T.C. of an O.J.

I’ll write more on this later, but here’s a link that allows you to read Abbie Hoffman’s infamous “Steal This Book”.

I highly recommend Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”. From the first few seconds I began turning its pages, I was memorized by McCarthy’s story. I couldn’t stop thinking about it at work, when it was time to go to bed, and when I woke up in the morning. I’ve finished the novel and I still can’t stop thinking about it.

A story conceived in a post-apocalyptic world has always been my favorite setting for a tale, but few over the years have done the subject matter justice. What, zombies take over the earth again? No really, I would have never guessed.

Instead “The Road”, which was selected to Oprah’s book club and won the Pulitzer in 2007, gives a brutal, detailed account of two people, a man and a boy, who attempt to make dramatic journey to the coast in a barren, scorched and lifeless world. Food is less than scarce- the few humans that remain have turned to cannibalism.

The man desperately tries to protect the boy in this increasingly cold and hopeless world, but struggles with his own past and remaining alive in the present. Meanwhile, the only life the boy knows is one of struggle and starvation.

They were just asked to explain what grace meant and now the room of teenagers was struggling to come up with an explanation. Maybe you could blame it on the impending heat wave or the fact that the adolescent brain effectively shuts down for the summer beginning in June, but the answers given were of the mark.

“What is grace?” seems like an easy enough question, especially for a group of young evangelical-minded Christians. One suggested grace might be “forgiveness”, while another offered the kind of incoherent rambling answer you’d expect to hear if the student had slipped into a daydream during world history class and had just been unexpectedly called upon by the instructor and was now trying to answer without really knowing the question. Most just tried to quietly blend into a wall or a couch, hoping they wouldn’t be asked to answer. After minutes of failing to produce an adequate response to a seemingly simple question, a more knowledgeable older Christian stepped in after the students naively challenged him to come up with a sufficient answer.

“Grace is getting something you don’t deserve from someone who doesn’t have to give it to you”, he responded, quieting his young critics. Of course this older Christian knew the answer to this elementary question. Grace is all over the bible - it is what makes Christianity different from all other religions, gives us eternal life, and makes our Christian life work! In fact there’s a nifty little acronym to remember what grace is: “God’s riches at Christ’s expense”.

Grace is the gospel message, God’s plan to save us from ourselves. As Paul puts it in Romans, “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Grace isn’t about what we’re doing or did, rather it’s about the fact that we can’t do it and need God to do it for us. As the book of Ephesians famously says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

On this level, it is easy to explain grace. But, grace is still hard to understand. As humans, we’re programmed with pride and the feeling like we deserve certain things. Surely, if I was in God’s position, there’s no chance I’d send my son to die for a bunch of ungrateful, obnoxious creeps who are just going to spit on and mock his sacrifice anyway.

When I received a large, flat-screen television from my parents this past Christmas, I struggled with the gift. There was no denying I wanted what was in that huge cardboard box, but there was no way I could have afforded to purchase it myself. Worse, there was no way I could possibly repay my parents back with a few measly “thank you’s” and the much less-expensive gifts I would soon be embarrassed to give them. It was a humbling experience, much like God’s free gift of grace. There’s no way we can afford to purchase ourselves out of death, yet Christ comes along and pays the price for us. When we accept it, it with the knowledge that there’s no chance we’ll ever repay him.

There's always a catch, right? Illustration titled Lucky Find by Graham Roumieu

Some refuse to accept God’s grace because it feels so humiliating to admit inadequacy. Others spend the rest of their lives feeling obligated to try to reimburse God for his free gift, a notion that makes no sense, but happens anyway. After all, if it’s free, there’s no cost, right? Maybe we’re just used to our culture where “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” and there’s always a catch. It’s absolutely puzzling – along comes God and offers eternal life with no strings attached, yet most humans flat out refuse his offer! Why?

Grace is hard to handle for most; even the Christian “saved by grace” faces the seemingly constant temptation to live the Christian walk based on his or her own righteousness, not on God’s grace. In this vein, Paul rebukes the church in Galatians asking, “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” We read that spiritual growth is by God’s grace, just like salvation was.

