Democratic Congressional Types, yes, you won. The ACA passed a majority of both houses and was signed into law by the President. The individual mandate survived a Supreme Court challenge and, though I think the Court missed this one, it decides law, not me. The ACA is the law of the land. I hope you know what you’re doing, because the majority of the American people are beginning to doubt you. Personally, I like what the ACA tries to accomplish. God help us if we don’t help those who can’t help themselves. However, I think the way the ACA plans to go about it (inasmuch as I—or anyone for that matter—understand it) is a potential train wreck for many reasons, not the least of which is the assault on personal liberties it represents. The truth is you don’t know how it’s going to work. Most of you didn’t even read it. Try not to be so smugabout having passed a law that amounts to throwing stuff against the wall, waiting to see what will stick. I don’t blame you for the government shutdown. Believe me, though, if the ACA turns out the way I think it might, I will blame you and you alone. Good luck. We’re all going to need it.

Republican Congressional Types, like you, I am a registered Republican (for now—this is probably an affiliation with a very short life expectancy), so it pains me to say this. Individually, you may be great folks. Collectively, you’re all idiots. You’ve thrown your lot in with a man whose idea of political discourse is reading Dr. Seuss to an empty chamber. Well, almost empty. CSPAN was there. There are a lot of things that trouble me about the course of action Republicans have taken. For starters, you all apparently have forgotten everything you learned in high school civics. If you don’t like a law—and no, the ACA is not a bill, it is the law—you convince people that it needs to be repealed, convince those people to elect you to office, and then repeal it. I get that you are operating under the maxim of “desperate times call for desperate measures.” I get that you think out of control spending is bad for the country and I agree with you. But here’s the thing. You can’t avoid one fiscal catastrophe by careening toward another. Well, I suppose you can, but why would any sane person want to? Meanwhile, all of those whose paychecks plummeted to zero as well as the full faith and credit of the United States are caught in the wake of your ill-conceived grandstanding. You have sold your birthright of intellectual excellence and integrity for a few measly bags of tea. Most disturbing is that you have no end-game. Much like the proponents of the ACA, you’re just throwing stuff against the wall and hoping against hope that something will stick. That’s a poor way to do government and the rest of us are paying the price.

For those of you who don’t know, the “Pinewood Derby” was an event in which its participants race small (about six inches long) cars built from blocks of wood.  These cars were placed on inclined tracks and, powered only by gravity (and aided by some well placed weights) raced in head to head heats until only one remained undefeated.  My car was the one.  Cool huh?

But that’s not the moment I want to tell you about.  This moment occurred several weeks later when I, a shy six year old boy, was asked to get up in front of my church and talk about winning the derby…

OK.  I can do this.  It’s Sunday night, so there aren’t that many people here.  Wait, here come a few more.  Why don’t they lock the doors at 6 o’clock?  These people should at least have the decency to be on time.  Oh, more people!  Maybe I shouldn’t look around.

OK, deep breath.  Time to sing.  “Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves, we shall go rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.”  I really don’t like that song.  Maybe it’s because we sing it like the Darlings from Andy Griffith, only in the key of off.  Mr. Worship Leader, I know you like singing verses 1,2 and 4, but you can throw 3 in, too, if you like.  No?  Oh well.

Maybe Pastor Stone’s sermon will run long tonight and he’ll forget about me.  I am supposed to go on last, after all.  Besides, it’s been a long day.  Everybody’s tired and just wants to get home in time for “In Search Of.”  That Leonard Nimoy sure is talented, but how’d they get his ears back to normal?  Acts.  OK, I can find Acts.  New Testament.  I just learned these.  Let’s see…Genesis, Exodus.  Wait, wrong half.  Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, ACTS.  There it is.  Oh, 6:40.  Getting close.  I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.

Now to Matthew?  Shouldn’t we have hit that one first?

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!”

