Bad Theology
Sunday, January 17, 2010
They say a blog entry should be short, but what can you do when a man like Pat Robertson causes such a mess? Some things take a while to clean up. Hopefully you’ll bear with me.
If you somehow missed it, you can read the text of Pat’s comments and see the video here. To be fair, he said these things in the context of a broader report in which he expressed sympathy for the Haitian people, and it was part of a fund raising segment for earthquake relief, so I’m not going to comment on his intentions. Pat Robertson may have genuine love in his heart for the suffering people in Haiti. But what he said was very wrong.
Many people have slammed Pat, of course, and I hate to pile on too, but to my dismay, some friends of mine—well-known Christian authors who should know better—seem open to the idea that Pat was right. “Look at all the times God punished other nations with disasters in the Old Testament,” they said to me. “It’s Biblical!”
Well, no actually, what Pat Robertson said is not Biblical. On the contrary, it’s heretical.
Before I mention a few of the many theological arguments against this grave error in thinking, let’s ponder the human cost. If we allow ourselves to start believing any specific natural disaster is the result of any specific nation’s sins, we need not go much further along that same path before we find ourselves calling a specific case of cancer (for example) a punishment from God. After all, in the same way the Bible shows God using disasters to punish nations, so it shows Him physically punishing individuals for their sins. Think of Nadab and Abihu, or Ananias and his wife. The Bible does indeed teach us God has sometimes supernaturally entered history to physically punish both nations and individuals for their sins. It also says God will do it again one day. But how heartless it would be to use that as an excuse to tell a woman she just lost her breast to cancer as a punishment from God!
That is essentially what Pat Robertson said to the Haitian people the other day. Maybe he simply has a very inappropriate sense of timing. Maybe the love is there. I don’t know his motivation, but I do know there are grave dangers in what he said. Judgmentalism. Legalism. Isolationism. Fatalism. So much evil can flow from the prideful notion that we are equipped to know a disaster on any level, national or individual, is a particular punishment or admonishment from God.
Ask yourself: after we have moved from attributing God’s wrath to nations to attributing it to individuals, what is the next step? Why, imposing divine wrath on God’s behalf, of course.
Nineteen men and women were hanged and one was crushed to death in Salem because of a natural extension of this theology. Here’s how the logic went: “The Bible says God blesses good people in this life, and curses bad people, and I am being good yet bad things are still happening, so the neighbors must be devil worshippers.” After all, the same Bible that tells us about God’s use of natural disasters also says, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” And sure enough, following exactly that same logic after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson famously blamed their neighbors, their fellow Americans who are “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians.”
So much for the human cost. Let’s look at this heresy of Pat’s from a Biblical perspective, beginning with the fact that the Bible says “In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these: a righteous man perishing in his righteousness, and a wicked man living long in his wickedness.” Certainly there are places where the scriptures tell us the righteous will be blessed and the wicked will be cursed, but elsewhere it says the righteous sometimes get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked get the rewards of the righteous.
This is not a contradiction. It simply means we don’t know nearly enough about God’s intentions to be able to connect any person’s behavior with the earthly blessings or curses he receives. God has his own reasons for giving easy lives to some and trials to others. We can never fully understand those reasons.
This should be especially obvious to Christians. After all, Jesus taught us that our righteousness will often lead to suffering. We are told we must pick up a cross to follow Him, and “In this world you will have trouble.” If God-fearing believers are guaranteed suffering in this life (and we are) where is the logic in Robertson’s statement that Haiti’s suffering is a curse for devil worship? Isn’t it just as possible, based on what the Bible says, that this earthquake is a cross for the faithful Haitian Christians to bear?
In the wake of Robertson’s comments, some have pointed to passages such as this one, this one and this one to assert that humanity’s sins can “defile” the “land” though sins such as sexual immorality, the wrongful shedding of blood and idolatry. Read those scriptures carefully and you’ll see it’s a giant theological stretch to apply them to any "land" except the promised land of Israel, but never mind that for now. Let's pretend "the land" means any land, anywhere, just for the sake of conversation.
If any land could still be "defiled" by sexual immorality, the wrongful shedding of blood or idolatry, then every land on earth would be pretty much equally defiled. After all, what nation can claim it is innocent of those sins? Yet few nations have ever suffered a natural disaster on the Haitian scale. In fact, many nations which have been "defiled" by those sins have been richly blessed on the whole, including the USA of course, despite our rampant adultery, homosexuality, history of genocide against the American Indian and the African slave, and widespread worship of the almighty dollar and all the idols it can buy. So while the idea of cursed land makes for a great scenario if you’re a novelist, it just doesn't have any basis in observable history.