Phillip Yancey wrote a good book called “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” In it, Yancey struggles to explain grace, instead relying on examples of what grace looks like in action. When I read, I felt completely inadequate to practice grace in my life. More often I operate like a bank’s general ledger: keeping track of the wrongs and rights I perceive people doing to me, and then writing out my own actions in payment to the corresponding person accordingly. So, in a lot of ways, I’m in the same “confused about grace” boat as the perplexed teenagers I was sitting in the room with.

Grace is a radical idea straight from God. Based on grace, we are able to walk directly into the throne room of God himself confidentially. As the writer of Hebrews, who I again surmise to be Paul, says:

Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water…

Due to Jesus’ sacrifice and his blood we are able to have direct access to God, which happens “through the veil, that is, His flesh”. As Christians, we’re baptized into Christ, and God sees us exactly as he sees Christ. We enter the throne room of God clothed in Jesus, essentially as Jesus. On one level, grace is so simple - without it we can’t have salvation, sanctification, or glorification. All three of these are the result of letting God work in our lives, not our own works. Why does God want to take us to eventual perfection? Why does he save us from death and give us a lasting purpose? The answer is he loves us, but why does he love us so much? It is hard to fathom. One thing is for sure: without grace, we’d never even get close to God’s throne, with it we can approach it with confidence.

I have long thought of Steve Martin as a sad clown, a person who is funny on stage, but always seems to have an underlying melancholy. His autobiography, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, only served to reinforce my view of Martin, while at the same time proving to be a funny, engaging, and at times, a sad read.

My opinion of Steve Martin as a funny-man is very favorable, yet Born Standing Up also gave insight into Martin’s carefully crafted, painstakingly detailed, and utterly serious approach to comedy. Determined to be noticed, appreciated and become a success despite his perceived lack of talent, Martin managed to quickly turn his time on stage into something totally functional and devoid of all fun:

“Enjoyment while performing was rare – enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford.”

Near the beginning of the book, Martin qualifies his written words; they are not representative of his entire life, rather their lone focus is on his career as a stand-up comedian.

In contrast to crude and vulgar comedy for shock value, Martin’s jokes are off-beat, zany and operate on an entirely different wavelength. His humor is smart and takes thought, something that might initially put my generation and younger ones off, but for the most part it stands the test of time. Martin is also a skilled comedy writer, having even won an Emmy penning jokes for The Smothers Brothers Show early in his career. I found myself laughing many times at both Martin’s on stage wit and the way he retold it with his meticulously selected words many years later.

Strangely, as I continued to read, I discovered Martin was a lot like me.

Steve is a deep thinker, constantly over thinking his every on stage movement days after performances in pursuit of acceptance from the audience. Often becoming twisted in thought over how an audience will react to a joke or an idea, he bombards readers with a constant stream of facts and detail. Even years later, he is able to recall the nuances of specific events in his career. Surely, he was also the only one who noticed these subtle details the first time around.

At the premiere of his now classic “The Jerk”, the audience roars with laughter almost non-stop, yet Martin still finds a way to have his feelings hurt. He wonders why the audience heads for the bathroom and the concession stand as Navin and Marie, played by Bernadette Peters, sing “Tonight You Belong to Me” as they along the beach while Martin strums the ukulele; a touching moment in the movie the sensitive Steve felt the crowd failed to appreciate.

Martin’s desire to be a successful stand-up appears to be driven by his quest for acceptance. Failed relationships and free love become lonely nights spent on the road. This translates into many years of honing the craft one-night stands until he is too famous to have them anymore.

The root of Martin’s drive during this time is his fractured and non-existent relationship with his father. However, the comedian talks about this failure with refreshing and unexpected candor:

“… [My father] offered to buy me a tuxedo. I refused because I had learned from him to reject all aid and assistance…I wish now that I had let him buy me a tuxedo, that I let him be a dad. Having cut myself off from him, and by association the rest of the family, I was incurring psychological debts that would come due years later…I tell you this story…to let you know that I am qualified to be a comedian.”

His father supported the family financially, yet was never available emotionally. At a young age, Steve grew bitter and resentful of him, remembering a childhood full of feelings of hatred towards his father.

“However [a one-time physical beating by my father] and his worsening tendency to rages directed at my mother – which I heard in fright through the thin walls of our home – made me resolve, with icy determination, that only the most formal relationship would exist between my father and me, and for perhaps thirty years, neither he nor I did anything to repair the rift. The rest of my childhood we hardly spoke; there was little he said to me that was not critical, and there was little I said back that was not terse or mumbled.”