Thou, thy, thee, ye, killest, stonest, gathereth?  Who talks like that?  Hey, I’m in church, maybe I should throw in some of those thees and thous when I give my speech.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.  This is going to be great!  I’m going to tell everybody about how my Dad and brother and I built this great car.  Or builteth this great car.  I’ll regale them with tales of how I vanquished all foes who dared to come against me on the field of battle.  I’ll tell them how they (or thou) were (or werst…is that a word?) a great source of inspiration as I placed the car on the track for each race;  about how with each race, I became surer and surer of victory;  of how I accepted the trophy with the grace and humility that would bring honor to Calvary Baptist Church.  THIS IS GOING TO BE AWESOME!

What’s that Mom?  Oh, he called me up?  OK, here goes.  Why is everything moving slowly?  Why are there trails behind every person?  Why does Pastor Stone sound like a broken tape recorder?  Why don’t my legs work?  What happened to the stage?  This morning there were only six steps up.  Now there are, 1, 2, 3…5643!  OK, last step…shake Pastor Stone’s hand.  This is good.  The lights in the auditorium are still down, just like when the Pastor preaches.  WAIT, WAIT, WAIT, what are they doing?  It’s getting brighter.  I don’t need to see these people!  Hey, who let them in here?  They really need to lock the doors at 6.  Since when did this church seat 50,000 people?

Deep breath.  Another one.  One more.  Whew, I’m beginning to feel light headed.  I can do this.

“When I won the pinewood derby…”

OK, what do I say next?  I have to pee.  What’s happening?  I didn’t eat anything before I came, but something’s flying around in my stomach.  Is it hot in here?  I told you there were too many people in here.  Why is everyone staring at me?  Didn’t your mothers teach you that was impolite?

“It meant so much to me…”

Nada.  Let’s see…by my calculations I’ve been up here about nine hours.  Don’t these people have homes?  A little help here, Pastor!  I’m six, remember?  Come on, Mark, tales of victory on the field of battle!  Vanquish, victory, trophy, grace, humility, thee, thou, builteth.  SAY SOMETHING!

“Excuse me, but I’ve got something I’ve got to do.”

And that’s how it ended.  Well, almost.  I then ran off the stage into the arms of my mother and cried until they had to re-hydrate me with an IV drip.  The pastor commented that mine was the most polite exit he had ever seen. Was this an important event in my life?  Sure.  I’ve never been afraid to speak in public since.

Yuan’s world eventually came crashing down.  Arrested for conspiracy and intent to distribute illegal drugs and later sentenced to six years in prison, Yuan was abandoned by all but a very few of his supposed “friends”.
To add insult to injury, Yuan learned, while wearing the tell-tale orange jumpsuit of the Atlanta Detention Center, that he was HIV positive, likely the result of one of his sexual encounters of the previous several
years.  As dramatic as the story of his Yuan’s fall is, it is not the subject of this book.

In recent years, Yuan, now a Christian speaker and HIV/AIDS activist, has garnered a fair amount of notoriety for his frequent speaking engagements in which he talks about HIV and issues surrounding sexuality and
Christianity.  For this he has been both praised and roundly (and often angrily) criticized.  Though one of this book’s thirty two chapters is entitled “Holy Sexuality” (a chapter that offers a view of sexuality that
will challenge the ingrained beliefs of many on both sides of the Christianity/homosexuality debate) neither HIV nor questions of Christian faith and sexuality are the subjects of this book.

What is Out of a Far Country about?  It is a modern-day prodigal son story, about a son who rebels against his parents and effectively abandons his natural family in favor of living life on his own terms.  It is about an awkward boy whose struggle to fit it and to make sense of his attractions led him on a journey into manhood
defined by rises, falls and, ultimately, redemption.  It’s about a God who says to us “I created you in my image and, for that reason and that reason alone, I love you.  Period.”  It’s a story that demonstrates that God’s ways are not our ways and that God uses whomever He wills, however He wills and does so perfectly.  Yuan’s journey from outcast kid to drug dealer to HIV statistic to Christ follower is, at bottom, simply a story of
God’s unconditional love for even “the least” of us (a category into which we all fall).