Another flaw in this theology is found in the root of the word translated in all those verses as "defile." That root is tame, the same Hebrew word translated elsewhere as "unclean" to describe houses where a person has died, bowls which have contained unclean food, chairs where an unclean person has sat, and of course unclean foods, among many other inanimate things. We know from Peter's famous vision of the sheet filled with animals that God has made all foods "clean." That's one of the proof texts used in support of the doctrine that Christians are no longer required to observe the letter of the Mosaic law. Funeral homes, dishes, chairs and pork are no longer "defiled" for us. Would this be true of everything inanimate except "the land" itself? Of course not.
The idea that the land of Haiti was somehow “defiled” centuries ago in a way that caused an earthquake here and now runs counter to everything the New Testament teaches about the law.
If we apply those Hebrew verses to "the land" of Haiti, then we have no consistent justification for disobedience to anything else the Mosaic law has to say about cleanliness and uncleanliness. Are we really prepared to return to that? Or do we agree with Paul that "...through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death"?
Moving on, consider a similar discussion that once took place between some Jews and a rabbi. Rather than comment on it I’ll just quote the conversation, with a few minor modifications to make it more obvious how it relates to the topic at hand (please do compare my version to the original):
“Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the New Yorkers whose blood Osama bin Laden had mixed with their office building. Jesus answered, ‘Do you think that these New Yorkers were worse sinners than all the other Americans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those thousands who died in the earthquake in Haiti — do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in the Caribbean? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.’”
If we ever had any doubt what Jesus meant when he warned us “Do not judge,” this conversation should remove those doubts. Don’t let anybody tell you different: Jesus doesn't want Christians saying the kind of thing Pat Robertson said the other day.
Posted byAthol Dickson at 6:28 PM 14 comments
Labels: The Jesus Way
You Can Be a Winner!
Friday, January 8, 2010
Win autographed copies my novels! Tim George, over at Unveiled, has a great contest going. Here’s a quote from his blog:
“To kick off 2010, Unveiled is going to give an autographed library of Athol Dickson novels to one lucky winner. Each week two questions will be added to this page. Points will be given for correct answers and comments left at appropriate reviews posted throughout January. Just follow the link after each question to find the answer. Email your completed list of answers no sooner than Feb 1st and no later than Feb 5th, 2010. Be sure and leave a comment to let us know you plan on entering the contest.”
So far there haven’t been many comments, so I’d say your odds are good... Have fun!
Posted byAthol Dickson at 3:49 PM 2 comments
Labels: About Athol, Lost Mission, River Rising, The Cure, Winter Haven
God of Discipline
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Do you worship discipline? Two days before the Christmas that just passed, I had the privilege of giving a kind of commencement speech to a group of men who were graduating from a Salvation Army rehabilitation center. All of the men had been at war for six months against the powerful urge to drink or to do drugs, and all of them were about to leave the program to continue the battle in a hostile world. I was asked to speak because several staff members of the center had read The Cure, and thought I might have something useful to say to their graduating residents. That novel has now become a favorite in several rehab centers that I know of. Probably they like it because it rings true. I wrote it from personal experience. In the heady flower child days of my late teens and early 20’s I did a lot of drugs and drinking, and developed a serious “problem” with amphetamines. I was also homeless for a time. But since I don’t struggle with alcoholism and it’s been decades since I had the urge to do drugs, some might wonder what makes me think I can offer meaningful advice to people in a rehabilitation program. The truth is I fight the very same battle every single day, for I am just as deeply addicted as any of those men, and you know what?
If you have a pulse, you’re an addict, too.
Sin is nothing more than the original addiction. It reveals itself in countless ways, but make no mistake about it: we’re all in the same condition, one way or another. So here is what I said to those brave warriors, a few words about the cure, offered in the hope that it might help you, too...
