"Crazy Love" Review

I just finished Francis Chan's Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God, and I'll be honest.  I found it downright disturbing.  Although I suspect that Chan's intentions are good, his delivery is judgemental, arrogant, and shame-inducing. He seems to have a very different interpretation of the Bible than mine, and he's sharing that interpretation with the world in this book, which strikes me as a little dangerous and irresponsible.  If I had read this book back when I was an atheist, its shame-mongering "You'll never be good enough" tone would have sent me running from Christianity, never to look back.

Finishing this book was a true challenge because, as a Christian, I found it offensive. If I were to review the entire book, this blog would go on forever, so I'll just focus here on Chapter 4, "Profile of the Lukewarm".

According to Chan, here are some of the characteristics that he thinks "lukewarm people" possess, followed by my concerns.  I'm not listing all of them, just the ones I take issue with:

The LUKEWARM PERSON:

1. attends church regularly.  Then Chan quotes Isaiah 29:13, which begs the question: Is he implying that my choice to attend church regularly means I'm only honoring God with my words and that my heart is far from God? Because if not for attending church, I would not be a Christian today. When I am at church, I am listening intently to that sermon, soaking it in and processing it afterwards. I am praying about it. I am communing with other Christians and learning from them. And all of this has strengthened my personal relationship with God. So no, my heart is not far from God just because I choose to attend church regularly. Is Chan suggesting that we don't go to church?
2. gives money to charity and to the church, as long as it doesn't impede her standard of living.  So what is he suggesting, that we drain our savings and give it all to charity?  That we take our child and go live under a bridge somewhere in complete poverty?  That we donate to the point that we do impede our standard of living?  I don't see Chan choosing the poverty that he would have us commit to.
3. doesn't want to be saved from her sin, but only from the penalty of it.  This implies that I'm incapable of having a conscience, and that I don't sincerely feel remorse after I've sinned.  It implies that I'm incapable of true repentance when I pray.  It's insulting and shortsighted.
4. rarely shares her faith with her neighbors, coworkers or friends.  I regularly encourage and welcome conversations about my faith with my friends and neighbors, where appropriate.  But no, I don't greet the new neighbor down the street with, "Hi! Is Jesus your Lord and savior?" Why?  Because that would scare the person off instead of welcoming him.  It pushes my agenda on him instead of taking the time to learn about him and thus learn how best to introduce him to a relationship with Christ.  And I definitely do not discuss my faith with my colleagues or I'd be fired in a hot second.  Is he implying that I'm less of a Christian because I choose not to be unprofessional and get myself fired?  When I was an atheist, one of the biggest mistakes I saw Christians repeating in their attempts to "reach" me was using their language instead of mine.  As an atheist, expressions like "Christ, our Lord and Savior" or "the Holy Spirit", or even just the full name "Jesus Christ" made me extremely uncomfortable and caused me to instantly turn a deaf ear to them as I searched for the nearest exit.  Now as a Christian, I often speak to atheists using vernacular that some Christians consider disrespectful, like "the man upstairs", but I'm not doing that because I respect God any less or consider him any less holy.  I do that because my goal is to reach the person I'm speaking with, by using expressions that are less "in your face", and make him feel more comfortable.  I feel like Chan's die-hard radical approach suggests that we brazenly share our faith with everyone without first thinking through a strategy that would achieve the ultimate goal of lessening the gap between them and God.  I also get the impression that he has worked in the church for so long that he might be forgetting what the rest of the world is like.
5. will serve God and others, but has limits to how much time, money, or energy she'll give.  As for money, see argument #2 above.  As for my time, is he suggesting that I take on more than I can handle and overschedule myself to the point of exhaustion and burnout?  Should I make myself sick just giving and giving and giving to everyone who needs it, and destroy any chance of a balanced life?  Because it is my balanced life that allows me to give what I do give. I do give my time. I do give my energy. But I won't over give either of those at the expense of my mental/physical health or my family's.  And that does not make me less of a Christian. I have a very hard time believing that Chan himself never sets any limits to his giving.
6. thinks about life on Earth more than about eternity in heaven.  He talks about our to-do lists as if they're a bad thing. So instead of taking my child to school, getting my work done, or tending to my husband, is he suggesting that I drop all of those activities and spend all of my time praying and thinking about the afterlife?  Life is to-do lists. There's no way to get around that.  Again, he doesn't seem to understand the real world. Chan fails to take into account how different things are now than 2000 years ago, and he doesn't draw the contemporary analogy between scripture and today's world.
7. does whatever is necessary from allowing herself to feel too guilty. Chan is implying that we should allow and encourage ourselves to feel guilt. This is very disturbing, considering that guilt is not "of" God, but quite the opposite. Granted, I have a lot to learn about the Bible and God's word, but one thing I have gathered from it is that God definitely does not want us to feel guilt.  We can feel repentant, but guilt? No. Guilt is from a place of evil, which Chan seems to be suggesting we embrace.  This is just wrong. When we feel sorry for our sins and we repent, that's how we rid ourselves of guilt the honest way. 
8. is concerned with playing it safe.  I could have a field day with this one. Chan sounds like he's implying here that we should intentionally put ourselves (and our loved ones) in dangerous situations because our bodies don't really matter, only our souls. What about the Bible's reference to our bodies as temples? God wants us to take care of our bodies.  Again, Chan is taking his own interpretation of scripture and twisting it into a message that, in my opinion, is the opposite of what the Bible teaches. 
9. feels secure because she attends church, professed her faith while young, was baptized, comes from a Christian family, is Republican and lives in America.  Huh? I've never heard any Christian reference any of these things as proof of their being Christian. I don't even know what Chan's talking about here. This one is just bizarre.

