Friday 14 August 2015

Praying the Bible

Praying the Bible by Don Whitney was published by Crossway this year.  It's been available in print in the US for a bit but is only available in the UK on Kindle until 21 August when the print version will come out here.  I first heard of this book probably in  Crossway's posts on Facebook.  The descriptions intrigued me and the more I looked into it, the more I wanted to read the book and learn what Don Whitney was teaching, so even though I much prefer print for such a book, I bought the Kindle version earlier in the summer so I could get started on it.  I was not disappointed.  The book is informal and conversational but the topic is still handled with seriousness and the Scriptures are held in reverence.   

It turns out that it's not so much a new technique that is taught, but rather an old method of praying, taught in a fresh way, and it is reaching a lot of people who have never heard of or understood the idea of praying the Scriptures.

The first chapter describes the problem that many of us have, which is our prayer life suffers because we get bored or just discouraged praying the "same things about the same things."  We think there is something wrong with ourselves, that we are not good Christians, because we find prayer so difficult, and frankly, boring so often.  

Dr. Whitney explains that praying about the same things is normal, because our lives are usually rather routine, with disruptions occurring only once or twice a year.  So, our concerns, and therefore our prayers,  usually are the same, year in, year out.  He points out six typical things we pray for:
1.  Family
2.  Future (either needing direction, or upcoming situations)
3.  Finances
4.  Work/studies
5.  Christian concerns such as church, missions, individuals
6.  Current crisis in our life

He also explains that the Holy Spirit's "preserving work"  in believers, helps them to persevere in their spiritual lives, which is why Christians continue to want to pray even when they feel so discouraged about it. 

In chapter 2 he begins talking about the solution.  He points out that if God wants His children to pray, He will not have made it too terribly difficult to do.  It would have to be something that people with all sorts of backgrounds and abilities can do.  Dr Whitney introduces in this chapter the idea of praying through passages of the Bible, especially from the Psalms.

At this point he had convinced me that this was what I needed to do.  But I needed to know how to do it.   Happily, in the rest of the book he explains to the reader the method he is recommending.  He gives an example of how he might pray through Psalm 23.  He explains that praying is different from exegeting, where you are trying to understand the meaning of it.  Although understanding it is good, in prayer it is alright if, when you are praying through a passage, things come to mind not directly related to the verse you are reading, and you pray about them.

There is a chapter on how to choose a Psalm of the day, and how to pray over other parts of the Bible. The epistles (letters from the apostles) are easy to pray from, but the Gospels and other narrative parts of the Bible will be approached differently. 

I really recommend doing the exercise he suggests in one chapter, before going on to the others.  

In chapter 8 where the reader is to evaluate his experience, I found my own experience of the exercise varied from the norm, but that is probably because there was a very specific concern I had that morning, and none of the suggested passages seemed to be much help.   However because of the videos (more on those later) I had already begun to pray through Scripture and on those previous occasions I found my experiences matched up more with those he described that other people had had. 

Praying the Bible - using the words that God has already given us - helps us to pray more according to His will and gives us more variety in our thoughts and words even when we pray about the same things we normally do. 

I'm so thankful to have learned about this book and to have been able to get it.   In June when I was back home a dear friend asked what she could be praying for me about, and I responded by requesting she pray for the improvement of my prayer life.  I feel this book was at least part of the answer to those prayers. 

If you can't get the book (but I hope you can) and even if you do get the book, I can recommend the series of short videos Dr. Whitney has made, to explain this technique and take the viewer through various examples.  You do need to sign up to get the emails which will have the links to the videos.  I normally hate having to sign up for things, but in this case I think it was well worth it. 
Link for videos

If you read the book, and or watch the videos, and actually begin to pray the Bible, I would love to hear about your experiences.

More about Dr. Whitney here


Friday 7 August 2015

Go Set a Watchman

Go Set a Watchman
by Harper Lee
William Heinemann (UK publisher)
14 July 2015

I wasn't going to read this book, at least not yet, as I hate getting on bandwagons. But there it was, at Sainsbury, copies nicely displayed in rank and file, at a low price, and with a free DVD of To Kill a Mockingbird as part of the deal!  I couldn't resist.  I succumbed.

(I will save the DVD until the younglings and I have read TKAM together.)

 I had enjoyed TKAM, had appreciated the story, the themes, and the writing, but it had never been something I loved and wanted to read over and over again. That might be because I had had to read it in school and as Mark Twain commented about humor, things die when they are dissected.  I had heard many negative things about Go Set a Watchman.   It repeated sections of description, the characters were racist, it was unpolished or not complete as a novel, etc.   Certainly nothing to commend it. 

And I certainly didn't enjoy it very much when I began reading it.  I never did grow to like Scout at any point of the book but in the beginning I really didn't know if I were going to finish the book because she grated on my nerves so badly.  A peevish young thing with an attitude of superiority - almost stereotypically "small town girl goes to New York City and comes home thinking she's better than everyone else."   Just plain irritating with no depth to redeem her character.

I enjoyed Ms Lee's descriptions of people and places, and her conversations, especially those involving Uncle Jack.  Her writing is definitely Southern and even her minor characters and events are decidedly Southern as well.

During the Depression, Mr. Finckney Sewell, a Maycomb resident long noted for his independence of mind, disentombed his own grandfather and extracted all his gold teeth to pay off a mortgage.  When the sheriff apprehended him for grave-robbery and gold-hoarding, Mr. Fink demurred on the theory that if his own grandfather wasn't his, whose was he?  The sheriff said old Mr. M. F. Sewell was in the public domain, but Mr. Fink said testily he supposed it was his cemetery lot, his granddaddy, and his teeth, and declined forthwith to be arrested. (p 191)

I love that!  It is definitely in the South that one could might find a local character so cussedly independent-minded as to do such a thing, and then "decline forthwith to be arrested!"