It may be that some of you were not Christians when you first walked into this place, so you may only recently have learned about God’s amazing grace. In that case, let’s make sure you fully understand the thing that saved you. Many people think grace is mercy, but they aren’t the same at all. Mercy is when you’re guilty and the judge decides not to throw the book at you. Mercy can actually be a bad thing, if it comes at the expense of justice for the wife and child whom you abandoned for cocaine, or the pedestrian you hit while driving drunk, or the shopkeeper you robbed to get a bottle or a fix. But grace is always good. Grace is when the judge does the right thing, when he goes ahead and throws the book at you because you’re guilty as charged, but then he comes down from the bench and suffers your punishment for you. And as every Christian knows, that’s exactly what Jesus did for us. That’s the whole point of the cross. God sentenced us to death for what we’ve done, which was only right and just, but Jesus took our punishment, so we are innocent in God’s eyes now.
Now, what does God expect from us in return for this? Absolutely nothing. God’s son died for us. How could we ever pay that back? We’d have to die to make it up to Him, and what good would that do when the whole point of the cross was to save us from our punishment? So it makes no sense to think we could do anything “in return” for this amazing grace. We can accept it. Period. That’s all. We can’t repay God. We can’t serve him. We can’t even obey him.
Yes, you heard me right. I just said we can’t obey God. But before you start thinking they let some kind of a pagan in here to talk to you, some kind of wolf in sheep’s clothing, let me quickly mention that the Apostle Paul said exactly the same thing in the Bible. He said, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do...I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing.... What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
See? Paul said it a long time before I did. We cannot obey. I don’t know if Paul was an alcoholic or addict, but he sure sounds like it when he says, “What I hate, I do.” I hear that, and it’s like he’s quoting from the Big Book (although of course it’s really the other way around). He’s saying, “we admitted we were powerless over alcohol.” He’s saying he “made a searching and fearless moral inventory of himself,” and he came up short. So if you’ve ever secretly felt guilty because it seems like obeying God is still impossible for you even though you’re a Christian now, if you think you must be weaker or more flawed than other Christians, damaged goods, then I want you to remember this: even the Apostle Paul agreed with the first step. Even Paul found his life unmanageable. Does that mean he was an alcoholic or a drug addict? No. But Paul was an addict all right. We’re all of us addicted to some kind of sin, one way or another, and as far as God is concerned there are many secret sin addictions which are just as bad as doping or drinking.
So, Christians, since we were powerless over our sins before we trusted Jesus, and we remain powerless over our sins today, obviously it’s a waste of time to ask, “What can I do?” But did you notice that question Paul asked at the end? He asked, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” That’s the smart question to be asking. Who will rescue me? Because if there’s no way you can win a fight, you need to be rescued. And praise the Lord, when a Christian begs for help, he will indeed be rescued. Every Christian believes along with Bill and Bob that there is “a Power greater than ourselves [who] could restore us to sanity.” Every Christian knows our Higher Power is not some wimpy little god “as we understand him,” but a mighty god we could never understand. Every Christian knows God personally, because we have met our higher power in the flesh on the cross. And if Jesus saved us then, He will go on saving us now, unless we start putting faith in our own will power instead of having faith in Him.
Listen now, this is important: Jesus didn’t give us power over sin. Jesus is our power over sin. What this means is, God’s grace wasn’t finished at the cross, it remains available for us right now, this instant, in every moment that we live. We were saved by grace through faith in Jesus, and not by our own works. We continue to be saved in exactly that same way. What good news this is! What a relief!
The secret to a happy Christian life is not to work harder at being sober. In fact it’s just the opposite. It’s to let Jesus do the work for you.
What does this mean in the day-to-day challenge to be sober? It’s very simple. When the devil sends that first little tickle—you all know the one I mean—you have just two choices. You can put your faith in your own willpower, or you can put your faith in Jesus Christ. If you tell yourself “Be strong,” if you put your faith in willpower, you will surely fall. But if you start praying, if you say “Jesus, I can’t win this fight! I’m too weak! Rescue me!” then the Lord will surely step right in to rescue you.
Does this mean Jesus will remove the urge to drink or use completely? Usually not. But you know what? If God leaves that urge in us, it’s because—hear me now, this is really important—if God leaves that urge in us, it’s because that urge is what keeps us turning back to Jesus.
