Christmas Confronts Capital

Everett Patterson's "Jose y Maria" 

From Advent through Christmas this season (that’s right there’s 12 days of Christmas so I am not late) I have been reflecting on the nativity in contrast with the idea of structural sin. Specifically how the structural sin Jesus was born into (which unsurprisingly looks a lot like our structures) created the culture that would later crucify him. This culture seems to be the very thing God asks Israel in Torah and the prophets to push back against. In considering this I am also noticing that personal sin is almost always a reflection of the systems of sin one lives in, which is not a new idea but one I am beginning to grasp. This is not to say that we do not have personal responsibility in the matter but quite the opposite as we are contributing to the larger problem when we engage in it. So let’s explore how.

I believe we see hints of Israel’s structural sin in all of Advent especially as we follow John the Baptist into the desert.  In this reminiscent scene of exodus and exile John draws Israel’s old night to a close and prepares everyone to ring in the new dawn. He takes up the prophet’s role of calling for the people to turn away from all that desecrates/enslaves them.  It is here that the culture’s entanglement is revealed when they ask, “What must we do?”  John tells the crowd to stop living in excess: If you have two coats give one to someone with none and the same goes for food; to the tax collectors he said stop taking more than you need from people; to the soldiers he said stop extorting and be content with your pay. Then King Herod arrests John for calling him out on taking his brother’s wife (Lk. 3:1-20).  All of these issues seem to be rooted in greed, violence and even fear-driven desire of their predatory economy. They lived in an unwillingness to trust each other or YHWH as provider and instead took for itself what it wanted.

Moreover, it reflects how Roman culture behaved from the top down and how much that had permeated Jewish culture.  Rome’s imperial control created severe inequality through its extraction-economy.  As Walter Brueggemann says about the period:

That is why so much attention is given in the Gospels to the tax collectors who were agents who helped transfer money and possessions from those who produced wealth to those who enjoyed wealth. That economy featured an urban center (Jerusalem) that was organized and ordered by the urban elite who enjoyed surplus wealth. It was evident that in Jerusalem many were not among the elite and lived subsistence existence. The elite who dominated the city depended, of course, on the labor of such subsistence workers… Douglas Oakman (in Jesus and the Peasants) has made a compelling case that the defining reality of this economy was debt, whereby subsistence peasants were kept endlessly and hopelessly in debt to predatory interests. ”[1]

It is not hard to extract from this scenario that it would have created fears over scarcity and vulnerability which has always been power’s greatest tool for control. Fear-based relationships never work well. Moreover, while the majority suffers, those at the top never go without and ironically they need the indebted majority to continue being consumers with innumerable payment plans.  This is why the tune that retailers sing the most is that we consumers do not have enough or that we are not enough without their product.  But that is not the truth, though it is the anxiety we enter into and it creates a people who will live beyond their means and implement such strategies over others. Thus the structure has formed the individual.

Contrastingly the message of Christmas is the great alternative message of hope. Not a message with words but a message of presence and a presence that threw shade on all their present arrangements. The nativity scene says that there is only one place even for the Creator who chooses to enter His creation through parents of poverty and that is to stay on the outside of its settled imperial order with the rest of the night’s displaced animals.  In this picture lay the hope of all who are displaced, disinherited, and disheartened because that is exactly where God prefers to make covenant, tabernacle, break bread, breathe life and redefine beauty. Why? Because God always had a life-thriving vision for creation and those set on the outside have no loyalty to the structures that never included them.  God opposes it by continuing creation through a people who will enter into trust and neighborly economies in the now. For those who insist on protecting the top of the economic and power food-chains this will NOT be good news! At least, not until they can see it for the life in captivity and anti-creation it is.

This foundational silent night sets the stage for the One who will later break traditional economic patterns and ask His followers to forsake possessions to follow Him (Lk. 5:11, 28; 18:22). It is because God’s remedy to our structural predation is selfless giving in remembrance that we are enough as is and YHWH decisively insists on being our provider (Exod. 16; Matt. 6:25-34; Mk. 6:30-44). The formation of trust and neighborliness is the culture of hope that should shape our collective lives on this creative journey. But it requires practicing this alternative way with fidelity in all of our relationships as our lives share a deep connection with the whole of the cosmic story.  

