I read a lot of blogs about technology and the Church, and more recently I’ve been giving a lot of thought to exactly how our technology and our faith collide – how one impacts the other. So I was excited to find out about the blog tour for From the Garden to the City — it sounded like just the book I was looking for.

And Dyer does not disappoint. I like the way he sets out his purpose at the very beginning of the book when he writes, “John makes a calculated choice to us a disembodied form of communication in service of the embodied life of the church, and in doing so he honors our Lord and builds up His Body.

“My hope is that in the coming chapters we can learn to do the same with our technology.”

Our ultimate purpose in technology has to be to honor God and build up the Church. Dyer is referring to 3 John 12-13, where John mentions that he had a lot more to write, but that those things could wait until he saw the recipients of that letter in person. In 2 John, the apostle mentions that he often wanted to write, but that there were things that had to be discussed in person. Two sides of the same coin, and two different uses of technology.

Dyer points out that technology has two different “stories” — how we use technology to shape our world, and how that technology shapes us. Too often, we look at one of those stories and ignore the other — we either become pragmatists who use every new technology without thought as to whether it’s the best solution to our problem, or we become complete Luddites who shun any new technology. Both are equally dangerous.

Interestingly, Dyer starts out with the Fall — this would be the “From the Garden” part of the book. He shows how God created us to be creative ourselves, to use technology to improve things. Adam is commanded to till the soil and cultivate the garden (Genesis 2:15). This fits with the overall pattern of the book, in which Dyer brings up four different categories that we need to think about in our use of technology:

Reflection: Since we are created in God’s image, how does the technology changes the way we reflect that image to the world?
Rebellion: Given that mankind is fallen, given our sin nature, how can this technology be perverted? How does our sin nature make us susceptible to temptation and sin?
Redemption: What are the evangelistic uses of this technology? How can we use this to take the Gospel to the world? SHOULD we use this technology to take the Gospel to the world?
Restoration: How does technology fit into God’s plan to ultimately restore the earth?

We need to remember that technology is a tool; what we do with it is what is important. We are creative people, and we need to use that aspect of the image of God to do great things in His name.

Long story short — this book has given me a lot to think about. Taken with several other books I’ve been reading and re-reading recently (Hamlet’s Blackberry, Devices of the Soul especially), I think there may be a need for me to re-evaluate how I sometimes use technology, and how often it becomes just a crutch for me.

John Dyer has written a book that may be uncomfortable for many Christians, but should be read by us all. There’s the germ of a sermon series in here, or maybe an evening Bible study to help Christians of all ages deal with the technology that has become so all-encompassing and overwhelming.

Yeah, right. That’s not going to happen.

When someone has experienced just too much nerdiness at one time, they are saidto have a nerdgasm. The person usually goes into a state of shock and can’t speak for up to 1 hour. Never distured a someone who as recently nerdgasmed because the person is prone to just spurt out random nerdy things that regular people could never comprehend.

That’s how Urban Dictionary defines the word “nerdgasm.” And that’s pretty much what I experienced as I read this book. From the first page to the last, there is a plethora of pop-culture, video game, computer geekiness that is really hard to contain, so I took a week to try to contain myself. But it really didn’t work — I’m still having some of the aftereffects.

First, the plot summary: James Halliday has died. Halliday is the developer of the most completely immersive virtual universe ever known: the OASIS. Everyone on the planet is impacted by the OASIS in some way or another — many make their living in the OASIS, creating things to sell to other ‘players’ to enhance their experience. Halliday died, and left no heirs.

And so a massive scavenger hunt begins. Halliday left clues to the locations of three keys, which open three gates. Whoever is the first to open all three gates gets the whole thing; they will be the owner of the OASIS, and the billions of dollars that Halliday has left behind. And there are some people who will do anything for that kind of money — even kill — in the Real World.

Halliday’s clues are all based in his love for the 1980s, and this is where the geekiness comes in. It was fun to see all the references to movies, music, and computer games that I grew up playing. You’d think that I’d have been able to solve these puzzles along with the main characters — but you’d be wrong. The clues are cryptic enough that you really have to think outside the box to be able to solve them. Well, that or devote your entire life to trying to solve the clues and find the keys.