Anyway, the book continues its downward spiral after this chapter and the overall feeling I'm left with is that Chan is taking some amazing (read "blasphemous") liberties in his style of execution.  There are sections in the subsequent chapters where he talks about his parishioners asking him whether they'll go to heaven or hell.  The fact that they're asking him this implies that he has conditioned them to believe that he has those answers.  Jesus himself said he didn't have those answers.  (Matthew 20:23 Jesus said to them, "You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.")  In another section, Chan mentions how hard it is for us to love someone who we "know" is going to hell, which again implies that he thinks he knows who is going to hell.  There is only One who knows who is going to heaven or hell, and it's certainly not Francis Chan.

The one chapter that I did like was the chapter full of testimonies about people who were living the message....right up until Chan started bragging about his own church.  Maybe he was trying to personalize it by using his church as a reference, but considering he was the pastor of that church, it came off as boastful...again.

I thought maybe I was being too harsh with these opinions until I shared them with my study group and learned that many of my peers felt the exact same way.  I know I speak for many when I say Crazy Love doesn't make me feel good about Christianity; it makes me feel shamed.  It makes me feel judged.  It makes me feel unworthy.  And it makes me burn with a fierce desire to defend God's message with what I know in my heart to be true and right.  God is forgiving, full of grace, and all powerful....and those incredibly important factors seem to be brushed aside in this book.  There's a section of this book where Chan quotes Jesus warning us against false prophets.  The ironic part of that is Chan himself comes off as the very false prophet that we're warned against, with his "playing God" tone throughout.  

In fairness, I did like the ending of the book.  It finally got to a point of reminding us of the good side.  I know there are others in my group who loved this book.  When we got into a discussion about it, several points were brought up, like Chan's decision to leave his church because he felt his congregation just wasn't getting "it".  To that, I say success trickles from the top down.  If your church isn't getting the message of God that you as a pastor are trying to convey, that is a failure on your part, not theirs.  What bothered me more was to learn that Chan's response to this crisis was to abandon his own parish.  I know he positions it as if he couldn't help them anymore, and he wanted to follow God's calling.  But it's sure hard not to read that situation as him leaving his people in their greatest time of need.  The other point that's been raised is that Chan didn't mean it that way - as in, the offensive way that I took it.  And to that, I say this subject matter is way too important to risk misinterpretation.  If Chan meant something other than what I read, he should have written it more clearly and with less room for interpretation and more explanation.  If the entire purpose of this book is to ignite our crazy love for God, Chan should take to heart that many readers walked away from it with an opinion like mine.  My greatest fear concerning this book is that on-the-fence believers will get a hold of it and be scared away from Christianity as a result.  I know many non-Christians who, if they read this book, would likely feel it perpetuates the negative labels that we as Christians are so often given: judgemental, hypocritical, boastful, condemning

I have discovered that one of my own callings is to introduce atheists to Christianity (Matthew 28:19-20) in a way that is non-threatening and in a way that lets them know that I hear them, that I don't judge them, and that I truly understand where they are because I was there once, too.  And I feel that this book is an affront to that effort.  I know many call Chan a radical, but I call him careless.  I prefer methods that inspire hope, like The Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel. 

