Christ Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.
No Dawn for Men, by James LePore and Carlos Davis
This sounded like fun. A crossover of two very popular and very different fiction series.
It’s well known that Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, was a genuine British intelligence agent during World War II.
It’s probably less well known, but hardly a secret, that J. R. R. Tolkien, creator of The Lord of the Rings, was offered a book deal in Germany previous to World War II, on the condition that he sign a statement to the effect that he had no Jewish blood. He turned the offer down in a letter which is a masterpiece of elegant dismissiveness.
So what if Tolkien had not sent a letter? What if he had actually gone to Berlin on a secret espionage job, assigned to him by the agent Ian Fleming?
That’s the premise of No Dawn for Men. Lots of possibilities here. How would Fleming and Tolkien have gotten along? What would they have said to each other, thought of each other?
Alas, this book does little to illuminate those questions. There is one scene where the two authors talk a bit about their basic values, but it doesn’t really lead anywhere. Fleming and Tolkien follow essentially separate paths through the story, Fleming acting like Bond and Tolkien like… oh, Bilbo Baggins perhaps, though a bit wiser, in a narrative with supernatural elements. He’s even given genuine underground-dwelling dwarves to travel with, which does not add to the credibility of the story.
The two plot threads occupy the page space like oil and water. The whole thing didn’t work very well, in my opinion.
Not awful, but nothing to seek out.
Dark Days Ahead?
A law professor talked privately to Rod Dreher about his fears for the future in the context of religious freedom bullying.
“In California right now, judges can’t belong to the Boy Scouts now. Who knows if in the future, lawyers won’t be able to belong to churches that are considered hate groups?” he said. “It’s certainly true that a lot of law firms will not now hire people who worked on cases defending those on the traditional marriage side. It’s going to close some professional doors. I certainly wouldn’t write about this stuff in my work, not if I wanted to have a chance at tenure. There’s a question among Christian law professors right now: do you write about these issues and risk tenure? This really does distort your scholarship. Christianity could make a distinct contribution to legal discussions, but it’s simply too risky to say what you really think.”
The emerging climate on campus of microaggressions, trigger warnings, and the construal of discourse as a form of violence is driving Christian professors further into the closet, the professor said.
“If I said something that was construed as attacking a gay student, I could have my life made miserable with a year or two of litigation — and if I didn’t have tenure, there could be a chance that my career would be ruined,” he said. “Even if you have tenure, a few people who make allegations of someone being hateful can make a tenured professor’s life miserable.”
“What happened to Brendan Eich” — the tech giant who was driven out of Mozilla for having made a small donation years earlier to the Prop 8 campaign — “is going to start happening to a lot of people, and Christians had better be ready for it. The question I keep thinking about is, why would we want to do that to people? But that’s where we are now.”
These teachers, students–Christians of all professions–will have to ask themselves whether they believe Christ Jesus, whose kingdom will never end, was joking when he told us to seek his kingdom first and look to God to provide what we need.
How Easter Shows Britain’s Value Shift
“In the confused mishmash which constitutes religious education in our schools, it is considered fine to concentrate on what cakes different faith groups eat and what flags they wave. But to suggest Jesus was a unique figure in history would be seen as dangerous brainwashing, and to say ours was a basically Christian culture would be elitist.”
The Frustrating Significance of Reading Pynchon
Nick Ripatrazone observes, “In a 1978 debate with William Gass at the University of Cincinnati, John Gardner said the fiction of Anthony Trollope is rarely taught ‘because it’s all clear.’ In contrast, ‘every line of Thomas Pynchon you can explain because nothing is clear.’ The result: ‘the academy ends up accidentally selecting books the student may need help with. They may be a couple of the greatest books in all history and 20 of the worst, but there’s something to say about them.’ Gardner warned that ‘The sophisticated reader may not remember how to read: he may not understand why it’s nice that Jack in the Beanstalk steals those things from the giant.'”
