Review: Just Do Something by Kevin DeYoung

Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God’s Will. Chicago: Moody, 2009. (Published on Amazon Kindle)

Kevin DeYoung’s purpose in writing this book is to challenge young Christians to make decisions more confidently, without waiting for a special word from the Lord. Instead, he wants us to get wisdom, and place more importance on the moral and ethical decisions than on the ones like marriage or employment, where either option could glorify God.  He speaks of two wills in God: the secret will of decree, and the open will of command. (Deut. 29:29) A third will of direction, which many Christians are desperately looking for, is not promised to us in Scripture.  The way of wisdom, by which God typically guides his people today, involves a lifestyle of earnestly “reading our Bibles (storing up God’s commands), listening to sound advice (turning our ears to wisdom), and praying to God (calling out for insight).”  (Cf. Prov. 2:1-6) 

DeYoung is careful to say that God can still speak to people directly through dreams or visions or small voices, but theologians from both the cessationist and the charismatic camps agree that we shouldn’t expect it to be normal.  According to Hebrews 1, the most reliable way of hearing God is through his Son: either by seeing and hearing him when he was on the earth, by hearing his apostles speak, or by illumination from the Spirit of Christ as we read the Bible and understand it in context.  DeYoung comments that when we give the stamp "God told me" to our mere impressions, then we foolishly put our decisions beyond the reach of sound advisers.

This is the first book I’ve read all the way through on my cell phone’s Kindle app. That’s partly because DeYoung keeps it short, steps on your toes, and tells personal stories. Although he’s a pastor, he doesn’t write just from his own life experience and scholarship; he also uses his two grandpas as examples in retrospect of trust in Providence, hard work, decisive action, and contentment; which he says were more common in the World War II generation than they are today.  

After reading chapter eight last night on “the way of wisdom,” I woke up and read Proverbs 1 and 2, with an ache in my heart to learn wisdom, that is, to think ahead and do the unpleasant things that are necessary because they are the right things to do, such as brushing my teeth when I’d rather go straight to bed, or writing a lesson plan for the week when I’d rather wait until ten minutes before class.  Because I’m called to glorify God, taking risks based on faith, and then being faithful in whatever job I end up (English teacher, professor, paralegal, Bible translator, tutor, etc.), is more important than finding my fulfillment in “the one right job”.  I wish more of my friends would read this book.

Dryden on Donne

 

Like high-hanging grapes, some people can't find it in them to love or understand complex wit. John Dryden thus wrote the above critique of John Donne, my favorite poet, in the dedication to his book of the enormous title, The satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis translated into English verse by Mr. Dryden and several other eminent hands ; together with the satires of Aulus Persius Flaccus, made English by Mr. Dryden ; with explanatory notes at the end of each satire ; to which is prefix'd a discourse concerning the original and progress of satire, p. iii (London: Jacob Tonson, 1693).  (The dedication was written to Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset.)  

When Dryden speaks of translating Donne into numbers, he means a regular poetic meter. When he speaks of translating Donne into English, your guess is as good as mine. But when he speaks of metaphysics, I can only hope that someone would say the same about me, and that someone like Janel Mueller would still appreciate my writing for what it is, because being clear and heartfelt is awesome, but being able to wrench a metaphor from the city gates and carry it to the top of a hill like Samson is clearly more awesome still. (See Mueller, Women among the Metaphysicals: A Case, Mostly, of Being Donne for. Modern Philology 87.2 [Nov 1989] p. 142.)

If you still have no idea what this is about, read the last sentence of the quote. The female mind should be given more credit than that.

How is the real story developing?

Read this first. Then this. I read them in the opposite order, but I'm afraid you won't last through the second one in time to read the first one, which is shorter and more edifying. Enough with the mystery already!

The first article is by Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz, and he talks about two of his favorite authors (Salinger and Hemingway) and how their books enraptured him with romantic lies about times and places that hardly existed.  A creator of wonderful imaginative literature can still waste their life. Miller urges us toward a better reality, saying, "the only story that actually tells the truth is the story you have lived, good or bad."  He calls his piece: "For a creator, there's no benefit to romantic preoccupations."

The second article is by Matt Thorn, a cultural anthropologist who studies Japanese manga and their fans. His article is called "Girls And Women Getting Out Of Hand: The Pleasure And Politics Of Japan's Amateur Comics Community." This article is a major step for me toward understanding gender phenomena in East Asia. Thorn talks about his observations at different amateur comic book shows in Japan throughout the 1990s, how idealized gay themes featuring pretty-boys have become the center of comics written by and for young women, how surrogates like this help wealthy girls escape from cultural expectations about their gender roles and relationships, and yet how either through or in spite of their manga obsession, these girls manage to develop normal relationships with people of either gender.

Don't expect me to start accusing at this point, because it was just such escapist voyeurism that brought me to Matt Thorn's piece. But I do want to let you know that I've woken up to the realization that it's my life that matters, and not the stories in my head that make part of its chapters. And it's not my life, if it's to be a life that matters.  Because the life I now live in this wonderfully earthy, preoccupied, and gendered body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. (Galatians 2:20)

Do you love performativity like Audrey Hepburn? Do you hate it like Betty Friedan? Do you just watch it to name it like Judith Butler? Either way, every action and the thought within it is the site of Relationships, human and divine, taking place in a field whose boundaries were created by Someone more imaginative than I. As long as I and my little brain can rattle around in that, it's all right.

Now that you've heard my take, I hope you'll live more consciously. But if you haven't yet got to the primary sources of this post, please read this first. Then this.

Schlatter on Nietzche's teaching style

"[As a college student, Adolf Schlatter] heard Friedrich Nietzche lecture on Plato. Nietzche was one of his professors. But the impression was not positive. Years later, he recalled chiefly Nietzche's 'offensive haughtiness. He treated his listeners like despicable peons. He convinced me of the principle, that to throw out love, is to despoil the business of teaching. Only genuine love can really educate.'" - Robert Yarbrough, "Adolf Schlatter and the Future of Christianity: Schlatter's Life and Legacy," 1995 Francis Schaeffer Lecture Series at Covenant Seminary.