However, if there's one silver lining to all of this, it's that 10 years ago, I never would have imagined myself vehemently defending God, Jesus, and the Bible in the form of a book review.  How angry I am about this book only speaks to how much I care about getting God's message right. Sorry, Chan, but I guess I'm taking your advice to not be quiet about it, and to get loud in the name of God's message.

God-bonks

It's been entirely too long since I've blogged, but...life.  We have been getting our church on and then some, what with all the extra discipleship classes we've been taking.  And although it's a little overwhelming and exhausting, it continues to trigger that spark of curiosity that helps me to stay close to God, that endless need for questions answered.  I love getting other people's take because it always gives me a chance to ask questions and seek answers.  But we got into a quick discussion today about "God-bonks".  You know, that moment when God bonks you on the head with the reminder of his presence.  Other people refer to them as "God-winks" but in my case, God tends to work with less subtlety, knowing that I'm too dense to catch on to a wink, and likely only able to actually notice a bonk.  Well, as we recited story after story, I realized just how lucky I am to have so many God-bonk stories.  If I were to recap my most profound ones in order of occurrence, they would go something like this:

1. having recurring nightmares for six months after my grandfather's wake, with macabre visions of his lifeless body - only for him to visit me in a dream to inform me that heaven is real and he is in it
2. anaphylactic shock as a teenager due to sudden penicillin allergy - the realization of something greater out there and the official end of my days of atheism
3. speeding on the highway on a college night when a raccoon runs in front of my car, and I do a 180 trying to avoid him, while going over 75mph...but I somehow manage to bring the car to a safe stop without crashing it or hitting the median, and all of the traffic behind me stops safely, as well.  And the raccoon got away safely.
4. reading the medical portion of The Case For Christ in my parked car, and breaking down completely into tears from it, with the epiphany that this whole Jesus thing is not actually complete BS
5. a redwood tree falling just across the river from us during our wedding reception - 'nuff said
6. realizing that, after the months of tears, phone calls, research, work, and worry, our son will indeed get the help he needs in order to thrive - standing next to the car, bawling with relief, unable to even call my husband yet with the good news because I'm crying so hard, I can't talk
7. and this picture below. A day that I was in a bit of spiritual turmoil and God, in his not-so-subtle manner, showed me that he's got me covered and everything is alright.

I know there are dozens and dozens that I'm forgetting, but these are some of the big ones.  And I'm just taking a moment tonight to thank God for the fact that He knows me so well, He knows the only way to get me to listen is to bonk me over the head with it.  My life is full of more riches than I deserve.  What a beautiful thing, to be aware of Him, and full with gratitude.

Treasure Hunting

Aaaaaand we're back...six months later.  It seems the more time passed, the more awkward it felt to come back to this blog.  Even now, I have this sense of writer's block, like I really don't have anything to say.  I have nothing to say, and I have too much to say.  And so I have no idea how to begin.  I've had countless post-church moments of inspiration where I've thought to myself, "Oooooh, I need to blog about that tonight."  But then I got in my own way and here we are half a year later.

We had a late night lastnight and I've had sleep issues for a few months now, so I honestly didn't know if we would make it to early church service this morning.  But to my surprise, I woke of my own accord - blessedly not by an alarm for once - and at an early enough time that we could still make it.  It was just late enough that I knew we wouldn't be on time to church per se, but there was an unspoken, comfortable sense of leisure this morning between Tex and I, where we just got ourselves and Wee Man out the door as soon as we could, without our usual "We're late!" freakout, also a welcome change.  Yes, we were :15 late.  But yes, Wee Man still got to go to Sunday school, and I still got to enjoy another awesome sermon, and the earth still got to keep spinning on its axis.  We went to discipleship hour for the first time in months after church and once again, I was amazed at the instant sense of intimacy and camaraderie that happens in that room with friends new and old. Scripture was shared and discussed along with tearful, personal stories and words of encouragement to those who were down and out.  And laughter.  Always laughter, no matter how intense and serious we allow ourselves to get.  That's one of the things that I love about these discipleship groups the most.  At the end of the hour, one woman reminded us to "journal" our walk with Christ, and I thought, "Ooooh, I should blog tonight and that would be my journal."  And now tonight is here and I find myself thinking Maybe I should actually do it this time instead of just thinking about it.  But the general feeling in my heart today matched the theme of this morning's sermon: joy.

