5 - Counter Culture, David Platt, 289 pages

Most who are familiar with David Platt know him from his breakout book, "Radical." After reading Counter Culture, I believe I will have to pick up this book to read in the future. Platt has a Bachelor's degree, a Master's degree, a PhD, and became the youngest head pastor of a Mega Church in America, located in Birmingham, Alabama... all before he was 26. He is a brilliant man and theologian and his writing style reflects this.

Counter Culture must pick up where Radical leaves off. The subtitle for that particular book is: "Taking back your faith from the American Dream." The thesis of Culture essentially asks, how do Christians respond to American ideals that deny the Gospel message? Platt's introductory chapter outlines the Gospel message and why it is important to Christians. For the rest of the book, he demonstrates how Christians living in a perverse culture should approach a variety of issues looking through the lens of the Gospel. He takes us through: the world of poverty, same-sex marriage, racism, sex slavery, immigration, abortion, persecution, orphans and pornography (as the subtitle says). 

This book has a tendency to be incredibly convicting. As authentic Christians, we perceive the world through a Christian worldview, a subject that is covered in Nancy Pearcy's book, "Total Truth" (which I wrote a book review on last year) and is a theme of Dr. Al Mohler's daily program, "The Briefing" (both of which I recommend you read/listen). When we see issues like sex slavery and poverty, we see them through the Christian worldview and we inherently know they are a result of a fallen world. However, the Bible and the Christian worldview tells us that we, as Christians, have a responsibility to respond to these atrocities. This is the disconnect between intellectual understanding and action. Often times when we see homeless people, we harden our hearts and tell ourselves, "I'm not going to help him out; he needs to get a job." Political reasons often cloud our views of immigration when are commanded several times in the Bible to treat such people with compassion and love. While we may lament the tragic fact of sex slavery, very rarely do we do anything beyond having a sense of remorse for such evil's in the world. 

This is contrary to our purpose of being "salt and light" as Christians in this fallen world. Platt calls Christians to action with a series of challenges. He begins each chapter with a brief summation, usually of a real life example, of the issue. He then approaches the issue through the Gospel: why it is wrong and demonstrates this (typically) from a passage in the Bible. He moves to why this is important to Christians and how we should respond to it. At the end of each chapter, he has a list of things that we should be doing to act "countercultural": Pray, Participate, and Proclaim.  He also set up the website for the book to offer ways that you can get involved in these various areas. 

This reminds me of the passage in Acts 17:6 where the text says, "And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, 'These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also.'" The Christians at that time acted in a way that was so against the norm of the culture, they believed they had "turned the world upside down." This should be the pattern for all Christians in every culture. There are unique challenges in a nation of such luxury and idolatry as America and Platt expertly addresses some of those challenges. We are living in a nation on the cusp (if not already) of a "post-Christian" society and now more than ever we need to hold firm our convictions to be in the world and not of it. This is an excellent book and I highly recommend you read it!

4 - The Apostle: A Life of Paul, John Pollock, 302 pages

Well I haven't been keeping up with regular book reviews simply because I have hardly had the time to sit down and read through an entire book as of late. Working through school, I have four books that I have to read in 8 weeks and I've been working through several other books that are near completion. So look for more reviews coming soon!

The Pauline Epistles, I have to say, are my most favorite in the New Testament. The ubiquitous Apostle Paul, formerly Saul the persecutor, is a classic story in the book of Acts about a pharisee turned Christian that has a timeless element to it. His writings have been pondered by millions of Christians, theologians, philosophers, and lay people to where his influence stretches 2,000+ years. It was the sixth chapter of Romans that sparked the interest of the great Augustine of Hippo to turn from his evil past and accept by faith the risen Savior Jesus Christ; Luther's study of Romans sparked the dawn of the Reformers against the Catholic Church; John Wesley, in turn, read Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans and was converted. The legacy of Paul the Apostle resonates throughout history and the ripples of his influence are still being felt today.

A biography of Paul has it's own unique challenges. Largely Paul's first biographer, Luke, is one of the only reliable sources we have to ascertain the life of Paul. What John Pollock does so well is he puts into context the historical events surrounding Paul as well as the pervading culture. From this, we see a different side of the Apostle.

What is also interesting is that Dr. Pollock meshes the accounts in Acts with the corresponding Epistles that Paul penned, showing the connection between what Luke wrote about Paul and how that connects with what Paul wrote himself. This enhances the perspective of the Pauline Epistles, particularly when you look at a letter like the one he wrote to the Philippians. You see the joy ooze out of every word in that letter, and you see why in the corresponding narrative in Acts. In turn, you see the time spent with the Galatians and the heartbreak Paul experienced in his letter to the Galatians when they turned away from what he preached there.

