Food for Thought

On the Reading of Old Books by C.S.Lewis

Not Praying Jabez by J. Daryl Charles

Praying With Jesus by James M. Kushiner

God's Books by Donald Grey Barnhouse

Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?

Could You Have Passed the 8th Grade in 1895?

"We believe in absolute Truth." But do we? by D.A. Carson

C.S. Lewis on the reading of Old Books---

"Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. And I would give him this advice precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusive contemporary diet. A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light...The only safety is to have a standard of plain, central Christianity which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective. Such a standard can be acquired only from old books. It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have red an old one in between.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to making certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook---even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it...None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them."

From God in the Dock, Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids Michigan, pp.201-202
ISBN: 0-8028-1456-5

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Not Praying Jabez---a Little Book with a Big Problem

While the religious book publishing industry is currently experiencing something of a boom, one book---all 93 pages of it has taken the industry by storm, putting its publisher, tiny Multnomah Press of Sisters, Oregon, on the map overnight. As of this writing, sales of Bruce Wilkinson’s best-seller, The Prayer of Jabez, are somewhere between eight and ten million (it is difficult to be precise, since the volume is flying off the shelves as fast as the shelves allow themselves to be stocked).

While people outside the Protestant Evangelical community might wonder what all the fuss is about, The Prayer of Jabez (PJ) needs no introduction to Evangelicals, who, based on sales, really do believe that the book is not merely the best thing since, but better than, sliced bread.

Long before I actually picked up a copy of the book to read for myself (based on moral principle, I absolutely refused to purchase what would have been sales number 8,473,529 of PJ), my initial impression of the book stemmed from how it is being marketed. One religious book distributor is selling PJ in packs of ten---which helps explain why the book is selling like hotcakes. Evidently, the excitement being generated by mass sales has created something of a "Jabez culture" within Evangelicalism. Inside the back cover of PJ, for example, I read that I can order The PJ Leather Edition, The PJ Journal, The PJ Devotional, The PJ Bible Study, The PJ for Teens, and The PJ Gift Edition. The latest religious book catalog informs me that I can now buy The PJ for Kids, The PJ for Little Ones, and yes, Jabez: A Novel. (Of course, I personally am awaiting The PJ Canadian Version for Parents of Children with RADS [Religious Attention Deficit Syndrome]). If that’s not enough, another catalog tells me the good news that the "extraordinary [Jabez] movement" has now been "captured in song" and is available on CD.

I was clearly one of the few Evangelical Protestants who had not yet read the book by the time the fall of 2001 rolled around. But my students forced the issue. "What do you think of The Prayer of Jabez?" was the constant query being thrown my way, whether in class or through e-mail. After all, teaching theology at a pan-Evangelical institution, I could hardly claim ignorance on (or indifference to) a matter that was touching every corner of the religious tradition of which I am a part. What was so captivating about this tiny volume that was taking Evangelicalism by storm? Wherein lay its grand appeal? When I finally read The Prayer of Jabez, I discovered that the author is to be commended for his desire to be "used by God." Zeal is certainly not a quality he lacks. Additionally, the reader cannot help but sense that the author has a high regard for scriptural authority; in his view, the Bible is to be believed, period. Finally, the reader is struck by the extraordinary passion with which the author seeks---and exhorts the reader to seek---divine favor. These attitudes stamp themselves indelibly on every page of the volume.

Conspicuous as these virtues are, however, they are not enough to offset the books flaws---flaws that run deep and require some commentary. Several recurring themes are troubling: in particular, the author’s emphasis on the miraculous as normative and the book’s very self-centered (rather than Christ-centered) focus on receiving personal blessing. (Both are reminiscent of the "health-and-wealth" heresy prominent in some conservative Protestant circles in the 1970s and 1980s.) The former gives an unrealistic and unhealthy impression of normal Christian living, while the latter reinforces psychotherapeutic tendencies that dominate contemporary culture.

Given the absence of any nuanced definition or understanding of "blessing," several questions scream at the reader. For example, is God not blessing me when I must taste death or walk through a dark valley? Can blessing be imparted at all by means of suffering? Where is God’s blessing when I must grapple with divine hiddenness or silence? And what is to be said for St. Pauls’ "I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound," an attitude that offers us "the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need" (Phil.4:11-12)? Perhaps the apostle had it all wrong after all.

