Kim Gentes

There are few Christian writers that have had as deep and ongoing impact in the last century as C.S. Lewis. One of his most celebrated books has been "Mere Christianity". Originally written in 1944 from the texts of various radio broadcasts, Lewis compiled and revised this collection of thoughts into his seminal work that preserves both his legacy as a great thinker and his profound skill as a writer.

While I had originally read this book in the mid-eighties, I knew it was time to revisit it. So, the last couple of weeks I re-read this classic Christian book a couple of times. In fact, reading it once actually was somewhat painful. I kept scouring the book and furrowing my brow as Lewis would make his knife sharp points at the end of each chapter. By the time I had completed one pass through the book, I knew immediately I must run through it again. The insights, and even more, the narrative flow are sparkling examples of great writing, from a master of language.

The more I read Lewis, the more it occurs to me that he is first and foremost, a writer. A brilliant writer, to be sure, but that primarily. In fact, Lewis makes this point in this book and tries to derail people who try to come at this book as theological treatise. This didn't strike me at first as being important, but the more I talk to others about this book, the more I realize it is true. I often hear others talk about "Mere Christianity" as though it were a theological defense. It is not. That isn't to say it is bad theology; rather that it isn't really written as a theological book (one in which Biblical texts are used as the centerpoint of building a case for a Christian perspective). 

In one sense it is a Christian apologetic, but it doesn't come from the perspective of arguing Christian points against alternative religions or even atheistic ones. Instead, Lewis approaches the concepts much more broadly, dealing with the (universe, humanity and reality) and eventually narrows his scope to point at which the "big questions" of life are asked. Into that stream of thought, the author presents his thesis that the Christian God is not only the Creator but the ultimate Father of our eternal souls. But Lewis goes there in very deliberate, progressive steps, making sure to explore the thought process and objections of people who might be learning of the Christian faith.

Along that path, from investigation to discovery to comprehension to obedience (and all along the way, transformation), Lewis plants some of the most succinct and powerful phrases about the nature of man, the Creator and the universe we live in. For example:

In reality, moral rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain, or a friction, in the running of that machine.1

There are literally dozens of quotable passages in this book- and pastors and authors have been quoting them for decades. In some ways, this book contains an expanded version of some of the core facts that Lewis writes in his famous sermon "The Weight of Glory"- but here he expands and draws a usable entrance way to non-believers to understand the Christian claims and follow and intelligent discourse about it. To be sure "Mere Christianity" is more meat than the sermon as well, and Lewis uses that storyboard to gradually move a reader from an unintelligent and lost world into a comprehension of the plan and love of God through His Son, Jesus Christ.

Lewis travels the distance from talking about a grand Cosmic Mind who is not only the author of the moral code, and behind the extance of all things, but who becomes the personal 3-in-One God who stands beside us (in Jesus), acts from within us (in the Holy Spirit), and opens grand arms to recieve us (in Father God) all as part of his program of love to draw man out of his death-ridden self into the life of being "sons of God".

The author does a spectacular job of answering the questions we all wonder about, but don't or can't find our way through the philosophical jungle of competing or amoral reasoning to find the truths we seek. With Lewis as our guide on this philosophical journey, we are in good hands, indeed. His mind, his writing and his raw humanity ask the tough questions and graciously walks us through both false and proper narratives to funding the likewise conclusions. It would be silly to say this book is a classic- everyone already acknowledges that. And yet it is that. It belongs alongside the best writings in Christian history.

Amazon Book Link: http://amzn.to/X0aUE3

Review by Kim Gentes

Years ago, I was serving on the executive team with one of the best managers I've ever worked with. His name was Chris. He had the most highly attuned sense of team-building and leadership that I had seen in a CEO. One of the first books Chris asked our team to read was "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" by Patrick Lencioni. This last month, I revisited this book and read it again. It struck me again as a succinct and actionable treatise for any team.

What it exposes is the real reason that most teams fail- people are often more interested in personal accomplishment than achieving team success. Lencioni artfully narrates what he calls a "leadership fable" of a new CEO who comes into a high-tech company to try to turn it around. The scenario that unfolds sounds so familiar to any of us who have worked in a senior staff meetings that it's a little indicting just reading the book, let alone considering doing something based on it. But that is why using a narrative is so powerful.

Lencioni recognizes that we must hear these truths in a reasonably real context rather than simply have them extrapolated as another "5 steps to corporate success" or such business book claims. And this book does exactly that. The reader is allowed to enter the world of DecisionTech, a fictitious Silicon Valley startup with everything going for it- except results! The story strips back the layers of dysfunction in the leadership team to its very core, and draws some deft steps at deconstructing the failures and reconstructing a strong working team. Not only do you end up seeing the components, people and issues for the raw things they are, but you begin to see (by the dissociation of story-telling) how those might be addressed in your own situations.