As Martin reached super stardom, his father grew increasingly critical. Steve countered as he knew how- by cutting him off:

“[My father, after seeing me appear as a guest host gave an interview and] said, ‘I think Saturday Night Live is the most horrible thing on television.’ I suppressed anything I felt about his comments…But as my career progressed, I noticed that my father remained uncomplimentary toward my comedy…I never discussed my work with him again.”

Many years later, as his father lay dying, Steve reconciled with the dad who he felt never accepted him:

“At last [my father on his deathbed] said, ‘You did everything I wanted to.’ ‘I did it for you’, I said. Then we wept for lost years. I was glad I didn’t say the more complicated truth: ‘I did it because of you.’”

Despite fortune, fame, and a roaring laugh track, Martin could never escape the problems created by his dysfunctional relationship with his father. Although he thought he was escaping them when he foraged out into the world on his own and broke into comedy, he carried them with him wherever he went, as if they were packed along to travel in his suitcase.

Steve Martin performs on stage

From starting off as a young boy at Disneyland to packing sold-out stadium shows as an adult, for all the success Martin was able to accomplish, he found himself alone at the apex of comedy facing the pressure to deliver constant laughs. While the nation was spewing catch phrases like, “Excuuuuse me!” which he coined, Martin was unable to enjoy the fame and fortune success afforded him becoming even more lonely and burnt out touring the country. He had no real friends or relationships, his sole interaction coming nightly with a mass gathering of people who wanted to see his show. Afterwards, he would retreat to an isolated hotel room before collapsing for the night to wake up and perform again.

“Though audiences continued to grow, I experienced a concomitant depression caused by exhaustion, isolation, and creative ennui. As I was too famous to go outdoors…my romantic interludes ceased…I no longer had normal access to civilized life. The hour and a half spent on stage was still fun, but there were…no others on stage, and after the show, I took a solitary ride back to the hotel…and boom…nowhere to look but inward…it seemed like a near coma was the best way to spend the day…this was, as the cliché goes, the loneliest period of my life.”

Of course, Martin looks back on all this as older and wiser now, an elder statesman of comedy and film. Accept for the implications of his broken relationship with his family and father, little outside of his career in stand up comedy is mentioned. But, Martin’s story is a clear lesson for boys and girls attempting to pack their suitcases and run to a life of their own while thumbing their noses at Mom and Dad: your problems with home will impact the rest of your life.

closet cleaning…

On Kalie’s recommendation- she said it was “unlike anything you’ve ever read”, the same friend who suggested I read “All Quiet on the Western Front” which was one of the best books I’ve read, I borrowed “Haroun and the Sea of Stories”.

An easy book to read, I enjoyed Haroun. I could imagine myself reading this to my child in the future or picture myself reading this when I was in seventh grade and loving every second of it. At the same time, probably I enjoyed this book more at age 24 then I ever could have at a younger age.

A young boy, Haroun, goes on a quest after his father’s ability to tell stories vanishes. Along the way, he discovers the fables his father has been telling are actually true. During his adventure, he encounters all kinds of unique characters and dilemmas, which are exciting to read but beneath the surface represent a host of real world problems.

Like any great book, I didn’t want to see any pictures or images of what others thought the characters and places in Haroun looked like, I wanted my imagination to form its own images. With the way Rushdie writes the book, this is easy to do. Beautiful, descriptive language is combined with exotic sounding Indian and Arabic titles along with other playfully and silly names. The characters and places are unique, yet they have a familiar feeling. Haroun’s journey brings to mind other well-known classics like Alice in Wonderland, The Never Ending Story, The Beatles’ “I am the Walrus”, and Star Wars.

Remember my defense of Men and Women?

Every so often, parents will tell laughable tales of their small children, who when at play with others of opposite sex in Kindergarten for the first time inappropriately begin curiously comparing what lies in their underpants. It is obvious to even the youngest minds that boys and girls are different, but the challenge according to Dr. Larry Crabb is “becom[ing] men and women who enjoy the difference.”