We don’t know exactly what drove Paul to cry out, “Rescue me!” but we do know he wrote in the Bible about having something he called a “thorn in my flesh,” and a “messenger from Satan.” Sounds like an addiction, doesn’t it? Paul says, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” Was Paul disappointed that God refused to take away his thorn, his Satan’s messenger? No. On the contrary he wrote, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses.” But why did Paul boast about his weaknesses? Here’s the answer in his words again: “I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
Hear that famous line again, Christians. “When I am weak, then I am strong.” There’s your key to a successful life, regardless of your sin of choice. Probably most of you have begged and pleaded with the Lord to take away your addiction. Since you’re here, that means God said “No” to you, just as he did to Paul. And like the Apostle Paul, you should praise God for that answer. Think about this carefully.
Do you really want to put your faith in discipline instead of in Jesus Christ?
If God took away your sin addiction, would you really be a stronger person, or would you be tempted to think you don’t need Jesus quite as much? Would you be tempted to pray a little less? Read His word a little less? Worship Him a little less? Spend less time with other Christians? Focus on yourself a little more, until you are alone again just as you were before you met him at the cross? Sober, but alone and terribly, terribly lost? Is that really what you want? Is sobriety worth that?
Now it’s time for the next battle, and as you prepare to go, I hope you will remember that your weakness makes you strong if you embrace it. Your weakness is a blessing. Don’t fight it; celebrate it, as Paul did. Boast about your weakness and take delight in it, because if you will do that, then your weakness will always point you back to Jesus.
Think about this carefully: your weakness is a blessing.
Don’t ever feel sorry for yourself because you have to fight this battle. Instead, pity the person who seems to find it easy to be “good,” who looks like they have life under control. Pity the poor Christian who is “only” addicted to gossip, or “only” surfs porn on the internet in secret, or “only” lusts for money. Those Christians may look clean and sober on the outside, but because their sin addiction is well hidden they can go for years—for all their lives in fact—without ever getting past the first step, without every going beyond the entry-level grace they found on the first day they were saved. You, on the other hand, have a particular thorn in the flesh that’s impossible to ignore, so you’ll always find it easier to embrace your weakness, easier to put your faith in Jesus instead of in your own will power, and easier to walk deeper and deeper into the amazing grace that’s always there to rescue you.
Posted byAthol Dickson at 3:20 PM 6 comments
Labels: The Jesus Way
To Steal, Perchance to Tithe
Monday, December 28, 2009
Sometimes art imitates life, but sometimes it’s the other way around. Those of you who have already read Lost Mission may remember Tucker Rue, the founder of a storefront mission in a poor Southern California barrio. Tucker is concerned about the American church's tithing problem, and I think he’s got good reason to be worried. A survey by the Barna Group famously determined that only 6 percent of Americans who called themselves “born again Christians” gave 10 percent or more of their income to churches and charities during the recession of 2002. (For more on stingy people who claim to follow Jesus, see Ron Sider’s 1977 classic, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.) I haven’t seen statistics on what the current recession has done to Christian giving, but this is an age old problem, which surely will remain with us until the end of days. In Lost Mission, Tucker Rue decides to resolve it by stealing from rich Christians to give to the poor.
A missionary who steals to help the poor . . . does that shock you?
That was certainly my intention when I wrote the Tucker Rue character. In Flannery O'Conner's classic book on writing Christian fiction, Mystery and Manners, she said a novelist must sometimes use “violent literary means to get his vision across to a hostile audience, and the images and actions he creates may seem distorted and exaggerated.” Following that strategy I invented Tucker Rue as a wild exaggeration, a larger-than-life example of the bad mistake we Christians often make by trying to solve spiritual problems with earthly strategies. But a Christian minister who steals from those who will not tithe . . . even with O’Connor’s advice in mind I wondered if readers would consider it too outrageous.
Now it turns out Tucker Rue may not have been violent enough, or distorted or exaggerated or outrageous enough, because believe it or not, there’s a Christian minister in the real world who is advocating much the same approach. Check it out.
At first I watched that video and marveled that a vicar would seriously suggest shoplifting for the poor, but after giving it some thought I decided there isn’t much difference between that and hoarding God’s blessings for myself. In Matthew 25, Jesus makes it crystal clear that God has blessed me so I can bless the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the sick and the prisoner. Jesus says to the extent that I give to needy people I give to God, and to the extent that I withhold blessings from them, I withhold from God.
With countless blessings in my life, as I consider year-end giving during this final week of 2009, that thought really hit home.
