Category Archives: Religion

Authors, Non-fiction, Religion, Reviews

‘The Great Good Thing,’ by Andew Klavan

Leave a comment

For years, maybe most of my life, I had languished in that typical young intellectual’s delusion that gloom and despair are the romantic lot of the brilliant and the wise. But now I saw: it wasn’t so…. The hungry can’t eat your tears. The poor can’t spend them. They’re no comfort to the afflicted and they don’t bring the wicked to justice. Everything useful that can be done in the world can be done in joy.

Has Andrew Klavan written Surprised by Joy for the 21st Century? I’m not qualified to say. But I will say The Great Good Thing is a wonderful book, a book in the great tradition of spiritual autobiographies like those of Lewis and St. Augustine – but with a modern edge.

You already know I’m wholly sold out to Andrew Klavan as a writer. He may be the best author of mystery/thrillers alive. You probably also know that he converted to Christianity from secular Judaism a few years back. In Klavan’s view these two facts aren’t unconnected. As he internalized the elements of storytelling, he reports, he was drawn ever closer to eternal truths.

Klavan tells us of his youth – economically comfortable – in a Jewish neighborhood in Great Neck, Long Island. His family seemed normal – he himself believed it was normal – but in fact it was deeply dysfunctional. His father was angry and a bully. His mother was a disengaged, frustrated social climber. The first real motherly love he experienced was from a Christian Ukrainian nanny, and her influence lingered. A smart but lazy kid, Drew Klavan faked his way through school and then college, buying the assigned books but never reading them, bluffing in classroom discussions and on tests. Continue reading ‘The Great Good Thing,’ by Andew Klavan →

Authors, Religion

“Why I was wrong about Christianity”

Leave a comment

One of the best things I’ve read in some time, from Tom Holland in NewStatesman:

The longer I spent immersed in the study of classical antiquity, the more alien and unsettling I came to find it. The values of Leonidas, whose people had practised a peculiarly murderous form of eugenics, and trained their young to kill uppity Untermenschen by night, were nothing that I recognised as my own; nor were those of Caesar, who was reported to have killed a million Gauls and enslaved a million more. It was not just the extremes of callousness that I came to find shocking, but the lack of a sense that the poor or the weak might have any intrinsic value. As such, the founding conviction of the Enlightenment – that it owed nothing to the faith into which most of its greatest figures had been born – increasingly came to seem to me unsustainable.

Read it all here.

Religion, Uncategorized

Gloomy news day

2 Comments

Yesterday was the first day of school for my institution(s), so I was pretty busy. But I learned (primarily through Facebook) of two deaths that were significant to me. For very different reasons.

Phyllis Schlafly died. I assume that the left has assumed the same classy and openminded attitude toward her in death that it assumed during her life (which is to say, there is no epithet too vile for them to throw at her. I’ve seen one example already). I’m sure that in heaven she wears those clods and brickbats as royal decorations. She was a model to us all, in her patient endurance of personal insult, for the sake of the truth, and her refusal to back down.

I think of her most from back in the ‘80s, when I was living in that twilight world where I still voted Democrat while my heart was really with the Republicans. Oh, I still believed that high taxes were God’s chosen means for building the Kingdom of God, but the things my fellow party members said about Mrs. Schlafly made me mad. And eventually I figured out that the people who called her names didn’t think any more highly of me. It helped me to jump parties. Thanks, Lefties!

Another death yesterday was Hugh O’Brien, who – when I was a boy – starred in a TV series called “The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.” I was a big fan of that show. O’Brien, unusually for television in those days, made some minimal effort to dress like the character he was playing. It wasn’t very authentic, but it was an effort. After all, there was no question of his affecting the real Wyatt’s magnificent mustache in those days. I’ve seen re-broadcast episodes, and while the show is not high art, and it leans too heavily on Stuart N. Lake’s highly unreliable biography, it’s a notch better than average TV western of the day.

He devoted his later life to a foundation for youth leadership development. He seems to have been a serious man.

Finally, our friend Gene Edward Veith posted an interesting article today in relation to the canonization of Mother Theresa of Calcutta. As a Lutheran, he doesn’t have much to say about the Catholic canonization process, but he articulates thoughts I share about her admitted struggles with depression:

I have heard this period of darkness referred to as evidence that Teresa “was not perfect,” but I think it makes her holiness more believable. The life of faith is not “perfection,” nor constant joy; rather, it often involves what Luther called “tentatio”–struggle, conflict, agony of conscience–and her descriptions of her depression shows that her faith was in Christ and not her own good works, which she had in such abundance.