In “Men and Women: Enjoying The Difference”, Crabb aims to identify and isolate not the glaring physical and sexual differences between male and female, but the deeper, more controversial, and oft debated diversities that lie in our make-up and design as God’s creatures. In painstakingly thorough fashion, the experienced Christian relationship counselor isolates the biggest barrier he perceives in preventing husband and wife from attaining maximum enjoyment and potential in marriage. It turns what could have been 50 pages into a 213 page exercise of discipline, but for those aiming to become better husbands and wives, it’s worth it. According to Crabb, the festering roadblock of good marriages is self-centeredness.

It's a one-eyed monster!

I’ll show you mine if you show me yours…

For Christians, self-centeredness is an old enemy many thought they’d eradicated by receiving Christ or intellectually acknowledging. Not so, says Crabb: Selfishness is a parasitic disease of the flesh we must constantly and humbly turn to God for help with in brokenness if we hope for any chance for success in our marriages. “No one marries with plans to be miserable” , explains Crabb, but somewhere along the way all falter. Spouses point fingers, scream and yell, and often eventually forget why they loved each other or even got married in the first place. There is no instant answer for martial bliss, instead in repentance we must shift our way of thinking to God’s; a good relationship isn’t “one that provides us with whatever we need to feel happy” , it’s something radically different.

For most of the first half of the book, Crabb spends his effort lecturing on what does not instead of what actually does makes marriage work. In addition, he spends a great deal of time extolling the differences between the traditional and egalitarian view of relationships rather than actually talking about his view of the sexes. After much qualifying and explaining, when he finally does get to the point- that differences and gender roles are meaningless unless we first establish others-centeredness, it’s well taken. Pounding it home like a the noise of a jackhammer on a throbbing headache, Crabb repetitively ensures that readers will realize arriving at an others-centered mindset is the vital first step in a good relationship. Those who wish to glance over the problems their selfishness poses in search of easy, practical, chug-and-plug solutions will loathe Dr. Crabb’s book.

Smartly, the arrival at the realization of self-centeredness is a crucial one because God’s design and Crabb’s counsel to every difficulty in marriage can’t be answered by a step by step repair manual. Instead, God created men and women to perfectly complement each other and provide for one another’s needs in ways that the other of opposite sex could otherwise never have met if not for their partner. Out of the marriage relationship drips God’s genius and creativity, which Crabb shares with readers is because our creator enjoys a similar and more perfect version in the confines of the trinity. The Trinity’s “way of relating”, explains Crabb, “is so radically right that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, in some mysterious but profoundly meaningful way, can be regarded as one.” By this perfect example, “A good relationship is one in which each member willingly and actively devotes whatever he or she has to give to the well being of the other…the highest criterion for deciding what to do at any moment is a person’s understanding before God of what would be the greatest service he or she can offer to the other.”

Part two of the book, “How Relationships Do Work: The Difference Men and Women Can Enjoy”, should be required reading for those wishing for long lasting relationships. Crabb gets to the real goods here and shares his insights on what make men and women so radically different, yet fully equipped for relationship with one another. Again, like a broken record, he extols, “We must get it out of our heads that there is only one right course of action to take in every situation…we must be committed to other-centeredness” and then builds upon his earlier writing, adding that “living biblically in relationship requires courage to make risky decisions that come out of hearts wanting above all else to give.”

Although both “have the authority to serve one another” , Crabb finally, after much wrangling and explaining, concludes men and women are truly and biblically different. “A husband exercises headship over a wife when he expresses his manhood toward her, when he gently but strongly leads her with a strength that is not afraid to become deeply involved.” A man “wants to know that he can move toward a woman and touch her deeply.” As the creator, “God has placed within [a man] exactly what his wife longs to enjoy and what can encourage her to become all she was meant to be.”

Conversely, “a wife’s special resources as a woman consist primarily of an attitude of nourishing, unpanicked supportiveness and warm, not biting acceptance.” As I see in my own wife, a woman’s “goal…is to use [all these] resources in a fashion that has the power to draw her husband into a stronger commitment to God and into more godly involvement with her.”

