I Know I Shouldn't Have, But...

...I started reading N.T. Wright's new book entitled Simply Christian. In effect, it's for those outside the faith to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ. There's been SO much that has muddied those waters over time.

Anyway, N.T. Wright is an excellent provocateur and a very good writer to boot. He has the intellectual/academic stripes to pull it off for anyone, follower or not, to at least respect where he's coming from.

But the good Dr. Wright always gets underneath my skin in the best possible ways and thus far this book is no different. Here's what got me going only 8 pages in:

"And now we have the new global evils; rampant, uncaring and irresponsible materialism and capitalism on the one hand; raging, unthinking religious fundamentalism on the other. As one famous book puts it, we have 'Jihad versus McWorld.' (whether there is such a thing a caring capitalism, or for that matter thoughtful fundamentalism, isn't the point at the moment.) This brings us back to where were were a few minutes ago. It doesn't take a Ph.D in macroeconomics to know that if the rich are getting richer by the minute, and the poor poorer, there is something badly wrong.

Meanwhile, we all want a happy and secure home life. Dr. Johnson, the eighteenth-century conversationalist, once remarked that the aim and goal of all human endeavor is to be 'happy at home.' But in the Western world, and many other parts as well, homes and families are tearing themselves apart. The gentle art of being gentle--of kindness and forgiveness, sensitivity and thoughtfulness and generosity and humility and good old-fashioned love--have gone out of fashion. Ironically, everyone is demanding their 'rights,' and this demand is so shrill that it destroys one of the most basic 'rights,' if we can put it like that: the 'right,' or at least the longing and hope, to have a peaceful, stable, secure, and caring place to live, to be, to learn and to flourish.

Once again people ask the question: Why is it like this? Does it have to be like this? Can things be put to rights, and if so, how? Can the world be resuced? Can we be rescued?

And once again we find ourselves asking: Isn't it odd that it should be like that? Isn't it strange that we should all want things to be put to rights but can't seem to do it? And, isn't the oddest thing of all the fact that I, myself, know what I ought to do but often don't do it?"

I could throw some things out there for discussion but it'd be too much. Just take it and run with it. I'm going back to my reading. I'm truly fascinated by the direction of this book...