On Books

Review: Enter a Murderer

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Enter a Murderer (Roderick Alleyn #2), Ngaio Marsh. New York: Felony & Mayhem, 2012 (originally published in 1935).

Summary: Invited to see a play with his sidekick Bathgate, Alleyn actually witnesses the murder he will investigate.

Nigel Bathgate is friends with the lead actor in a play at the unicorn and receives two tickets to a performance. His friend, and lead partner in crime investigation, Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn is free and joins him. Before the play, they visit the lead actor, Felix Gardner and witness tensions within the cast as Arthur Subornadier barges into a conversation with Gardner and actress Stephanie Vaughn, a lovers’ triangle with Subornadier the jilted lover. We also learn that Subornadier had threatened the theatre owner, Jacob Saint with blackmail to get the lead part. Are you getting the picture that Subornadier is not a very likable character. Turns out he has offended most of the cast and crew.

During the climactic scene, the character played by Subornadier loads a gun (supposedly with dummy bullets) quarrels with Gardner’s character. Gardner gets the gun, fires and kills Subornadier as the stage manager fires a blank shot. Only Gardner really kills Subornadier, and Alleyn sees it all and calls in his crew to investigate. Quickly, they figure out the murder is the one who substitute real bullets for the dummies that were in the top drawer of a desk during a short time when the stage was blacked out. Attention focuses on various characters including Jacob Saint, who is eventually arrested, and Albert Hickson, the property manager who was responsible for the bullets–until Hickson turns up dead while Saint is in jail.

The climax comes when the actors return to the theatre to re-enact their movements in the final scene. In the end the murderer self-exposes, the very person who Alleyn had written down for his newswriting sidekick, Bathgate. And so ends the first of Marsh’s murder mysteries set in a theatre–a favorite location.

This is early Alleyn. He and Bathgate are still learning to trust each other. Alleyn seems a bit rougher around the edges than in later novels, and without Troy in the picture, suggestively returns the attentions of lead actress Stephanie Vaughn, who doesn’t seem to mind gathering men around her. At the same time, the trademark qualities of Alleyn emerge, his quiet, commanding character that marshals the efforts of his team, including Bathgate and his focus on details and not appearances until the murderer is revealed.

This was a quick read and great fun with an unexpected twist at the end–all the ingredients for a good mystery, and for one just beginning the series, an indication of the good things to come with thirty more of these to go!

Review: Bittersweet

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Bittersweet, Susan Cain. New York: Crown, 2022.

Summary: Describes the state of bittersweetness, where sadness and joy, death and life, failure and growth, longing and love intersect and how this deepens our lives and has the power to draw us together.

About ten years ago, Susan Cain published Quiet, helping the extroverted world discover the power of introverts and what they bring us all. In this work, Cain explores why at least some of us like sad songs, rainy days, and react intensely to art?

She helps us enter into understanding bittersweet by telling the story of the cellist of Sarajevo, who during the worst of the shelling, appeared every day and played Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor. It is a beautiful, sad, and evocative piece that capture both the beauty of pre-war Sarajevo and the terrible loss of the war. This is bittersweet, this embrace of sadness and the longing for beauty, for something beyond our fractured existence. Holding together these seemingly disparate experiences, Cain believes is the pathway to “creativity, transcendence, and love.” Bittersweet can draw us together in the shared experience of longing for the transcendent.

Cain explores the sources of our longings for the good, the true, and the beautiful, the wonder of those moments and yet their transience. She contends that it is the place of creativity. She talks about how we live with bittersweet in a world of relentless positivity whose mantra seems to be, “be happy.” She offers an insight into the mental health crisis on university campuses, where everyone has to project a put-together, perfect Instagram image of effortless perfection that no one can live up to. She contends that our understanding of bittersweet can transform workplaces, where we understand the other side of fantastic success is the risk of failure, where allowing workers to acknowledge their struggles releases them to work more freely and productively, knowing that we’re all strugglers here.