And that’s what our main characters do. They watch War Games until they can recite the dialog by heart. They practice playing old Atari 2600 games until they can beat them in just a few hours (at one point, the main character plays a perfect game of Pac Man on the original arcade machine!).

I read the first 22 chapters in one day. I took breaks, of course, but from the time I got up until I went to bed that night I read 22 chapters. I would have read more but I couldn’t stay awake — I finished the book the next day.

The book is not only a fun read, though; it’s also a pretty good commentary on an increasingly wired society. People in Cline’s universe spend the majority of their time in the OASIS — and the Real World has gone down the tubes. Of course, that means people want to escape more and more, so they spend more time online, and there goes the spiral. The book is a near-future science fiction work, set in 2044, so it’s just far enough in the future that technology has improved, but not so far into the future that we can’t relate to the people there. They’re our kids and grandkids; in 2044, my daughter will be 43 — exactly my age right now. This is a look at her possible future, and it’s not really a bright one.

The book also has some commentary on religion — as anti-religion as the main characters are, I found it interesting that they were actually very religious. They had a holy book, they had scriptures, and they had their own ethical code that they lived by. Even as they rejected organized religion, they organized their own religion without even realizing it.

One thought kept running through my head as I read this — WHY didn’t they create an Alternate Reality Game to promote this book?! If any book ever has been, Ready Player One would have been perfect for the trans-media treatment, and potentially a real life scavenger hunt.

If you haven’t already bought this book — WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR??! Click that link up there at the top and get a copy or two. You’ll be glad you did — just brace for the nerdgasm.

The Gift Trailer from Crossway on Vimeo.

This book takes place a mere three weeks after the end of The Sword (which I reviewed earlier this month, right here). Teo and Ana have met scouts from a land called Ulmbartia, and are welcomed as heroes after Teo helps defeat some attackers. Ana is noticed by the top levels of Ulbartia’s social stratus, and is quickly welcomed into high society — which separates her from Teo. Everything looks wonderful in Ulmbartia.

But things are not always as they seem. Ulmbartia has a problem with people who are less than perfect; these Defectives are taken from society and never seen again. And there is even more hostility to the One God and His Book — even as Teo and Ana search for the lost second part of the Book. And Ana has to make a choice between the good life she’s been given and the man she owes her life to — a man she may even … love.

The Gift is a great sequel to The Sword. There is action (especially toward the end), there is suspense, main characters die or seem to die. There is theological exploration that reminds me of some of the questions that the Jews had of their Messiah — is He to be the conquering hero or the suffering servant? And which of these was Iesus Christos? We see the continuing development of an orthodox Christian theology as Teo and those with him begin to learn more and discover more about this ancient, lost faith called Christianity.

I’ve actually had this book done for quite a while (as you can tell if you watch the trailer above) — this series has grown on me, and I’m a little disappointed that the next book will be the last one (it’s a trilogy, after all) — though I’m hoping for a second trilogy. The plot moves, the twists and turns suck you in, and the characters are compelling (though I got a little frustrated at Teo and Ana constantly NOT declaring their love for each other). And once again, we get a glimpse of how theology may have developed in the early Church, and how different opinions and interpretations led to the many sects and denominations we have today. My recommendation of the Chiveis Trilogy is only strengthened after reading The Gift. It’s in stores — go buy it already!!

Kandiah notes that we often do this to the Bible. I say “we” because I’m talking about preachers and teachers, and I am both at various times. I’m sure that I’ve done this without realizing it. We approach Scripture with a goal to wring a 30-minute, 3-point sermon out of a passage. We often approach Scripture with a topic already in mind, and simply seek a passage, verse, or even part of a verse that will serve as a jumping-off point for our rant against our favorite pet peeve. And this makes it easy to transport and pack, but it destroys the purpose, functionality, and beauty of God’s Word.

The purpose of Route 66 is to help all of us (and now “us” is all Christians) to understand the Bible as a book of books, unified in purpose and theme but diverse in style. Kandiah takes eight different literary genres (narrative, law, psalms, wisdom, prophetic, gospels, epistles, and apocalyptic) and examines how each is used in the Bible — and what impact it has on how we should approach the text.