You'll find plenty of synopses and reviews on the web so I won't try to give a run-down on the story.  I'll limit this to a few of my decidedly personal observations.   I think one of the most prominent thoughts that I have after reading this book is that how one reacts to it will not only depend on one's personality and beliefs, but very much on one's age and one's origins.   I'm not from the Deep South but I am from the South (Tulsa and Oklahoma on the whole being an odd mix of South, Mid-West, and South-West cultures).  The story is set before my time yet I did grow up when "de-segregation" was very much a part of public policy, particularly noticeable in schools.   Busing students from one section of town to another (as I recall it was mostly black students to mostly-white schools) was part of life at the time.

I think people younger than myself, even from the South, will be bemused and horrified by some of the attitudes and beliefs of some of the characters.  It can't be helped, somewhat, as we all have to look at the world through our own eyes and if we haven't learned another's point of view and have been taught only certain parts of history we tend to read things from the past through our own moral lens which has been formed more recently.   So, many of the characters' statements and views will seem reprehensible to many readers, even those raised in the South.  To those younger people raised elsewhere the characters might seem even more backward, ignorant, and perhaps even evil. 

But we have to place the characters in their time in history.  Atticus Finch, if he was in his 70s in 1955, would have been born in the 1880's, only 15 or 20 years or so after the end of the War Between the States, during the Reconstruction Era (which, although it officially ended in 1877 some historians believe that in reality that era ended in the 1890s).   How ignorant it would be to think that his and his family's and other peers' views would mirror-image those formed by people born and raised in the late 20th Century!  Of course his views will seem strange to modern readers, and also to his own daughter who was raised in an entirely different world by the time she came along - even though she was raised in the South which hangs onto tradition like the oaks hang onto moss.

I don't think that Harper Lee was necessarily trying to promote the views of certain characters through this book, like I have read some reviewers say.  I think rather that she was reflecting on what she was seeing and hearing during a time of great change for the South.  I would not like to make any assumptions about what her views really are.  It is certainly possible to create a protagonist with attitudes that are at odds with your own (Dorothy Sayers and her character Lord Peter Wimsey come to mind here).

Besides the theme of race there are the themes of growing up and of learning to look at people and places in a different way, of realising that people are a mix of good and bad.   There seem to me to be two major periods of growing up: one is when one leaves childhood and enters adolescence, and the other is when one leaves adolescence or young adulthood and enters real adulthood.  The latter is when those last remnants of childish thinking and acting are finally done away with.  Some people never really get through that second stage.   Scout goes through at least part of the second growing up in a very painful and dramatic way in the second half of the book. 

There is a theme very worth talking about, I think, and I would love to have some conversations on this, and that is "how do we combat evil or wrong-thinking?"  Again we have a generation gap, I believe, with younger people believing one thing and older people having another view.   Jean Louise has quite a lot of learning to do in this regard.

Harper Lee brings a lot of her own life into this book.  She was the daughter of a lawyer and moved away to New York City.  I don't know what she felt when she came back; again, I do not want to speculate.   I do think that disdain for your hometown after being away is not an automatic thing; something that must appear in someone that lives away for a while.  It's more apt to be present in someone in their 20s and who is searching for something deep they're not finding in their life in their hometown.  Although different lifestyles/locales may suit different people better or worse (I'm definitely a country or small town mouse, as opposed to a city mouse), much of what people are searching for is not going to be found elsewhere if they aren't finding it where they already are.

This book isn't going to win any prizes, I think.  I ended up enjoying it more than I thought I would, although not as much as I wish I could have.  In the end I am glad I read it.  Almost more important than the book itself, in some ways, to me, is reading other people's reactions to the book.   I'd really like to hear more from older people who lived through some of the things talked about and get their views on this book. 








Some thoughts on chapter 1 of Bavinck's The Doctrine of God

I'm doing a Systematic Theology course from Reformed Theological Seminary on ITunesU.   It's free although I have bought the recommended books for the course.

One of the nice things about doing it this way is that I can do more if I have more time, and less if life is busy and I need to cut back on reading and listening to lectures.  I don't get credit for the course but, after all, it is free and as I'm not working on getting another degree and just want the information, I don't mind at all.

One of the books is The Doctrine of God by Herman Bavinck.  I just this morning finished chapter 1. I think most of it went in through my eyes and then went out my ears or something.  To say I found it hard going would be an understatement.  It's been a long time since I attempted such serious reading and I'm very out of practice. There was a long section on various 19th century philosophies about knowing God and another section on agnostic thought (from the late 1800s - early 1900s) and I found those very hard to get through. It does look like the other chapters will be a bit easier for me.

I know the purpose of this blog is for me to review books after I've read the whole thing, but I think I would like, from time to time, to write a very brief summary of the chapter.  So here goes my summation of chapter one - what I got out of it (which will make any seminary professor shudder, I'm sure):
God is incomprehensible yet knowable (Bavinck's words).   A lot of philosophers have said a lot of things about God but it's mostly all rubbish.  We can know about God from what He has said about Himself in His word and in nature. 

Oh, and Israel didn't "evolve" it's idea of God. 

I think section 1 of chapter 1 was the most useful to me and I will probably read it again some day.