For me, the book “Men and Women” walks hand in hand with the Love Ethics course we’re currently taking. As I consider how to stimulate my wife to better love and serve others instead of formulate some selfish plot to have her meet my needs, our marriage has grown. Just last Wednesday night after class, as we lay down to bed together, something unusual happened. As usual, she was grumpy and tired and so was I, but after a few tense moments of bickering back and forth, I turned my thoughts to God and to recently learned Love Ethics. “Tell me a secret”, I whispered and took a risk, thinking of the most illogical show-stopping reversal of my always logical personality I could. “Are you serious?” she cautiously questioned back before the conversion quickly moved into hours of honesty, laughter, concern, and overall open spiritual exchange between me and my wife. I’ve been in a relationship with Lauren for more than 8 years, but I communicated and shared things with her I had previously never shared in a way I never had and she did the same. The craziest part was at 1:30 am in the morning, nether of us wanted it to end. Strangely, it all began with an effort to focus on and serve my wife in a way that would meet her needs.

Maybe, I thought, I was being too harsh on the 1972 movie based on “Slaughterhouse Five”. I mean, here I was casting a remake of a movie I had never seen. Hollywood is always doing this- remaking classic movies that have no business being remake and adding nothing, for what?

So before I launched into pre-production for my imaginary film, I decided to watch the ’72 version, apparently approved by Vonnegut himself.

I thought the movie was OK. Surprisingly, people have mostly good things to say about it. But, Halfway through, I was getting bored. The movie was just EHHHHH. Of course, this never happened with the book.

The shmoe cast as Billy Pilgrim was my main gripe: Billy wasn’t Billy enough for me. Not spacey, daydreamy enough. The alien abduction was as lameo as it gets: seriously, a floating light blob? I guess there wasn’t a huge budget allocation for special effects. However, There were some good things about the movie- I thought the scene where Valencia crashed her Cadillac was great- way more over the top then the book- she was driving her car up and down hills and smashing into things, simply losing her mind that Billy was in a plane crash! When we start shooting the remake, I think Ginny Sack will have to flip out on this level.

The movie was just OFF. The filmmakers failed to capture the essence of the book. Of course, no easy task, but we have to remake this sucker and try.

L-Lo

How’s the weather on Tralfamadore, Ms. Lohan?

I’m thinking some more changes need to be made now that I’ve seen the movie version. The ’72 Montana Wildhack was WAY off. She was too ordinary, not glamorous enough. Originally, we planned to cast Blake Lively in the role. I think the Gossip Girl star would do well, but initially we overlooked the PERFECT actress for the part. In the novel, Montana is a 20 year old starlet who wears the serenity prayer around her neck. In real life, Lindsay Lohan is a talented but troubled actress that desperately needs a good role to get her career back on track. I Know Who Killed Me wasn’t it. This is the role L-Lo was born to play- from earth starlet to Tralfamadore wife; this is how the Mean Girls star gets her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

In the film, Paul Lazzaro was played by a brash actor that reminded me of a young Al Pacino. I don’t know if we can get him, but let’s land Michael Imperioli, AKA Christopher Moltisanti, another Sopranos Alum to play the part.

Oh yeah, and we really need to cast Christopher Walken as Wild Bob, the loopey old commander that gives orders to the POW’s as if he were still on the front lines. I’m sure Mr. Walken will agree to the part, all he does these days is play these crazy cameo roles anyway!

I just finished reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five last night. An amazing book, it’s written like a crazy, yet coherent daydream. I raced through it, marking the pages with memorable passages on them. After reading the book during lunch one day at work, I found myself lost in the story. For a few moments had a difficult time returning to reality and remembering what I was doing before I started reading.

To me, this is the mark of an excellent book- you can’t put in down because you’re totally engulfed by it. When you’re not reading, you’re thinking about it. Then, when you finish reading it, you wish there was more.

I suppose some of you were forced to read Slaughterhouse Five in high school and find this to be old news. But apparently, the book was made into a motion picture in 1972. However, that didn’t stop me from casting the major roles of the novel in my imagination as I read. Like all good books, Slaughterhouse Five vividly painted scenes in my head. I know it would have been a lot less fun to read the book if I’d already seen the movie adaptation.

The main character, Billy Pilgrim, would of course have to be played by a Hollywood newcomer in my imaginary blockbuster. That’s why I chose Steve Beech to play the part. He’s the perfect tall, lanky, awkward Billy. Sometimes, I watch Steve Beech daydreaming. Now I’ll wonder if he’s time traveling on Tralfamadore when he stares off into space.

