Joseph Lacy and Mountain Reign

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Joseph Lacy's 'Mountain Reign'High in the hollers of ’50s-era Kentucky, God’s grace rains down on a team of boys and one determined coach in an Appalachian school destined for destruction. In Mountain Reign, author Joseph Lacy blends the best of sports fiction with a touch of the divine as he follows the hardcourt exploits of roundballers who don’t know when they’re outgunned.

Guard Veacher Phelp’s rude upbringing in a coal mining town beset with poverty and darkened by days in the belly of the earth only spurs him onto hopes of victory in Lexington. But his Hazelwood High School Flyers, in their last year as a school, have little hope of beating the powerhouse suburban Kentucky schools—until a Melungeon outcast joins the team.

Coached by Slade Greyman, a WWII vet with a dark secret, the Flyers begin their unlikely rise to the upper echelons of Kentucky basketball in a series of heart-stopping games. But then a litany of injuries, the antagonism of the the local coal honcho, the lure of the opposite sex, the call of the mines, and the revelation of the Coach’s hidden sin threaten to undo Hazelwood’s last chance at glory.

Author Lacy packs his first novel with court-pounding action, glorious mountain scenery, heartbreak, and hope. He portrays a way of life few people know, weaving elements of Coal Miner’s Daughter and Hoosiers into the quintessential Kentucky basketball novel. And his effortless skill at hill country metaphors can’t be matched. Whoever coined the term “turn of a phrase” surely was thinking of Mountain Reign.

If you want evocative writing that epitomizes what sports fiction has to offer, Mountain Reign is a book you’ll adore.

Joe Lacy is a good buddy of mine, the perfect Kentucky gentleman, and one of the quartet that makes up The Write Brothers, my writers group. I had the privilege of reading Mountain Reign as it took shape, and I was continually amazed at Joe’s scholarship and deft phrasing. I hope soon to post Joe’s thoughts on writing in response to my rant on the state of Christian fiction. An interview here may follow.

If you’ve got a sports fan in your household or you get horse rooting for the underdog, you can pick up Mountain Reign from Amazon (just click the link or the book cover). A fine Christmas present and the perfect read to start a new year.

How to Fix the American Christian – Unifying Faith and Praxis

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A current theme erupting throughout the Godblogosphere concerns taking the Church back to the Gospel. I think that’s a noble effort.

As a flawed human among flawed humans, though, I worry that even such an essential “recovery” runs the risk of leading people into a form of sub-Christianity that in the end fails to reflect the entirety of the Kingdom of God and the reason Jesus came.

I was not planning to write on this issue in this “How to Fix the American Christian” series, but when a reader objected to the series due his belief that such a series merely supplants the Gospel with “behavior modification,” I felt compelled by God to write this. In fact, I believe God provided me an apt illustration that is already deepening how I think about this issue.

In the rush to strongly delineate the Law from the Gospel, I believe we have a tendency to fall into the error of lumping the Law with the natural outworking of the Gospel. In other words, because both involve doing, we fail to make a distinction between the Law and Gospel-based praxis.

One of the beauties of the Gospel is that being finds a central place among doing. Man cannot justify himself by the doing of the Law. Instead, he rests in the finished work of Jesus, abiding in Christ. What we Christians are by that abiding now defines our being.

But like so many aspects of the faith, mistaken notions lurk on the outskirts of that beauty. We are, after all, in the process of being made to be like Jesus; we are not complete yet.

The error of equating the Law with the natural outworkings of the Gospel are addressed by James in this well-known passage:

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe–and shudder!
—James 2:14-19

What separates the Christian from the demon is not belief in Christ. It is faith expressed through Gospel praxis. It is doing those actions that naturally extend from having been confronted with the truth of the Gospel. It is not just saying, “I believe the Gospel and no longer attempt to justify myself by the Law.” No, it means that the entire way you and I live can and must be altered by that statement. And since that involves how we live life, it must necessarily involve what we do.

Herein lies the problem with the contemporary American Church: Our praxis does not reflect what we claim to believe—and the world knows it.Tree with fruit

The illustration that best reflects this issue mirrors the agricultural focus Jesus often took in His parables.

