Review: Why Holiness Matters

This month I will highlight a couple of books by friends and acquaintances. Up first is Tyler Braun‘s Why Holiness Matters. I first came across Tyler when I read this post and discovered we have some overlap in our stories. Here’s my review of his first book.

—–

Peel back the layers and you will find that one of he greatest fissures in modern Christian thinking lies between authenticity and rule keeping. Most people won’t lead with either of these labels, but they are there.

I work with college students and we have both types of students: those who just want the rules, just want a checklist, and those who use the quest for authenticity as a trump card, justification for poor decisions.

There is a third way, though, and this way is the subject of Tyler Braun’s strong effort: “Why Holiness Matters.” Braun argues that while most in the millennial generation will resonate with authenticity thinking, there is something better that Jesus offers: holiness.

Braun does his best work by taking this old idea and making it new and fresh for his contemporaries (although there’s plenty here for non-millennials as well).

I appreciated Braun’s relational approach to the conversation: holiness is not new (or better) behaviors, nor is it something we simply feel (or drift) our way into. Rather holiness begins with new affections. Our relationship, love of, and connection to a holy God leads to holiness.

I especially enjoyed the chapters on community and mission. Braun does well to emphasize that holiness is a communal process and draws us into community, it’s not a solo pursuit. But, holiness doesn’t lead us to lock the doors and keep the bad people out. We are compelled back into the world to love and serve our neighbors.

A solid effort, and a book I will likely use with students this year.

Sometimes we don’t need new words, we just need new definitions and conversations about good, old words.

Game Change

I wrote yesterday that Game Change is possibly my favorite read of the summer. Whatever your political views, the 2008 presidential election cycle was high drama and full of compelling stories. The authors focus on four campaigns (Obama, Clinton, Edwards, McCain), providing all kinds of interesting background.

There are, undoubtedly, numerous reasons why Obama won. But as I was reading two aspects of Obama’s campaign stood out to me again and again:

  1. The Obamans (as the authors refer to the campaign) had a motto: no-drama-obama. They knew stuff would come up, they new their opponents would hit them hard, but throughout the whole thing Obama was about at straight-line as you can be. Very few ups and downs, very few emotional outbursts, and a lot of methodical, rational decision-making. Clinton on the other hand: wildly emotional, a roller coaster of highs and lows. McCain: wanted as little information provided to him as possible (Obama on the other hand puts baseball nerds to shame with the amount of information he processes)…as a result McCain was all over the place, following his gut instincts to the bitter end. Edwards, well, you can only imagine the drama there.
  2. The other fascinating thing to me was this: Clinton, Edwards, and McCain all had one person on their team who was highly competent and extremely dysfunctional. Extremely. (You could argue that Hillary had two of these people in her camp if you include her husband). Each of these people caused fissures on their team that proved, in the end, to be fatal. Obama had some personalities on his team too. But, the Obamans got caught up in the historical nature of the campaign (you might say they remained focused on the mission) and that kept some of the personality and ego issues to a minimum.

Fascinating stuff and a lot of implications for leaders: keep things steady and focused and choose your team well!

Summer Reading, Part II

  1. On Some Faraway Beach The Life and Times of Brian Eno: A little too fanboyish to be a great biography, but still an interesting read about one of the most influential music producers of the last 40 years (Bowie, Taking Heads, U2, Coldplay)
  2. A Hologram For The King: Eggers’ attempt to tell a story of the financial crisis…some parts hit and some miss. Where he hits Eggers continues to be one of my favorite writers, but where he misses it just feels like he’s trying way too hard.
  3. Game Change: Absolutely fascinating…my favorite read this summer…more on this one tomorrow.
  4. Why Holiness Matters: Also more on this one soon…check out Tyler’s blog
  5. Bob Dylan in America: Historians’s take on different eras of Dylan’s work…interesting connection to other artists like Aaron Copland.

Wholehearted (A Final Rolling Stones Post)

The third and final installment of a three part series (“Honing Our Chops”) that first appeared at Faith ON Campus:

[I recently finished Life by Keith Richards, lead guitarist for the Rolling Stones. When most people think of the Stones they probably think of Mick Jagger first (no thanks to Keisha and Maroon 5). But Keith has really been the leader, glue, and engine for the band that turns 50 this year. I found a lot of what Keith writes about in Life to speak into my vocation as a Campus Minister. These are my reflections on Keith’s insights.]

“We just wanted to be a great blues band. That’s all we played [the blues], until we actually became it.” from Life, p. 158.

One of the themes that becomes very clear, very quickly, when reading Life by Keith Richards is that the Rolling Stones never set out to be an epic, culture changing rock n’ roll band. They were deeply influenced by the Chicago blues (Muddy Waters, etc), and that is, in many ways, how they still view themselves to this day: a Chicago blues band from London.

Not that they didn’t have ambition. They wanted to be a great band. But they had no idea what they were getting themselves into.

When students show up on campus as freshmen there are some who just want to party, and a few others who are there to get a degree and get on with it, but the majority of students come with significant dreams and aspirations.

They may not say this to the first people they meet at school, but they come wanting, believing, even knowing, that they can, and will, change the world.

But then life happens, disappointments accumulate, frustrations with classes and professors set in, and some of the gleam and shine of college begins to fade.

There is a kind of lostness that many students wander through around the mid-way point of their college experience. Should I stay in this major? Should I transfer schools? Is this really worth all the money and debt?

I believe students wind up in this place for two reasons:

  1. They lack a specific vision for their life (I want to change the world sounds nice, but it is far too vague to sustain anyone for a long period of time).
  2. They have been taught to hold back

I picked up Life because, of course, I wanted to hear some incredible stories about the greatest rock band of all time. But I was also interested because this is the 50th anniversary of the band (a band that still includes 3 of the 5 originals and a fourth who has been around for almost 40 years). How do you stay in the game, let alone on top of the game, for that long? 50 years is an impressive marriage.

I think the two big reasons the Stones are celebrating a 50th anniversary are that they had a specific vision (to be the best blues band in London), and they did not hold back.

There are several scenes in the life of Jesus where he lets people in on the secret: this thing is headed to the cross…my mission is to be broken and poured out for you. Almost every time he says this someone tells him no, that’s a bad idea (see John 6 or Matthew 16).

Martin Buber speaks of taking either a “yes” or “no” position to life. Jesus was saying an emphatic yes to his vision, and he was not going to let some “no” position folks hold him back.

Campus ministers must help their students navigate the college experience with wisdom and sagacity. But, hopefully, not at the expense of taking a “yes” position in relation to our students.

Certainly they get plenty of the “no” position from many other sources.

One more Stones story. For the first four years of their existence the Stones were playing a gig or recording a song for all but 2 days of that period. Now certainly working everyday for four years is not healthy. But, here’s the really interesting thing: very little of what they played and produced during this time was original material. Most of their big original work took place in the ten years after this.

It’s almost as if those four years were their university years. And they threw themselves fully into this time: learning songs, learning how to play together, learning how captivate an audience, learning a sound, learning everything they’d need to know later on down the road (when they really did change the world).

A campus minister has the opportunity to guide students to a posture of “yes”. To help students find their “chicago blues” and to throw themselves fully into life.

The chops of wholeheartedness.