Book Review: "Radical Together" -- the wrong people, the right gospel

Author: David Platt, 2011. (Waterbrook Press)

Even smaller than his first book (this one is just under 150 pages without the study guide), Platt's sequel is no less thought-provoking even if it repeats several of the themes of his earlier book. Where "Radical" focused on the problems with American culture, "Radical Together" focuses on the problems within the American church. His purpose in this book is to unite the church, meaning the lay people, around a gospel-centered vision.

The six short chapters, each with a sub-heading, are as follows:

1. Tyranny of the Good: the worst enemy of Christians is good things in the church
2. The Gospel Misunderstood: the gospel that saves us from work save us to work
3. God is saying something: the Word does the work
4. The Genius of Wrong: building the right church depends on using all the wrong people
5. Our Unmistakeable Task: we are living -- and longing -- for the end of the world
6. The God who exalts God: we are selfless followers of a self-centered God

Like his earlier book, Pastor Platt weaves together compelling stories from his own life and that of his faith-community at Brooks Hill in Birmingham, Alabama, to craft an easy read. And like "Radical" the speed and slimness of the book belies the challenge within its pages.

Two chapters stood out for me. The first focuses on cutting the good to emphasize the greater. He tells of how his church slashed their budget, not because of tough times, but to spend their savings on spiritual needs around the globe instead of staffing needs within their church. Downsizing for the betterment of the world. How often we hear of budget cuts to line the pockets of corporate shareholders. Here Platt tells of budget cuts (of over $1.5 million) to serve impoverished churches in India and elsewhere around the world. These are not shareholders; these are sinners in need of grace, expressed in this case through the generosity of a gospel-driven church in North America.

The other chapter that stood out, chapter four, is centered on the people within the church, the wrong people. Platt argues that we should focus on building our people, not the places, or the programs, or the performances; not even the professionals, who seem to be the right people. Rather, we must "unleash people to maximize the ministry opportunities God has already planned and created for them," refering to Eph. 2:10 ("For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do"). He underscores this idea: "the key in all of this is an intense desire and intentional effort to make every one of our lives count for the multiplication of the gospel in the world." We who sit in the pews are the wrong people according to church marketeers, but as we depend on God's power we can be the right people to bring Jesus to our next-door neighbors, our coworkers or the unwitnessed people groups around the world. Are we ready to be radical together with the other members of our church?

Note: I received a free copy from Waterbrook Publishing but was not influenced to provide a positive review.

Like Dandelion Dust -- wishes and their impact on others

Director: Jon Gunn, 2010. (PG-13)

This compelling drama centers on two families, the Porters and the Campbells, who come from distinctly opposite sides of the tracks. This is made clear from the opening scenes. When we see Jack Campbell (Cole Hauser) sailing off the Florida coast with his little boy Joey (Maxwell Perry Cotton), while his wife Molly (Kate Levering) waits in their million-dollar mansion, they represent the "haves", with luxury and money. Wendy (Mira Sorvino) and Rip (Barry Pepper), on the other hand, live in a beater home in the low-rent district of Ohio. They are the "have nots," blue collar workers at best. But their lives intersect in Joey,

In the movie's only flashback, we see Rip arrested seven years earlier for beating up Wendy. Alcohol and abuse are his twin demons. For his punishment, he was sent away for a seven-year stretch. Unbeknownst to him, Wendy was pregnant and chose to have the baby, and then give him up for adoption. To legalize the transaction, she had Rip's signature forged, knowing that Rip would never give away his son. The Campbells were the fortunate adoptive parents.

When Rip is released from prison, he is a changed man, and returns to Wendy, ready for a new start in life and for a family. But when he finds out from her that he already is a father, together they are determined to find the boy and reclaim him. Ohio law supports this return of the boy to his parents, since the father's signature was fraudulent. This premise sets up the film. The Campbells must give up Joey, who only knows them as his parents, but are not prepared to do so. The Porters want to meet and keep Joey, though they may not be ready for parenthood. Which set of parents will be better for the boy? The rich Campbells, or the poor Porters?

Based on the novel by best-selling Christian author Karen Kingsbury, Like Dandelion Dust offers a realistic portrayal of two families. Though it veers into melodrama once or twice, it refuses to present a clear-cut hero. Both families have something to offer and both families have much to lose. The film exposes the humanity in the characters, leaving us struggling to choose who to cheer for.