The author doesn't leave it to story either. Once the narrative has completed, Lencioni retraces the core points of the "Five Dysfunctions" and you are given concrete steps to moving to building an effective team that can produce results. Since this book has become one of the best selling books on business leadership in the last 10 years, I am guessing many people have found this sage advice. I would be in that camp. Some of the observations and truths pointed out here are so poignant they may seem obvious. Yet, the real problem is that we often stay mindlessly aware of these "800lb gorilla issues" that are in the room, but fail to address them. Lencioni faces this head on and doesn't blink.

This is an excellent book, and it gets better each time I read it. I will be going back and reading it again in the next couple days. It's usable, thoughtful, and potentially revolutionary (to those who will act). The book is short (239-240 pages, depending on the version you read) so you should be able to read it in just a few hours. Well worth the time.

Amazon Book Link: http://amzn.to/VUpdNl

Review by Kim Gentes

I was a 20-year old, newly married man. One evening I got a call from a musician friend. Both he and his wife were musicians and church friends. I was excited that he was calling me, and even more that he invited Carol and I to dinner at their house. Wow! It was our first official invitation to dinner as a couple! I remember driving to their house, looking forward to making “couple friends”, eating together and maybe playing some music together that night. We were welcomed with hugs and smiles. We sat down and ate a great dinner and were just beaming with anticipation. After dinner, my friend turned to me and smiled. 

“We have something important to tell you”, he said. Wow, I thought!
 
“Would you like to be able to take yearly vacations? Would you like to buy Carol nice things, and have extra money for savings and kids later?”, they asked. I was lost. Carol was a customer service trainer at a local airline, and I had just begun my career as a software engineer. We were just beginning, but it seemed like we had what we needed.

“I guess”, I answered, uncertain where this was going, genuinely lost at the turn of conversation.

He smiled, “We’d like to introduce you to Amway.”

If I’ve ever an awkward and empty moment, it was at then. In an instant, the entire experience, invitation and hope of friendship faded. I had become an opportunity for someone to build their downline.  Ugg.

I hate sales. I am the ultimate anti-sales person. I hate anything that smells like sales. Not sure if I am being clear here. Sales = yuck! And I suspect that as you read my brief story above, many of you could relate similar experiences from your own life. In the context of the modern economy, sales seems like an all pervasive “necessary evil” of our world. It is from that perspective that I hesitantly began reading Daniel Pink’s “To Sell Is Human”.

The truth is, the only reason I even dared to consider reading this book was that several customer reviews of it lauded it as a “non-sales” understanding of the art of persuasion. Sales without decept. It seemed too good to be true. So, the eternal optimist that I am, I peeked inside and found this book to be a delightful example of what Pink preaches- learning to move people. There was indeed a way to commend people to a certain direction without leaving your conscience at the door.

At the core of Pink’s thesis is that you must always approach convincing people with deeper notions than simply selling wares and collecting commissions. In fact, understanding the motivation of “sales” is more crucial than the execution. Pink states it this way:

To sell well is to convince someone else to part with resources— not to deprive that person, but to leave him better off in the end. 1

From that foundation, the author treks through a number of other pinnacles of his new “sales” paradigm that re-envision persuasion by trying to help others. This means approaching your “job” (even if it is called “sales”) by inquiry and investigation rather than determination and demand. For example, an important step is asking people what their goals are not to try to do an “end-round” and force the issue back to a sale, but to find out how to help meet their needs, even if the “product” you are selling doesn’t happen to fit this time around. Even the “salesman” motivational techniques change from deterministic self-hype to interrogative self-talk: asking questions about yourself as preparation for a customer meeting.

Finally, even the “after the sale” approach is completely different. Pink says it well:

Anytime you’re tempted to upsell someone else, stop what you’re doing and upserve instead. Don’t try to increase what they can do for you. Elevate what you can do for them.2

The whole personality and attitude approach in sales reverses course from being the pushy schmuck in a plaid coat to an approachable acquaintance who is there to help. The book highlights, of all things, humility!

And it demonstrates that as with servant leadership, the wisest and most ethical way to move others is to proceed with humility and gratitude.3

Throughout the book Daniel Pink shows a new set of ABC’s for selling. In the old world of sales it meant “Always be closing”. In today’s landscape of information ubiquity, the ABC’s of sales means “Attunement, Buoyancy, Clarity”. In these, Pink re-examines why the internet has changed the world of consumer purchasing into a place where the seller no longer holds an information advantage over the purchaser. The entire book is devided in three main parts: the first is a 3 chapter section exploring the redefinition of many terms that once ruled sales and the people involved. The second section is based in inquiry- investigating and understanding the needs of the customers (where we discover the new ABC's). The final section explores actions- that we engage in to help our customers (pitch, improvise and serve). The sections are clear and points strong. There is little fluff in this 260 paged book, and it goes by fast.

