Guest Blogger Book Review: "Churched: One Kid's Journey Toward God Despite a Holy Mess"

"Churched: One Kid's Journey Toward God Despite a Holy Mess"

A memoir, with a dose (or twelve) of cynicism, that doesn’t live up to it's subtitle.

I picked up "Churched" from the Blogging for Books program with WaterBrook Multonomah, just out of curiosity. It looked like an interesting read, which I will note here, it was.


I started reading the book as soon as I got it. It was very interesting, telling Matthew Turner’s childhood experiences growing up in a conservative church. It’s pretty much his autobiography… with about a tablespoon (or two) of cynicism added to it. 

It starts with the author in a sauna, where he meets a guy with a tattoo of Jesus spitting fire out of his mouth. A conversation ensues, which leads you to believe that in the end of the book our author is different than he is in the beginning . Wanting to see the change between the beginning and the end, I read through this book quickly. 

It was very interesting with a lot of funny and witty stories. Although these stories are written in a cynical light, there is a very good point in the end, in which he admits that no church is perfect. However, he still hasn’t really recovered from his ‘holy mess’. 

I expect this book will be rewritten in a few years with an actual ending that makes a point, because hopefully by then he will be past this, and will have become a more mature follower of Christ. This book almost makes a really good point at the end…but ends up a bit short of a bulls eye.

Disclaimer: I received Churched for free through the WaterBrook Multonomah blogging for books company in exchange for doing a review.

(Today's book review was by guest blogger/avid reader/book reviewer par excellence, Erika Fletcher, my 15 year old daughter.)

Book Review: "Shattered Dreams" by Larry Crabb

I am a real fan of Larry Crabb.  I'll have to admit that the first chapter of "Shattered Dreams" was difficult for me to read.  Without the context of the rest of the book, I had the feeling that Larry was spending too much time and space on the pain of the times when God doesn't answer our pleas to Him the way we'd like Him to.

In reality, we often press down our pain with pious-sounding words like, "God knows what's best..." and the like. Crabb is painfully honest about the disappoint that comes from really trusting God with your problems but not receiving the answers you'd like. KNOWING that God knows what is best doesn't necessarily make your painful existence FEEL any better.

Once he has helped us get over our compulsion to "make excuses" for God, he gets to the real meat of the matter. The story of Naomi and her bitter experiences with God present a great backdrop for contemplating our own disappointing experience with God. Like us, Naomi also saw many opportunities for God to "come through" for her come and go without God responding to her prepared script for Him.

It is often not in the *removal* of our painful experiences that we experience God most deeply and intimately. Crabb shows that it is often in walking *through* the dark, lonely valleys that we realize that God is using those very experiences to remove the obstacles to the deep intimacy with God that we desire.

If that is true, then we can't ask God to remove the painful experiences so we can have intimacy.  The desired shortcut will ultimately only short-circuit the intimacy we were longing for.

In our painful experiences, when all else is stripped away, we can learn - and Crabb says ONLY then can we learn - that it is God we've longed for all along. It is only after we've walked some painful pathways that we are able to truly enjoy God for Who He is!

While the early pages were hard work, the "meat" in the middle of this book made the early work well worth the effort! I'd highly recommend this book to anyone who struggles to understand why God doesn't "come to their rescue" in their difficult times.  Don't give up in the early pages, and definitely don't write Crabb off as a heretic before you've done the work to milk these pages for their full benefit!

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: WaterBrook Press (November 2, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307459500
• ISBN-13: 978-0307459503
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches

~I received this book free for review from Waterbrook Multnomah Publishing Group.

Full Body Scan? No thanks!

OK, when I arrived for my flight to Orlando this morning, I saw that the Full Body Scan (aka "Virtual Strip Search) has now apparently become the standard order of procedure for Richmond International Airport.  They only have ONE backscatter scanner, but everybody is expected to go through it unless they protest.  When I stepped up to the line, there was a lady patiently standing there.  I asked her if she was being made to wait because she had "opted out" of the virtual strip search.  She said, "Yes, I guess I have to wait because I have 'a choice'."  She was a first class frequent traveler and had been waiting 10 minutes for the exercise of her freedoms.  She was a bit frustrated, but was not going to be bullied into relinquishing her freedoms.  She was adamant about that fact.

I had the time to talk to her because I was also opting to exercise my constitutional freedoms from illegal search and siezure.  In fairness to TSA, I'll have to say that the guy who did my patdown was was sensitive to my rights.  When he commented that I'd probably done this many times, I said, "No, I used to be able to be screened without having to opt out of a virtual strip search."   He didn't react negatively to my comment and was quite professional in his conduct.

I told him that I was aware that he was just doing his job.  He said, "Let's just get you through here."  He scanned his gloves in advance to confirm that his gloves didn't create a "false positive" on the explosives test.  I joked that if his gloves failed, I'd have to screen him.  He didn't laugh out loud, but appreciated the humor.  (Wow!  That is a change from most of my previous interactions with TSA!)

