Welcome to the Pacific Union College's "President's Book Club" blog

Thursday, November 13, 2008

I have a passion for reading. It’s one of my favorite hobbies begun as a missionary child when my mother would take my brother and me to the U.S. Information Agency Library in Beirut, Lebanon and then Montevideo, Uruguay every two weeks. That hobby was reinforced when Winton Beaven, my President at Columbia Union College, used to talk about books he had read in his sermons and talks to students. Of course, for the twenty-one years after graduating from CUC when I was working on a Master’s degree and Ph.D., most of my focus was on getting ready for my comps or writing a thesis and then a dissertation but I always managed to get some other reading done. Over those years, the books piled up that I wanted to read and I’ve been making up for those “lost” years ever since.

The shelf at home where I keep books I’m planning to read contains about fifty titles but then I’ll go by a book store or go on “Amazon.com” where they make recommendations based on your past purchase or I’ll drop by Costco to find a current best seller and the planned books to read goes away. I try to read several books at a time including books with a focus on my professional life in higher education, in my field of American history with a focus on my special love of biographies, a novel, something of general interest, and a devotional book.

Our most recent selection for the “President’s Book Club” which our special friends of PUC received several months ago is The Jesus Way. A conversation on the ways that Jesus is the way by Eugene H. Peterson. Because of his very popular paraphrase of the Bible titled, The Message, Christians and Adventists have admired Peterson. The Message paraphrase came out of his work as a pastor in Maryland where he would paraphrase a chapter of the Bible for his weekly prayer meeting. Eventually he completed the entire New Testament and word got out that his work brought new meaning to ancient words so he first published the New Testament followed by the Psalms and then the entire Bible. This prepared the way for Adventists to have their own popular paraphrase prepared by Jack Blanco called The Clear Word. Jack is an old friend who taught in the CUC Religion Department with my father-in-law, G. Arthur Keough. All of the profits from his paraphrase go toward various charitable projects.

When some got Peterson’s book, The Jesus Way, they probably anticipated a book like The Message or a book like those written by Phillip Yancey or Max Lucado but instead found a very deeply intellectual and theological book that you couldn’t just skim through without deep thought. Often each sentence requires profound thought and the reading does not go quickly but the possibilities for meditation are endless. Some sections Peterson almost sounds like a modern day prophet writing in righteous anger against consumerism, definitions of worship, and the self-interest with which we approach life. And then there are sections of sheer beauty where the words are put together in such moving ways.

In this book Peterson loves metaphors with a special focus on “the way” of Jesus. However, he suggests that “the way” was prepared by six representative figures –

• Abraham (the way of faith)
  
• Moses (the way of language)
  
• David (the way of imperfection)
  
• Elijah (the way of marginality)
  
• Isaiah of Jerusalem (the way of The Holy)
  
• Isaiah of the Exile (the way of beauty).
  

In contrast he suggests “other ways” focusing on individuals who went another direction –

• Herod (the master of political ways and means)
  
• Caiaphas (the master of religious ways and means)
  
• Josephus (the master of celebrity ways and means).
  

What do you think of Peterson’s choices? Are there others you would suggest? How important were these individuals in actually preparing the way for Jesus to come? How much did He rely upon their example? Are there individuals you can think of today who follow the way of Jesus just as He followed in the way of the individuals suggested by Peterson?

Let’s begin the conversation.

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