Blogging Ottinger (tim)

My most recent (non tech) reading project is Ain’t Too Proud To Beg, subtitled living through the Lord’s Prayer. The author is theologian Telford Work (an unusual name, to be sure). The book is not even 300 pages long, but I’ve been taking a long time getting through it. It’s rich, and so I must take small bites in small sessions, and sometimes have to mull and reread.

The book is inspirational, but it’s not “Inspirational”. Books and music titled “Inspirational” are typically trite emotionalism sanctified with the occasional scripture reference (sometimes taken in context). Instead Work has a definite edge, and takes an eyes-open approach to the subjects. It is a thinking book, not just a feeling book. From the intro:

Crafting chapters that begin in my own experience and culminate in the Lord’s words might be popular […] but it would make Jesus my public relations representative, not my King. I do not want to give readers the impression that Christianity is just a name for one’s mental attitude or outlook.

I knew I was into something different. I have learned a lot in the first half of the book. Work is well-educated, and has taken me on a tour of things I know only a little about. I’ve had to play catch-up. This is another break from the easy casual “inspirational” style of “Christian Living” books you tend to find in popular bookstores. This book will challenge you instead of stroking your hair.

What it is about, so far, seems to be about the Kingdom of God and Holiness. It refuses to accept God as “a vehicle of the self.” The following anthemic chorus (from P103) is something I’m meditating on now:

We — we peoples of the world, but also we Christians much of the time — have spent the last two thousand years doing what we had been doing before: trying to turn the world God gave us into the world we want, the people we were made to be into the people we would rather be, and God from the the Lord we have into the Lord we prefer. This is the pattern in the chaos of American Christianity. Constantine is not the villian; we are.

The book follows the structure of the Lord’s prayer, and is a sort of series of articles on the otherness that is represented there. There are a few whippings (like the two mentioned above) but it’s not a book of accusations. It deconstructs to reconstruct, and reconstructs brilliantly on a better foundation.

I have found it beneficial.