Religion

Deeply Flawed, But Becoming Beautiful

Leave a comment

From our earthly perspective, it may not seem to us that the motley assortment of deeply flawed humanity that makes up the church has much to commend it. What kind of a reward is this for Christ’s suffering? Yet Jesus does not hesitate to call us beautiful!

Iain Duguid writes about the hope and security found in Daniel 6. “My salvation rests not on my ability to ‘Dare to be a Daniel,’ but solely on Christ’s perfect obedience in my place.”

Fiction, Religion

‘White Bone,’ by Ridley Pearson

Leave a comment

White Bone

I’m a fan of Ridley Pearson’s Lou Boldt police procedurals. But he seems to be easing off on Lou these days, which is understandable considering Lou’s age. Instead he’s moving into the currently hotter genre of the international thriller, with his Risk Agent novels starring John Knox and Grace Chu. They are contractors who do occasional work for Rutherford Risk, a private agency specializing in hostage negotiation and extraction. I liked the first book, so I bought this second one, White Bone.

The title is a reference to elephant ivory. In this story, Grace, a talented computer technician, is sent to Kenya to look into the records behind a spectacular – and cruel – crime, where precious vaccine was stolen and replaced with a dangerous substitute, resulting in many deaths. Suddenly she drops off the grid altogether, and John Knox – somewhat to his own surprise – is concerned enough to leave his mentally disabled brother, his only family and the center of his life, at home while he goes to Africa to search for her, clashing both with the police and with ruthless animal poachers.

What follows is a white knuckle adventure story. While John runs down slender leads with increasing desperation, Grace is forced to revert to her most primitive instincts in order to survive in a suddenly prehistoric environment.

The book delivered on its promises of suspense and adventure. I wasn’t enamored of it, myself, because wilderness survival stories aren’t a flavor of literature for which I have a lot of taste. But people who like that sort of thing will find Grace’s survival story riveting. I’ll admit I was also troubled a little by some of the other story elements. The book is pretty solidly in favor of shooting poachers on sight, an idea that bothers me because it puts animals before humans (though I probably wouldn’t be as troubled by Old West ranchers hanging rustlers, so that may be prejudice on my part). Also, there is a minor subplot involving a group of hostages, and no sympathy whatever is expended on them.

But White Bone is a well done, exciting thriller that will probably please many readers more than it pleased me. And I’ll read the next book in the series. Cautions for the sorts of things you’d expect.

Religion

Babel Was Not a Model for Segregation

Leave a comment

Segregation Signs

Last month, the Presbyterian Church in America officially repented of its members’ involvement in racial discord in the Civil Rights era and beyond, including “the segregation of worshipers by race; the exclusion of persons from Church membership on the basis of race; the exclusion of churches, or elders, from membership in the Presbyteries on the basis of race; the teaching that the Bible sanctions racial segregation and discourages inter-racial marriage; the participation in and defense of white supremacist organizations; and the failure to live out the gospel imperative that ‘love does no wrong to a neighbor’ (Romans 13:10).”

Jemar Tisby, who is the director of the African American Leadership Initiative and Special Assistant to the Chancellor at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, explains what encourages him about the PCA’s resolution.

The problem with not having an explicit statement repudiating racism, especially during the Civil Rights Movement, as a Southern Presbyterian denomination is that African Americans and other ethnic minorities will always wonder, “Are these folks still cool with racism?” That’s putting it bluntly, but there’s truth to it. As a black person in an overwhelmingly white branch of the church, I have to constantly evaluate whether I’m truly welcome here or not. A strong statement repenting, not just of racism generally, but the more recent lack of vocal support for racial equality during the Civil Rights Movement, is necessary because silence about the matter tacitly communicates either support or indifference.

One charge related to the PCA is the view by some founders and members that racial segregation is a biblical directive.  Continue reading Babel Was Not a Model for Segregation →

Religion

Individuality: a fresh concept

Leave a comment

Sometimes, when reading very old books, you come upon a moment in history where a corner is turned. And your own presuppositions make it difficult to see what’s going on.

Last night I was reading the Book of Ezekiel (that’s in the Bible, for our younger readers) before bed. And I was suddenly struck by what was going on in Chapter 18.

