Got It Covered

So the cover is complete. I'm pretty psyched about it. I'm thinking it will help the book jump off the shelf and grab people's attention in October when it is released.

Great New Books to Check Out!

I will be unleashing some awesome news (and visuals) re: my upcoming book Playing Saint very soon!

In the meantime, here are some other great books to check out:

Great deal and a giveaway with the release of Terri Blackstock's latest thriller.

Lip Reading, the latest from Harry Kraus, about an impossible choice: save yourself or help millions?

And check out the ebook giveaway of Lynette Eason's Too Close to Home. FREE for Kindle and Nook.

Why It's Okay For Christians to See the Noah Movie Even Though It's Not Perfectly Biblically Accurate

It's just a movie.

Hell Frozen Over?

Last week, my son and I went to see Frozen in the theater. I'd only seen the teaser trailer with the living snowman and the dog-like reindeer, so I had little idea what it was about, but it looked like fun. It turns out it's about a misunderstood, quirky princess who feels like life in the palace is keeping her back from truly expressing herself (Cf. every Disney movie ever).

You should stop reading here if you want to avoid spoilers, as I'm about to jump right to the climax of the film. The queen's magic power-slash-curse has frozen the whole kingdom in an eternal winter and accidentally frozen the heart of her sister, who is now about to die as a result. She's been told that only an act of true love can melt her frozen heart and save her life.

Of course, the guy she thought she was in love with is really pretty evil and the "fixer-upper" guy she's been adventuring with (named Kristoff) is clearly her true love after all. The snow clears just long enough for them to see each other, and they are closing in for the kiss.

That's when my pastor-brain clicked: what a great sermon illustration this would be! Not unlike The Matrix when the kiss of Trinity brought The One back after he sacrificed himself, this would be a picture of how Christ (duh, Kristoff as Christ a la The Truman Show) saves us from the terminal ice in our hearts, etc., etc.  But then Princess Anna saw her sister about to be killed by the Surprise Bad Guy and she veered off course, thrusting herself in the path of the sword, turning to ice just in time to stop the blade and save her sister. The sword shattered (for some reason), and my pastor-brain started trying to spin this in a way that would save the potential sermon illustration.

Before it could, though, Anna turned back into flesh and bone, saved by her own act of love, rather than the love of Christ(off).  Then the whole eternal winter (see "curse of sin," a la The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe) thawed and everyone was saved. What a shame: another humanist message encrypted in a children's show, designed to teach kids that the Answer lies within themselves. It sucked that it turned out to be a borderline-satanic story because the music was amazing, the story compelling (by Disney standards), and the jokes side-splitting. Oh well; file it under "anti-Christian propaganda" with most everything else. Right?

My brain started filling in the details: the Ice Queen had created life (at least two sentient snow creatures) and we had seen her holding an orb and scepter, like many Gods (including Christ) have been portrayed, and her father wore a Maltese cross with a dove on it. All of this points toward: you don't need Jesus; you can save yourself. In fact, hadn't she kind of saved God? Now I was getting mad.

This all happened inside my head in less than a second. It doesn't take any time or thought because the neural pathways have been well-worn by a lifetime of similar paranoid thought all around me in the Church: from back-masking records in the eighties to sounding the alarm re: Harry Potter and such more recently. Everything that's not explicitly Christian in message is fair game to be called out as the very opposite.

But WHY? This is exactly the kind of revisionist reader hermeneutic the Church has been railing against in recent years; so why do we selectively reinforce it? Because here's the thing: much like AC/DC never stood for "Against Christ, Devil's Children" (in fact, the name came from the side of a sewing machine!), Kristoff was not named such in order to be a Christ figure, but as an homage to Hans Christian Anderson, who wrote The Snow Queen (along with Characters Hans and Anna). I was importing the very stuff that was raising my ire.

It would be just as easy to go in the other direction: Ilsa, the princess, has been cursed from birth with a dreadful disease that turns everything to ice. After fighting it for most of her life, she gives in to it and embraces it as her identity (singing, "I can't hold it in any more...no right, no wrong, no rules for me...") only to find that this makes everything a million times worse. She is about to perish when she is saved by an act of self-sacrifice, followed by a resurrection. Well, from that angle, this sounds like a downright Christian story!