Posted byAthol Dickson at 6:55 AM 7 comments
Labels: Lost Mission, The Jesus Way
Hope During Advent
Monday, December 21, 2009
Feelings of loss and loneliness tend to well up in me at this time of year, which is ironic. For a Christian, next to Easter this should be the most joyous season. But I find my thoughts straying back to Christmas past, and longer dinner tables flanked by laughing loved ones, now absent.
Something a friend said to me today reminded me of a TV show about D-day I once saw. There were interviews with old veterans who had survived that terrible slaughter, interspaced with film clips shot in the midst of battle. One old man described being on the beach, taking shelter from deadly machine gun fire behind a tiny obstruction. Another soldier beside him began to crack up. The old man in the interview said, “I just told him, ‘Think positive, man,’ and we kept going.”
The remarkable courage of that statement has always stayed with me. In the end, it really is that simple. You think positive, and keep going. And in a Christian’s case of course, thinking positive is thinking Jesus. I am so grateful for the hope found in the manger, and in the empty tomb.
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me — put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.” (Philippians 4:8-9)
Happy birthday Jesus!
Posted byAthol Dickson at 7:26 AM 3 comments
Labels: The Jesus Way
Peace During Advent
Friday, December 4, 2009
During the Advent season I think about the angels’ announcement to the shepherds tending their flocks in Luke 2:13-14 “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” These angels aren’t talking about some cheap, bumper sticker kind of peace. Real peace isn’t about us visualizing anything; it’s a gift from God. In John 14:27 Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
Notice Jesus contrasts his gift of peace with a troubled heart and fear. In Philippians 4:6&7 Paul does the same: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” I’ve learned that peace, not courage, is the opposite of fear. Brave people can act in spite of fear, but our hearts cannot contain both fear and peace.
One day last spring, when I went to the bathroom my urine was bright red with blood. The doctor said it could be cancer of the kidneys, liver, or prostate, or else a fourth undetermined cause. So the odds were three-to-one that it was cancer. He also said usually by the time one has bloody urine it’s pretty far along so my chances would not be good. Then he said we wouldn’t know until he some tests were done, so in the meantime I shouldn’t worry.
Being of little faith, I ignored his advice. I was afraid. Since God obviously knew that already, I thought I might as well admit it. So as Paul said, by prayer and petition I asked God to help me past my fear so I could desire His will with thanksgiving, even if it meant a painful death in my near future. And being afraid, I prayed the prayer in Mark 9:24 where a desperate man cries out to Jesus, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”
I had to wait two weeks for the test results, two weeks knowing it was likely I had advanced cancer. But what a wonderful two weeks that was! I learned the Lord will always answer a prayer for faith with “Yes!” even in the valley of the shadow of death. He answered by filling my mind with an eagerness for heaven I had never felt before. I watched the sun set over the Pacific, and as beautiful as that sunset was, instead of worrying about cancer I couldn’t stop thinking that sunsets would be a million times more beautiful in heaven. And I can honestly say when the doctor told me it wasn’t cancer, my relief was bittersweet, because as Isaiah says in 57:1&2: “...the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil. Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death.” And as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:55&57: "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? ...thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Rarely, but sometimes, things are so bad we can’t find the words to pray. I had such a day, many years ago. After fighting leukemia for months it was my father’s time to go. He was like a baby, lying naked on his bed, unable to talk, unable to control his bowels, bald from chemotherapy, going home in much the same way we come into life. It broke my heart to see my mother wiping his bottom, this man who had always been so strong. As I helped her by bringing in clean towels and carrying soiled towels out, I wasn’t praying. I was beyond all words. I was just too deep in grief, totally numb.
Then, as I crossed my parent’s bedroom with a filthy towel in my hand, all of a sudden the heavens opened up and God’s holy presence came shining down on me. I don’t care if this sounds like a cliché or not: it was like standing in a beam of light. God’s warming love flowed over me and all my grief and pain was simply washed away. Just for a moment there was no room for anything but glorious peace from head to toe. And I want to make this clear: in His infinite mercy, God’s peace came without any prayer on my part. In Romans 8:26 Paul makes a promise that was certainly true for me. He says, “...the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.”
Although God's gift of total peace lasted only a few seconds, and then my grief returned as was only right and proper, after all these years that moment remains a rock solid promise. Even when I’m so overwhelmed I can’t find the words to beg for help, I’ve learned my loving Father will be here with me.
