In our hiking adventures, my wife and I have seen a number of different animals in the wild – sometimes from uncomfortably short distances. One day we saw a cougar thirty feet or so away (from inside a car). Normally most of us would never spot one in the wild and you don’t really want to see one. It’s not because they’re not beautiful; they are. But by the time you see a cougar, it has been watching you for quite some time and you won’t like what they’re thinking (read food). Is God just sitting around out beyond space and time outside our experience watching us for His own disinterested amusement?
Tony Kriz made me do something I don’t often do; I read his book, Aloof, in a single weekend. He pulled this off through good writing, real story and taking a genuine read on the native hunger for God that lives in our deep places. If I knew someone genuinely wrestling with the God question (especially the Christian) who was willing to move beyond philosophical/theological considerations to personal involvement and relationship, I’d slide this book at them with the provision that we talk about it later. (We should never just throw a book at someone as if it were a pill. We should also give ourselves in availability for future conversations.) Aloof will spark those conversations.
The title begs interesting questions many people have bottled up inside. Aloof: Figuring Out Life With a God Who Hides. If God exists, where is He? If He’s so loving, how can He withhold Himself from all the suffering in the world? If He loves me in particular, why don’t I sense His presence more than I do or even at all? Is He withholding Himself from me? Does He not want to be found? We could add more. Tony alludes at one point in his story that he isn’t very good at making lots of money. If he could put a big red bow on all these questions, that would change. He does something more subtle. He generously tells his own story allowing us to look over his shoulder so we can discover his own handles on these crucial questions. He throws some interesting ingredients into the pot.
Tony is vulnerable in the best of ways. Vulnerability has been the rage for awhile. It sometimes plays into the vulgar appetite we have to gawk into other people’s lives. Reality TV, some memoir and a lot of blogging plays into that. In groups, we can feel pressured to spit something out on the floor to prove we’re vulnerable. I remember a seminary student telling me he’d been so conditioned to this that he could rip open his soul at a moment’s notice in front of anyone. Doesn’t sound healthy to me and Tony doesn’t play to gawkers but his reflections (even some he admits are painful) show both respect for himself and respect for pieces of light from Jesus Christ He shares as treasures not just thrown out on the floor for anyone to sniff at. I talk to writers as I read their work and I found myself thanking him a number of times for what he said. I felt honored to read what he wrote. I kept thinking, “Thank you, man, for trusting me with this.” He survived a churchy childhood faith of stereotypes, formulas, legalism and triumphalism. The tender account of his coming to know Jesus Christ gets sadly and quickly paneled over with a veneer of churchiness; Tony learns to play the church game even while grieving in heart while he does it.
Tony doesn’t preach (I’ll bet he can.); he shows. For Christians, burned out, dry and/or doubtful, Tony models something valuable. Aloof speaks profoundly to the disillusioned Christian thinking about throwing in the towel. I am convinced that disillusionment with religious faith and Christianity in particular runs much deeper in American culture than anyone imagines. Even if our faith seems lifeless and flabby with no spark, take what we have out and get it dirty in the lives of other people. Tony has not lived a passive spiritual existence. Jesus steers people who are moving even if (sometimes especially if) they don’t have a clue where they’re going. Since my faith came alive during my college years in the Jesus Movement of the sixties, I enjoyed read about his campus years a little later. The frustrated, questioning church kid became a strangely vocal public advocate for Jesus. In ways large and little, Jesus shows Himself to be anything but “aloof.”
A third flavor in the mix is actually the whole book itself. Tony unpacks his past both to keep what’s valuable and to kick the trash to the curb. A lot of us don’t do this, avoiding it under a pseudo Christian spin on Philippians 3:13. It goes like this. “Paul even tells us to forget what lies behind. He didn’t spend time or energy rummaging around in his past. Neither should we.” Once Christians, we should never let our past define us. But unlocking our past is exactly where we find that God has not been “aloof” at all. We “born again” types act as if we embraced Jesus Christ the first time we heard about Him. This almost never happens. As we look back over our years, we can see breadcrumbs of grace and fingerprints of Jesus if we know where to dust for them. Some of these will be the purple elephant playing bagpipes in the corner of the room. How did we miss that? Aloof is one man’s Mona Lisa of doing this. That Tony Kriz is now a spiritual director of sorts helping others to do it at Portland’s Warner Pacific College is a good thing.
The end of this book crept up on me; I kept turning pages, engrossed in the story until I just ran out of pages. Sort of like finishing a bag of chips while we still want more. So I’m off to Amazon for his earlier Neighbors and Wise Men which should kick a dollar or so in royalties his way. Spend it wisely. And I found something else at the end. Tony, you re-evangelized me, you rascal! This needs to happen to all of us occasionally.
To read an excerpt from Aloof and watch a video interview with the author, visit the Patheos Book Club page here!
David Swartz pastors Bethel Baptist Church in Roseville, Michigan. He thinks that jazz is sacred music, that books are better company than most people, and that university towns rock. He blogs at geezeronthequad.com
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