Amazing pity! Grace unknown!
(mertala/Flickr)
Category Archives: Religion
Francis Chan on Finding Power in the Holy Spirit
Guinness Company Begun by Christian Businessmen
“Guinness was a Christian who thought that by brewing beer he was doing God’s work,” according to author Stephen Mansfield in his book, The Search for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World. Bob Smietana reports:
The Guinness family, especially in the company’s early days, was known for the Christian faith, which had been shaped by John Wesley, founder of Methodism. Wesley encouraged his followers to work hard and to give as much money away as possible. The Guinness family took that challenge seriously, Mansfield said. They paid their workers more than other brewers. Their company offered generous benefits — often sending employees’ children to private schools, and having doctors, dentists and a masseuse on staff.
That’s Christians living out their faith in the marketplace. I love it, but I’m not going to try another Guinness for St. Patrick’s Day. I may stick with something safe, like green cookies.
Peter Hitchens, on Christianity and his brother
From the Mail Online: Peter Hitchins describes his journey back to Christianity, and his dispute with his atheist brother Christopher, on the release of his new book, The Rage Against God.
I have, however, the more modest hope that he might one day arrive at some sort of acceptance that belief in God is not necessarily a character fault, and that religion does not poison everything.
Beyond that, I can only add that those who choose to argue in prose, even if it is very good prose, are unlikely to be receptive to a case which is most effectively couched in poetry.
Tip: Ed Veith at Cranach.
The Devil’s Workshop, by Stephen J. Cannell
I’ve been enjoying television writer and producer Stephen J. Cannell’s novels recently, as you may have noticed. The Devil’s Workshop did not disappoint me in terms of story or character (I found the ending especially moving), but I’m glad I didn’t read it first, because it might have turned me off his work from the outset. Continue reading The Devil’s Workshop, by Stephen J. Cannell
The Devil's Workshop, by Stephen J. Cannell
I’ve been enjoying television writer and producer Stephen J. Cannell’s novels recently, as you may have noticed. The Devil’s Workshop did not disappoint me in terms of story or character (I found the ending especially moving), but I’m glad I didn’t read it first, because it might have turned me off his work from the outset. Continue reading The Devil's Workshop, by Stephen J. Cannell
The Hypatian fallacy
One of the enduring legends of the West is that of Hypatia of Alexandra, immortalized by authors as far separated in time as Edward Gibbon and Carl Sagan as a humanist martyr, a scientist who was murdered by 5th Century Christian fanatics for the “sin” of inquiring into the mysteries of the natural world.
Our friend Ori Pomerantz directed me to this entry from the blog Armarium Magnum, concerning a recent movie about Hypatia. The author, who identifies himself as an atheist, points out that there is zero historical evidence for the idea that Hypatia died for science. According to the record, she got caught in a political crossfire and was killed by a mob that didn’t care (if it even knew) a bit about her scientific activities.
Thor, loser
Phil used to post a Friday Fight every week in this space, so I was amused when Floyd at Threedonia posted a “Friday Night Fight” this afternoon. Even more amusing, it’s this clip from a TV movie, “Hulk vs. Thor.”
Marvel Comics’ Thor was always a dilemma for me. I only saw a few issues as a kid, and I was grateful that they paid some lip service to actual Norse mythology. But they made Thor a blonde, and shaved off his beard. (A friend told me that he understood that the artist had determined from the first that he wanted Thor to wear a red cloak, and red hair would have tended to bleed into that. I say that if you prioritize wardrobe over authenticity, you must be gay.)
Aside from the aforementioned cosmetic problems, the big change Marvel made was to make Thor bright. The Thor we meet in the Norse myths does not have what you’d call an analytical mind. He solves problems by a) hitting things with his hammer, or b) getting help from a smarter friend.
Historically, this may be a residue of class prejudice. The myths as we have them come from Viking Age poems. These poems were written by poets (skalds) who congregated around royal courts and made their fortunes by their language skills. They were intellectuals. Odin, being a god of poetry, attracted their worship, and they gave him credit for high intelligence. Thor, on the other hand, was the popular god of the common people, and the skalds portrayed him as a country rube. I suspect the farmers had other myths which portrayed Thor in a more positive light, but they didn’t get into poems that have come down to us.
The Norse gods have been something of a challenge for me in my fantasy novels, and Thor in particular. I try to follow orthodox Christian theology in my presentation of the supernatural. Christianity has generally considered heathen gods to be either a) a delusion, or b) demons (“No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God….” 1 Corinthians 10:20). It works best for fantasy purposes to treat the old gods as existent beings.