Billy’s earth wife, Valencia, would be played by the same actress that played Ginny Sack on the Sopranos. I envisioned Ginny behind the wheel of the Cadillac as she hurriedly poisons herself by driving a smashed up “body-and-fender man’s wet dream” that’s been in an accident to see Billy in the hospital.

Ginny Sack

Ginny Sack as Valencia

Science fiction writer Kilgore Trout would be played by Malcolm McDowell circa Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween. McDowell’s white hair, beard, snooty and unlikable English accent would be ideal. Somehow, I can see Malcolm drawing on his A Clockwork Orange experience as he crazily laughs and then hacks up an olive that lands between a woman’s breasts at Billy’s dinner party.

Roland Weary, the self-proclaimed hero and leader of the three musketeers who “saves” Billy against his wishes would be played by Jon Favreau, of Swingers fame, but circa his role in The Replacements.

Strangely, the part of weasely and vengeful Paul Lazzaro was played by the same imaginary character that I pictured for Dick Hickock when I read Capote’s In Cold Blood. The person I picture was really no one in particular, just a greasy twisted coward of a man. I’m sure we can dig up somebody when the studio green lights my project.

Edgar Derby the heroic, chiseled, middle aged leader of Billy’s rag-tag POW squad in Dresden will be played by Javier Bardem, who cashes in on his recent No Country For Old Men fame. The role could also be played by George Clooney, but due to budget concerns the producers went in a different direction.

Javier Bardem

Javier Bardem as Edgar Derby

Montana Wildhack, the young twenty-something motion picture star, would be played by Blake Lively, of Gossip Girl fame. Billy compares her curvature to Dresden architecture. Ticket sales and buzz increase by having one of Hollywood’s current “it” girls attached to the project.

Blake Lively

Serena Van der Woodsen as Montana Wildhack

Steve Buscemi would reprise the role he’s played a million times by playing the part of Eliot Rosewater the loony Kilgore Trout enthusiast. Rosewater introduces Billy to Trout’s obscure writings while the two share a hospital room.

Buscemi

Buscemi as Rosewater

Bertram Copeland Rumfoord, the tough war vet who despises Billy and refuses to believe he could have survived the infamous fire bombings in Dresden while they inhabit the same hospital room would be played by action star Bruce Willis. Kristen Bell, of Veronica Mars fame, would play Lily Rumfoord, his trophy wife and proof that he’s a superman.

Note: This is not the report I was required to write for Love Ethics class on “Men and Women”, that will likely come later, rather something I felt compelled to write in addition.

I have been hearing grumblings from everyone who chose to read “Men and Women” Enjoying the Difference”, by Dr. Larry Crabb, for Love Ethics Class. While I agree the book was extremely difficult to read, now that I’m finished I compare my experience reading “Men and Women” with running cross country.

Most would assume I chose to run cross country and track because I enjoyed running, which wasn’t the case. Although I never remember missing a practice or meet, it wasn’t because I didn’t want to. In fact, I’d often spend the majority of my time before a race or a long run thinking about how much I didn’t want to run. I’d secretly wish I was hurt or had an excuse not to participate, but I always managed to push through these thoughts and start putting one foot in front of the other. Running is physically challenging, I believe that it’s actually unnatural for a human body, but more than that, when your mind and body are screaming for you to slow down and stop, running is an intense exercise in mental discipline.

But, I look back on my time as a runner longingly and still enjoy running when I can convince myself to lace up my shoes. After running multiple miles and pushing myself past the point I thought I could, there’s an intense satisfaction in knowing you worked hard, not to mention the calm “runner’s high” that sets in minutes after you’ve crossed the finish line. In the end, the result is worth the effort expended.

Reading Dr. Crabb’s book is like making your way through a thick, swampy Amazon jungle when just in the distance there seems to be a safer, easier short cut that’s already been blazed. Not surprisingly, Dr. Crabb writes like he lectures, having heard him earlier this year, he seems to have difficulty fully articulating his complex spiritual thoughts. Readers have to patently navigate and wade through a murky muck of thoughts and not-yet-ripe-ideas that are tangled and intertwined with valuable nuggets of godly insight. In “Men and Women”, Crabb spends too much time over qualifying and explaining his reasoning than he does actually dolling it out. He spends more effort talking about what’s not instead of what really is- points on the traditional and Egalitarian views of relationships may not be exciting for highly enlightened Xenos readers, but this probably isn’t Dr. Crabb’s intended audience.