Another thing I’ve learned is this: Peace cannot be possessed. Imagine if you were so greedy for air that you took in breaths but refused to exhale. You’d end up gasping for the very thing you tried to hoard up for yourself. In Isaiah God speaks of “peace like a river,” and I think He chose that simile because peace cannot be stagnant; it must always flow. God expects you and me to be the riverbed through which His peace flows into the world.
Jesus tells us how to do this in his Sermon on the Mount. Turn the other cheek, he commands. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.” That noun, peacemakers, includes an action verb. It means we who follow Jesus have a job to do. We are to obey Jesus, to make peace, to be His hands and feet to a fearful world. Our own peace is impossible if it doesn’t flow on through us to help fulfill the angel’s Advent promise of peace on earth, goodwill to men.
This doesn’t mean obedience to Jesus’ commands causes God to give us peace. It’s completely wrong to think any action on our part imposes some kind of reaction on God’s part. The Lord is the cause and we’re the effect, and it’s never, ever the other way around. It’s impossible to obtain the peace of Christ by trying to be good. Peace cannot be earned. Our obedience has no effect on God (except of course to please Him). God requires obedience for our sake, to turn our thoughts away from ourselves, away from our pain, our troubles, our fear, so we can be capable of accepting His gift of peace that transcends understanding.
As we cannot possess peace, so God’s peace must possess us. We must surrender ourselves to peace as we surrender ourselves to Christ. To the extent that we trust Him, we will receive peace, by grace, through faith and not through our good works.
I was reminded of that recently. As many of you know, I am a novelist. Last September, my eighth book was published. It was a disaster. Due to illness on the part of a key person, and a badly managed corporate restructuring, the publisher forgot to promote the novel. Normally they would send advance copies to several hundred influencers—newspapers, magazines, bloggers and so forth—but for the first time in my career, not one advance copy was mailed. Unbelievable as it sounds, they simply forgot. Bookstores stock novels based largely on the advance buzz in the press. Since there was no buzz, the stores bought only about a third of the usual number of copies. So, unless God wills otherwise, this novel is dead on arrival.
It means I’ve lost over a year’s worth of hard work. That’s how long it takes me to write a novel. And it’s not something I do in my spare time; it’s my full time job. So you can imagine how devastating this was. Since I’m far from perfect, I was furious at first, and then I was depressed. I lost a lot of sleep, and I felt like a failure. There was certainly no peace in my heart.
Then one night my pastor asked some men to pray for me, and in his own prayer the pastor spoke about the Lord’s book. Not my book. The Lord’s book. It was such a simple concept, it had escaped me, but that prayer reminded me that what I write is not my own. I write to serve my Savior. I write to spread His peace on earth, His goodwill to men. And so long as I surrender my life to God, no matter what the world may do there can be no such thing as failure. It’s really just that simple, because as it says in 1 John 5:3&4: “This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world....”
Here’s another delicious quote, from Psalm 85:10: “Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other.” As a writer, I think those words are particularly beautiful. Righteousness and peace kiss each other. As a follower of Jesus, I know the Psalmist speaks here about God’s righteousness, not mine. I can no more possess peace than I breathe without exhaling. To be at peace, I must surrender to it, be possessed by it, and pass it on. So I’m not dwelling in grief or anger about my last book anymore. On the contrary, I’m hard at work on another novel for the Lord, about a troubled man who finds peace in the end.
When you’re troubled and need to find peace, admit your fear and ask the Lord to help your unbelief. But if you are too overwhelmed to even think to ask, never fear; even then the miracle of peace is given to those who love the Lord. Just don’t try to possess God’s peace. Be possessed by it instead. Resist the temptation to turn it inward. Look for someone you can share it with, and the gift of peace that transcends understanding will surely flow through you like a river, no matter what your circumstances.
Posted byAthol Dickson at 6:45 PM 11 comments
Labels: The Jesus Way
The More Things Change...
Friday, November 20, 2009
Things are changing fast in Book Land. Last month, the world’s largest Christian fiction publisher decided to convert one of its traditional imprints into a self-publishing division. This week, the world’s largest romance fiction publisher announced they have entered the self-publishing business, too. Never mind the troubling ethical questions and conflict of interest concerns that many have raised about established publishers choosing to blur the lines between traditional and self-publishing this way. That’s another blog. Today I’m interested in bigger trends.