Another very powerful insight that Daniel Pink makes is the research about what kinds of people are truly successful sales-people. And it is not the pushy extroverts that has been the conventional wisdom! Without making up some incoherent or recursive logic about why some personalities sell better than others, Pink brilliantly explores the truth about why we trust some people and buy from them. The new world of “ambiverts”. As someone who is not an “extrovert”, this was a gem in the book for me!

If I had to summarize the book’s approach in one word, the new world of sales is about: serving.

The book is much more scholarly than other sales motivational books I’ve seen, and contains a well-thought set of studies to help explore the main points Pink makes. He has done his research and it is convincing and insightful. I was more than impressed by this brilliantly sculpted, inspirational and (yes) humble approach to sales.

If you are not a hyper-psyched, extroverted, type-A personality, but know that you are needing to be better at “sales” (or moving people to make decisions), this book is for you! It was for me, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Really! Check it out!. 

Amazon Book Link: http://amzn.to/14RcjAi

Review by Kim Gentes

1. Pink, Daniel H. (2012-12-31). To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others (p. 39). Riverhead Hardcover. Kindle Edition. 

2. Ibid., Page 226

3. Ibid., Page 228

In the last four years I have read many thousands of pages of materials in researching an understanding of economics, history and culture. In that time I have read little that was as well-written and insightful as David Graeber's "Debt: the First 5,000 Years".

What initially holds Graeber's work above others is his contrarianism related to the foundations of Adam Smith's capitalism, especially the historical telling of barter as the nascent form of exchange that led eventually to our current modern version of free market capitalism. The author makes the point that debt, rather than barter and money, was the foundational language and system of exchange and has remained so for 5,000 years.  The book claims that Smith's story related to the origins of markets, as found within "The Wealth of Nations", is a contrived fiction in which barter is used as the seed explanation for how currency/money/economy developed.

The grander plot of the book is that reciprocation can expose itself in two primary ways - owing a favor, or owing a debt. As he says poignantly-

the difference between owing someone a favor, and owing someone a debt, is that the amount of a debt can be precisely calculated.1

The book starts off with a modern day controversy about global (specifically, third world) debt. The question is raised about whether paying back debt is a moral question. From this launching point, the author traces back, through his anthropological background, five millennia of understanding human societies and how their systems of debt have become the framework for our understanding and conversations about virtually every aspect of life, especially (and including) morality. Graeber states-

If one looks at the history of debt, then, what one discovers first of all is profound moral confusion. Its most obvious manifestation is that most everywhere, one finds that the majority of human beings hold simultaneously that (1) paying back money one has borrowed is a simple matter of morality, and (2) anyone in the habit of lending money is evil.2

Part of the reason that morality and debt are so closely and importantly linked for the author is that he goes to great lengths to connect the idea that the moral failure surrounding debt is not with the debtor (as current culture suggests) but the with creditor. Graeber makes this important distinction not purely on the present circumstance (in which one person places themselves in debt to another as part of an exchange), but uses historical and anthropological examples (and theory) to expose the fact that for thousands of years debt has been enforced by the most heinous means- from debt peonage, slavery, prostitution, imprisonment, war, violence and more. At the root of the human ability to harm and debase one another over a debt is the fact that debts devalue not just the items exchange, but the very people themselves.

From this perspective, the crucial factor, and a topic that will be explored at length in these pages, is money’s capacity to turn morality into a matter of impersonal arithmetic—and by doing so, to justify things that would otherwise seem outrageous or obscene...3

...The way violence, or the threat of violence, turns human relations into mathematics will crop up again and again over the course of this book.4

The book develops a long and complicated understanding of various ages of exchange in which society went from credit based exchange to coin/currency exchange and back and forth for various reasons. Graeber's work is compelling if not confusing. While he is obviously a brilliant researcher and thinker, he languishes several times in the book to keep himself on task to his earlier promises. Many points that look to be big items drift off aimlessly into side issues and what seems like favorite quotes from the authors research work rather than essential points to the thesis. One of Graeber's important points about exchange/market systems is that they are integrated tightly with government constructs of debt and war.

modern money is based on government debt, and that governments borrow money in order to finance wars.5

All of this actually does matter in his final thinking, but he mars the straight lines of thought by randomly attacking capitalist thinkers like Milton Friedman and Adam Smith because he doesn't like that they said things built on utopian models (though he admits that what they said ended up being true and actually working in the real world).  Graeber is right in one sense- it matters why society thinks the way they do, and how ideas that changed history came into being. But while he is proving his points he meanders unsuccessfully through some issues by pretending that his ability to invert the predicate logic of a phrase (i.e. "what does society owe us?" into "What do we owe society") is appropriately addressing the real issue.  But in the end, his book is much better than the faults he makes in crafting his narrative- because he asks some great questions.