These questions cannot be answered rightly with the book’s definition of blessing. Properly understood, the divine intention is that we mature, not that we seek after "blessing." The author’s guiding assumption that God wants to "enlarge" my "territory" and "expand" by "influence" is also troubling. He never stops to consider that perhaps a person is not ready for "enlargement," in which case to "pray for larger borders" is ill-informed, ill-advised, ill-suited, and thus, unwise.

In truth, to find contentment in one’s present state, which manifests itself, despite the author’s emphasis, in not asking for "enlargement," has nothing to do with belief in the miraculous. To the contrary, to be preoccupied with the miraculous, as the author asks of the reader, is a salient mark of immaturity. God’s calling for people of faith, it must be stressed, does not necessarily entail "enlargement" or "expansion" for all; such teaching confuses size or amount with divine favor and is unbiblical (though it is very American).

Moreover, the author’s "promise" that "you will know beyond doubt that God has opened heaven’s storehouses because you prayed" (emphasis his) flirts with the theological distortion that divine favor depends on my efforts rather than the divine initiative and the divine purpose. Consider this statement: "God’s bounty is limited only by us, not by His resources, power, or willingness to give." As Christian believers struggle with the paradox of divine sovereignty and human moral freedom, this insight from PJ is supposed to help us past inconvenient and nagging theological complexities. Thus, not divine resources and the divine intention, but our manipulation of God for our own design (despite the author’s disclaimer that receiving blessing pleases God), determines the measure of blessing that comes our way.

The needed adjustment here, it seems to me, is to stress what PJ leaves unsaid, namely, that which we find in Jesus’ parables. The parable of the talents (Matthew 25) is instructive for several reasons, not least of which is that it helps believers define their entrusted sphere of service in the Kingdom of God as well as the awareness of how they are particularly gifted (ten, five, two talents, etc).

PJ’s emphasis on not having because we are not asking enough also shows itself in the manner in which the author admonished us to ask. Consider this promise: "When you start asking in earnest---begging---for more influence and responsibility with which to honor Him, God will bring opportunities and people into your path." The danger in this sort of statement is that it equates intensity of request---begging---with the receipt of the desired blessing.

In standard Evangelical, fideistic fashion, it suggests that sincerity, not informed theological reflection, produces the desired effect. This approach mirrors a severer and debilitating misunderstanding of God’s character and believers’ position as adopted sons of God (cf. Gal. 4:1-7). And it results in the authors’ well-intended but unfortunate conclusion to the book’s penultimate chapter (lamentably titled "Welcome to God’s Honor Roll"): "I encourage you to rush back into God’s presence and make things right, whatever it takes. Don’t squander even for a minute the miracles that He has started in your life. Indescribable good still lies ahead for you and your family."

In addition to the book’s unbalanced accent on human beings moving the arm of God, its approach to normative Christian living is distorted. Consider, for example, this statement: "The most effective war against sin is to pray that we will not have to fight." The fact of the matter is that discipleship entails, indeed demands, that we "fight" (which is to say, war with) and resist temptation. St. Paul is unambiguous that this conflict is not a war of flesh and blood (Eph.6). James 1, moreover, emphasizes that this battle with temptation is both normative and character-building. The catalog of virtues in 2 Peter concurs: We persevere in order to become more godly.

Later in the book Wilkerson claims that "Jabez, whose prayer earned him a ‘more honorable’ award from God, might have made the case that God does have favorites." What shall we make of this theological contention? At the very least, it dangerously misunderstands (and distorts) what constitutes genuine faith. And in phrasing my assessment in this way I believe I am being kind. Curiously, the author seems not to have pondered why Jabez is not numbered among the "heroes of faith" highlighted in Hebrews 11. Many of these individuals after all, were not "enlarged" or "expanded." In fact, the writer of the Epistle is emphatic: "All of these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised."

These substantial problems go hand-in-hand with the fact that nowhere in the book does the author engage in any serious discussion of theology. In no place does the author reflect on God’s character, the implications of Christ’s atonement, the person and work of the Holy Spirit, the rigors of Christian discipleship and crossbearing, or New Testament models for petitionary prayer. As a teacher I am further disappointed that the author did not contextualize Jabez in biblical history. He does not discuss the function of the Hebrew genealogy (in which Jabez is presented). Nor does he consider the possibility that Jabez’s prayer is specific to his personal situation (viz., notable suffering and hardship within the familial context), and, therefore, not to serve as a universal prescription.