Some people think we’re looking at a future filled with hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people putting out their own novels. Given this new thrust toward self-publishing, and the ease with which a manuscript can be uploaded to the Internet as an e-Book, why not? Any author who has ever done a book signing will tell you that everybody seems to think they are a writer. Now they can prove it without having to jump through all the traditional hoops of getting an agent, attracting an acquisitions editor and satisfying a publication board. Write it and post it. It’s just that simple!
Some people also think the Internet has changed everything when it comes to production and purchase in the arts. We used to be macro-consumers. Now that it is so easy to get “published,” we’re going to become micro-consumers. No more blockbuster novels. Everybody will be reading something different because there are so many different things to read.
The Internet, they say, has changed everything, and we published novelists had better get ready for hard times because there is a wave of words coming that will overwhelm us.
I don’t believe it for a second.
Take Hollywood for example. At the end of the day, after Johnny uploads his latest YouTube video creation, I think he still sits down to stream a blockbuster Hollywood production on Netflix, right along with a million other people every day. No matter how many Youtube videos get uploaded, I don’t think that’s going to change the fact that the blockbuster Hollywood production is much more fun. And if Johnny does watch someone else’s Youtube video, on what does he base that decision? On the fact that a whole lot of other people have already watched the same video, of course. Take away the view counter and Youtube would die of lack of interest. We don’t have millions of people watching millions of different videos. We have millions watching a few videos. All the other millions of videos are seen by the people who make them, their friends, and family. Sort of like home movies.
In exactly the same way, Johnny might upload his novel to some file sharing site, but for his own reading he’s still going to choose a Steven King title over some unknown person who wants $1.50 for a download from Scribd.
I’m thinking about general trends here, and of course there will always be a few people who swim upstream, but while the Internet allows us to produce stuff at a micro-level, but that doesn’t mean the vast majority of us want to consume stuff on that level. This is due to basic human nature. Human beings have a heard mentality, and no technology will ever can change that.
There’s so much proof. Anyone could start a “news” service like Matt Drudge’s. All the man does is post links to other people’s news stories. Countless bloggers have tried to do the same, and it’s safe to say many of them post the same news links, or more interesting links, but Drudge still gets 28,000,000 hits a day while all those others get maybe 50 to 5,000. Why do millions of people go to Drudge every day? Because millions of people go to Drudge.
People have a herd mentality. We always have. We always will.
We see a line; we get in it, whether we know why or not. It just seems easier, somehow. How many times have you seen this at a ticket booth? A couple of lines, one long, one short, both for the same thing? And what is your first instinct? If you are like most people your first instinct is obviously to get in the long line, because that’s why it’s longer in the first place. It takes extra thought to get in that short line, and it takes a little courage, because a little voice warns us that the longer line must be better. After all, everybody’s in it.
Since we’re wired to take the well trodden path our marketplace will always be driven by that instinct, which means sales will always pile up in a few places rather than being thinly spread all over the place. How many search engines are there? How many people use Google, versus all those others combined? We’ve even turned “google” into a verb. We might enjoy the fantasy that someone’s out there reading our blog or looking at our video, but when it comes time for us to do some reading and looking, the Internet hasn’t changed our herd mentality. On the contrary, the Internet enables it.
What will probably happen as traditional publishing slowly dies as some predict, is a corresponding period when it’s every author for himself, with a proliferation of websites like Scribd where you can market your wares. Then one site will rise to dominance, a la Google, Drudge, Amazon, Craig’s List, Youtube, and etc.. That dominant e-publishing site will include a download counter for each title. And just as we see on Youtube, the titles with the most downloads will attract the most downloads. Tipping point will remain a fundamental marketing dynamic. Buying patterns will continue to exist just as the do today. A few authors will rise to the top, and all the others will sink to the bottom. At the end of the day, fiction authors will be in much the same place as we were ten years ago, with a small pool of the luckiest or the most talented professionals selling 95% of the novels, and a few million others wannabes splitting the other 5%. There will always be a need for professional editing. PR and marketing will still be necessary. The dominant e-publishing website will eventually change their business model and start taking a percentage of sales, of course. And being very poor negotiators, I suspect we authors will still be lucky to retain our usual 5% to 15%. In the end, unless human nature changes, life as an author will remain essentially the same in spite of everything.
Piracy, on the other hand, could ruin everything for everyone, authors and readers alike, but that too is another blog.
Posted byAthol Dickson at 10:41 AM 8 comments
Labels: Writing