In addition, Out of a Far Country, is about a mother’s struggle.  In alternating chapters running roughly chronologically with Christopher’s story, his mother, Angela, tells her own story of redemption
through the trials of a rebellious son, a lifeless marriage, and lifelong scars that haunted her inmost being.  From her childhood in Shanghai and Taiwan to her life in the United States with husband, Leon, Angela describes for us her journey from atheist to Christian, from staunch anti-religionist to powerful prayer warrior, from suicidal mother to child of God.  Hers is a story not only of redemption but also of the power of a praying parent who asks God not to bail her son out of whatever situation he might be in, not to allow him to remain in
a school threatening to expel him, not to spare him from prison, but to do “whatever it takes” to bring her son to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.  It was a bold prayer.  It was an instructive prayer.  It was an effective prayer.

At bottom, Out of a Far Country is a story of hope.  No matter how far from God we may think we are, God pursues us in the most unlikely ways and in the most unlikely places, in a swank Atlanta apartment, in
a prison bunk—even in a trash can.  Read the book.  You’ll understand.

I am an admitted “gadget guy.”  I love the newest, best technologies, not necessarily for their usefulness, but rather for their cool factor.  Of course, I’m also broke, so for now I can only read about the newest gadgets and tools on the market.  Despite my gadget obsession, however, I’ve never particularly held them in high regard.
Like many people my age and older, I long for a simpler time when our attentions weren’t divided between the laptop, the iPad, the Blackberry (or Android or iPhone), Twitter and Facebook. I’ve never seen technology as a savior.  I still don’t, but I think my critical attitude is beginning to soften.

During the time we’ve been apart, my wife and I have used a variety of technologies to keep in touch.
Our favorite is an unnamed video chatting app developed by a rather fruity company.  There is something that
is both exceedingly cool and comforting about seeing the person to whom you are talking on the small screen of your cell phone (“cell” phone? Do those still exist?).  Of course, use of such a tool is intentional and planned.  We use it for exactly the purpose for which it was intended.  Despite having such devices at our disposal, what I really enjoy are those unexpected moments of connectedness with my wife, those times when I feel just a bit closer to her without even trying.

It was a relatively low-tech program running in the background on my desktop computer that gave me just such an experience yesterday.  I was sitting at my desk when a small pop-up appeared in the lower right hand corner of my computer’s desktop.  The text read something like this, “Amy Resume SRMC PICU.docx added to Dropbox.”  For those of you who don’t know, Dropbox is an application that automatically syncs documents among multiple devices.  You can create or edit a document on one device, save it to a Dropbox folder on that device and it will automatically save the new or edited document on all other devices on the same account.  Pretty cool (note to Dropbox developers: shoot me an email and I’ll tell you where to send the check for the
endorsement).  Whenever we know what a loved one who happens to be far away is doing at a specific time, we somehow feel a little closer to him or her, as if distance were no barrier to participation in that person’s life.  I
saw that small balloon pop up and for just a moment I felt just a little closer to my wife.  I knew that at that moment, she was editing her resume and that something she had just touched (so to speak) had made the 700 mile trip to nest on my computer.  I knew what she was doing and I had a little memento of her day.

OK, OK, I know this is teetering on the nauseating and overtly geeky.  To that I can only say, oh well.  Whenever my family is together again maybe I can write something that isn’t a jumbled mix of sentimentality and nerdy fascination.  For now, we are counting the days until my wife is reunited with us.  Until then, we will hold on to and appreciate those little moments that close the 700 mile gap between us.  Thank you, Dropbox, for making me feel closer to my wife.

Nearly 2000 years have passed since the church entered the world of secular politics.  During that time it has vacillated from complete withdrawal from secular affairs to outright theocracy and made stops at every point in between.  In the modern United States, the church lives a confused existence.  On the one hand, it preaches being “in” but not “of” the world, yet it flies its national banner beside the pulpit as if to equate its faith with its political allegiances.  It preaches peace on Earth every December yet sees providential endorsement of every military operation undertaken by its nation.  It embraces its earliest roots in defending the lives of the unborn against the spectre of abortion yet can abide seeing “a man put to death, even justly” when the outrage of the citizenry demands it.  It confesses “one God the Father Almighty; Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible” yet fractures over issues of money, power, prestige, and politics.

