Leonard Sweet - The Bad Habits of Jesus: Showing Us the Way to Live Right in a World Gone Wrong

WE LIVE IN A WORLD where cool has nothing to do with climate, hip is not a part of the body, and to say someone killed it doesnt mean they hurt anybody but brought something to life.

It has not been easy learning to speak and think in this new vernacular, where bad is good and where cougar, trout, and salmon have nothing to do with nature. I could not have made these transitions and translations without the help of my three youngest kids, Egil, Soren, and Thane. For their willingness to let their father sit on his kids knees and learn from them, I am grateful. Even though this book was written in six weeks, when I didnt have time to have time, thanks to Elizabeth I always knew I needed to make time and learn how to take time to have time.

For the last two years I have served as Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tabor College. The Tabor masters students I taught in the spring of 2016 were some of the brightest and most innovative students with whom I have ever had the privilege of studying. I am jealous of Rick Bartlett and David Swisher for spending their full time with such stellar graduate students. For their insights on these bad habits during the course of this semester, I am grateful to Edith Buller-Breer, Greg Chewning, Aaron (Joseph) Duvall, Jon Esau, Vern Hyndman, Mary (Alexandra) Marintzer, Kurt McDonald, Kristen Poljansek, Aubrey Smith, Lee Waldron, and Joseph Wuest.

Books on the habits of Jesus have been plentiful (TheJesus Habits, Habits of Grace, 7 Habits of Jesus, etc.). Since I had already done one book on how Jesus ate good food with bad people (From Tablet to Table), I gave Michael Waddells idea of another bad book (i.e., bad habits) a standing observation when my agent, Mark Sweeney, gave it a standing ovation and kept clapping until I said yes to the project. Magriet Smit cheered me on daily while I was writing this over Christmas and reminded me that what loomed in front of me as one of the Alps could be an anthill if I approached it differently.

On January 28, 2016, I announced on my Facebook timeline that I was finishing up writing this book, and I invited people to submit their own nominations for the bad habits of Jesus. I then said that the ones I picked would be part of the book in some way, a new authorial device called crowdsourcing. So their entries on my timeline were also their permissions to use their quotes in the book. The response to my invitation was a flood. I have lifted out some of the ones that were the most provocative and the least covered in the book. Thanks to all my coauthors.

Laughter does so much good for the body, mind, and spirit that you should call those who make you laugh your doctors. The doctor is always in when Landrum Leavell III is around. If you think Jesus turns his followers into sourpusses and crab apples, you need to meet Landrum. Lori Wagner is my right arm, left brain, and demolitions expert. She has edited everything I have written for the past seven years (as well as coauthored a novel with me) and was able to fit this bad-habits bombshell into her already-crowded schedule. When a metaphor misfires, thats on me. But there would be a lot more sputtering and lurching, and some loss-of-limb explosions in the political minefield that is language, without her roadside clearings and disarmings of my mindless metaphorical IEDs.

I finished this book while speaking twice a day in Kerala, India, at the Maramon Convention (2016), sponsored by the Mar Thoma Syrian Church. For me this annual camp-meeting, the largest gathering of Christians in Asia (150,000200,000), was a way of following in the footsteps of one of my missionary heroes, E. Stanley Jones. I have already dedicated a book to him. I now dedicate this book to my traveling companion in India, Anne Mathews-Younes, the granddaughter of E. Stanley Jones. In two weeks of traveling together I could not find even a sliver of a bad habit, much less a single one. I hope, now that Ive dedicated this book to her, she wont reveal my multitude of badnesses.

Leonard Sweet

ORCAS ISLAND

PENTECOST SUNDAY, 2016