I’m not a big book reader. I do my best, and when I find a good book it’s difficult to put it down, but I am far from considering myself well read. But this past year was a very significant year in reading for me because of how we are doing our message series with theStory. We spent 8 months in Genesis and we are half way through spending 8 months in the parables. We grabbed a bunch of books on what we were doing and out of both piles have come most of my reading for the last while.

The best book this year by far was by an author I had never even heard of before 2008. Joe picked up a book by him called Hunting the Divine Fox and he loved it so he grabbed his book on the parables while he was at it. After reading the first chapter I have officially dubbed it a serious landmark in my life. Very few books have done that for me. C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity and A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren are the only two other books that I can really give that kind of credit to, and I read those books when I was 16 and 18, so it’s been six years since I really felt so energized and excited about a book.

The author’s name is Robert Farrar Capon, and the book I’m reading is called Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus. The book has done a number on me in more ways than I can mention. First, it is written so I can read it. Capon is hilarious, fun and lighthearted as he goes through almost every parable that Jesus told. You don’t feel like you are reading theology but you are. This book has given legs to a lot of feelings I’ve had to what some people call universalism, I like to call it grace. Third, this book gave me an entire new perspective on Jesus and his ministry. The way he ties the four gospels together and watching him unpack the parables along with historical timelines and theology was fascinating. This book got me excited about Jesus and the kingdom all over again.

The next book is called Genesis by William Turner. We bought this book because a respected source told us to. We had to spend $120 to buy it because it is out of print and now you’re looking at almost $150 to get it. I would have paid triple for it and Genesis would not have gone the same way if we didn’t get this book. Turner helped make sense of and make connections inside Genesis that I never would have guessed. He wrote the book like he read Genesis. He refused to look forward while reading and read into the text but only look backwards and tie things into things in the past, which made for a very interesting read because you’d be surprised at how much of our own biases we read into Genesis. This book reminded me of my OT class back in university where every class I would walk away in awe because I just couldn’t believe how amazing the stuff was that I was reading.

Well this book is definitely more well known it was the first political book I had ever read fully. Which of course has scarred me for life. The entire book was just extremely interesting and informative about all sorts of things that I never even knew happened let alone interesting facts behind the stories.

I just finished reading Spencer Burke’s book A Heretics Guide to Eternity. It was an enjoyable and easy read overall. His thesis could probably be summed up in a few sentences found on page 61…

“Religion declares that we are separated from God, that we are ‘outsiders.’ Grace tells us the opposite; we are already in unless we want to be out.”

If the book does one thing, it assures anyone worried about getting into heaven after they die that they don’t have anything to worry about and that they should just focus on following Jesus here and now. The entire book is saturated in grace talk and Burke’s journey of understanding exactly what this grace looks like and how it fits into his theological understandings. While I’m not much of a Theo-buff, I know a lot of the things that he is saying flies in the face of what I grew up understanding all through my church upbringing and Christian university experience. This isn’t a bad thing. I think it takes books like Spencer’s to challenge what we take for granted in our theology and our lifestyles. So I won’t critique his theology, I’ll leave it up to the theologians to do that. Either way, I love his heart. I love that he is trying to take his understandings of love and make it work with the scriptures that he loves. I love that he can say universalism, and question it and tip his toes into it, because when it comes to loving people, which you can tell he’s doing, it is an option that makes sense. You can really see how his love for people clashes with the institutionalized church and the clash is necessary.

I would however make a few changes of the book if I had a say in the process. For the most part I feel like his message is good and his heart is good but he draws it out way too long. I think everything he had to say probably could have been written in one solid chapter (maybe two). The book may have been more beneficial to write his original plan of “stand-alone heresies” that he believes as each chapter. Another issue still as I believe (which I think Bob Hyatt pointed out a bit ago) is the use of the word heretic. While a lot of though as obviously gone into it, because it’s in the title, red flags go up when I think of trying to be a heretic. He says that everyone should be a heretic, but in my understanding of heresy, that would mean that no one is a heretic. I agree though that Jesus definitely was a heretic, heck I spent half my life in the Pentecostal church being accused of heresy whenever I challenged them and I never would have changed a thing. I think it is exactly because I challenged what was thought as normal I am where I am today, but I wouldn’t encourage people to challenge what is normal just because it is normal. I think society and religion has gone a long way and some things that are normal are where they should be. Instead, I would encourage people to challenge what doesn’t look like Jesus, and if it means going against the status quo, then do so, if it means the opposite, then so be it. So I understand Burke is resisting a long history of religion and probably experiences where heresy was the only option, I would be careful of being so quick to the word heretic because being a heretic can also be just as harmful in other circumstances.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is trying to understand eternity and grace and how the two work together. Spencer does a great job of trying to reconcile a loving God with religions understanding of hell and punishment. It is definitely a book that needs to go on a reading list for this subject because he is very honest and shares his journey not just what he thinks you will agree with him on the right answers.