           It is a unique occurrence when something happens for the first time.  “Firsts” always shape history.  Yuri Gagarin showed the world that existence is not necessarily tied to this celestial ball – that there is indeed a great big universe out there.  The Enola Gay’s payload showed the world that we hold the power of self-annihilation.  Some firsts are good.  Others are not.  The church during the reign of Constantine was a first.  It was the first instance in which affairs of the Christian faith and of the secular state became mutually and voluntarily intertwined.  Was this first experience a good one or a bad one?  If we believe that we in the United States are somehow heirs of the fourth century church, the answer could go either way.  Certainly, much of our accepted doctrine owes its acceptance to the work of those resilient, pious, and faithful fathers of the early church whose work would likely not have been possible without the patronage of the state.  Looking at what the Roman empire became and what the church has today become, though, one wonders if we have not lost something in the trade.

That’s the problem with stereotypes.  They are, in truth, bad caricatures.  Good caricatures reflect some kernel of the person they intent to portray.  Bad caricatures seek solely to elicit the audience response intended by the artist at the expense of the model.  It’s not my intent here to offer anyone an extensive education on autism.  I thought it would be nice, though, to let you meet one autistic young woman.  Her name is Sarah Stup.  She is unable to speak, but she definitely has something to say.  It would be wrong to say that hers is a “representative” story because, like all of us “typical” people, each person with autism is unique.  I don’t want to say more.  I haven’t walked the road that earns me that right.  Watch the following video.  I suggest you watch it when everything around you is quiet.

An absolutely horrible earthquake rocked Haiti today.  Preliminary reports indicate that the death toll may be in the hundreds of thousands.  For those who don’t know, a well-known, though embarassing, voice of evangelical Christianity chimed in on the disaster.  Pat Roberston explained, “Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it.  They were under the heel of the French … and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French.’  True story. And so the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal…’  Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another…”  The legend of which Robertson speaks dates back to the 18th century and is of very dubious origin.  Even assuming its truth, however, what view of God countenances his raining disaster on hundreds of thousands of people who not only are not parties to such a “pact” but who are even unaware of such a legend?  I am offended that Robertson who, in theory, flies the same religious banner I do would hide his apparent personal disdain for those not like him behind the faith that I so cherish.  It’s ignorant, it’s offensive and it’s an affront to everything that Christ came to do.

Earlier in the day, I read a thread in which someone compared Robertson with Fred Phelps (the pastor behind godhatesfags.com).  I responded that, in some way, Robertson is worse.  Phelps simply spouts personal vitriol and bad theology to a limited audience whose size is determined by how slow a news day happens to be.  Robertson spouts ignorance in many disciplines — history, theology, sociology, etc. — and is much better funded.  What a dangerous combination.

I struggled over whether to write this post.  I don’t like making personal attacks on anyone — at least anyone who is identifiable.  But what should a thoughtful Christian do?  We cannot let something like this simply pass in silence.  It’s an offense to the Gospel and yet another pretty good reason for the world, who judges Christianity by the conduct of Christians, not to take Christ’s message seriously. 

I’m at a loss for further words…

Praying for Haiti,

Mark

Anyway, in my immense frustration I have decided to share with you, my friends, a list of the top five things (and people) that tick me off so that you will know how to avoid annoying me.  Yeah, I know this is a little self-indulgent but it is cathartic for me.  Read it.  Consider it.  Comment and let me know if you share my aversion to any of these little vexations of life.

5.  People who wear pajamas.  OK, my beef isn’t really with people who wear pajamas, per se.  Personally, I prefer shorts and a t-shirt, but my wife and kids love pajamas and that’s OK.  I even lounge around the house from time to time in pajamas, especially when the Heels are playing basketball.  My problem is with those who think the world is their bedroom.  Pajamas should be worn to bed.  But there are certain places where this most comfortable of sleep wear is simply not appropriate, church, for instance.  Well, I’ve never actually seen anyone show up to church in PJs but I do see them at the grocery store, the restaurant I used to manage, and I’m pretty sure I saw one of President Obamas aides in a pair of Hello Kitty pajamas and bunny slippers lurking in the background of a rose garden press conference.  The point is that it takes 20 seconds to put on a pair of pants — maybe 30 if they’re button fly.  Do us all a favor.  Take the extra time and put some clothes on!