When Jack realizes his lawyer cannot help and his senator refuses to do anything, he determines to take matters into his own hands. Visiting Ohio, he confronts Rip at his workplace. As a rich man, he thinks it is all about money. Offering Rip half a million dollars to "buy back" his son, he is surprised when his offer is refused. Joey was not for sale. The law declared he belonged with his birth parents and they were not going to commercialize their blessing.

Here is one theme: money. And the message is reinforced: money can't buy love. Too often, those blessed with financial resources think they can buy anything they want: from cars to homes, from toys to boys; the poor need money and will sell even their children. But such thinking is fallacious and unethical. We cannot buy people. Slavery was condemned after the civil war and remains immoral. Offering money to the poor for a person's son demeans both the father and the son. There is an inherent dignity to life, based on the presence of God's image (Gen. 1:26), even if that life is lived in squalid conditions.

Rip's response to Jack is swift and violent, leaving Jack bloodied physically and Rip bloodied emotionally. Having held his temper through his prison years, the demon is out of the bottle. And to commiserate, he hits the bottle again. With alcohol back in his life, it is not long before domestic abuse reoccurs.

A second theme of the film is self-destruction. Rip's self-destructive tendencies take over his family, but the Campbells, too, choose a path that is destructive to their lifestyles. We all have deeply flawed personalities, due to the sin that is present in us from birth (Psa. 51:5). Under pressure, we can choose to follow the path of the Spirit or the path of the self. Too often the self's way is destructive, to ourselves or to others. We can become the worst versions of ourselves in such choices.

Yet, the film offers a sense of hope and redemption. Wendy chooses to stay with Rip, seeing in him the spark of goodness, the potential to be a father, even if that time is not yet. There is a love buried inside him, and she wants to help him.

The title of the film comes from a scene in the middle when Joey is on one of his arranged trips to the Porters house. Wendy picks up one of the dandelion weeds and tells him that blowing the spore of the dandelion dust is like setting a wish free. The wish is trapped until, like dandelion dust, it is released by the wind of a person's breath. But like life, wishes are not always black and white. One person's wish is another person's nightmare.

Wendy's wish is for her boy to be back with her and Rip in a loving family. Yet her wish realized may hurt Joey even as it benefits her. Our wishes are like this. Sometimes we want things that seem good for us, while forgetting or ignoring that they may impact others negatively. We overlook the bigger picture in our desire to realize our wishes. St. Chrysostom prayed, "Fulfil now, O Lord, our desires and petitions as may be best for us" recognizing that God alone knows what is optimal for us. Our sight is too poor.

Like Dandelion Dust is carried on the shoulders of Miro Sorvino, the Oscar-winning actress. As the fragile yet brave woman whose choices define two families, she is the heart and soul of the film. And it is appropriate that she gets to demonstrate her love in a final act of sacrifice. If the two fathers have offered different views of the depravity of humanity, the two mothers provide a peek at the redemptive aspects of humanity. Redemption and hope become entwined in a bittersweet ending, that leaves tears in our eyes and perhaps a glimpse into the heart of self-giving love. Isn't that just like Jesus.

Copyright ©2011, Martin Baggs

Book Review: One Month to Live -- nice quotes, cheesy chapters

Authors: Kerry and Chris Shook, 2008. (Waterbrook Press)


I really wanted to like this book. The authors' premise is intriguing: "Most of us, if we knew we only had one month to live, would live differently. We would be more authentic about who we are and more deliberate about how we spend our time. . . .Why can't we all of us live more like we're dying?" In other words, if we had one month to live wouldn't we likely change how we live to resolve conflict, minimize regret and cement relationships?

But there's the catch. We don't have 30 days to live. And we can't drop everything to suddenly change our lives. We have jobs to work, children to raise, lives to lead.

After the first couple of chapters I found the book to too choppy, changing metaphor with each chapter as if disconnected from the previous one. And it was too shallow. In six or seven pages, just enough to digest in five minutes, the Shooks give us a capsule summary with three or four main points, some Scripture and a story. It was, in a word, cheesy.

The book has four main sections, each with 7 chapters, addressing the no-regrets lifestyle need to a) live passionately, b) love completely, c) learn humbly, and d) leave boldly. I don't disagree with the content, and there are enough "sound-bites" in each chapter for reflection. But the delivery, even with the "Make it Count" side-bars and the closing "Make it last for life" questions, was tedious and boring. The book just did not capture my attention. I found myself wanting to set it aside unfinished without regret.