[1] Walter Brueggemann. Money and Possessions (Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), 187-188. 

            

A Song For Our Time

Photographer Mark Lennihan's picture of "Charging Bull" & "Fearless Girl"

Illusions of paradise; we hoard them all, those graven images of liberty;

and Wall-street’s silos storing needs

sing well an indivisible nation’s liturgies;

doctrine of trading farmers for industry,

flow of life follows the Nile’s fertility

right through the ghettoes of prosperity,

“in God we trust” in Caesar’s currency

buying up Victoria’s secret iconography,

found tranquility in mindful mass captivity,

ordaining the weak, the prop for our longevity,

gun proliferation blessed my weaponized-economy,

quick sanitize their bodies under gravestones of sanity,

honored for sacrificing the children to the Flag; finally

we are free from the need to need, feel, receive, fail, forgive and grieve.

Growing as a Culture of Peace (Prt 3 & Final)

To continue building on the last section, when it comes to being a people of peace, knowing and explaining what is right is far easier than putting it into practice.  I insist that it begins with a heart that has been transformed by God’s grace, but there is a progression in living a life found in grace. But it must be further learned and shaped within the domestic life of the church community.

I find it best to look at the guidance from the early church. The very early church was good about forming a people that would act more in the way of peace as appose to a people who just try to convince others that it was the right way to be while showing no sign of it themselves.  This was not, and should not be, viewed as a behavioral modification emphasis, but rather it was unique transformation.  In fact these Christians drew lots of people because they were known for being radically peaceable and patient and it was for that reason that the early church improbably flourished amid the violent Roman Empire. That is of course before Constantine and others drove Christian growth via violence and force thus making our story a cautionary tale, but let that mark the way not to go.

            To get back on topic, in Alan Kreider’s book on the early church he shows that some of the practices that initiated their habitus was memorizing scriptures that they felt embodied the Gospel and God’s Kingdom being present.[1] Yes, this looks like one of the spiritual disciplines discussed in the last post because it is, but I’m moving to somewhere new I promise.  The Sermon on the Mount was among the obvious that Christians focused on, but Kreider highlights another one that was cited most by early writers. It was Isaiah 2:2-4,[2]

In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

This poem in Isaiah comes right after chapter one’s judgment on Israel, but it strangely looks beyond judgment to a vision of hope and a day when YHWH is tabernacled with the world again. He will be the life giving presence in Jerusalem which makes it the central place of peace that draws all nations. Walter Brueggemann also adds that Jerusalem is the torah of YHWH in which the torah will be the clue for peace and points to the way of justice for everyone.[3]  Perhaps a justice that only acts restoratively.  

            Fast-forward to the Christian writer Justin Martyr who said that while Isaiah’s words were not seen as fulfilled on the grand scale of a still violent and war stricken world, they were already being formed and fulfilled within the culture of church communities.[4] “We who were filled with war, and mutual slaughter, and every wickedness, have changed our warlike weapons (our swords into ploughshares and our spears into implements of tillage) and we cultivate piety, righteousness, philanthropy, faith and hope, which we have from the Father Himself through Him who was crucified.”[5]  Jesus’ life and teaching offered creative expression for the church community to live this out because it had a new way in which new possibilities were emerging.  But we can only get to the new way if we are willing let grace and spiritual humility lead us into rethinking everything.

As I said in part 1, conflict is not a bad thing, but our perspectives and responses to it tend to be quite terrible. Look at race in the U.S. right now. The black population clearly sees inherent racism in many areas but particularly in our justice system.  It seems that very few whites (especially those in power) are taking them seriously and many white people say awful things like slavery was in the past and “they just need to get over it” because it was their great-grandparents and grandparents enslaved and not them.