Imagine three trees.

The first “tree” is hardly recognizable as a tree at all because its entirety remains below ground. It is all roots. That tree believes itself to be the prefect reflection of a life in Christ. It is always talking about the Gospel, defending it and affirming the five solas of the Reformation with an undying allegiance. It cannot help but sink its roots deep in the nourishment that is God Himself, praying and reading the Scriptures with enviable devotion.

But in truth, such a tree is abnormal. Because it is all below the surface, it cannot provide shade, wood, or fruit to others. It exists solely for itself. It takes from the soil and water, yet gives nothing back to the world above ground. From time to time, it may send a meager shoot up through the soil, but rarely does this act provide anything meaningful to others. Such a tree may even proudly declare how it is impervious to the wind that would knock down other trees, but it fails to see how useless it actually is, a perversion of the kind of tree that God intends.

I have three such trees in my yard, all Bradford Pears. They started out looking beautiful, but their trunks and branches were not strong, despite being deeply rooted. They cracked and split, so I had to cut them down. The stumps remain and the roots still show some signs of life, occasionally sending up sprouts. But that won’t be the case forever. For all intents and purposes, those trees are dead, their roots slowly rotting in the life-giving soil.

I’ve met plenty of Christians like the all-root trees. They didn’t start off that way, but that is how they finished. They have an apologetic that would make Ravi Zacharias seem like Joel Osteen, but theirs is an insular world beneath the soil, one the outside world never sees. They tend to live in fortress-like churches and are always talking about defending the faith. Yet for all their talk of the Gospel, the world around them goes on as if they are not there at all.

Another tree has a trunk, branches, and green leaves. By all appearances, it seems like a normal tree. It does interact with the world, doing useful things for others like providing shelter from the sun and bearing fruit for eating. Such a tree prides itself on giving back to the world by what it does as a tree. It believes itself to be the perfect reflection of a life in Christ.

But below the surface of this tree one finds a curious lack: It has no roots. It didn’t start that way, but over time the tree became so concerned about appearing to be a tree by being doing what a tree is supposed to do that whatever focus it needed to give to its rootings withered away. Over time, such a tree tends to burn out and dry up. And all the things it once provided shrivel.

I’ve met plenty of Christians who spend all their time trying to maintain an appearance of being a Christian, but they have no Gospel roots. Such people are all about what they do and how they act. They have no means of simply being or dwelling, no rootedness to the source of nourishment and grounding.

A few years back, we hosted the big family Christmas and got a tree from our neighbor. We cut the tree fresh from their plantings, struck by its shape and beauty. The scent from that fresh evergreen filled our house. If it dropped any needles in our living room, I couldn’t find them. We enjoyed everything about that tree, but when it had served its purpose, I dumped it on our burn pile in mid-January.

The amazing thing about that rootless, cutoff tree is that it remained green until August. Finally, a typical August drought proved too much and it finally succumbed to brown.

I said that there are three trees, right?

The only tree that genuinely serves the purposes of God is the one with deep roots in the freedom and nourishment of the Gospel and a trunk and crown that provide a full expression to the world of that rootedness by providing beauty, shelter, comfort, and food to others. Such a tree fully expresses what it means to be a unified, living thing. The roots support the tree, anchor it, and provide nourishment to the trunk and crown. The trunk and crown not only make the tree useful to others, but they deliver life and growth back to the roots. In fact, without the trunk and crown, the tree dies a slow, lingering death.

For all us Christians to be healthy, we must not only have the Gospel, but we must also have Gospel praxis. That Gospel praxis reinforces our faith as much as anything. Doing the Gospel truly does lead to a reinforcement of the Gospel in our hearts. That natural outworking enlarges us as much as a tree’s leaves provide the photosynthesis to make it grow. I can only speak for myself, but I know the profound reality of how the outworkings of the Gospel through genuine practice serve to reinforce the Gospel in me. The doing strengthens the being.