I like this hermeneutical approach; I think it is far more honest with Scriptures. If we believe that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant word of God, then we have to look not only at what He inspired to be written, but how He inspired it to be written. He used poetry, history, narrative, etc. for a reason, and we are being dishonest if we ignore the literary genre just because it doesn’t fit in with our own preconceptions of a passage.

More importantly, Kandiah takes each of these genres and shows how the Bible uses it to make the passages relevant for our lives today. We really are “navigating life with the Bible.” We see the Bible as a book that had meaning for the people who wrote it and first read it, AND as a book that has meaning for us today, because of how it was written. Rather than flatten the Bible out so it fits the container we want to put it in, the Bible is allowed to be the book God intended it to be in the first place.

This is NOT a book about how to teach using games; there are plenty of those available, and I’ve got a few of them on my Amazon wish list. This book, though, is as much about classroom management as anything else. It’s about structuring your class as if it is a multiplayer roleplaying game. Students don’t get assignments; they get quests. They don’t receive points for assignments; they get experience points (XP). And they don’t work in groups; they form guilds to raid boss monsters for XP. The theory is that students play games like World of Warcraft a lot, and understand that dynamic, so incorporating it into the classroom will give them a different perspective on learning, and encourage them to learn in different ways than they have been in the past. It’s thinking outside the box.

I enjoyed reading about Sheldon’s trials and errors. He’s very honest about thing he didn’t do well the first time, and changes that had to be made. We learn while we read because we’re learning from his mistakes. And he also acknowledges that the same exact system will not fit every classroom. Modifications are made based on the students and the subject matter. Changes are made based on what didn’t work before — even in the middle of a semester, if needed. That’s another thing I liked with this book — it isn’t about the system, it’s about doing what will help students learn better. That’s a focus that more teachers need to have. Sheldon also shows how he used the technique in several different classes, with different ages and types of students, at two different institutions. Again, it’s not a cookie-cutter program, but the basics are there to be modified and used in a lot of different ways.

I was attracted to this book because I’m a gamer, and I’m studying to be a teacher. Combining these two passions of mine seems like a no-brainer. And reading this book has given me a LOT of ideas to use in the classroom. I’m studying to teach computer applications; I’m very project-oriented, rather than lecture and test oriented, so a management style based on experience points makes sense to me — my goal is to give students experience using technology, so why wouldn’t I want to measure how much experience they’ve gained? So this is certainly something I plan on implementing once I’m in the classroom fulltime.

The research is still mixed on this technique; the case studies in the book are favorable, but there really isn’t enough data to show how well this will work across the board. I can see how some content area teachers would have trouble implementing it in their classes (math teachers, especially). In a project-oriented class, though, like the one I will be teaching in, this can be used well. It’s different enough that students will enjoy it, and it might even be fun enough that the teacher will enjoy it, too.

Then, on July 17, 1926, Norris fired three shots into Dexter Chipps, killing the lumber salesman and creating a bigger controversy than he’d been part of before.

David Stokes has certainly done the research on this story. Stokes goes into detail examining events leading up to the shooting, showing the forces in Fort Worth who wanted Norris to go away and those who were willing to defend him no matter what. We get a picture of two men, really; J. Frank Norris, fundamentalist firebrand and heir apparent of William Jennings Bryan, and Fort Worth Mayor H. C. Meacham, who Norris attacked almost as soon as he took office. It could even be argued that the men were two sides of the same coin; both were opportunists who were loathe to waste a chance to harm the other, and both could be quite single-minded in their pursuit of the other. Shortly before Chipps’ murder, in fact, Meacham had fired several of his own employees simply because they were active members of Norris’ church.

It would be easy to write a book slanted to make Norris look evil, to point out the inconsistencies in testimony in the trial and insist that Norris should have been found guilty. It would also be easy to write a book from the opposite perspective, and paint Norris as a persecuted minister who made political enemies with his mixture of fundamentalist theology and populist politics. Stokes does neither of these. While I couldn’t help but feel that Norris really didn’t have to fire a shot (much less the three he fired), there is a balance in the book that I really found refreshing. Nobody is solely to blame, but everyone has a part to play in what happened. Stokes does an outstanding job of showing how multiple situations in Fort Worth, and both Meacham’s and Norris’ own personalities, lead to a tragedy.

