New Material

I've been a little concerned that eight weeks is a long time to stretch out The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possibleby A.J. Jacobs for Sunday school.

Last Sunday, our church hosted Philip Yancey, author of works such as Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? and Reaching for the Invisible God.Since I'm on the committee that brought him to town, Jennifer and I got to have lunch with him, and during the course of our conversation I mentioned my Sunday school class and my concerns about stretching the material. He suggested I pick up Shalom Auslander's Foreskin's Lament: A Memoir as another take on some of the same material, specifically our relationship to the laws set out in the Old Testament. This one is written by someone who grew up as an orthodox Jew and still thinks God is out to kill him. Now that he's got a son, he's wrestling with his own troubled upbringing. I promptly rushed out and bought it, and a couple chapters in I have to say it's bitterly funny and may pan out as a good resource for my class. We'll see.