Judge Not?

One of the sharpest shifts in our society recently is that the average person on the street now knows nothing about the Bible. When I was a kid, even the "unchurched" (I'm not a huge fan of that term) knew basic Bible stories and a few verses.

Today, though, people only know ONE. "Judge not, lest ye be judged."

But what does that really mean? Stephen Altrogge wrote a great post on the topic, which I highly recommend. You can find it here: Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged.

Thoughts on Killing Sin and Not Giving in This Lent

Click the images below to read a couple articles I wrote about resisting temptation and taking every thought captive this Lent.

Thoughts on Repentance and Ash Wednesday

They say that the Inuit language has, like, thirty-seven words for snow because Eskimos are so overly familiar with the stuff that it would be silly to just refer to “snow” in general.

That’s probably not true, of course, but it makes a good, broader point. There are many different types of snow, different kinds of love, different forms of stress, etc. and oversimplifying can lead to problems.

And, as we commence our observance of Lent in the Christian church (except those hardcore Presbyterians—it’s too “popish” for them), with a day that is traditionally associated with ashes, sackcloth, and repentance, we might stop to consider that there are different kinds of tears.

A VARIETY OF TEARS FOR A VARIETY OF OCCASIONS

I’m sort of an expert on this (meaning, I read a Wikipedia article), so let me fill you in. You’ve got your basal tears, which are for lubricating your eyes and actually serve as part of your immune system. Then you’ve got your irritant tears. These are more reactive, like when a particularly nasty blast of wind comes your way, or you walk into a sand storm.

Then, of course, there are emotional tears, which actually have a different chemical structure from the tears used for lubrication. So if your buddy says he has “something in his eye” while watching Up, you could prove him wrong in a lab, with a sample of his tears, because emotional tears contain stress hormones.

So that’s the scientific classification, but we all know that emotional tears can be subdivided into many more categories. Infants have three kinds of crying: basic, anger, and pain. When we had a baby, I was told that I would eventually learn the difference between “hungry” crying and “diaper” crying, but I call shenanigans on that.

BIBLICAL TEARS

As we grow up, we develop more complex categories of tears. These are common to all humans and have been from the beginning. We even see them in the Bible. I would . . .

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My New Year's Resolution: Be More Like Knope.

My New Years Resolution? Be more like Leslie Knope. Why?  Click over to my article at The Blazing Center to find out.

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#amNOTwriting: A Confession

So you should never begin a blog post by apologizing for “how long it’s been” since you last blogged or (worse) explaining why it’s been so very long. Writing (and Speaking) 101: always start strong, with a hook, not with a soul-suckingly boring laundry list of tedious events and obligations. But what if you’re writing about the dearth of posts? Is it okay then? Nah, still better to kick it off with something that grabs the reader, like . . .

Confession: I haven’t been writing.

If I were the kind of guy to use established hashtags on a regular basis, you’d still never see the ironically-broken-English-sounding #amwriting tag from me—at least not since last November, when I finished a short story double-header called God Rest Ye Motor City, which I think is some of my best writing to date, despite having been cranked out in just a few days. “#AmNOTwriting” is more like it (or maybe . . . “#aintwriting” to better mirror the janky grammatical issues of the original?). Yeah, every tweet and post since before Thanksgiving should be tagged with one of those. I’ve spoken at three writing conferences during that time, but I haven’t been writing anything.

I guess that’s not entirely true. I write a sermon every week. Often two. And sometimes a lesson. But that’s a whole different thing.

So what makes a just-starting-out novelist, briefly referred to as “The Suspense Author Everyone’s Talking About,” just . . . stop? I’d like to say it's kind of a Salinger thing. I’ve penned my Catcher and my Nine Stories and now I’m fading into obscurity while the world builds up my mythos. But that doesn’t work when your paperbacks are ranked in the neighborhood of 1,000,000 on Amazon and everyone’s not, in actuality, “talking about”  you. So, at the risk of reciting the aforementioned soul-suckingly boring laundry list of events, let me fill you in . . .

My two traditionally published books, Playing Saint (2014) and The Last Con (2015), have performed as one would expect the debut and follow-up of an unknown author to perform—neither breakout smash hits nor total flops. They were nominated for three awards, were finalists in all three, but won none. And, for a variety of reasons, my publisher and I parted ways. Which makes it sound like it was mutual, when in reality they had a contractual right of first refusal and they exercised that right (specifically on a proposal for a Playing Saint sequel).

So my agent sent the prop on to some other publishers, along with a proposal for a book I’m currently calling Clinch, which has a rather out-there premise, involving a paramedic, a long-lost treasure, an Indian tribe, and a woman who runs a junk shop by day and decides to become a super hero by night—all in a sleepy little Midwest tourist town. Not surprisingly, Breaking Saint (as I’ve been calling the Playing Saint, pt 2) was a none-starter. No one wants to do the sequel to a modestly-performing thriller owned by the competition. (In fact, a couple editors seemed kind of confused to have received the proposal.) And Clinch was just too unconventional, they said. Too fringe. Too niche. Too midlist. But we like the writing and please send us any future projects that are more marketable.

