the Apocrypha canonical status, the LXX manuscript included it as an addendum to the biblical OT text. Luther admitted the apocryphal texts were 'profitable and good to read', although it was only the later Reformers who took objection to it being part of the Bible.  

However it was only in 1827 that a decision was made by a particular British bible society to exclude the Apocrypha from its bible printing runs. From then on the evangelical tradition has been to not include the Apocrypha from English bibles.  

The Apocrypha however can still be found in some editions of the NRSV, TNIV (now discontinued), NCV, REB, CEV and NLT.

Interesting!

The Reading Room

It's not mine, but click on this photo (it's a big file but worth the wait!) and soak up the reading atmosphere. See you again Monday.

Stories of the Broken

I am drawn to autobiographies of the broken. In reading such books the grace of God glows brightly. Henri Nouwen's books are an example. Nouwen was a Catholic priest who worked as an academic at Notre Dame University in the USA. Feeling like his faith was being shrivelled by the academic world he accepted an invitation to be a pastor at L'Arche, a Christian care facility for the mentally unwell.

In his first year or so there, Nouwen suffered a nervous breakdown and took an extended absence. After three years he had recovered and written a book called 'The Return of the Prodigal Son', in which he recounts his discovery of the Rembrandt painting of this gospel parable, and his personal insight from God into Jesus and God's amazing grace through both the parable and painting.

The book above is actually a collection of Nouwen's notes from conferences he spoke at, in which he relates the story of his breakdown and recovery experience.

There'll be a couple of moments where you go 'hmmm, not sure I agree with that', however the book is still  quite moving in parts and, again, a powerful witness of the grace of God. Along the way are practical exercises to slow yourself down and meditate on God and his word. Recommended.