Gardner also called Pynchon “a brilliant man, but his theory of what fiction ought to do is diametrically opposed to mine, and while I think he’s wonderful and ought to be read — besides which it’s a pleasure — I don’t want anybody confusing him with the great artists of our time. He’s a great stunt-man.”
Ripatrazone goes on to talk about the difficulties and importance of teaching Pynchon : “I end with Pynchon because his fiction is difficult, dated, and frustrating: exactly what my students need to read before they go to college.”
Song for Maundy Thursday
#ThingsJesusNeverSaid
Love is what you make it. Whatever you call love, it’s all good.
Love your neighbors, like the Samaritans, except the hateful ones.
RT @rcsprouljr: #thingsJesusneversaid When the culture despises you/when perversion is protected & celebrated/when your political clout is gone all is lost.
I don’t know when this Twitter hashtag was started, but it’s been revived for the clash with Indiana Armies of Intolerance, who say they want to defend religious freedom, but we all know what they really want, right? It’s obvious. Let’s rally to drive them all out of business in the name of freedom and respect.
Last year, people were talking #ThingsJesusNeverSaid with images like these. I just shared #11.
Clearly a tag like this cuts both ways. Jesus didn’t say many things, and everyone has put words into his mouth, but those who disrespect him may have done this more than anyone.
Jesus never said, “Put my name on something fun. Draw people to the Christian brand, and I will be honored.”
He didn’t say, “Watch yourself. If you get out of line, the Father will hammer you.”
Or this, “Stop thinking about my teaching. Just believe what I say.”
Feel free to add to the list.
The Fruit of Evolution
How Hegel’s concept of a universal mind, a spiritual evolutionary process, gave us postmodernism, deconstructionism, and political correctness.
Over time, Hegel’s pantheism was secularized and his Absolute Spirit was reduced to a metaphor — the spirit of the age, the Zeitgeist. (In German, Zeit means time or age; Geist means spirit.) What remained, however, was the idea that individuals are “unconscious tools” of the Zeitgeist. They are not producers of culture so much as products of a particular culture. Individuals are shaped by the communities they belong to, each with its own shared perspective, values, habits, language, and forms of life.
In our own day, this has led to the extreme conclusion that everyone’s ideas are merely social constructions stitched together by cultural forces. Individuals are little more than mouthpieces for communities based on race, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexual identity.
This comes from Nancy Pearcey’s Finding Truth: Five Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes.
‘Contemporary scholarly methods do not always lead one to truth’
Seven essential lessons from Thomas Oden, an evangelical scholar in a secular academy:
- Contemporary scholarly methods do not always lead one to truth.
- Many of the questions raised by modern scholars have been addressed (long) before in the history of Christianity.
- The quest for originality and newness can be a dangerous one.
- Scholarly views can have serious social consequences.
- The modern scholarly community is not tolerant like people think.
- A faithful voice can have a significant impact.
- Modern Ideologies will eventually collapse under their own weight.
Non-review: The Shadow and Night, by Chris Walley
One of our readers asked for my reaction to The Shadow and Night, the beginning of a science fiction series by Chris Walley. I gave it a try. Perhaps I didn’t give it enough time.
The story is set in the distant future, in a universe where (as far as I understand it) the Lord has established His millennial Kingdom. The story starts on a distant planet, which has been terraformed and colonized by humans. A demonic rebellion is coming, but I didn’t read that far.
I’m sure I should have given the book more of a chance than I did, but I found nothing in what I read that engaged me. The writing seemed to me entirely lacking in any spark, the characters dull, the dialogue lackluster. This was supposed to be a more or less sinless universe, as I understood it, and sinlessness here seemed boring. Stereotypical soft-serve Christian storytelling in a bland setting.
Judging by other people’s reviews on Amazon, it may well be that the book improves as it goes along. But looking ahead at the number of pages yet to read, and judging by the small amount of fun I was having at the beginning, I gave up on it.
Don’t judge the book by my experience.