The black majority realize they are not being heard or taken seriously and they protest and form movements that attempt to highlight that they are witnessing police brutality and mass incarceration rates higher among them than anyone else and they are right. Yet nobody wants to step up for them and say “black lives matter” so they have had to do it themselves. The response to that from many has been to say well “all lives matter” even when they clearly don’t believe that and it only became another division for the political right and left to take sides on which itself seems to be a new turf for racial division.  Still not being heard though, many protests have turned violent which brought new condemnation and equally violent responses. 

Mark my words, this intractable polarization will continue so long as the adversarial thinking continues. Those with the dispute will continue to be ignored and downplayed by those who do not experience it firsthand and by those who want to make sure they stay suppressed.  Now I am sure there are arguments against me from other sides of the conflict, but it will not negate that somebody was first not being heard and the same old cycle of conflict with anger, violence, depression, broken relationships and so on is just being carried forward.

The counter-cultural witness that was in Isaiah’s vision, Jesus’ embodiment and the church’s continuation was that conflict was the uncomfortable failure that brought opportunity for change. But the hurt ones were heard by the other side who would confront the issues by taking it seriously and empowering all parties to work for change as one people, not “colorblind” as they say, but color-bound. 

To borrow Kreider’s illustration, in Acts the Hellenists within the church community were upset with the Hebrews because they were neglecting to feed their widows in the daily distribution of food (6:1-6).  Now note that the response was not to ignore them, or downplay their issue, but rather they assembled as a community and decided to appoint seven notably responsible people who would shoulder the task of distributing food just to them. The whole community liked the idea and it worked well.

So what I am trying to get at is that along with God’s grace and spiritual formation is the need to develop practices and skills that say we to belong to each other.  There are three main skills I will throw out there to consider (Kreider and Augsburger both tout these).  The first two are interlinked, “attentive listening” and “truth speaking”. Each highlight that communication is the key to a strong relationship, yet always has to be centered on some idea of love for the other. As David Augsburger says, “To love another is to invite, support and protect that person’s equal right to hear and be heard. To love is to listen; to be loved is to be fully heard. Love is first the action of the eyes attending, the ears attuning and then the soul connecting.”[6]  And if you follow the God who is love then there should be no reservations about wanting to follow this.

Subsequently, “attentive listening” is to suspend judgment and receive the criticism not in a way that reads something else into it or using what is being said to create ammo for a counter argument, but by truthfully attending to what is said and meant and uninterruptedly identify with what they are feeling. Another way to think about it is as a matter of being open to a different perspective and goals and taking it seriously.  "Truth speaking" correspondingly works to mutually use the simplest and clearest words one can come up with to convey and clarify their meaning and experience.  Then, as Miroslav Volf says, “…we enlarge our thinking by letting the voices and perspectives of others, especially those with whom we may be in conflict, resonate within ourselves…”[7] This helps us to see and hear each other.

          The third skill is alertness to community wisdom. Community is always a complex intertwining of lives and experience that is part of something larger especially in the church sense. Churches are usually a close knit people who have entered the story of the Prince of Peace and we can often recognize those among us who genuinely embody that (usually the older generation). We then learn that way of peace best when those who have been well formed by it consistently model it, teach it and empower others to do it better.  We are creatures of mimetic behavior (see Rene Girard for more on that) and so it must first be learned by observing others doing it well and then become a padawan of sorts to follow "the way". Thus the way justice and peace is learned and practiced inside the church will become the way justice and peace is practice outside of the church and if it does not embody Christ’s peace we might need to raise some questions to our church leaders.  

 Now, I believe this can only lead to conversations about mutual accountability and how to discern as a community. Yet what this is about is that we are to be a people so committed to the practices and values of peace (as-well-as belonging to each other) that good outcomes will be subsequent but not central to our task.  Peace is the way, not the end goal. 

So to tie this back together we live lives in flux. What began with encountering God’s transformative grace and work should continue with our connecting with God in spiritual disciplines of fasting, prayer, worship, silence and so forth to internalize Jesus’ way of peace, and then this should lead us to outwardly rethink how we relate to everyone else and become better at making room and tending to each other.  If we do this regularly together, we will be a community that no longer needs to fear conflict because with God we know how to care for it, transform it and even welcome it into our lives growing together.   