Our pastor shared scripture comparing our discovery of heaven to finding treasure in a field, the "treasure" in this case being God.  But honestly, the first thing I thought of when he mentioned "treasure" was not God, but my husband, the person who led me to God.   The pastor talked about the value in giving up everything superficial for this treasure, about taking risks for this treasure, and that's exactly what I know Tex and I did.  Tex uprooted himself from his very home, and moved three states over to be with me.  I risked uprooting myself from all that was safe, and stable, and predictable, and secure.  I experienced profound losses: betrayal by longtime friends, the destruction of my name and reputation, and the invasion of my privacy.  Terror and exhilaration walked arm in arm with me wherever I went, and a steady hum of anxiety accompanied my every step.  But through all of the unknown, Tex was my rock.  He was my new beginning, and the one who would show me what life could be if I chose to take a chance and live it the way I wanted, not the way everyone expected me to.  And so we walked the plank hand in hand, jumped off together, and took the plunge of our lives.  And what a wonderful deep dive that turned out to be.  Gone was the negativity, drama, and obligation, replaced now by a hopeful and relentless pursuit of truth.  I was taking a sizable gamble by leaving my former life behind to be with Tex.  But Tex was taking a gamble of epic proportions to be with me, an agnostic who scoffed at Christianity with an arrogance that still makes me wince to recall.

But through Tex's subtle influence, my heart began to open to God.  Granted, I didn't know it was happening at the time because I was still too busy being right.  Pride is such an insidious captor, isn't it?  It's amazing how full of it we can become without even realizing it, and that's what makes it so dangerous.  I really do see why pride is referred to as "the root of all evil".  It's such an easy thing to justify, and to pardon.  And yet it really is the root of all that is broken in the world.  But regardless of my own colossal shortcomings, Tex just continued to be himself, teaching through example, never through words.  In retrospect, if he had tried to teach me about Christ through words, we would probably not be together today.  We would have fought and debated, and one of us would have given up.  But that's what makes God's plan so cool; he knew that I was stubborn and proud, and that it would be a man of big actions - not big words - that would make me think.

And so my fascination with how Tex viewed and interacted with the world grew, and my door had been cracked open.  Then, in finding our church, reading Lee Strobel's works, forging discipleship friends, and soaking up bone-chillingly powerful sermons given by our Holy Spirit-infused pastor, my door had been kicked completely open and I was on my way to understanding what that amazing man, Jesus Christ, was really all about.

And so this morning's sermon discussed joy, and I went to discipleship hour full of it, and I picked up my son from Sunday school, full of it.  And Tex, Wee Man and I went sledding on this spectacularly gorgeous day, the snow sparkling off the pine branches against a cobalt blue sky, and I felt joy.  I watched my son and my husband play together in the snow: joy.  We had lunch at one of our favorite restaurants, and Tex and I got into a discussion so deep that we talked for fifteen more minutes after paying the check: joy.  We took a family walk together in the crisp, cold air at dusk: joy.  Now, the feelings that held me arm in arm as I went throughout my day were peace and exuberance, and the steady hum that accompanied my every step was hope.  For I have never felt such profound awareness of the blessings that blanket me as I do now.  I know what I have, and I know how lucky I am to have it.  And I know none of it would be possible without God.  And I know my newfound relationship with God would not have been possible without my husband, my treasure, to introduce me.  Yes, I had believed in "a" God through most of my life.  But until I learned about Jesus, God had not taken on the form for me that he does now.  Now, he is my friend.  He has a personality and a sense of humor.  Now, he has a face and a message and a clear path for me to follow.  And on the days that his path feels less clear, he patiently waits for me to find it again.  He is my ultimate treasure.  And I thank him every day for guiding me closer to him through the remarkable people in my life, most notably, my husband.

Matthew 13:44-46 (NIV)

44| “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. 45| “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46| When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.