The Secret Missions of Transformative Time Travel!

 

            Stealth technology wields fascinating power because of its ability to make an aircraft or ship undetectable, enabling any mission to carry out its objective with surprise arrival. Because I was already playing around with a sci-fi theme of time travel, as I wrote it, I kept thinking of Transformative Time Travel as a “stealth book.” Or you could categorize it as a “Trojan horse” book. Why think of my book this way?  Because sometimes you need to "sneak” the truth of a book into the hands of readers before they realize what they are reading! Every major chapter is a stealth chapter with its own subtle goal. Here are just four stealth missions in my book to discover if you choose to slip my book into the hands of your unsuspecting friends. It would make a great Christmas gift!

 Stealth Mission # 1: Attract New Interest in the Ancient!

This conservative biblical book explains an ancient spiritual discipline (Psalm 1:2; Joshua 1:7-8). Yet books on spiritual disciplines like Bible reading, meditation, and prayer rarely sell well because those who need more discipline often do not know it. Sadly, despite many excellent books about meditation, today, a minority of Christians (less than a percent?) read books about it. This is a real “travesty,” weaponless Christians needing more help in their daily battles. Picturing biblical meditation of the future and the past as “time travel” can get this power into the hands of modern readers - confirmed by Amazon mislabeling my book as ‘New Age meditation" and as “Christian discipleship.” I am delighted to see God use my disguise in such a broad category and follow history - C.S. Lewis (demons teaching theology backward”) and John Piper (coining the term “Christian hedonism”).

Stealth Mission # 2: Attack Worry Indirectly!

Sneak up on worry without scaring worriers! Many worry, yet few want advice on how to battle it. Either they believe they cannot beat it (“I come from generations of worriers!”), or they try to manage it (“It’s not that bad!”). Neither approach is more successful than trying to domesticate a lion. In my pastoral experience, no worrier to whom I have handed a book on worry has read and benefited from it. But by imagining mental “time travel,” worrying brothers and sisters can finally see worry as “meditation gone astray.” God employs our imagination to inspire hope! Just imagine a biblical future, and you can learn to, as Charles Spurgeon recommended, “turn into a prayer everything that is a care.”1 Specifically, chapter 3 strategizes the battle plan for redeeming worry by imagining yourself operating as a blessed biblical meditator (Psalm 1:2).

Stealth Mission # 3: Motivate the Unmotivated!

Many burn out on self-help books, whether Christian or secular.  Authors promise if you follow their X, Y, or Z plan, you, too, can get moving, boost productivity, and realize your dreams. Some tips help, but most advice does not stick. What if you can offer the Bible’s main key to successful discipline? The Bible appeals to our past and our future to motivate us. Chapter 6 unpacks the Bible's claim for using this spiritual method of motivation and is full of practical tips.

Stealth Mission # 4: Prepare for the Unthinkable!

Like the topic of worry, countless Christian books address the later seasons of life and facing death. But few Christians read about old age and death. It’s depressing, right? But God wants us today to meditate on our lives and the end. We must prepare ourselves as our bodies decline and age, inevitably moving us closer to death.

How do you help those you love to face the worst? Don’t try it this way! “Merry Christmas, Aunt ______! We know you are in great health, and we likely have more holidays with you, but we thought you should read this Christian death and dying book!”  What a way to kill festive joy! Instead, you can hand your loved one this book that “appears” to be about happy time travel but has a surprisingly comforting chapter (Chapter 8) on the end of life.

Perhaps you need to read about one of these topics. Give those topics another try! This book approaches your problems and opportunities differently than you have before. To quote the famous teacher Mary Poppins (a wonderful, fanciful time traveler): “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.”

  

1C. H. Spurgeon, “Prayer, the Cure for Care,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 40 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1894), 110.