Many read the Pauline Epistles and find a jaded man with a temper that lashes out with passion. But the character of Paul taken in it's entirety shows the love and empathy he has not only for the Gospel, but also for those whom he stayed with and in a way, all of humanity. Imagine living amongst these converted Christians for years at a time and the friendships that developed for the sake of the Gospel. Particularly moving to me was the largely forgotten Epistle to Philemon, which, lacking the theological depth of some of Paul's other Epistles, shows a side of Paul's deep love, compassion, and even humor.

But a book about the Apostle Paul cannot be written without some controversy. For example, we do not possess any solid evidence of the life of Paul after the last chapter in Acts. Some believe he went onto Spain. Others, Britain. Dr. Pollock, and I in turn, believe he died in Rome. There was just one are where I disagreed with Dr. Pollock. He elaborated on Paul's thorn in the flesh, making the connection that it must have been some kind of physical ailment. I do not believe this: in fact, I believe in the text (2 Corinthians 12:7) he says that it is a "messenger from Satan." This would led us to believe it was not something physical, but rather a person that was spreading a false Gospel. This is certainly open for debate.

The other warning I would give to those interested in this book is that Dr. Pollock at times extemporizes the narrative to make it interesting. He utilizes his imagination to paint a picture of what the scene might have actually looked like but things that the text does not explicitly say. He might talk about how the wind moved through the temple as a cool breeze on a hot summer's day in Ephesus, or picking up the writing utensil to write in his own writing in the Epistle to the Galatians. This is a matter of semantics, but nonetheless important.

Overall, a fine look at the life of the Apostle Paul.

Warrior Culture

There has been a lot of controversy over the movie, "American Sniper," directed by Clint Eastwood, that has made news headlines across America. If you live under a rock, Sniper tells the story of Chris Kyle, Navy Seal who became one of the most lethal snipers in the history of the United States Military. After he got out of the Navy, he wrote a book of the same name which I wrote a review about last year.

Much of the criticism over sniper is coming because Kyle fought in a war that has seen itself mired in controversy. But also because in the book and the movie, Kyle says some controversial things. In the book and in the movie, Kyle calls the people he was fighting "savages," as he does in this interview on a late night talk show. Further, in the book he says he has a clean conscious in regards to the people he has killed and believes that he was justified in killing them, specifically because their death represented fewer Americans being killed. Not only did he believe he was justified, but in the book he says that he actually enjoyed his time there; he enjoyed killing people.

You can see why this is controversial I'm sure. But the purposes behind writing this is to unearth a hidden perspective that Hollywood cannot put into a movie, and that people cannot put into autobiographical books.

Speaking of this first scene in the movie, Michael Green of Arizona State University says:

"But the movie does not pause to register the tragedy of their deaths. The drama in the scene – and throughout the movie –- turns on the crisis for Kyle, of the moral and emotional consequences of the war for him. The woman and child, like all Iraqis in the film, are rendered as conspicuously “other”: distant, dangerous, unknowable and malevolent. In this scene, for example, Eastwood does not show us their fear or anguish. Filming the action from Kyle’s point of view keeps them at a remove from the viewers’ sympathies."

What Mr. Green fails to register is this is not a movie about the Iraq plight. This is not a movie about the political situation underpinning the war in Iraq. This is not a movie about the demonizing of Arabs. This is a movie about Chris Kyle. Part of being a Navy Seal, or any militaristic occupational force that has invaded another country, is the harsh reality of doing things that are morally questionable. The point of this scene is to provide an understanding to people who have, in most cases, never experienced war. Most people have not made life or death decisions that if they choose wrongly, could result in the death of even more people. These are the psychological battles that the warrior must consider when he is in battle. If someone is trying to kill you or people that you are entrusted to protect, is it lawful to kill them before they kill you (or worse, other people who you're providing watch for), even if said person is a woman or child? 

As you progress along in the movie, you will see that Chris Kyle begins to experience post traumatic stress disorder, which is common for those who have seen as much bloodshed as Kyle did. This demonstrates that while he may have been off the battlefield thousands of miles from danger, he was still fighting battles with the demons that haunted him. Imagine living with the knowledge that it was because of you someone, or many someones, is eating alone tonight because you couldn't save their spouse? Living with the thought that some little girl or little boy is going to grow up never knowing his or her father? 