[1] Alan Kreider. The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic 2016), 91.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Walter Brueggemann. Isaiah 1-39: Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press 1998), 24.

[4] A. Kreider, 92.

[5] As quoted by Kreider from Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho 110.3.

[6] David Augsburger. Caring Enough to Confront: How to Undersand and Express Your Deepest Feelings Toward Others (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Publishing 3^rd Ed. 2009), 29.

[7] Miroslav Volf. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon Press 1996), 213.

Growing as a Culture of Peace (Prt 2)

I am continuing on the point that peace should not be the end goal to conflict, but rather that peace should be the means by which we respond to conflict and be the very thing we embody. I think people might scoff at this because we have an entire history of proving the enlightenment wrong about knowledge equaling right behavior. As James K.A. Smith says in his book, You Are What you Love, there is an enormous gap between what we know is right and what we actually do.  So how does one close that gap?

It may sound cliché, but the conflicts we experience externally are usually conflicts that began internally and we are witnessing the result. In the same breath, peace can also flow from the person who has internal peace because old thought patterns have been transformed into rhythms of humility and grace.  We Christians know this as the inner work of the Holy Spirit.  That sacred place where God is in search of us (and often us of Him) and we suddenly find ourselves found and reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:18-19). More shocking is that God then dwells with us.

The revelation is that there can be and is peace with our Creator because God says in His kingdom you count too and that He won’t count you out if you won’t count you out (Lk. 15:1-32). When you know that you count there is deeper understanding that we all count, so then to rage against someone else for our own vindication or claims of righteous indignation is to only diminish what is true about both of us and all of us.

I believe most Christians know this to some degree. Maybe many haven’t been able to put it into words and give it language, but the inner workings that made anyone want to follow Jesus in the first place was usually some internal revelation like this.  The problem is that this was the beginning of something really big and it soon became a distant memory for too many Christians. They return to life as usual internally and externally.

But, to follow Christ is to be formed into Christlikeness, also known as “spiritual formation” (Gal. 4:18-19). As Dallas Willard defines this formation, it “refers to the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self in such a way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself.”[1] We are taking on the character of Christ in that we become, like Paul says, a people marked by peace and characterized by compassion, kindness, humility, patience and forgiveness (Col. 3:12-17). 

Being this kind of person can sound vainly wonderful, but the missing component is our cooperating with God in the work of self-emptying. This is primarily the work of emptying the self of all arrogance, hardened insensitivity and self-sufficiency.  To consciously be walking with God and learning to let those things go regularly changes how we think, feel and relate to everyone.

This is precisely why the mystics regularly practiced what is known as the “spiritual disciplines”. These are that habits of worship, prayer, fasting, simplicity, meditation, service, confession and so on.  Each one of these practices produces many things in our walk with God but at the top of the list would be the practice of unhurried listening to God, the practice of trusting God and the practice of loving God and neighbor. This takes the peace we so often experienced as new Christians and gives it much deeper roots and much more meaningful attachment to others.

So if you feel like your relationship with God and love for others has grown cold then this is a pretty good place to start, but to my main point, if the church is ever going to grow into a culture of peace and embody peace amid conflict, then spiritual formation must be practiced regularly and be part of how we disciple someone who wants to follow Christ.

Ideally I would suggest finding someone who can teach you this within your own church family.  But if that looks bleak, no matter what stream of Christianity you come from, you might just find that a priest (Catholic or Orthodox), Franciscan monk or nun, or protestant pastor in your area is receptive to teaching someone who wants to learn.  If you are not comfortable with that, then my personal reading suggestions for more on this are:

1.      Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline The Path to Spiritual Growth

2.      Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives

3.      Henri Nouwen’s Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit

4.      Richard Rohr’s Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi

[1] Dallas Willard. Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ (Colorado Springs: NavPress 1989), 22.