When we Christians declare that we are no longer beholden to the Law, we must NEVER confuse the doing of the Law with the doing of the Gospel. Far too many Christians are making that mistake, though, because of their well-meaning intentions to distance the Church from works righteousness. However, in the course of such avoidance, Gospel praxis suffers. This all too often leads to insular churches that are smug in their preservation of the truth of the Gospel, while at the same time they give nothing of that Gospel truth back to a dying world. And so they inevitable harden and die along with the world they are so loathe to serve for fear of betraying sola fide and sola gratia.

How to Fix the American Christian – Lightening the Load

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At a time of the year when Americans lose their collective minds and buy throwaway gifts for senseless reasons, the Scriptures say this:

And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man said to him, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. And Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”
—Matthew 19:16-24

At the risk of being accused of blasphemy, I’m going to say that the above passage is a nonstarter for most Christians, especially in America. The closet of American excessWe’ve heard it so often that it simply drains out of ears before it reaches our souls. We don’t think we’re rich, nor do we believe that our possessions own us. And we certainly don’t ponder for one moment that Jesus is speaking to us in his address to the rich, young ruler.

Despite the fact that there’s probably not a person reading this post who is not among the world’s top 5 percent in wealth, most of us don’t consider ourselves rich. The inequitable percentage of the world’s goods that Americans consume compared to the size of our population is just another example of damnable statistics. We read Ron Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, and though it tugs at our heartstrings, we feel it would best challenge someone richer than you or I.

Fine. I realize this issue is a nonstarter.

But the Bible says this, too:

And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. “So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house, and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak….”
—Matthew 24:14-18

Any warning from Jesus is worth heeding. His words are truth and life.

Now I’m sure the preterists out there will take issue with any contemporary usage I attempt to draw from this passage, but I’m ignoring them. When I read this passage out of Matthew I see an underlying truth: Jesus wants us to live lightly. In other words, you and I need to be nimble.

But when I look at most Christians today, we are anything but nimble. We’re the slowpokes in DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, dragging out of Egypt an oxless oxcart cart bulging with every last good we own, even as the Red Sea threatens to collapse on Pharaoh’s army nipping at our heels.

The average Christian household today is a massive burden. And it is so because we bury ourselves under stuff. We live in too-big houses filled to the rafters with ten of everything. (Even as I type, a basket near my desk overflows with a dozen highlighters. Don’t ask me why.)

And it’s not just simple stuff like highlighters, but racks and racks of clothing and shoes. We buy bookcase after bookcase to store books we no longer read or reference. Stuff accumulates to the point that we can’t find room to live amidst it all. We created the storage industry so that even in a tiny town like mine, they keep building more and more places to store people’s stuff. {Insert classic George Carlin standup routine here.}

That tendency to keep our overflow stored in larger and larger spaces was addressed by Jesus:

And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
—Luke 12:15-21

If the state of the American Church is any indicator, we are rich in stuff and not rich toward God. Yes, God was the one who gave that rich man all that bounty. It’s what the man did with it that condemned him. We must never forget this.

For this series, I started with this issue rather than saying we must seek Jesus first because sometimes you have to clear the room of the giant pink-polka-dotted elephant before one can see anything else. And our excess in America is one honkin’ big pachyderm. I heard on NPR this weekend that sales of goods to WalMart alone accounts for 15 percent of China’s entire GNP. Whether that figure is true or not, it’s scary because we all know that it may very well be true.

This year has been a time of God telling me that we have got to lighten the load. In truth, you and I are beholden to what we own. We cannot live in the nimble way demanded by the Gospel. We are not prepared to get up and go when God tells us to. Because we live in America, our hearts are divided between the Lord and our possessions, no matter how much we protest.

If we want to fix Christianity in America, we Christians MUST lighten our loads.

A baker’s dozen practical actions to consider:

1. Stop buying more stuff. Just stop. You and I don’t need more stuff, period. Especially electronic gizmos. I am constantly amazed at the Christians online who have gone through multiple generations of cellphones, iPods, and laptops. Why? The number of Christian blogs where the blogger comments, “I just replaced my old _______ with the latest one,” is staggering. What’s more staggering is that the thing replaced is often only a couple years old. And nine times out of ten, the thing replaced is not something anyone needs to live. Yet somehow that thing just had to be replaced. Our parents got by without cellphones, so why do our kids each need one? You grew up okay, right? Let the Bible dictate how we live, not a Verizon commercial.