I don't know if they've backed off on some of the "enhanced pat-down procedures" but the pat-down was not excessively invasive.  I've seen others go through the enhanced pat-down before and I don't feel that this one was as invasive as some that I've seen.  Maybe TSA is buckling a bit to our demands for our constitutional rights?  :-)  Read: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-tsa-scanners-20110202,0,984304.story

I appreciate that TSA has some professional employees.  I appreciate that they seem to have eased up some on the enhanced pat-down.  However, none of this makes up for policies that play "fast-and-loose" with our constitutional rights to begin with.  I still contend that everyone who walked through the strip-search line this morning were denied their Constitutional right to protection from illegal search and seizure without probable cause.  The more we submit quietly to this erosion of our rights, the more the bureaucrats in charge of our "security" will sharpen their knives to whittle away yet more or our rights.

What is tolerance anyway?!

I've been thinking recently about the subject of "tolerance". Tolerance has become one of the buzzwords of our day. It has taken a few years but tolerance has morphed into a "whole new animal" from what it once meant.

In its original meaning, "tolerance" meant putting up with things that you didn't deem to be correct. In actuality, tolerance - by definition - requires that there be dissonance between the individual's preference and what is being "tolerated".

In today's rendition of the word you must approve of anything and everything or you are deemed intolerant. ...and intolerance is deemed the worst ill of our society. The worst ill, that is, if you are intolerant of certain things. (As I write this, a cross has been removed from federal lands – by apparent vandals – after a court case questioning the constitutionality of the cross, though it is not a religious symbol any more than the thousands of crosses in Arlington National Cemetery. Intolerance toward supposed religious symbols seems to be acceptable.)

Recently, in a men's group meeting I was facilitating, one of the guys chimed in on the topic of tolerance when I mentioned it. He said, "I know about tolerance because I was a machinist!" He went on to explain that from a machinist's point of view, tolerance is the amount of deviation from the assigned specification a part can be machined without it being rejected. The implication is that items outside of “tolerance” are rejected.

In the "good ole' days" tolerance was measured in 100ths of an inch. As long as you stayed within the acceptable range of tolerance the parts were acceptable. If your part fell outside the acceptable range, the part was rejected. So you see, tolerance is the line between acceptance and rejection, not the ability to accept anything and everything.

A machinist must be held to this standard for rather obvious reasons. In the world of machinery, parts must be a certain size and shape or the machine will not function properly. Imagine taking your car to your mechanic and he says, "I don't have the right part, but I can use this bolt and some paper clips and have you back on the road in no time!" Confident? I think not.

However, in our society, we have decided to toss out such standards in every sphere EXCEPT for machinery. We seem to think that we can suspend judgment (and logic) on all matters, tolerate ANYTHING and all will be well. Why do we think this will work in matters of morality, when we know it won't work in any other sphere?

When it comes to morality, we seem to think that the machinist can make the part anyway he chooses and when we try to run the mechanism all will be well. No need to measure, or to verify a good fit. We just dump in whatever we have, and expect that the society will flourish.

I do not advocate intolerance. I am simply saying that if we want to insist on tolerance, we must understand what tolerance actually is. If we want our society to work, we need to understand that there must be some design specification, and there must be a line between acceptance and rejection before we can ever begin to measure tolerance. “Everything goes” is not the order of the day for a tolerant society.

Book Review: 5 Cities that Ruled the World

5 Cities that Ruled the World
by Douglas Wilson

Belief, thought, self-rule, imagination and commerce; these are key elements that have lasting effect on human culture. Douglas Wilson has taken a unique perspective on the development of these themes and their ongoing effect on modern culture. In “5 Cities that Ruled the World”, Douglas Wilson views these significant elements through the lens of five individual cities.

While there are a multitude of cities that could be seen to have significant effect on modern culture and belief, Douglas Wilson has chosen five specific cities very specific reasons. This is an interesting book comparing and contrasting some of the most important cities in human history. By the time you’ve read through each city, you understand why he chose the cities that he did.

Jerusalem gave us the spirit. Athens gave us reason. Rome gave us love. London gave us literature. New York gave us industry and commerce.

Throughout the book, Wilson points out that these different places have given us the freedom to believe, to think, to rule ourselves, to imagine, and to make money. Along with these freedoms come bad, evil, and undesirable things, but in the long run the truth, the beautiful, and the good will be remembered.

The book was well-written and free from “insider” jargon. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in world history, or anyone interested in cultural trends and their roots. I found the book a pleasure to read and look forward to sharing it with my friends.

“5 Cities that Ruled the World”; each of these cities has good and bad points. Years later, we remember the good, and continue to learn from that good that emanates from these “Cities that Ruled the World”.