4. People who sing in public.  Again, it’s not so much that I dislike hearing people sing in public, it’s that I dislike hearing people sing badly in public.  There are days when I feel like I’m judging the biggest American Idol audition ever and the schedule is filled entirely with William Hungs.  The most obvious offenders are people who simply can’t carry a tune in a bucket.  The ones that annoy me even more are the people who try to sing along with me but know neither the words (or, worse, know the words but put them in the wrong place) nor the tune.  Then there are the worst of the worst, the people who should wear a shock collar triggered by vibrations in the larynx, a gag, and a full facial mask a la Hannibal Lecter, namely those whose volume is in inverse proportion to their ability to sing.  There is an old country maxim in some rural areas of the South, “If you can’t sing good, sing loud?”  People who live by this advice should have to fight Patrick Swayze in a pond after trying to destroy his bar (may he rest in peace.  He was alive when I originally wrote this).

3.  People who engage me while talking on a cell phone.  I carry a cell phone, but I’m not a big fan.  I just don’t like being that accessible.  What really irritates me, though, is people who walk up to me for the purpose of asking me something, but who make me wait until their precious conversation about the hideous shoes Sally wore to church Sunday is over.  I tell you what — we’ll compromise.  You can talk on your cell phone when you are in front of me if, after 5 seconds, I can shove it down your chatty little throat so I don’t have to see you hold that electronic idiot indicator up to your ear while you ignore me.

2.  People who walk around babbling to themselves.  This class of people is the most self-important — and clueless — of all.  This group does not include the mentally ill or even those who have a tendency (like myself) to think out loud.  No, my ire is directed at the Bluetooth headset user.  Do any of you remember when cell phones first became widely available (but were still expensive — $500 dollars for the phone and airtime charges of $1,000, 047 per minute)?  Do you remember the neer-do-well clowns who would walk around carrying on extremely important conversations about the real estate investment deal they were about to close on a phone whose outside was plastic and whose innards were air?  Yeah, I’m talking about those people who only pretended to talk on a cell phone in public.  Well, these bluetooth aficionados are cut from the same cloth.  Sure, they are likely talking to a real person on a real phone, but let’s face it, if the conversation is not important enough to engage the hands and arms to hold a 1.5 ounce communication device to one’s ear, thereby signaling to everyone that one might be rude, but not crazy, then perhaps one should rethink how one spends his or her minutes.

1.  Insistence that lists should consists of items in multiples of 5.  Why is it that lists must be “Top 5” or “Top 10” or “Top 100”?  Is it because Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter?  Is it David Letterman’s fault?  How about Billboard Magazine?  Perhaps it is the fault of every radio show seeking to carve out its comedic niche.  Whatever the case, it’s annoying.  This post is a perfect example of why it irks me so.  I am supposed to be reading for class right now, so I don’t have a lot of time to write about another pet peeve, but that would only leave me four.  So, I had to cheat and include this one in order to keep with convention.  Whoever is at fault for this should be forced to pull the pin from the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch and count to 5.

So there you have it.  Avoid these things and you and I will get along  just fine — unless you do something else that’s really annoying.  And if you understood the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch reference, good for you, you connoisseur of all things cultural and sophisticated.

To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee — This book is exceedingly cool on so many levels.  It is the only book that Harper Lee ever published and she has routinely refused to talk about it in public.  It’s a great story about relationships — a girl with her father, a black man with his racist persecutors, law with society, a pariah with his community, right with wrong.  Set in the segregated South, To Kill A Mockingbird tells the story of young “Scout” and her father Atticus Finch, a well-respected lawyer (yes, lawyer and “well-respected” in the same sentence) and man of integrity who represents an African-American man wrongly accused of assaulting a young white woman.  The book is infuriating, inspiring, thought-provoking, fun, and convicting all at the same time.  Sometimes we need to feel convicted.  This book fits the bill.