In early April, I decided to start another project while I waited to hear back from the remaining publishers considering these proposals. I would write a nonfiction book I’d been outlining for quite some time and serialize it, releasing a chapter at a time on The Blazing Center, an awesome online magazine that has published my work in the past. I was thinking I’d write one chapter every couple weeks. To date, I’ve written (waaaait for iiiit) one chapter. And, if I’m honest, that one was already written, almost a year earlier. Chapter 2 remains half-done. It’s been almost three months.

While #notwriitng, I’ve been barely-active on social media (at least on my author accounts), occasionally sharing the sort of stuff authors of Christian fiction are expected to share, along with a few things I actually wanted to. It’s been no secret that I’ve had something of an ongoing struggle with pandering, whether with my “image” as an author or with the actual content of my books. More on that in a future post. Suffice to say, in response to all this, I wrote most of a book proposal that I’m fairly sure would get picked up by an advance-paying publisher if I were to put it out there. And yet, I really had no interest in writing it. Or writing at all.

But wait! Come to think of it, I have been writing something over the past few months. Me and my buddy Ted Kluck have been writing a sequel to the end-times satire we put out in 2012. It’s the last thing any mainstream CBA publisher would touch. But I’m writing like an animal. Seriously, I can’t stop. Maybe because it’s refreshing to write without the pressure of trying to break out of the midlist, without dulling the sharp edges to suit the market, without subconsciously trying to target a demographic that is unlikely to get what I really want to say. Instead, I can write for the hundred or so people who actually e-mail and tweet me, asking when they can read my next book, because they loved the last one. I can write what I want to read. It’s stupid stuff at the moment (seriously, the plot involves a drug called “Ultragest” that shortens the human gestation period to six weeks), but it’s freeing in a weird way. It's the means, not the end, but it actually has me writing again.

So here’s the updated confession: My name is Zach and I’m a midlist author. (“Hiii, Zach.”) And I’m cool with it. I #amwriting, but I’m on no one’s 2016 list. It’s been nearly a year since The Last Con came out and I finally feel the desire to write again—not from without (you should have another book in the works or you'll be a year behind!), but from within.

And here’s what I see in my future: I’m not waiting for one of the Big Six (which I think have become the Big Four) to sign me again. I’m not waiting for anything.

• I’m going to finish Chapter 2 of Out of Sardis and send it to The Blazing Center.
• I’m going to finish Breaking Saint and it will be available to readers next year, even if I put it out independently. People keep asking if there will be another Parker Saint book. There will, God willing.
• And I am going to reboot my gritty, modern retelling of the story of the prophet Elijah, through a new upstart publisher where a bunch of blood and bullets are not a deal-breaker. I’m hoping to make it a trilogy.

And I’ll keep you in the loop, right in this space. Here’s a hashtag I’ll actually use: #MidlistMondays. Most Mondays for the foreseeable future, starting next Monday, I’ll explore a different aspect of life in the literary limbo where I currently reside,having decided to just get comfortable here, light up a fine cigar, and craft some books that I would want to read. Books like Playing Saint. Books like The Christian Gentleman’s Smoking Companion, which I wrote and published with Ted and which has sold almost as many copies as either of my traditionally published novels.

While I respect all the podcasts and workshops and books about how to get your foot in the door of the Publishing Machine (I even contributed to one) as well as all the advice, freely (and not-so-freely) given by industry veterans, about how to keep your career moving up and your “platform” expanding . . . when it actually quenches your desire to write, it’s time to let all that go.

Walk into your local Barnes and Noble today and I’m not sure whether you’ll find one of my books on the shelf. I actually kind of doubt it. Maybe soon they'll be on the bargain table.

But I’m writing. And that feels good.

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Moon Landings and Bad Bible Interpretations

Today, I am reviewing an incredibly important and relevant book, which you have probably never heard of. It’s called The Bible and Rockets to the Moon by Edward Boone. First off, let me apologize; you won’t be able to find this work anywhere, nor can you borrow my copy. But that’s okay, because I’m going to tell you everything you need to know about this little volume. Strap in; we’re going to hit 5 Gs.

The book begins with the bold observation that, “Radio commentators, newspapers, and magazines have been talking in terms never before used in the history of the world.” This is conveyed as a bad thing, largely because recent achievements have been so far beyond the average citizen’s understanding that they “leave the human race groping in darkness like a blind man.” I know, sounds bad.