Odin’s easy. He’s smart, crafty, a liar, and it’s no stretch to imagine him as completely evil.
Thor is harder. It’s hard to envision a dumb demon.
So when I gave him a scene in The Year of the Warrior, I pretty much played him as what he is in the myths—sort of a force of nature, powerful and dumb. I cast him in a comic scene, which I think was just as corrosive to his worship as demonization.
Misplaced outrage
There’s an anecdote about C.S. Lewis that I’ve always enjoyed. One of his friends told of walking down an Oxford street with him one day, when they were accosted by a beggar. Lewis stopped and gave the man some money.
“You know he’s just going to go off and drink it up, don’t you?” the friend asked as they went on their way.
“Yes, well,” said Lewis, “if I’d kept the money I’d have probably gone off and drunk it up myself.”
There’s a wonderful humility and recognition of shared humanity in that story, I think.
Some people take the wrong lessons from such stories, though.
The essential thing is that Lewis was giving away his own money.
Years and years ago, I sat in on a teaching session led by a Lutheran pastor (we’ll call him Pastor Number One). He told a story of his own, one which (he thought) taught a profound lesson. I think it taught a lesson too, but not the one he thought it did.
Pastor Number One had taken a pastoral educational class which called for a “real world experiment.” Each pastor in the program was required to pack away all his clothing and his wallet, put on old, dirty clothes, and go out to spend a few days on the street as a homeless person.
Pastor Number One told, with some indignation, of getting in to see the pastor of a church (let’s call him Pastor Number Two, shall we?). Pastor Number Two had looked at him and said, “You’re strong and healthy. Obviously you’re able to work. Why don’t you get a job?”
“He was lecturing me!” Pastor Number One exclaimed, recalling the outrage. “I was hungry! I needed food! I didn’t need a lecture!”
I’ve often thought about Pastor Number One over the years, and it seems to me his righteous indignation was a little unjust.
Because the fact was, Pastor Number Two had had his number. Pastor Number One was indeed strong and healthy, and perfectly capable of working. He had come into the church under false pretenses, and had lied in Pastor Number Two’s face.
Pastor Number Two (if my experience in a church office where I saw [and helped] a lot of transients is any indication) had probably, over the years, developed a pretty good nose for bovine sewage.
What Pastor Number One saw as cold-heartedness, was in all likelihood just the exercise by Pastor Number Two of his fiduciary duty not to waste the money entrusted to him by his congregation (as well as a determination not to enable unhealthy life choices, or treat grownups like children). If Pastor Number Two was being judgmental, so was Pastor Number One.
And Pastor Number Two had the moral advantage of not being a liar.
The courage of God
Evangelical Outpost linked today to this article, questioning the traditional understanding of the martyrdom of Lady Jane Grey. Even if all it says is true, for me it doesn’t diminish the pathos of her youthful martyrdom.
Then I read an article about Auschwitz in Smithsonian Magazine.
So I’ve been contemplating human suffering today.
Have you ever thought this thought? I’ve thought it many times: If I had been God, and had known that giving human beings free will would result in all the evil and horror that have in fact been produced, I wouldn’t have given them free will. And if the human project was unsatisfactory without free will, I’d have just skipped the whole business.
I have an answer that satisfies me intellectually. 1 Corinthians 2:9 says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”
Apparently, in God’s economy, the good He is creating far outweighs all the innumerable evils perpetrated by man since the fall of Adam. From the viewpoint of eternity, we’ll look back and say, “Yes, it was well worth it.”
Now that answer raises a hundred questions in my mind. Questions for which I have no answer, and for which we have been given no plain answers.
This, I guess, calls for faith.
But it also argues, I think, for courage on God’s part. Granted, He saw the outcome from the beginning. But part of that outcome, I believe, was His own assumption of all that evil on the cross.
I read somewhere that, in the early years of the Superman comic strip, the writers came to a crisis when they’d made their character so powerful that they couldn’t come up with a challenging enough opponent for him anymore. That was when they invented Kryptonite. Something that took all that power away.
God did it in real life.
I can’t find the reference, but G. K. Chesterton wrote somewhere that all those scoffers, who call God evil for creating an evil world, are right in a sense, and that God acknowledged it (in a way) by explicitly accepting the punishment for creating all that evil.
Whatever else you think, I think you’ve got to admit it’s no cowardly strategy.