Don't miss the Forest for the Pine Cones

I pulled an old book off the shelf a couple weeks ago. It has a drawing of a pine cone on it. That about summarizes the book - scratchy, prickly, common and dry. It is by a philosophy professor named Dallas Willard. (The guy has two first names and both are cooler than Tim. Share the wealth buddy.) The book was actually designed for popular consumption but was never really popularly consumed. I think it had something to do with the pine cone cover.

Somebody in the marketing department must have been on their "A-game" that day-"I've got it! A pine cone! We'll put a pine cone on the cover." If I were trying to sell the book to your average Christian, I would have put a cross made of twisted "tribal" black nails or a photo-shopped picture of Mel Gibson hanging on the cross. Or better yet make the cover have a faux finish - tattered and burned like a pirate-map - Christians seem to like stuff like that. But hey I don't even have a profile pic on my blog - but I can promise you it won't be a pine cone.

What is interesting about the Willard book is that I really struggled to read it six years ago. It just wasn't that entertaining. I blazed through it so I could write a highly insightful paper about how it should apply to every Christian and should be second to the Bible as a source of Christian authority. And then... it sat on the shelf for six years like a fine wine waiting for me to mature enough to read it again.

The book is like a pine cone. It is kind of spiky -you wouldn't want to just throw it at someone haphazardly. It is full of 19th century philosophy quotes and it asks the reader to fast and spend long periods of time alone. It even has a chapter on why Christianity has become too fun and not enough about self-denial.

So I am about half way through the book and I just realized what the pine cone is about. It's about life. A pine cone is this really spiky, nasty hard thing that is actually a giant seed - from the pine cone grows some of the largest trees - some hundreds of feet tall. And I guess this is like being a Christian. Following Jesus can sometimes be dry and scratchy and even painful - but it is always about big growth. Maybe the path of least resistance or of most entertainment isn't the path to growth. Maybe us Christian ought to be more pine coney - committed to the difficult things that will produce growth.

If you are interested in becoming a pine cone Christian, the book is called Spirit of the Disciplines.