I honestly hadn’t read much about J. Frank Norris, in spite of my own church background and theological convictions. I knew he was highly influential, and I knew he had shot someone, but beyond that I really didn’t know much. This book has really shown me something about this fascinating individual, and I’ll probably do some more reading about him. I’d love to read different points of view concerning the murder and the trial, especially. Stokes has done an outstanding job of bringing this tragic event to modern attention; it could even be said to be a cautionary tale for some of our own modern-day “megapastors” (which Norris certainly was, in his day), an example of what can happen when a desire for controversy and political clout goes too far, and makes enemies with too much power.

This coming Saturday is Do Nothing but Read Day, and I plan on taking advantage of it. I’ve got a bunch of books to get through, and as of August 22 I’ll be back in graduate classes until December (only 6 hours, though, so I can still work and hopefully update the blog). Needless to say, I’ve got to take advantage of any opportunity to get my To Be Read pile conquered.

I’m hoping to get several books finished Saturday, so I’m providing a list — this should give me some incentive!

That will probably get me through the day, though I may have to break out the brand new ARC for The Measure of the Magic: Legends of Shannara by Terry Brooks. Just got it this past week, and it’s sitting there tempting me as I try to get through the backlog that is my TBR pile. I’ve started all of the books on the list already, so I’m hoping that I can finish them each pretty quickly. And of course, the reviews will be posted here when I finish.

This book starts a bit slowly, but if you stick with it you will be rewarded. By the middle of the book, I couldn’t put it down at all, and I finished the last hundred pages faster than I finished the first fifty. The story is suspenseful, and the characters are memorable, even for someone who doesn’t have Pekkala’s famous memory! If you don’t know much about pre-Soviet Russia, you will learn a lot from this book without even really realizing it.

Parts of the plot were somewhat obvious, especially if you remember Chekov’s Gun, but this is an outstanding introduction to what I hope will become a long-running series.

The Sword has given me hope.

The premise of the book is outstanding — Christianity has been forgotten in the wake of a global apocalypse. No word on any Rapture of believers or anything – the indication is that they all died out. So there’s no “Left Behind” storyline here — in fact, the Christians have been gone long enough that nobody has really heard of Christianity or Judaism. Litfin is rebuilding Christianity from scratch, and we’re along for the ride..

Litfin doesn’t candy-coat things, and he doesn’t shy away from making his nascent Christians human — including showing their arguments and disagreements as they try to figure out what this new faith is all about. I think it’s interesting too that thus far in the series, the converts really aren’t Christians — they haven’t even read the New Testament. If anything, they are simply recovering a form of Judeo-Christian theism, and building from that theological base. This is refreshing in Christian fiction — too many books I’ve read would have had someone discover a cache of Gideon Bibles and a series of VHS tapes on “How to Become a Christian” and that would have been it. These people are struggling with forming theology based on this ancient book they have found. And there is the possibility that their Christianity will bear little resemblance to our own, which makes me even more eager for the next installment.

I’m really looking forward to future books in this series. If more Christian fiction would pay attention to Litfin and his books, then I’d be able to retire the scare quotes permanently. And maybe actually read more of it.

But there is more. The book seems roughly chronological, so you get to see the maturation process that Adam went through, both professionally and personally. We see more of him as an actor, rather than as a foodie. We meet the people he hangs out with, the women he loves. When he gets dumped, we feel for him. And when he tries to make lifestyle changes (especially later in the book), we are there cheering him on. My only disappointment was that those changes didn’t seem to take; if we believe what is written at the end, we wonder if Adam learned anything or not.

When I started the book, I thought (and actually told someone) that it was a book about “where I lived, what I ate, and who I slept with.” It has all that in it, but I think taken as a whole there is something more there. It’s a story of someone trying to find himself personally and professionally, and in the end we get the sense that he’s done exactly that.

It’s not a perfect story, but it’s honest, and it’s a fun read, whether you are a foodie or not.