After finishing The Book of Lights, I wanted to read another Potok book, and I chose “The Chosen” as it is the one that was sitting on the coffee table at a friends house that toggled my desire to read him again to begin with.  I read this book in one day as I flew back from CA to NC, and thought it was absolutely great.  In fact, I liked it better than The Book of Lights, which is odd because I had thought I remembered liking that book the most of all the Potok books when I read nearly everything he wrote 10-12 years ago.

I think I’ll just have a bunch of quotes in this entry…

First is the quote that started the book, by Karl Menninger:

When a trout rising to a fly gets hooked on a line and finds himself unable to swim about freely, he begins with a fight which results in struggles and splashes and sometimes an escape.  Often, of course, the situation is too tough for him.

In the same way, the human being struggles with his environment and with the hooks that catch him.  Sometimes he masters his difficulties; sometimes they are too tough for him.  His struggles are all that the world sees and it naturally misunderstands them.  It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one.

Now on to some quotes from the book:

…when a person comes to talk to you, you should be patient and listen.  Especially if that person has hurt you in any way.  [Note he doesn’t say it will be easy!]

He told me once he wishes everyone could speak in silence…  [this is a key concept in the book, but I won’t go into it here…]

No one knows he is fortunate until he becomes unfortunate… [I don’t fully agree… We can know we are blessed/fortunate, though we may not understand it fully without having something taken away…]

The Talmud says everyone should do two things for himself.  One is to acquire a teacher….  The other is to choose a friend.

… the most mysterious thing in the universe to man is man himself.

Honest difference of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a friendship.

This one needs its own quotes:

Human beings do not live forever… We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure against eternity.  So it may be asked what value is there to a human life.  There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?…  I learned a long time ago … that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing.  But the eye that blinks, that is something.  A span of life is nothing.  But the man who lives that span, he is something.  He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant.  …  A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.  It is hard work to fill one’s life with meaning.

And one more:

A man is born into this world with only a tiny spark of goodness in him.  The spark is God, it is the soul; the rest is ugliness and evil, a shell.  The spark must be guarded like a treasure, it must be nurtured, it must be fanned into a flame.  It must learn to seek out other sparks, it must dominate the shell.  [ This one is perhaps must deeper theologically than what you think at first read...]

In the past 12-24 months, I have had a growing sense of a lack of depth with the level of theology being discussed, taught, and preached in this area (the South in general 🙂 ) and in Baptist churches in particular.   This feeling has grown as I have read more books, many of which I have read due to the Classical Christian School we have worked so hard to start.   A quote from The Paideia of God by Douglas Wilson hit the nail on the head:

. . . many of those who are involved in starting up classical and Christian schools are on their own pilgrimage.  They do not have any settled doctrinal convictions but are unsettled by that fact.  They feel rootless and unequipped to teach their children.  They have begun the process regardless, and they have constantly come up against what may be described as a fundamental theological reason why their studies seem so fruitless.  They are trying to be faithful but cannot seem to get any traction.  I have seen numerous such individuals who have begun to investigate Reformed theology precisely because their previous theology (or, more likely, lack of theology) provided an inadequate foundation for the kind of eduction they wanted to provide for their children.

But even before that, I have always been drawn to theology books and had even started reading books such as What is Reformed Theology (RC Sproul) and Systematic Theology (Gruden), as well as listening to Systematic Theology courses Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS) makes available on iTunes.  Just in the past month I have heard speakers at ACCS mention the “superficiality” of the south, and I have begun asking a few local pastors their thoughts on the topic.

At any rate, I came across the following three podcasts which do a really good job of going through the history of the SBC and touch on what I would consider much deeper theology than what we typically see in today’s SBC churches.

http://www.ncbaptist.org/index.php?id=audio_koinonia

I highly recommend listening to these, especially if you are a member of a Southern Baptist Church and if you have been searching for deeper things.   For example, one point that was brought up was the submerging of doctrine to a more pragmatic and experiential view of faith took over.  Another example is how they show the root of Baptists is a combination of English Separatists, dissatisfied Anglicans, and a desire to get back to the basics of what is taught in the Bible.  They go on to say that in every way Baptists are Protestant except in their view of Baptisms (age of accountability vs. infant), and that we can in general be called “Evangelical Calvinists” (though they point out some differences in sub-aspects of what that means.  Each of these points is discussed by leading Baptist Theologians of our day.  (I may have thought that term was an oxymoron until listening to these guys talk!  😉 )  A general sense I got is that Baptists tried to be as broad in their theology as possible while maintaining primary doctrine as taught in the Bible, but let some of the more subtle differences be settled at the family or local church level.  For example, Evangelical Calvinist as a broad term does not just mean Reformed Baptist.  (I’m still trying to get my head around all of these terms and doctrines, so if I have mischaracterized anything, I apologize!)

Even if you have not felt the same lack of depth, the podcasts are worth listening to so you can get a feel for the history of the SBC — where the organization came from (and why), some foundational beliefs, and what issues it is currently facing.

And finally, they mentioned the SBC Confession of faith, which is worth a read through as well…