2. Use items till they wear out. The shoes I’m wearing are eight years old. My best dress shoes are 22 years old. My favorite pair of slacks was 15 years old before the vacuum cleaner accidentally ate them. I’d say the average age of items in my closet is 11 years old. And in my garage sits the soon-to-be 17-year-old truck. Meanwhile, I’m writing this on an 8-year-old computer—yeah, ancient.

Christians are called to be frugal and wise, not the leaders in fashion. We’re not supposed to listen to the world’s siren call. If our stuff is old, that’s fine. If that means people don’t like us because we’re not hip, that’s their problem. (And no crying about having to be hip to evangelize people, either. The Holy Spirit is the same yesterday, today, and forever, so He doesn’t need your Prada bag to reach your girlfriends.) God looks on the heart, not the label of your brand new Armani jacket.

3. Reevaluate what items we truly need to live. Start asking why we need this or that “essential” item. Instead of always plotting what we might gain from purchasing an item, let’s consider what we might lose instead. Honestly, with all too many “essentials” today, the loss is greater than the gain. We end up working longer and harder to afford the essentials billed to us “timesavers.” How stupid! And often, the item we think of as essential interferes with building community between ourselves and other people. In the end, the item we can’t do without may very well drag us down

4. Find other ways to access desirable items without buying them and holding on to them. For instance, must we buy the latest Christian book? Or can we order any book we want to read from our local libraries through interlibrary loans? I know that my little rural library has pulled books for me to read from seminaries and Bible colleges all over the country. I read them, absorb what I can, and then I put into practice what I can. If I can’t put into practice what I read right after I read it, why would I think that having it on my bookshelf (a bookshelf I had to buy, mind you) would make any difference?

Can a highly desirable item be shared with others outside our immediate family? It bothers me that so few Christians entertain that thought—or reject it as “socialism” or an impediment to their right to consume whatever they wish whenever they wish it. If we did learn how to share better, all of us would be beholden to a lot less stuff. We could work less (since we wouldn’t need to make as much money), devote more time to the Lord’s work, learn lessons in Christian community, and enjoy simpler lives.

5. Say no to redundancy. We own duplicates of so many things. It’s as if we’re always in Plan B mode, afraid that God won’t provide for us should our only set or lone item go on the fritz. I know one Christian blog that discusses Bibles, where readers often show off their massive stacks of leather Bibles, each costing $50 or more. I don’t understand why, especially when believers around the world are crying for Bibles yet cannot afford to own one. (I know this is especially true in China.) I know that we own four different sets of plates. Some of those were inherited, but it still does not make much sense to own that many. When some people have none, why do we have multiples?

Our tendency toward redundancy also means that we are more likely to buy a number of cheap items that will not last rather than one of an expensive item that will. We need to reward quality, even it means owning less of a quality item. (See also #7.)

6. Learn generosity. The generous person cannot be owned by things. Period.

7. When we divest, give to the genuinely poor in a way that builds the Kingdom. Jesus asked the rich young ruler to divest himself of most everything he owned and give the money to the poor. If we sold just our excess alone, I think it would go a long way. That’s how rich we are.

When we choose to sell our excess or to donate items, we should find ways to invest it in the Kingdom. Rather than simply dump items at the Goodwill or the Salvation Army stores, I believe it would be more Kingdom-minded if we were to find on our own a family in need that we could support, and in more ways than just handing over money or our excess goods. We should instead befriend the folks in that family and work to help them get out of the poverty trap. We should make certain they know about Jesus, and not just by sharing the Gospel in words. Growing up, I remember that many churches adopted Vietnamese refugee families, but today we do little of that same work for the poor among us. That needs to improve.

8. When we must buy, choose high-quality items from local craftsmen. I am wholly convinced that living simply is not just living with less but owning items that are better built and crafted. So little of what we own today will ever be classified as antiques because it won’t survive. It’s artless, cheap junk. I purchased what I thought were quality oak chairs a few years ago to replace the broken chairs at our kitchen table, only later to realize the new chairs came from China. Ten years later, none survive intact. Contrast this with the Ethan Allen chair I’m sitting on as I write this. My parents bought it for me when I was 11.