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Mark Noll — This book opens with, “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”  As a long time church-going, fried-chicken eating, committee-sitting, business meeting-attending, Bible-believing Southern Baptist Christian, I was told for most of my life that Bible was the gold-standard measure of how to live my life.  I believed it then and I believe it now.  Unfortunately, the baggage that often came with that advice was a rabid anti-intellectualism, a distrust of academia, a suspicion of any question.  This attitude, prevalent among many Christians (though, thankfully, not within my immediate family), has never sat particularly well with me.  In The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Mark Noll discusses what he perceives to be the proper role of what he calls the “life of the mind” in the Christian life.  He outlines Christianity’s rich intellectual history which has, of late, been abandoned by the church at large in favor of what I call the poor man’s piety — a faith that doesn’t want to be explored.  Lamenting the anti-intellectualism that has often pervaded U.S. churches and pointing out the often dire consequences of these attitudes, Noll explores the rise of anti-intellectualism, its causes, and recent responses on the part of Christian scholars.  This book is, in large part, why I am in graduate school at the age of 38.  Christians need to reestablish themselves in the world of thought and ideas.  This book is a call to do just that.

Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco — This book changed nothing about my life.  I’m not a better person for having read it.  It didn’t inspire me to make the world a better place.  It didn’t kindle in me a fire to live a life of significance.  What this book did was to show me that it was possible to write a novel that was entertaining, engaging, complex and intelligent in a way that weaves together philosophy, theology, science, history, art, psychology, all in an impossible-to-put-down book.  Until I read Foucault’s Pendulum, I saw no value in reading fiction.  A lot of it was trite, unintelligent and formulaic.  Granted, some of the 19th century Russian authors wrote some pretty intricate stuff, but when I finished reading it I just wanted to jump off of a bridge.  And sure, there are some “classics” that engage me now but, honestly, what young adult whose main interests lie in college basketball and classic rock really enjoys reading Dickens’ cockney English or Mark Twain’s ramblings about a trip down river?  It’s only because of Foucault that I can now read some fiction without rolling my eyes.

Fear and Trembling, Soren Kierkegaard — Would you be willing to plunge a knife into your son’s heart as a sacrifice if you were certain God told you to do so?  Would you tell anyone what you were about to do?  Do we have a duty to God that transcends the ethical?  What is the nature of faith?  Is it the end or something to move beyond?  These are all questions that Kierkegaard, a 19th century Danish philosopher, addressed in Fear and Trembling.  Starting with the narrative of the aged Abraham preparing to sacrifice Isaac, the son through whom God promised Abraham he would be the father of many nations, Kierkegaard makes us think about ourselves and the nature and strength of our own faith in God and, indeed, the nature of God, himself — is He just, is He ethical, is He capricious?  While I don’t agree with all of Kierkegaard’s theology nor do I recommend this book to any Christian without a strong grounding in the faith, I highly recommend it for the mature Christian who wants to think deeply and carefully about this word we hold so dear and that is so central to our theology — faith.

Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis — “Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”  Imagine sitting by a fire, sipping hot chocolate, listening to your father tell you about the meaning of life.  Now, imagine your father is an Oxford professor who used to rub elbows with J.R.R. Tolkien.  Culled from a series of radio addresses, Mere Christianity is Lewis’ conversational defense of Christianity.  While sophisticated in its reasoning and eminently logical in its structure, its tone is that of an old-time Saturday night radio program or a winter’s fireside chat.  Beginning with an exploration of innate knowledge and ideas, such as how we know it is wrong to take someone else’s piece of fruit or why two things are equal, Lewis builds the case step-by-step for a creator, then God, and, eventually, Jesus the divine son of God.  Apologetics tends to be a field rife with subtle philosophical points and nuanced arguments that can easily escape those who aren’t geeky enough to become familiar with the terminology and structures of philosophical reasoning.  In Mere Christianity, Lewis unpacks the Christian apologetic for the lay audience, explaining very complex ideas in very simple terms while sacrificing very little in the way of precision.  Ultimately, Lewis, a one time atheist, concludes that Jesus was not a “madman or something worse,” but “was, and is, the Son of God.”  In addition to its generally edifying nature, this book has shown me the importance of combining razor-sharp reasoning with clear communication, because no matter how great our ideas, they are of no use if no one understands them.

I would love to hear from any of you about books that have influenced you in some way.  Leave comments, let me hear from you.  Until then, be well.