In the final analysis, PJ offers people what they want to hear and avoids what many need to confront. It joins a growing list of best-sellers in the religious book publishing industry, almost all of which belong to the "inspirational/devotional," "historical fiction," or "breaking through/unlock your potential" genres. PJ, as the subtitle indicates ("Breaking Through to the Blessed Life"), belongs to the last and endorses a view of Christian living that can accurately be called "Christian magic." PJ’s author promises us: "Through a simple, believing prayer you can change your future. You can change what happens one minute from now."

Doubtless many who have benefited from their reading of PJ will object that I am too critical of the book. After all, the author is sincere and, at least in some Evangelical circles is deemed to have served God effectively in the past. Nevertheless, in my view the book’s strengths are outweighed by one deeply troubling tendency: It magnifies---and distorts---half-truths, which inevitably masquerade as "the gospel truth." For now, at least, I won’t be "praying Jabez" along with my many Evangelical brothers and sisters. I’m just not sure I’m at all ready to have my territory enlarged.

---J.Daryl Charles is associate professor of Religion and Philosophy at Taylor University, Upland Indiana, and author of The Unformed Conscience of Evangelicalism: Recovering the Church’s Moral Vision (Inter-Varsity, forthcoming). This article appeared in the May 2002 issue of Touchstone Magazine. For more information, visit: www.touchstonemag.com

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Praying with Jesus----on Jabez and the Lord’s Prayer

Among several of the Harry Potter books and two John Grisham novels in USA Today’s list of last year’s best-selling books, The Prayer of Jabez placed third. It was a very high rank for an explicitly religious book, but I do not think its rank good news for Christians. Its success may tell us more about the great spiritual need of Americans, but the book gives them the wrong answer.

The Prayer of Jabez, its author says, is about "a daring prayer that God always answers." It "contains the key to a life of extraordinary favor with God." According to the cover, it offers a "Breaking Through to the Blessed Life" by devoted use of a prayer dug out from the middle of a genealogy given in 1 Chronicles 4:10. Jabez called on the God of Israel: "Oh, that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory; that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil." The book is written in the language of American ingenuity and know-how: "That’s the catch"; "the little prayer with the giant prize"; "You can change your future. You can change what happens one minute from now"; "dependence is just another word for power." And finally, "If Jabez worked on Wall Street, he might have prayed, ‘Lord increase the value of my investment portfolios.’"

The book’s extraordinary success is probably due in great part to the American fascination with discovering new things and new methods. It has all the marks of the typical how-to, self-help books that Americans buy like soft drinks. Like most such books, it offers a great profit from a small investment---success is achieved not by hard work but by knowing the trick.

The author of Jabez, Bruce Wilkinson, heads the respected Walk Thru the Bible Ministries. Multnomah Press is a small but mainstream Evangelical publisher. While millions have bought their little book, it has its critics. One, in a letter to Christianity Today, complained that the book is "all about us" and "focuses on little other than ‘what God can do for me.’ " That seems like a fair critique. The editors wrote in his defense: "Wilkinson has repeatedly explained that his book is not ‘about us’ but about ministry." But his explanations won’t wash. I saw a Jabez spin-off in Toys R Us: The Prayer of Jabez for Little Ones. It’s a kiddie book for two-to-five year olds, with thick pages, color pictures, and one phrase from the prayer on each page. And what about the postcards that I have received in the mail from Capturing the Jabez Phenomenon, which includes a list of book, audio, Bible study, leader’s guide, devotional, journal, teens, leather, and wallet prayer card products, all with prices? There is even a Jabez hotline and website. This is not about ministry, but about sales.

But perhaps this would be less of a problem if Jabez qualified as a Christian book. There is little, if anything, in it that couldn’t be prayed by a Jew or a Muslim, though I would hope that pious Jews and Muslims would not pray such a prayer and expect "the giant prize." The latest spin-off product is a Jabez "Hebrew Prayer Shawl" with the words of the prayer woven into the fabric.

Jabez simply is not about Christian prayer. It is prayer in an Old Testament sense, without the further revelation that tells Christians how they should pray. The prayer is offered simply to "God"; it is not prayer in Christ, through the Holy Spirit, to God the Father. There is no christological foundation for the prayer. The apostles, who did pray the psalms and understood them christologically, did not pray the prayer of Jabez, nor did generations of Christians who followed them. It is simply not part of the tradition, and its absence from the tradition---and the absence of any similar prayers from the Old Testament---is not an oversight. This is not the way Christians pray. Christians have been given the proper prayer to pray daily. The Lord’s Prayer is the Christian prayer and the model for all other Christian prayers. And it is markedly different from the prayer of Jabez.

