I got a little behind in my reading this last weekend (things were insanely busy) and I am in the process of catching up. I finished Coming Home: To The Father Who Loves You a few days ago by Robert Jeffress and was disappointed. I guess the book is what it is but I was expecting something different and more profound. The book is based (more loosely than I anticipated) on the biblical story of the prodigal son and since I am thinking of preaching on it soon, I thought would be helpful. This was one of those times when the jacket cover seduced me. I though it might be better, more theological and reflective, giving me insights into this amazing story of Scripture but instead, I would define it as your typical “problem + solution = success” book. There were points where the book implied that if you felt far from God then with “these three or six things” you can fix the problem and have success in your relationship with God and thus in life. I don’t know? I just find the Bible and my life to be way more complicated than that and I ironically find that complication soothing. I don’t think God created us as a spiritual math problem and the Bible as the formula for success (as we in North America have defined it).

Instead, I think God is way more complicated and mysterious than that and on many levels I find books like this, or any spiritual message like this, troublesome. Maybe I’m just weird and bizarre and I’m alone in my questions, but I have a sneaking suspicion there are others out there like me. Others who find their spiritual lives to be way more complex and even their relationship with God to be more elusive and unformulative (I think I just made that word up) than these books or messages portray? Or, perhaps, I am quasi normal and there are others out there who either feel guilty their loves don’t line up with the formula or their problems easily solved by it. Or maybe they just think they are alone and are too afraid to speak up. If that is the case, I hope you can find comfort in others like me.

I believe truth is more than a formula or pattern…Jesus (the way the truth and the life) lived in a way that was unformulated. Even though the Pharisees tried to evaluate Jesus by their legalistic and self-serving spiritual formulas, Jesus reversed their formulistic view of God. In fact, I think human formulas by nature of their human origin, are self-serving. Like any postmodern, I question any formula that starts with a preferred answer and builds the formula to create that answer. This is the same reason why I agree with others that in many ways the modern scientific method is flawed – but that is a post for another time.

Anyways off to a completely different book I need to finish: “Freakonomics” by Levitt and Dubner.