But it's neither. How about we just let stories be what they are, say what they want to say, and entertain us? If a story is well-told, it glorifies God who gives us the gift to write, read, and appreciate story. And unless it blatantly promotes sin or a false Gospel, we can probably enjoy it for what it is with profit. Rarely does children's fare stray beyond the odd fart joke and, honestly, the intentionally anti-religion stuff (like The Golden Compass, alt title: The World's Least Original Book/Movie) is so rare at this point that we can probably dial back the conspiracy-minded paranoia.

If you haven't seen Frozen, you should go see it soon, even though I already gave away the ending. We braved the epic snowpocalypse after church today and the whole family enjoyed it, this time in 3D! It was even better the second time. I'm glad I didn't let my pastor-brain run out of control on me and taint a really great story, even though we had to deal with a three-foot snow drift over the car upon exiting the theater. Worth it.

The cold never bothered me anyway.



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All My Exes...

So here’s the saddest thing I’ve seen this week. I was driving up Pennsylvania Ave. yesterday and noticed a big red X on the back of a car, up ahead of me in the turn lane. Human nature being what it is, I was immediately curious what this driver was so "anti-" as to prompt him or her to feature it on the finite space of his or her back window, publicly objecting to its very existence. So I tried to inch ahead in my lane and see what it was.

I’ve always been curious about such things. Remember those tasteless stickers of cartoon Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes fame)...er...relieving himself onto the Ford logo (or Chevy or Ohio State or whatever)? Despite being kind of crass and a blatant violation of international copyright law, they were a fascinating study in what motivates people to go on record—for the world to see—as someone who hates a particular brand, school, city, or even a group of people.

As I drove past the car in question, though, I saw that it was not a group of people but one particular person who was bearing the wrath of this driver. You know those too-cute-by-half little stick people families that people put on the back of their cars (read: minivans)? The kind that show Mom and Dad and Brother and Sister and dog and even sometimes goldfish in stick-form? Well, this car had three people on it: Mom, Dad, and a toddler I’m guessing (I drove by rather quickly). And affixed over either Mom or Dad was the big red X.

That sight killed my good mood with record speed. I began thinking about what could create such bitterness, such that using a razor blade to remove the offending person was not enough. No, this person’s sticker had to remain there with an X over them. I deemed it unlikely right off the bat that he or she had died. More likely there had been a split.  Either the father (or mother) split and left his spouse to raise the child alone, or there had been an angry, toxic split over a disagreement or series of disagreements or something and their parting had been on vicious enough terms to warrant the big red X.

In that moment, I think I would have done anything in my power to reconcile those two people—at least to the point where the X could come down. And I began thinking about whether I’ve ever been angry enough with another person to try and hold them up to public shame—to feature them X’d out (or the victim of an licensed, urinating cartoon Calvin) on the back window of my car. 

Sadly, the answer is yes.

I haven’t actually done it because it sounds like a lot of work and because seminary students and ministers have to stay above reproach and because I wouldn’t want to tip my hand that I’d been that hurt or that affected by someone else...but there have been a good (bad?) number of times when I have burned a bridge so completely that it wouldn’t have been too big a step to throw them up on my back window.

Sometimes it doesn’t take much to kickstart a conflict that will end with such a complete breaking of ties and trust. A little slight on the part of one party, blown up and bottled up by the other. A comment said in the heat of the moment. And before you know it, a big red X has been applied, if not on the back windshield, at least in the heart and mind of the offended one.

And that’s usually how the story ends. My experience is that we humans generally long for reconciliation, but are notoriously unwilling to take the first step. We want to hear someone else humble himself and apologize first. We want them to make the move to cross the chasm between us, even if we know deep down that we are the ones to blame for that chasm.