The best thing about the book are the quotes that open each chapter. Carefully chosen, they are apt and appropriate. I wanted to copy these down and think on them, rather than read the chapters. I can't honestly recommend the book. For me this was thirty days of regretting I had started this book!

Note: I received a free copy from Waterbrook Publishing but was not influenced to provide a positive review.

Heat -- hunters, hunted and hindered relationships

Director: Michael Mann, 1995. (R)

Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Two of America's greatest living actors. They have been in over 130 films between them, with 14 Oscar nominations combined (three wins: one for Pacino, two for De Niro). But Heat was the first film in which they shared screen time. Of course, both starred in The Godfather Part 2, but De Niro was the Don as a young man before Pacino's character was even a twinkle in his eye, so never appeared together. Here, they play nemeses, having two key scenes together, one in the middle and the other at the climax. Despite its marketing as the first film that pitted them together, their shared screen time is a small portion of this three-hour film. Yet, this classic purrs because of them primarily, as well as because of the other stars in the cast. And the script gives these actors terrific dialog and the latitude to ad lib.

De Niro plays Neil McCauley, a mastermind robber who is as cool as a cucumber and whose love-life is as cold. Pacino is Lieutenant Vincent Hanna, a detective in LA's Robbery-Homicide division. He is loud and passionate, married with a stepdaughter. But in reality, these two are more alike than they appear and they are destined to cross paths. Heat moves inexorably forward to a final confrontation between the two great actors.

Mann (Public Enemies) certainly knows to grab the attention and direct action. Shot entirely on location in LA without a single sound stage, he builds an almost symmetrical film, with a slam-bang opening, an armored car robbery, mirrored by the closing chase and showdown. In the middle is the other major set-piece, a bank robbery that degenerates into a full-on gun-battle in the streets of Los Angeles. In between, Mann takes time to develop the key characters as well as several supporting foils, both on the police team and on Neil's criminal crew. And it is because of this that the film has depth. Through these characters we understand the issues Mann is exploring, issues of how relationships are impacted by work and career, and how an obsession with a vocation can be all-consuming. Along the way, we gain a glimpse into the underlying psyches, a glimpse that may reveal something about ourselves.

The sizzling opening sequence of the armored car robbery highlights Neil's meticulous and methodical nature. He has planned the operation well, and knows exactly what to steal and what to leave. He has his timing down pat. But the robbery is botched when new team member Waingro (Kevin Gage), a vicious criminal, ruthlessly shoots one of the three guards in cold blood. This leaves Neil, Chris (Val Kilmer) and Michael (Tom Sizemore) facing murder charges, not just armed robbery. The pace, once started, never lets up.

With murder and robbery, Hanna shows up on the scene with his police team, Bosko (Ted Levine, from TV's Monk) and Drucker (Mykelti Williamson). Evidence is minimal but it is clear that the crooks are pros.

As the film develops, we see Vincent at home with his third wife Justine (Diane Venora) and her daughter Lauren (Natalie Portman, her second role after The Professional). Vincent enjoys the marital sex but not the marital sharing. His family lives in a "dead-tech, post-modernistic" house that says more about their relationship than about their taste in art. This is a postmodern family that has no real warmth and whose soul is shriveled and dying.

A pivotal scene occurs in the middle of the film. After blowing a trace on all four key criminals, Vincent is following Neil's car from a helicopter above the twinkling lights of the LA night. When he orders the helicopter to set him down and he takes over a detective's car, he is able to pull Neil over on the freeway. As the tension mounts, the hunter and hunted come face-to-face. We expect violence but we get urbanity instead. Vincent invites Neil to coffee in a diner. It is here, sitting opposite one another and on-screen for their first extended dialog together, that we learn about these two loners.

This scene was shot with no rehearsals. The actors faced each other as the two characters would, with a little anxiety and wonder. Mann allowed two cameras to shoot continuously and let the two greats verbally spar with each other.

Neil tells Vincent his life philosophy: "A guy told me one time, 'Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.' " (Here is the meaning of the film's title.) This is his loose-grip philosophy. He has no relationships because he is not prepared to invest anything of himself in them.  As he says later, "I'm alone but I am not lonely," but he is merely fooling himself.

