IVP - Strangely Dim - August 2006 Archives

Likewise on the Airwaves

It must be August, because august Christian thinker Charles Colson has been caught reading a book by august Christian publisher InterVarsity Press. The book just so happens to be Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant, the inaugural book in the Likewise line. The donkey is in the hizzle, so to speak.

The book collects the e-mailed correspondence between Preston Jones, a Christian historian, and Greg Graffin, the lead singer of the punk band Bad Religion. Graffin has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology, so he's eminently qualified to front a punk band.

To be frank, Chuck Colson isn't the core audience for Likewise books; he's about three times the age of our typical Likewise reader, actually. But I'm certainly glad he found it, nevertheless; we're tickled that he's given the book a reading and, by extension, a hearing. His description of the book, both its content and its tone, is apt and a good indicator of what's to come in the line. You could say that he's pinned the tail on the donkey, if you wanted to be corny like me.

Read (or listen to) Colson's review here. There's a link to the book from there.

Doing My Part by Doing Nothing

Word from two blogs I frequent and the New York Times, no less, is that people have lost the will to take vacation. Read the NYT article here.

Finally, I'm countercultural! I'm going on vacation next week. I'll get to see a good friend I haven't seen in a while, I'll visit a family member we see only occasionally, and I'll eat myself silly on a big ole boat. Mildly embarrassing, but oh so tasty.

I understand the inner compulsion to stay at one's desk, of course. By all rights I should be home from work by now, but here I sit, typing madly away about resting. Meanwhile, the work keeps piling up, the minutes keep whirring past, and my compulsion to prove my worth keeps nipping at my heels.

The church has forever warned against sloth, but it's also warned against the self-exaltation that takes place when we see ourselves as indispensible. The apostle Paul may have written to the Thessalonians that if you don't work, you don't eat, but the prophet Moses wrote to the world that we're to remember the sabbath and keep it holy, just like God does.

Frederick Buechner defines sloth as distinct from laziness:

A lazy man, a man who sits around and watches the grass grow, may be a man at peace. His sun-drenched, bumblebee dreaming may be the prelude to action or itself an act well worth the acting. A slothful man, on the other hand, may be a very busy man. He is a man who goes through the motions, who flies on automatic pilot. Like a man with a bad head cold, he has mostly lost his sense of taste and smell. He knows something's wrong with him, but not wrong enough to do anything about. Other people come and go, but through glazed eyes he hardly notices them. He is letting things run their course. He is getting through his life.

So next week I'll be working on my senses of taste and smell. When I get back, if you're good, I'll answer your e-mails.

Peace out.

Best Imitation of Myself

This morning I hopped into my car, put the key in the ignition, started my car and switched my radio on just in time to hear my name on Lin's Bin.

Lin Brehmer, morning DJ of the best radio station in the world, responds to listener questions with an audio essay supplemented by bits of popular music and film and television sound bites. Lately I've been sleeping late and missing the broadcast. Today, though, I got there in time, to hear him declare, "Today's question comes to us from Dave Zimmerman in Downers Grove."

Technically I don't live in Downers Grove, I haven't been alerted by WXRT that Lin would be using my question, and I don't remember submitting the question. But it sounds like the kind of question I might ask.

I've encountered other Dave Zimmermans in the area before: when I was married, my wife's checking account was joined to some other, far more wealthy me; and I refer to myself as Dave Z 2 at checkups so that my dentist doesn't give me someone else's root canal. But really, what are the chances that this guy and I would have the same bank, the same dentist, the same taste in music, the same fondness for Lin's Bin, and the same burning question for the ages? Somewhere out there is my doppelganger, living my vida loca.

The question, incidentally, was fittingly ironic: "How do you explain serendipity?"

As of this morning, the broadcast wasn't available yet as a podcast, but you can find the archives here.

When Soul Meets Student Body

InterVarsity has launched a new website for students. I've been itching for it for some time now, even though I'm not technically a student. Call me biased, but nobody integrates the thought life and the life of faith quite like InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Check out Student Soul to get a feel for what's on the minds of college students, which is what will be on the minds of everybody else come graduation day.

Just Like Jesus

I'm working my way through the final draft of the forthcoming Likewise book The New Friars, a survey of global movements serving the world's poor by Scott Bessenecker. It's inspiring, challenging, distressing, motivating, and other participles too numerous to name. I came across this story that's three parts funny, two parts poignant.

I had dinner with Jesus earlier this year. He sleeps on the streets around Santa Monica pier and goes by the name Bill. . . . A few of us ended up at a McDonald's where many homeless hang out. While we were waiting for our order, a man with longish hair and a beard, wearing ragged clothes, stepped up next to me. . . . Hmm, I thought, this guy sort of looks like Jesus. . . . Bill sat down with us and told his story of schizophrenia and homelessness. "You know, I'm sort of like Jesus," he said, and then went on to quote Jesus from Matthew 8:20, "The foxes had holes but the Son of Man had no place to rest his head."

"You are kind of like Jesus," I agreed.

"I know I'm not really Jesus," he confessed. "I'm not that far gone yet."

I like the simpleness of this story. It's just a bit scandalous in the picture it paints of Jesus, but just a bit hopeful in the picture it paints of each of us. The people Scott profiles in The New Friars are living in solidarity with the poorest of the poor because Jesus calls us to identify him among us, to serve as though he were receiving our service. Some of these folks are in the Phillipines or Africa or South America, but some of them, like Bill, are at the McDonalds on Santa Monica pier. Who'd have thought you'd find Jesus in such a pedestrian pace.

I'm no new friar; I'm not that far gone yet. But this book is making me wish, just a bit, that I was one. Which I suppose is the point.