For one thing, when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we open with a fundamental act of Christian worship. We begin with the address of God as "our Father," and as St. Paul tells us, "when we cry, ‘Abba!’ ‘Father!’ it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God" (Rom. 8:15-16). When we say, "hallowed by thy name," we acknowledge the holiness of God and Father, which is a worshipful confession. The prayer of Jabez, in contrast, teaches us to begin with a petition for God to "bless me." The critic was right; the prayer is about us and what God can do for us. That is where it begins and ends.

Throughout the Lord’s Prayer, it is "us" and not "me" that prays. The Christian prays only as a member of the Body of Christ and therefore in communion with his fellow Christians. He asks for nothing for himself that he does not also ask for them. Jabez prays as a lone individual asking only for his own gain.

Only after this do we make our first petition, one much more modest than that of Jabez: "Give us this day our daily bread." In this we admit how dependent upon God we really are for our needs. Jabez, on the other hand, asked that he be given more than he already has.

The next petition brings us to a crucial act of the Christian life: Forgiveness of sins lies at the center of the church’s experience of life in Christ. The life of the Christian begins with the forgiveness of his sins and new life in Christ. Our Lord also said, "If you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." (Matt. 6:15) The only apparent similarity between the Lord’s Prayer and Jabez’s would seem to be in Jabez’s final petition: "Keep me from evil." The New Testament prayer, though, is certainly broader: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." We recognize that we face temptations to sin (as did our Lord), and they come from "the evil one," which is one way, perhaps the correct way, to translate the last phrase of this petition.

I can recall only one instance in the New Testament that deals with an appeal to enlarge one’s territory: Christ’s temptation in the wilderness. The evil one offers the Lord all the kingdoms of the world, if He will only "fall down and worship him. Jesus rebukes Satan with, "You shall worship the Lord you God and Him only shall you serve." The Lord’s Prayer, as traditionally prayed, ends on the same note, a confession that to God alone belong "the kingdom, and the power, and the glory."

The Lord’s Prayer is a powerful prayer, which the Incarnate Son of God handed on to His disciples in the Sermon on the Mount with the exception that they would "pray then like this" (Matt.6:9). If Jabez himself had met the Lord in the first century, he would have been instructed to pray the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus ended His sermon by comparing those who hear His words and do them to "a wise man who built his house upon the rock." Those who hear them but don’t do them on sand. Users of Jabez may have started a habit of prayer where they had none before, but the habit of praying this Old Testament prayer is not enough for the Christian life. They are not praying as Christians have been taught to pray. Even Oprah Winfrey talks openly on her show about the power of prayer, the power of faith in God, but there is nothing Christian about it. That a prayer like Jabez has caught on like wildfire shows how dry the fields are, how lacking are the wells of spiritual refreshment and discernment. It shows how eager people are to build anything--- even if it means building on sand.

But perhaps there is still hope: In the Christian Book Distributer’s catalog, a new book appears in a small box on the page opposite the Jabez page. Written by Hank Hanegraff, The Prayer of Jesus invites those who pray the prayer of Jabez "to move to the next level with Jesus’ prayer." They will "learn our Lord’s seven secrets to real intimacy with God. It’s sure to transform your walk forever." Well, the appeal here is, like that of Jabez offered in the language of self-help and knowing the secret. Nevertheless, I am tempted to hope that this language is just marketing hype, and that more than eight million Christians will take the appeal seriously and begin to pray daily the Lord’s Prayer.

It would be a blessing if Christians were to pray the Lord’s Prayer every day, and also pray several times during the day for the Lord’s mercy on the sins of our country and for a spirit of repentance. The Prayer of Jabez at best is a distraction from the real tasks of Christian prayer: the worship of God, prayer for forgiveness and the ability to forgive, prayer for mercy, prayer for our enemies, prayer for repentance. It is a distraction because we don’t need to have our territories enlarged---we can barely manage what we have---but rather to beseech God earnestly that His kingdom come, that His will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. We need not pray like Jabez but like the Son, who alone can tell us how we should speak to the Father.