We can see even more clearly his approach to women in a conversation with Chris in Neil's beautiful but spartan condo overlooking the expansive Pacific Ocean. "When are you gonna get some furniture," Chris asks. "When I get around to it," Neil replies. Chris asks a second question: "When are you gonna get a lady?" Neil responds, "When I get around to it." Women mean as little to him as the furniture in his apartment. Something to buy, use, enjoy and walk away from.

Human beings were not made to live like this. We were meant to live in community, in relationships. Even from the beginning God's creation was sad and lonely without a companion (Gen. 2:18). God chose to make Eve for Adam (Gen. 2:22). And he desires that we enjoy the relationships we find ourselves in. This requires commitment, a willingness to stay put, even when the heat is on, rather than splitting thirty seconds after the heat is felt.

Vincent is not much better than Neil. He tells Neil, "My life's a disaster zone . . . . I got a wife, we're passing each other on the down-slope of a marriage -- my third -- because I spend all my time chasing guys like you around the block."  Neil comments, "Now, if you're on me and you gotta move when I move, how do you expect to keep a marriage?" Vincent's real problem, though, is summed up later by his wife, in one-short sentence, "You never told me I'd be excluded."

In trying to protect her from the ugliness of his job, Vincent is pushing her away. He is not letting her in, not allowing her to share his inner person. A marriage cannot be built on great sex, though it might be fun for a short while. It requires commitment and conversation. It demands openness and sharing. It cannot survive when one person shuts out the other. Such marriages, like Vincent's, suffocate and die.

More than this, though, Vincent's commitment to his work drives a wedges between him and his family leaving a terrible toll on his wife and stepdaughter. Justine has become a doped-out woman, feeling nothing, and Lauren feels too much, overly anxious about everything, strung out with suicidal tendencies. How sad for a man to be so successful in his career yet such a failure at home. As Jesus commented, "What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?" (Matt. 16:26) Where are his priorities? Where are ours?

At the end of a lonely night out with police friends, during which Vincent runs out to attend a 911 call about a prostitute's murder, Justine cuts through Vincent's persona to nail his identity when he returns: "You don't live with me, you live among the remains of the dead people. You sift through the detritus, you read the terrain, you search for signs of passing, for the scent of your prey, and then you hunt them down. That's the only thing you're committed to. The rest is the mess you leave as you pass through."

She's right. He is a hunter, aroused by the scent of his prey. He lives for the chase, to catch criminals like Neil. His vocation is his obsession, not his family. One wins, the other loses.

But Neil and Vincent are more alike than they seem, even if they are on opposite sides of the law. Neither is prepared to hold down a relationship. Both are consummate professionals. Vincent tells Neil, "I don't know how to do anything else," to which Neil replies, "Neither do I." Vincent says, "I don't much want to either." Neil: "Neither do I." Vincent realizes that "All I am is what I'm going after." In a sense, he is Neil, but the positive flip-side of the coin. Though he is the loud, brash, passionate one of the two, he is still just like Neil.

As the movie steadily drives towards its ending and Vincent's marriage is drifting apart, Neil finds a woman. Eady (Amy Brenneman) is a lonely heart like him. She thinks he is a salesman but they are drawn to one another. Once she finds out who he really is, he gives her a challenge, to make a snap decision to leave with him or leave him: "I don't even know what I'm doing anymore. I know life is short, whatever time you get is luck. You want to walk? You walk right now. Or on your own . . .  on your own you choose to come with me. And all I know is . . . all I know is there's no point in me going anywhere anymore if it's going to be alone . . . without you." But when the chips are down at the end, Neil follows his life philosophy not his heart. He is not so different from Vincent. He cannot hold down a relationship; he is too caught up in his loose-grip lifestyle.

Action and great characters aside, Mann's Heat certainly reminds us that relationships take work. And when work takes priority over these relationships we risk hurting the very ones we say we love. Are we hunters, like Vincent, leaving a pretty woman at home abused and afflicted, pining for us not our pay or our promotions? Are we like Neil, cold and aloof, not letting anyone in close enough to care? If we have even an iota of these tendencies, now is the time to turn the heat up and burn them away, rekindling the flames of passion and partnership that may have dwindled and almost died. It is not too late.

Copyright ©2011, Martin Baggs