Growing as a Culture of Peace (Prt 1)

Banksy

Peace is probably one of the most important topics the church should be discussing right now. I say this not just because we have so little of it these days, but because how we understand peace set the parameters for how we view and resolve conflict, personally or otherwise.  For example, if we simply define peace in the dictionary sense it is freedom from disturbance, a tranquil state of being, or a state of not being at war. That alone makes peace an end goal with a lot of open territory for how one can arrive there. 

If a marriage is hurting from lack of communication and lots of disagreements you can just terminate it: get a divorce and file under irreconcilable differences and peace will ensue; if you have a friend, sibling, coworker, or someone of the sort whose relationship with you is centered only on them, their needs and based on seeing everything their way, then go along with it and you will never be without peace; if another country or people group is standing in the way of peace blow them all to hell so peace can be restored.  Of course none of these are good ideas, but they are where we tend to take them when conflict disrupts our definition of peace.

As an alternative idea, what if we stopped thinking of peace as the end resolution to conflict and make it the means to resolve conflict? And while we’re at it maybe we could stop seeing every conflict as a bad thing and become alert to the fact that it is necessary for alerting us to a need for change.   

Why would I say this? Because, when Jesus says things like, “forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6:12), and “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (Jn.14:27), peace is not the end goal because we already have it. We have God’s peace so when we read something like “Blessed are the peacemakers for they are the children of God” (Matt. 5:9),  we cannot see it as peace being the final resolution, but rather peace being the way to treat each other and the means by which we do life together. 

Miroslav Volf (theologian) says it like this: “Inscribed on the very heart of God’s grace is the rule that we can be its recipients only we do not resist being made in into its agents; what happens to us must be done by us.”[1] To my mind this is the epitome of what the church should be, representatives of God’s grace and peace wherever we go.

Yet as the Kreiders have said, churches really do not describe themselves as being “cultures of peace” even though that was one of the good things being cultivated by the early church.[2] As far as I can tell the church now might struggle with even wanting to be such a people because we are more comfortable drawing lines in the sand that reinforce our stance against those we don’t support. Rather, what should be happening is learning to posture ourselves as a loving people who were and are recipients of grace and peace and therefore extensions of it. 

My point is there is a much better picture to this creation story we are in, but we have to insist on re-finding and refining it in our lives.  This is just the beginning of what needs to be said about this, which more will be coming in the following posts, but I want this to launch the conversation. And I want this to remind us to be aware that “the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus… make(s) you complete in everything good so that you may do his will…”(Heb. 13:20-21).  Peace is already present even amid our conflicts.

[1] Miroslav Volf. Inclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996), 129.

[2] Alan Kreider, Eleanor Kreider, and Paulus Widjaja. A Culture of Peace: God’s Vision for the Church (Intercourse, PA; Good Books, 2005), 9-10.  

Robert Jeffress Trumps the Bible

A pastor from Texas, Robert Jeffress, recently said that he believes that the Bible, particularly Romans 13, gives Donald Trump the moral God-given authority to wipe out evil using whatever means necessary whether that be by assassination or war to topple evil dictators like Kim Jong-un.  He goes on to say that the only time we are to love our enemies and forgive is in interpersonal relationships, but he says the government is never told to turn the other cheek.  Here is a link to hear the segment in full (Robert Jeffress on Fox & Friends). 

First let me say this, if all of Jesus’ talk about not resisting an evildoer and not retaliating against aggressors and being forced to walk a mile with someone and praying for those who persecute you was solely for interpersonal relationships, then they had odd interpersonal social lives (Matt 5:38-45).  Call me crazy but this almost had to have been directly related to Jewish life under Roman occupation.  They were the ones doing most of the forcing and persecuting.

Second, Jeffress clearly needs some refreshing on the world surrounding Romans 13.  Aside from the fact that there is an inherent contradiction in thinking one can still be a good, loving Christian and stand behind state sponsored destruction of people, there is a bigger flaw. By Jeffress’ logic Christians of Rome should have championed Nero and the rest of the Roman government while they wielded the sword against those who they deemed evil.  By the way they deemed Jews and Christians as troublesome and evil.  Nero’s reign was the political-climate Paul was speaking into, and so my point is whatever Paul meant here it could not have meant what Jeffress thinks it does.