Oh, I should mention that this little booklet was written after Sputnik and Explorer, but before Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface. And the “relevant issue” at hand is whether or not landing on the moon would be a sinful rebellion against the Almighty. I inherited this short, saddle-stitched volume from my late grandmother, who had a whole shelf full of similar booklets and pamphlets—some of them full of solid Gospel material, and a few of them more or less cookoo for Cocoa Puffs. I have no idea where she got them or what she thought of this particular book. Seriously, though; stick with me. I promise it really is relevant.

Mr. Boone attempts to use the Bible to build. . .

Click here to read the rest.



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Porn & Worship?

Yeah, it's a click-bait title, but it's not really misleading.

This is another article I wrote for The Blazing Center, which has pretty much become my favorite website over the last year or so. It's the brainchild of Stephen Altrogge (an author and songwriter who's got songs in our new church hymnal!) and Barnabas Piper (John Piper's son, who has written some great books, including the newly released Help My Unbelief). I'm planning on contributing  regularly to the site, because it is awesome.

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Remember the “worship wars” of the Eighties-and-Nineties? Churches were split over whether they should start a “contemporary service” or perhaps jump into the deep end and “go contemporary” altogether. People got mad . . . like, mad. Christians turned on each other over whether we should keep singing “Sweet Beulah Land” with the organ or start awkwardly clapping along with an acoustic guitar while sort of half-knee-bouncing our way through some “Songs from the Loft.”

I was one of the few to spend time in both trenches in this particular skirmish. Full disclosure: in college, I was in a Christian rock band called “Dead Ostrich.” Yes, I know it’s a stupid name. No, I didn’t choose it. It meant something about rejecting ignorance and apathy or . . . something. Anyway, we had a song that touched on the worship wars. The lyrics included these gems:

There you sit with your hands in your pockets
Afraid to show a little emotion.
Your friends may not approve
Your family may not approve
Your preacher might not approve[1]
But I guess it’s up to you

REFRAIN
You really make me sick
You’re such a typical Baptist

Aside: we gave a copy of our CD to Rob Bell (yes, that Rob Bell) and sat in his living room while he explained that, while he really liked the song “Typical Baptist,” we shouldn’t play it at our concerts if we were trying to reach the lost for Christ. Life is weird.

Anyway.

A few short years later, as the nineties and the worship wars wound down, I—hip-deep in cage-stage Calvinism—did a one-eighty on the topic. My reason for abandoning my college angst in favor of a premature middle age grumpiness was again rooted in emotions. Having embraced a full-on Sola Scriptura stance as well as affirming the total depravity of man, I just didn’t trust them anymore. Extreme emotions threatened to get between God’s Word and me and gum up the works. Better to stick with dusty, albeit doctrinally sound, songs that would engage my mind but little else.

In the ensuing 15-20 years, my personal pendulum has, of course, swung back from the extreme position once again. I found myself having what could be described as “emotional experiences” while worshiping God, and being almost embarrassed about it. With more study, discipleship, and maturity, I’ve come to embrace emotional worship (along with those dusty hymns), while still being on guard against some of the aspects of emotionalism that caused Calvin and Luther to scowl beneath those weird aviator-slash-scholar caps they always wore. (Note to self: get one of those caps.)

Allow me then to offer four reasons to be a little leery of emotionalism in worship and one big reason not to be . . .

CLICK HERE to read the rest of the article . . .

Improving on God's Plan

I wrote the following for The Blazing Center.

Joshua: Okay, everybody quiet down. It’s time to start this elders meeting.

[Din of talking continues among the seventy elders]

Joshua: Seriously, shut it!

[A beat]

Joshua: Alright, then. So tomorrow begins our big siege of Jer— . . .  Seriously, Jehoiarib? I see you passing that note. Stop it. Put it down. No, not in front of Tola; put it . . . You know what? Give it to me. It’s mine now. I keep.

[Note is handed down comically long line of elders, to Joshua who reads it, frowns with, like, a sort of old-lady frown if that makes sense, and then crumples it up.]

Joshua: [to Jehoiarib] You know, just because I’m a super-spy-slash-mighty-warrior who hides in the homes of high-end prostitutes, escapes out windows, slaughters the enemy, and is basically the James Bond of the Ancient Near East doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings, man. Comments like this [slightly hefts crumpled note] still hurt.

Jehoiarib:  [Studying his feet, mumbling] Sorry.

Joshua: So anyway, I’ve gotten the plan for the attack, direct from Adonai, and it is incredible. He is obviously going to do something huge and miraculous in our midst!

[General din of anticipation, which sort of sounds like some people saying “murmur murmur” under their breath while others say “watermelon, watermelon”, also under their breath]

Joshua: You all know that Jericho is straitly shut up because of the children of Israel; none go in and none come out. But God has given the city and their king and their hardest-core warriors into our hands. Here’s the plan: all the men of war in Israel will surround the city at once . . .

Read the rest of the article here.