The word of the LORD came to me: “What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge?’ As I live, declares the Lord GOD, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine, the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die.

This is stuff that seems self-evident to us. No surprises here. It’s what we expect from God. But the significant thing – to me – is later in the chapter:

“Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ Hear now, O house of Israel: Is my way not just? Is it not your ways that are not just?” (Verse 25).

You see what’s going on here? The prophet’s audience, the Jews of the Babylonian exile, find it hard to understand how anyone – let alone God – would not want to punish a son for his father’s wrongdoing. And vice versa. Acting in any other way seems to them not only stupid, but positively unjust. What we see happening here is a major cultural shift. A brand new idea in human history, imported from outside our world.

The “normal” human point of view (historically speaking) has been to see human beings in terms of the groups to which they belong. Their families. Their races. Their nations. We recognize today that it’s unjust to say, “All those [insert group name here] are the same.” But such thinking is instinctual. Statistically normal in the world. Prejudice of this sort is born into us. We need to be educated to think otherwise. Continue reading Individuality: a fresh concept →

Fiction, Non-fiction, Religion

He Who Waits For the Best Time to Act

Leave a comment
The hobbit at his table
The hobbit at his table

One of my life quotes, which I wish I could say I’ve actually given proper attention, is a verse from a song in the Rankin/Bass version of The Hobbit.

“A man who’s a dreamer and never takes leave,
Who lives in a world that is just make-believe,
Will never know passion, will never know pain.
Who sits by the window will one day see rain.”

It’s a Glenn Yarbrough song, which you can hear here.

That verse is loosely related to a quote attributed by some to Martin Luther. “For truth and duty it is ever the fitting time; who waits until circumstances completely favor his undertaking, will never accomplish anything.” As our readers often say, “That’s the truth,” but did Luther actually say this?

The Quote Investigator doesn’t believe he did and has evidence to support his belief that another German theologian with a curiously similar name is the one who first put this thought (in his own words) on paper.

Non-fiction, Religion, Reviews

‘The Printer and the Preacher,’ by Randy Petersen

Leave a comment

The Printer and the Preacher

I picked up this book with great anticipation. It’s fairly well known that Benjamin Franklin and the English revivalist George Whitefield were friends. An account of their friendship promised a very entertaining and educational story. Unfortunately, though it was educational, the entertainment element was largely wanting in The Printer and the Preacher.

Author Randy Petersen clearly did a lot of research to produce this book on two remarkable men. George Whitefield to a large degree invented popular evangelism as we know it – emotional, dramatic preaching, avoiding denominational distinctives for a “mere Christianity” gospel. Benjamin Franklin, as his major publisher, supported his work (most of the time) because of its positive social effects, but could never accept the deity of Christ. Nevertheless the two men liked and respected each other, and were friends for many years, until Whitefield’s death. Whitefield again and again urged Franklin to consider Christ’s claims, and Franklin politely put him off.

Wouldn’t it be intriguing to have been a fly on the wall during one of these men’s meetings, when the very concepts of what would become American religion were being worked out by two men of intelligence and wit? Alas, The Printer and the Preacher never provides any detail of such a meeting, even in summary. Apparently such accounts don’t exist, and the two men’s letters don’t preserve the kind of interchange we’d like to have. What we get, instead, is bits of factual information scattered like raisins in the great oatmeal bowl of the author’s analysis. Don’t get me wrong – the analysis is good, as far as I can tell. But I wish the author had trusted his story more, and felt less obligated to explain each point to us. Of course that would have left us with a much shorter book.

The Printer and the Preacher is a useful work. But it’s not a great pleasure to read.

Religion, Uncategorized

Faith of our founding fathers

1 Comment

Proposed Great Seal
Benjamin Franklin’s proposed Great Seal of the United States, showing the Egyptians drowning in the Red Sea.

Thoughts after reading a book on Benjamin Franklin:

It is often stated that Franklin and Jefferson were Deists. This is justified in a sense, because they thought of themselves as Deists. But they really weren’t.

They believed that prayer had value, that God could be petitioned. That is completely opposite to true, continental Deism, which believed in a God who paid no attention to His creation.

What these men actually were, was Christians without the Incarnation. They accepted Christianity as a positive social good, but denied that Christ was God.

In essence they were secular, non-kosher Jews, who would never have considered converting to Judaism for social reasons.