In a different article entitled, "Killing Ragheads for Jesus," by Chris Hedges, Hedges quotes a retired Air Force Mikey Weinstein:

“The movie never asks the seminal question as to why the people of Iraq are fighting back against us in the very first place,” said Mikey Weinstein, whom I reached by phone in New Mexico. Weinstein, who worked in the Reagan White House and is a former Air Force officer, is the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which challenges the growing Christian fundamentalism within the U.S. military. “It made me physically ill with its twisted, totally one-sided distortions of wartime combat ethics and justice woven into the fabric of Chris Kyle’s personal and primal justification mantra of ‘God-Country-Family.’ It is nothing less than an odious homage, indeed a literal horrific hagiography to wholesale slaughter.”

The problem with this statement is, again, this movie is not a political commentary on the war in Iraq. This movie is about Chris Kyle. The word "service" has many different meanings. In America, if someone asks you, "Are you in the service?", this connotation typically means the person is asking if you are in the military. We call it "service" because quite simply, one serves his country by volunteering to be in the military. In America, unlike some other places like the Republic of Korea, military service is not mandatory. It is an act of courage and heroism that young men and women volunteer to go to war on behalf of our country. Therefore, we have designated the term "service" to link this understanding that, under no obligation, one is willing to fight for America and her enemies. In this way, Kyle perhaps had a political opinion about the war in Iraq; I'm almost sure he did. But where we go wrong is to suggest that the war in Iraq defines these encounters. What I mean is these political commentators are looking at this movie not from the lens of an autobiographical account of Chris Kyle, but through a politically motivated attack on the idiocy of the Iraq War. Kyle didn't ask to go to war. Kyle didn't go into the President's office in Washington and say, "We should go kill some Iraqis sir." He was merely in the right place at the right time that when his country went to war, he went to war. This is important to keep in mind when looking at the story of Chris Kyle because people keep trying to say "We should never have been in Iraq in the first place." Well, this simply was the purpose of the movie. In any case, we were in Iraq (a fact that you can't change) and Kyle was merely following the orders of his superior officers. So Kyle isn't the one to blame here. If one wants to make a political statement about the Iraq War then by all means: but leave Chris Kyle, a "service" member who was fulfilling his own personal obligations to be a Navy Seal, out of it.  He didn't ask for it and he didn't have much to do with the political aspects of the war.

In any case, many are also (as I pointed out with Mr. Green's article) trying to portray the Iraqis as innocent victims of the cruel ironies of war.  In some cases, I would wholeheartedly agree. However, Kyle saw a lot of action in a place called Fallujah. In 2004, the Marines launched a campaign called "Operation Phantom Fury." The insurgents had basically taken over the city of Fallujah and the Americans came to stomp out their fire. Days before and leading up to the operation, calls for civilians were made to leave the city. Many did. But many also came in. In the book, Kyle talks about how there were insurgents who weren't even Iraqi that came into the city to fight alongside their brothers. This is an important point when commentators try to provide the innocence of the Iraqi people: not all the people that Kyle killed were necessarily Iraqi.

What the main issue here however, is worldview. A worldview is essentially the way we perceive the world. There divide is widened between American commentators because they lack the proper worldview to see the Iraqi people. But even a more concerning issue is the lack of perspective of a warrior culture. Hedges says this later in his article:

"The book is even more disturbing than the film. In the film Kyle is a reluctant warrior, one forced to do his duty. In the book he relishes killing and war. He is consumed by hatred of all Iraqis. He is intoxicated by violence. He is credited with 160 confirmed kills, but he notes that to be confirmed a kill had to be witnessed, “so if I shot someone in the stomach and he managed to crawl around where we couldn’t see him before he bled out he didn’t count.”

He goes on to discuss how much of a brute Chris Kyle was. But this isn't the full truth on the subject. Let me explain:

In every culture, some are politicians, some are farmers, some are workers, and some are warriors. This has been true nearly throughout all of human history. The ancient Romans had a warrior class, as did the Spartans. The warrior culture today is often misunderstood. Being a Marine, I have some firsthand experience with this. Here in America, you have 18-19 year old kids being shipped off to war only to come back and have to deal with the consequences of that war. This is a traumatic experience to say in the least, something that you cannot fully comprehend unless you've been to war. Even before they go off to war however, they are inculcated with the ideals of a warrior. From day one at boot camp until they graduate from the School of Infantry, Marine grunts are essentially learning how to be a warrior. The culture that goes along with this is not pleasant: if you were to spend one day as an invisible person with the grunts you might be horrified at some of the things they do and say.  In a longer quotation, this is Hedges concluding thoughts on the film American Sniper:


"The culture of war banishes the capacity for pity. It glorifies self-sacrifice and death. It sees pain, ritual humiliation and violence as part of an initiation into manhood. Brutal hazing, as Kyle noted in his book, was an integral part of becoming a Navy SEAL. New SEALs would be held down and choked by senior members of the platoon until they passed out. The culture of war idealizes only the warrior. It belittles those who do not exhibit the warrior’s “manly” virtues. It places a premium on obedience and loyalty. It punishes those who engage in independent thought and demands total conformity. It elevates cruelty and killing to a virtue. This culture, once it infects wider society, destroys all that makes the heights of human civilization and democracy possible. The capacity for empathy, the cultivation of wisdom and understanding, the tolerance and respect for difference and even love are ruthlessly crushed. The innate barbarity that war and violence breed is justified by a saccharine sentimentality about the nation, the flag and a perverted Christianity that blesses its armed crusaders. This sentimentality, as Baldwin wrote, masks a terrifying numbness. It fosters an unchecked narcissism. Facts and historical truths, when they do not fit into the mythic vision of the nation and the tribe, are discarded. Dissent becomes treason. All opponents are godless and subhuman. “American Sniper” caters to a deep sickness rippling through our society. It holds up the dangerous belief that we can recover our equilibrium and our lost glory by embracing an American fascism."

I hope you are as disgusted with this as I am. Because Hedges misses the point of a warrior culture: these are the men and women that are learning how to kill people. I won't spruce it up, that is essentially what their whole job will be: To kill the bad guys and bring the good guys back home. Regardless of the political situation or intent of a war, this is what Marine grunts, Navy Seals, Army Soldiers etc. train to do. The culture that is built around this idea includes things that are not deemed acceptable to our politically correct culture like hazing. It also lacks the individuality of other careers because you work as a team: if the team loses a member everyone is affected.  

This is one facet of the warrior culture. I'm not saying that is correct or that it should be praised, I'm saying that understanding the worldview of the warrior culture is essential to interpreting this movie. Chris Kyle's job was to kill people. Do you think that the psychological sociological implications of that may tend to warp the status quo on what is "accepted" in a culture? The answer is a most resounding yes! For example, Chris Kyle said that he enjoyed killing. Understanding the warrior culture, one would have no problem with this statement. But since people like Chris Hedges are examining Kyle's occupation without this fact aligned with his perspective, he casts Kyle in an incredibly negative light. This isn't without it's problems however. For example, a huge problem in the American military is sexual assault, i.e., non consensual sex in the last 10 years. This could be contributed to the pent up male aggression one see's in long deployments working with mostly all males. Other factors contribute but this is certainly a negative side to the warrior culture (one that I believe we need to expunge from our ranks). Another example is the tendency to get into fights at bars. Hedges criticizes Kyle for getting into bar fights while on leave from deployments. Do you think understanding the warrior culture could explain why instances like this happen? The man had just experienced six months of grueling combat. Not all aspects of the warrior culture are commendable, but understanding it gives light to these complex social situations Kyle is being hanged for.

The warrior culture is nothing new, as I have said. Every culture has given the responsibility of national defense and war to a group of individuals in this caste. Without warriors, empires fall and nations crumble. Is those who want to be a part of something bigger than themselves that willingly join the "service" in order to protect those whom they love. For this reason, I believe every service member is a hero. And they bear within themselves the horrors of war. This is the most tragic aspect of the warrior culture. When you cease to examine American Sniper for it's political message, you will see that the point I believe that is trying to be conveyed is the tragedy of American Service members trying to battle their own demons after the war. [Spoiler Alert[ You can see at the end of the movie Kyle dies trying to help a fellow service member who was dealing with his own inner battles. Not only this, but relationships are strained: throughout the movie there is a constant tension of trying to be a father and a husband to his dear wife and kids while at the same time fighting a war. These are the situations that American Sniper is trying to convey: not these stupid political messages the media is trying to shove down our throats to vindicate their outspoken beliefs when these events transpired. 

In all, I believe that when seen through the correct lens, American Sniper is a really moving and beautiful movie. In November, I had the honor for playing for Mr. Clint Eastwood in California. He said that American Sniper was the best movie he has made. And I would agree with him.