What I think Paul does here is continues his discourse from 12 in 13 about never vengefully repaying evil for evil. The Roman Christians could do that by refusing to act like the rest of the world who bought into the myth of redemptive violence especially against their own citizen-killing government.  It would have been plausible for Christians to want vindication and attempt assassinating someone like Nero themselves, but Paul is telling them to continue doing good no matter who is in authority over them. 

Paul’s point seems to be that the Church is distinct from the Government because the Church is to exist as an alternative community within the patterns of the world, namely sword wielding governments.  The only thing Paul does say about government is that God ordered and uses them to create some order (and I don’t mean "use" in a way that violates their freedom to make decisions, namely terrible ones).  God merely ordered them in as much as He allows the governments to keep having a place within the created order of the universe.  We also cannot forget that God says that world rulers were an entity working against His will (see 1 Sam. 8), so while governments will not be the means by which God sets things right, He isn't going to stop them from bringing what order they do manage either.

Unfortunately I believe Jeffress represents the voice of our larger Christian culture that has rejected the way of Christ to follow the way of the nation. That my friends will always find false-security in things like “fire and fury” and using threats to control others.  

Empire Baptized Review

I am reviewing a book this month! This is thanks to Speakeasy who sent it to me in return for an honest review, no matter how critical. The book is Empire Baptized: How the Church Embraced What Jesus Rejected 2^nd-5^th Centuries, and it is penned by Wes Howard-Brook (J.D., M.Div.). Wes is a professor at Seattle University. He previously practiced law, but now he teaches theology at SU, he works in a deacon formation program for the Archdiocese of Seattle and of course writes books, among many other things. As apprehensive as I am about lawyers writing books on Christianity, I gave him a shot anyway and he does not disappoint. 

Let me begin by saying that I have to consider this book to be an important contribution to the topics of early Christian history and the evolution of Christianity. The early Christian writers have been important voices to both the Orthodox/Catholic traditions and the many streams of Protestantism. Yet, Howard-Brook challenges their views from Origen to Augustine. While giving a critical analysis of several of these writers, he asks his readers to consider the idea that it was actually the internal workings of the Roman Empire’s religious, philosophical, social and economic structures that came to undergird their Christian formation, as oppose to the Jewish rootedness and culture of its origin. He argues very well that this is most evident through their (and now our) narration and interpretation of scripture and the subsequent development of our theologies and doctrines over the millennia. 

As a side note, for those who are up on the “New Perspective on Paul” and where it is going (by Sanders, Dunn, Wright and Co.), I felt this absolutely complimented that work as well. It too confronts faulty soteriologies and anthropologies that have been based on misunderstanding of the ancient Jewish culture.

Nevertheless, within this contextual setting Howard-Brook enters into a much needed exploration on the important themes of ecology/creation care, anti-Semitism, war and nonviolence, sex, hierarchy, social justice and other things that we Christians have notoriously mishandled. So, while I definitely tout this book as well researched history book and critical analysis, Howard-Brook also points directly toward the contentious issues that we divide over now and no doubt will continue to do in the future thus offering many points of relevancy.

It is also worth mentioning that Empire Baptized is a continuation of another book Howard-Brook had written titled Come Out, My People. In this book he seems to outline God’s leading Israel away from the “religion of empire” in exchange for the “religion of creation” throughout the Biblical narrative. I say “seems” because I have not read Come Out, My People, but he offers a brief recap in the forward. With that, I had little trouble keeping up with Empire Baptized, so I felt this was a good standalone book. With that said Howard-Brook does rest on interpretive assumptions about the Bible that I presume he worked out more fully in the first book which would be helpful for many beforehand, or at least something to keep in mind while reading this book.

            My only “con” for the book is not so much a flaw as much as a friendly caution. This book is geared toward an academic audience which I personally do not have problem with, but I know some will. Being of that genre and vocabulary it can at times feel daunting. This, however, is not to dissuade anyone from trying. In fact if I can get more people in my own sphere to take the time to work through it, I will. It is definitely a book worth having on the shelf for any who are interested in these topics and dilemmas.