While I am certain everyone reading this will provide an exception, I believe that local craftsmen are more likely to produce goods that last than the garbage coming out of China that we so readily consider “a deal.” In addition, buying locally made goods supports the local community and allows us the blessing of knowing the very people who make the goods we own, building relationships. It keeps money local, too, and resists the multinationals, who drive consumption, greed, fear, and envy.

9. Leave the Joneses to the Joneses. Keeping up with them will only keep us away from the Kingdom of God. They’re building their own worldly kingdoms that will perish. Our aim as Christians is to build an imperishable one. So don’t just give that ideal lip service; live it. If people think less of us for failing to keep up, that’s their problem. If we are still trying to please men, then we should not be servants of Christ. Because in the end, Christ’s view of us is all that matters.

10. Don’t judge other people by their possessions. Those who attempt to live simply err when we  judge others for what they own. This traps so many Christians. But we must remember that simplicity takes many forms, and just because someone drives a BMW tells you nothing about how they acquired it or how long they expect to drive it. If a $50,000 car lasts for 25 years while a $25,000 car lasts for only 10, then the pricier car may be worth it. My own closet is filled with clothing from L.L. Bean, not a cheap retailer, but I acquired it mostly through gift certificates gained through promotional programs, meaning I paid about $75 for what amounts to $1,000+ of clothing. The designer dress the fashion plate at church wears may have been purchased from a consignment shop or from the racks of Goodwill. We just don’t know.

As Christians, we are to mind our own households and let others mind theirs. So rather than peeking over the fence at the next guy’s fancy stuff, let us ensure that we are doing all we can to live simply ourselves. God will certainly deal with the other guy in His own way and time.

11. Consider downsizing the house. Our houses are too big. Because nature abhors a vacuum, and so do we, we proceed to fill those homes with all manner of stuff we don’t really need. Stuff that costs money to repair and maintain. Stuff that ultimately drains us and imprisons us.

Some are learning in this economy that they overbought their house. That’s a hard lesson that no one wants to learn. Truth is, we all may. I suspect that most of us live in houses that are more than we can afford or maintain. We must remember that choosing to be being downwardly mobile is not a negative, especially if it makes us more like Jesus.

12. Get in the prayer closet and get real with God about this issue. Ask God for insights by the Spirit as to what is won or lost by the possessions we own or intend to buy. Ask God for a discerning mind that will not cave to Madison Avenue. Ask to be made poorer in goods so that we may be richer in spirit. Ask for an attitude of gratitude. Ask for humility. Ask for a heart that is undivided. Ask to be made more like Jesus.

Most of all, we must pray for our children. They are the ones most easily enslaved by the world’s idea of wealth. Any plan of simplicity we undertake as families will be least understood by our children, as it means they will have less than their peers. I guarantee, even if they are born again, children will not grasp the benefits of simplicity if it means they must do without the latest hot item that their peers, even their church peers, own. We must also prepare for the incidentals of simplicity with our children. Case in point, a child without a cellphone will suffer socially if his or her peers all own one. The ramifications of simplicity and its impact on our children is one of the greatest battles we will fight to keep from being owned by the world’s systems. The promise is that a child raised in the way of simplicity will better cope with loss (and gain), will more greatly appreciate Christian community, and will find the narrow path that avoids the world’s highway to destruction.

13. Be grateful to God and rely on His provision alone. The bedrock underlying consumerism in the United States consists of greed, fear, and envy. See any positives in those three?

As Christians, those three sins must become increasingly foreign to us. Yet we work so hard to ensure that the very spiritual transformation God desires of us when it comes to those sins is thwarted by our confidence in our own selves to provide.

If anything, this economic collapse must teach us that none of us is that innately powerful to keep the entire world at bay by creating our own home fortress. Even the most controlling people suffer loss. Better that we learn gratefulness for even the smallest thing. Better that we learn to pray “give us this day our daily bread.” Grateful people who lean on God for His provision can never truly suffer loss.

More than ever, the call to Christians everywhere is to learn to live with less, to be more generous to the poor, to consider how living with less builds community with other believers, and to rely on God alone for our provision.

May we do more than listen.