This is, in a sense, the story of Scripture. It was not a petty spat or mutual squabble that fractured our relationship with our God; it was one-sided. It was all us. We didn’t want to submit to his will. We wanted to make our own rules, find our own way, do our own thing. So we bent our wills away from his and put a big red X over the God who created, loved, and sustained us. And despite that fact, even as the Old Testament relates the unfolding and re-developing of a relationship between God and man, it’s never us who initiates it. God makes the first move—in a burning bush, on the top of a mountain, in the hearts of those he calls. Like a slighted friend or spouse, we sat in our corner, stewing, hardening our hearts all the more, unwilling to even try and make the first move.

And so Christ came to us. He took and flesh and dwelt with us. He fed us and washed our feet. He died on a cross for our sins. And, in Christ, God reconciled the world to himself. He didn’t just remove the red X we’d placed over him; he gave us a new heart so that we could remove it.

And with that new heart, we ought to approach our relationships with each other differently. When Christ has rebuilt our bridge at the cost of his very life, how can we be quick to burn our own bridge with others? How can we collect red X’s in our minds like the tick marks on the side of a WWII fighter plane? How can we be unwilling to make the first move toward repentance and reconciliation when a chasm has grown between us and a neighbor, friend, family member, or co-worker?

I've recently preached on I Corinthians 13 twice (once on a Sunday morning and once at a funeral) and been twice reminded that love keeps no record of wrongs. And as Jesus reminded Simon the Pharisee, whoever has been forgiven much, loves much. When I’ve been forgiven a record like mine, it makes no sense to X out people based on their record with me. I pray that God will continue to give all of us, more and more, the same mind that was in Christ Jesus and give us the grace and perseverance to carry on loving one another.

Do you have a red X you need to remove? If so, the best way is to ask God to do it. And while you’re asking, let him know that you might put another one on without even thinking about it, and you’d like him to take that one off too. And the next one. The good news is that someday, we’ll run out of red X’s.

You Changed My Title.

So I'm experiencing all this Big Publisher stuff for the first time, firsthand. (My wife works for a major publisher, frequently from home, so I've watched much of the process from a detached distance many times over.) You tell yourself you're going to be ready for the editor's notes and the possibility that they might change your title and not like your cover concept, and you're going to be the least-difficult author they've ever had. 

But then it actually happens. And you feel the little man who lives in your ego poking his head out, saying, "You're wrong; all my ideas are perfect."  <sigh>

The title I wanted for my book was Demoniac. I thought it was punchy, evocative, memorable, etc. They thought it sounded like a horror story (when it's actually a character-driven suspense-slash-action-slash-comedy with supernatural elements). They also thought people would have a hard time pronouncing it (is it a long or short O?) I hated their first alternate suggestion, but tried to get used to it. Then I finally told them I hated it and together we came up with a title we can all love.

The new title is Playing Saint.  It's got layers of meaning (i.e., the main character Parker Saint is acting the part of a Christian and someone else is "playing him" as well). It's punchy, it rolls off the tongue easily, and I think it's fairly memorable.

And here's the thing: it's way better than Demoniac.

The same thing is true about the notes I received from my editor and a freelance editor. Some of them would have changed the essence of the story, so I pushed back on those. Others were obviously great ideas. Still others needed some time to digest and some back-and-forth to refine.  But at the end of the day, it will be far better. The book on bookstore shelves next October will be far and away better than the book that would have existed if I had gone the self-controlled imprint route again.

You may be worried about getting tied to an agent and submitting your work to publishers, afraid that you'll lose control and what comes out at the end of the day won't really be you. But the truth is that it will be the best version of you it can be.

And I think, especially for a Christian, the exercise of letting go and listening to others and letting them improve you, is a vital one and will serve us well in developing our character and refining us as people and as disciples.

I Kissed Lanie Goodbye

Remember that one book that every high school and college-aged Evangelical female read during the nineties, called I Kissed Dating Goodbye? Remember Seinfeld? Ever wonder why no one had tried to combine them?

Us too.

Click here to read our white paper, I Kissed Lanie Goodbye: What Evangelicals Can Learn from the Relationships of Seinfeld’s Elaine Bennes.