All this makes “Men and Women’ frustrating to those looking for a quick read on relationship troubles. Men and women thumbing through the pages for easy answers to difficult marriage problems will become frustrated because Dr. Crabb isn’t a McDonald’s drive-through for marriage building; the problems he aims to uncover are festering infections that readers will need to prayerfully struggle with for days, months, and even years to see results.

Demanding

I’m not selfish! Just give me the damn answers I need, Crabb!

For the duration of the book, Dr. Crabb emphasizes that selfishness is the cancerous center of our problems and inability to make relationships work. To put it simply, no one likes to read a book on how much they suck. As a Christians, we nod our heads in agreement and impatiently wait for our author to move on. Only, he doesn’t and keeps expending page after page, repetitively urging us to address our core problem with selfishness. Not until the closing pages of the book does he finally address the original questions of difference between male and female he first set out to. Believers, especially Xeniods accustomed to practical application served up on a silver platter, will quickly grow tired of “Men and Women’s” lengthy approach. I thought to myself, “Shouldn’t this have been a 50 page manual instead of 213 pages of confusion?” Reading along, I wanted to yell at the book, “I know I’m selfish- now move on to the part where you give advice that helps ME!”

But, my obvious selfishness, laughable after the fact but indiscernible to me at the time, illustrates Crabb’s point perfectly. After trudging through the book begrudgingly, Crabb’s points began to eat away at the selfish ways in which I interact with my wife, my family, and my friends. According to Crabb, we wish to brush selfishness off like we’d check taking out the trash off a list of chores to do. I spoke with one person who claimed that they adequately realized they had a deep-seeded problem with selfishness the first time it was mentioned in the book, then attempted to list the ways they wished “Men and Women” was written. While I agree the book wasn’t authored exactly how I would have liked, to disqualify or merely glance over points Dr. Crabb makes because he isn’t making them in the way you’d like is completely absurd! Instead, selfishness is a destructive and terminal problem that we desperately need to realize pervades our ability to have any success in relationships. Dr. Crabb insists that to be able to love each other in a godly and others centered way, we must first deal with the monstrous beast of self that lies inside each of us.

The Imposing Beast Within

The Imposing Beast Within

At one point in “Men and Women”, Crabb illustrates just how far reaching the evil of selfishness is when he exposes how we often explain away our cruelty and impatience for people by our “bad day”, while we hold others responsible for their actions regardless of their circumstances. This point stuck with me especially on a day like today, when my head is pounding and I feel like people should be respectful and keep their distance. We all expertly and naturally excuse our own selfish thoughts and behavior. Often, I feel bothered and aggravated by my wife after a come home from a hard day or from a night of relating with my high school ministry. I’m appalled that she’d think I could be capable of hearing her concerns and worries too; after all, I’m spent emotionally. Can’t I just watch TV in silence and get a backrub?

Suicide Teddy

Nobody understands me! I’ll show them!

I can’t say for sure, but I’m willing to hypothesize those with a problem with Dr. Crabb’s “Men and Women” haven’t yet begun to realize the extent of their own selfishness. Often, just the tip of selfishness is exposed in our lives and doesn’t seem like much of a problem, but the majority of selfishness lies beneath the surface like an iceberg waiting to rip a marriage to shreds. Selfishness is a life-long disease we live with as fallen beings and can’t be ignored. Heed Crabb’s warnings- deal with it and in prayer turn to God for help. Until we individually are crushed by selfishness, we are either naïve or just haven’t yet established a close personal relationship with someone. To become others centered, the point where we can have supernatural success in relationships, requires nothing less than constant dependence on the Lord with the crushing realization that selfishness dominates your life.

Like running, the experiences most worthwhile in life are those that require struggle and hardship. Then, when you’re able to cross the finish line in the end, you look back on the other side and see it was all worth it. Thankfully, as believers, we don’t have to go through life alone, or remain crushed under the weight of failed relationships. God is waiting to help us through the arguments, sleepless nights, conflicts, and struggles we will undoubtedly incur while pursuing deep, meaningful relationships. Although it could have been a little shorter, I’m thankful for “Men and Women”.