The biggest of these is about the nature of exchange and the nature of value. At the core failure of humanity in relationship to debt is a devaluing not of goods, but of the human person itself. Graeber is at his best when he challenges us to recognize that our history and our current practices have run rampant not because we use one economic system or another (capitalism or such), but because we allow the exchange system to carry us too far -- we allow it to exchange human life for goods. In essence, our systems of debt exchange place a value on human life as a way of equating what can be paid back when the currency is not. This happens in slavery, debt peonage, debtors prisons, and even wage labor.  It is ultimately a very compelling point, since he basis it on solid history and plenty of modern examples.

Some may decry this book as anti-capitalist, but I think Graeber is reaching for a higher ideal than that. I think he is looking for valuing human life right on forward to the present. That we provide protection for wage laborers, abolish debt peonage systems (that still exist in some countries today), even human slavery and worse.  He is also advocating the questioning of some systems that were built on these premise and have become unchallenged (such as new NGO loan systems, World Bank and the IMF), leaving whole nations in essentially debt servitude to multi-national corporations and countries such as the US.

Though he says these things, Graeber is not a raving anti-capitalist. His book is well worth reading. It sparks of brilliance in places and requires serious thought.  The corruption of the value of human life has been enmeshed into the exchange of the marketplace, and for Graeber this must be untangled if we are to make better decisions for the future. For this, he deserves huge praise and an honest reading of the material. 

Amazon Book Link: http://amzn.to/WZkw0w

Review by Kim Gentes

1. Graeber, David (2011-07-12). Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Kindle Location 8120). Random House Inc Clients. Kindle Edition. 

2. Ibid., Kindle Locations 202-204

3. Ibid., Kindle Locations 310-312

4. Ibid., Kindle Locations 320-321

5. Ibid., Kindle Locations 7694-7695

What is the distinct thing that makes the Christian life different from any other? Francis Chan's book "Crazy Love" is a short and clear call to exploring that distinction. Chan is convinced that our lives must be founded and fueled by love. Then, on the basis of that love, we are to sacrificially give away our lives as the "way" to be the people Jesus called us to be.

For the first few chapters Chan explores the motives of our "service" (acts and lives lived) as Christians. Such things as fear, pride and various other substitutes are proved to be false foundations in place of a thankful life that exists in light of a truly awesome and holy God. Chan urges us to see God as the scriptural Everything from, and to which, true love can proceed.

In light of the God of "Crazy Love", the book moves the reader into a realization of the biblical view of a response to such a God- a response that can only be real if it sees action. But Chan is not preaching the "American god" of prosperity in his book. Rather than a god in whom we strive to achieve success and are granted blessings of favor, position or possessions- Chan is calling us to lay down everything. At the root of "Crazy Love" is a deft prescription to the American church- sacrifice.

Often times, when books are written that call Christians to humility or sacrifice they do so from a position of making people "worms" in light of God's all-consuming awesomeness. Conversely, much of Christian "faith" culture has made the American god one of "success"- basically teaching that if we are following God's plan for our lives, blessings and abundance will be ours to receive and accumulate.

Chan avoids both of those clichés and calls us to see the God of "Crazy Love" as the source and strength of all we can be. From that place of trust and faithfulness in God's love, we are to offer our lives sacrificially as conduits to bring that love to the hurting and lost world. There are a good many insights in this book, but Francis doesn't turn this insightful teaching into just another cliché itself. If you stopped short of finishing the book, you might believe that you should sell everything you have, move to Africa and feed the destitute. While Chan poses that as one path for those called, he doesn't fall into the trap of becoming the voice of the Holy Spirit for the reader. Instead, he presents his thesis as a starting point from which any believer can then step into the world of possibilities that only God can uniquely chose for each one of us.

One may minister to the poor, another serve as a medical missionary, another stay in their current careers and show God's love there. The point is, the book asks the reader to be accountable to God and the voice of the Holy Spirit. After the book has explained why Christians should lay down the edifice of the American ideal "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" (which we often translate into being the selfish accumulation of "stuff") it encourages the believer to follow God's direction specific to their lives.

The message of this book is clear, simple and yet often ignored. I was convicted by the simple truths of this book. I would guess my experience is not alone. The book presents a vivid picture of a different kind of Christian- the kind we are in dire need of in our world.

Amazon Book Link: http://amzn.to/WjPvX3

Review by Kim Gentes