---James M. Kushiner is the executive editor of Touchstone Magazine: A Journal of Mere Christianity This article appeared in the May 2002 issue of Touchstone Magazine. For more information, visit: www.touchstonemag.com

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God’s Books and Our Words

(Taken from Donald Grey Barnhouse’s commentary on Romans)

It is certain that God keep books. There are several sets mentioned in the Word. There is the book of life, which seems to be a sort of population roll of all those who have lived in our world. From this, it would appear, some names may be blotted out. There is also the Lamb’s book of life, which is the roll of those who were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. From this no name could ever be erased. Who records these lists we do not know; the idea that angels have charge of the work is a mere assumption from the fact that the angels are said to be the messengers of God, doing His bidding. Then again there are books in which God records the spiritual actions and even the spiritual thoughts of those who believe in Christ. Even if one does no more than think upon the name of the Lord, the thought is not lost, but enters into the record. (Mal.3:16) But there would also seem to be a personal record of the actions and thoughts which, although recorded, have nothing to do with the fact of salvation (that is to say, God does not act favorably toward any man because of the man or because of any thought in the mind or heart of the man). This personal and individual account records what each man is in himself, and then what he becomes in Christ. (Romans Vol. 2 p.206)

"As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God. So each of us shall give account of himself to God." (Rom.14:11-12) At our resurrection there will be judgment for us, not for sin, since that has been dealt with by the death of our Savior, but a judgment of how we lived after we believed in Christ. There is also the special accounting which I must render as a minister who has the responsibility to guide the Lord’s sheep. We watch for souls as those who must give an account (Heb. 13:7). What carefulness this should work in all who deal with other souls! How great the responsibility of a pastor toward his flock! It will mean loss of reward if we fail to understand that we must render account to God. (Romans Vol. 3 p.217)

In Romans 14:12 we see that every believer must give account of himself to God. Let us look at the Bible teaching about the details of our appearance before the judgment seat of Christ. First, the Lord Jesus announced that every man would give an account in the judgment for every idle word (Matt.12:36). The Revised Standard Version translates it, "men will render account for every careless word." Some commentators have applied this verse solely to words of abuse or scandal, but it should be evident that words inspired by evil motives will, indeed, be judged. However, the Greek argos is the common word for people who are unemployed, idle, lazy. Thayer’s Lexicon translates it as a "careless word, which because of its worthlessness, had better been left unspoken."

Now I think it is fair and logical to conclude that if the believer must account for every careless word, this applies not only to what he says, but to what he allows himself to hear and read. The accounting for our words is a double one. We are inclined to think too much of the judgment side and not enough of the side that brings recompense. Matthew 12:37 says, "For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned." [Worthy words---whether heard, read or spoken] will be remembered to our credit. None of this, of course, has to do with our entrance into Heaven but only with our place in the government of God. (Romans Vol. 3 p.218)

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Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?

When you compare yourselves with yourselves, you are not wise (2Cor.10:12). We folk of the 20th century may be more moralistic than were medieval people, in the sense that we fret more about morality (outward observation), but men and women of the Middle Ages had better moral habits (inward contemplation). In medieval times, the seven cardinal virtues and seven deadly sins were known to everyone, while nowadays it is the rare Christian who can name them. Can you? To practice morality, we must first know what virtue and vice mean. But modernity has shaped even the Christian understanding of sin. Augustine and Calvin did not wonder at the Californian tendency to conflate salvation and self-esteem. Nor did they meet a widespread cultural assumption that the proper place to inquire about the root causes of human evil is a department of psychology or sociology. How must the doctrine of sin be taught in settings where pride is no longer viewed with alarm? What can the Christian church say about sin in settings where it has itself contributed much to such tendencies, including the tendency to democratize God? Read more: Back to Virtue, The Seven Deadly Sins Today.

We need to renew the knowledge of a persistent reality that used to evoke in us fear, hatred, and grief. Many of us have lost this knowledge, and we ought to regret that loss. For slippage in our consciousness of sin, like most fashionable follies, may be pleasant, but self-deception about our sin is a narcotic, a tranquilizing and disorienting suppression of our spiritual central nervous system. What's devastating about it is that when we lack an ear for wrong notes in our lives, we cannot play right ones or even recognize them in the performance of others. Eventually we make ourselves religiously unmusical. The music of creation and the still greater music of grace whistle right through our skulls, causing no catch of breath and leaving no residue. Moral beauty begins to bore us. The idea that the human race needs a Savior sounds quaint. Read more: Not the Way Its Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin.

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