The material of the third part on mortality, impermanence, and grief was the most thought-provoking for me. It is framed with the death of her brother and father from COVID-19 and the descent of her mother into dementia, a mother with whom she has had a bittersweet relationship. In between, she narrates attending RAADfest, a gathering of people into radical life extension, who are in revolt against aging and death. While Cain, like all of us would like to live longer, she doesn’t believe the pursuit of deathlessness will lead to peace and harmony, but rather the acceptance of mortality and walking together in it has the power to draw us together. She believes that the embrace of bittersweet is the way out of inherited trauma, when we face and embrace the pain in the lives of our forebears and live with gratitude for their resilience and the gifts they passed on to us.

I found myself reacting in several ways to this book. One was that I recognized a strength Susan Cain has is to name what is often an inchoate sense many of us have. While her “quiz” at the beginning of the book suggests some score higher on the bittersweet scale than others, anyone who has lived enough life, or even through a pandemic grasps this tension of sorrow and wonder, of longing and hope within which we live. Cain’s genius is to name it and give the lie to the American (and often Christian) focus on being happy.

Cain develops her ideas through a series of stories of travels around the world and interviews with a number of insightful people. She is a storyteller, and sometimes, it is hard to keep track of the larger story she is rendering for all the stories. Only in going back over the book for this review did I get any sense of the development of her ideas. With that, I also found the book somewhat repetitive as she makes again and again the point that bittersweet gives meaning, and creativity, love and union with others to our existence. It felt to some degree that this is the world she wanted to be so.

Cain describes herself as moving from an agnosticism to something different, not exactly faith or belief in a particular conception of God. Yet it seems in the end, in an attempt to identify with universal human experience, all she can do is believe in the longing for something more. She quotes C. S. Lewis from Surprised by Joy, noting that “we have hunger because we need to eat, we have thirst because we need to drink; so if we have an ‘inconsolable longing’ that can’t be satisfied in this world, it must be because we belong to another, godly one” (pp. 53-54). Yet Lewis found the fulfillment of his longing not in longing but in God. I fear Cain’s argument is to embrace the hunger and the thirst, but not go on to where there is food and drink. I sense she believes that longing or bittersweet is its own satisfaction. I can’t help but wonder if there is a dark side to bittersweet not discussed here, the disillusionment and despair of a life of longing without finding. I found myself praying that she would find, and have the courage to accept, the “other” that she longs for.

Review: Eyes to See

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Eyes to See, Tim Muehlhoff (Foreword by J. P. Moreland). Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2021.

Summary: An exploration of how God acts in the ordinary elements of everyday life, the idea of common grace, and how we may be encouraged as we recognize these ways of God at work.

When we think of the idea of God at work, we often look for the extraordinary, and we may wonder why we do not see more of that. Tim Muehlhoff believes in this extraordinary work, but he also wants to help us recognize the ordinary, yet beautiful ways God is at work in everyday life. Classically, this is the idea of common grace, the goodness God pours out on all creation: “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45).

Muehlhoff goes beyond the sun and the rain in exploring God’s everyday goodness. He begins with inventions and the instances when human beings arrived at similar solutions to problems, for example the stethoscope. He considers a number of human inventions, and while not arguing this as a proof for God, proposes that there are many instances of this hidden goodness meeting the needs of the world.

In subsequent chapters he turns to different realms in which we see this goodness. In science, we understand the incredible fine-tuning of the universe and our particular location on earth that makes life possible, and also the wonderful breakthroughs to sustain life, such as the accidental discovery of penicillin and the developments of antibiotics and vaccines to complement our amazing immune systems. He calls our attention to the power of art to help us recognize both providence and fallenness in our world when we are otherwise oblivious to it. He weighs the power of words and communication not only to hurt but to heal and illumine with quotes from Hinduism, Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius, Luther Standing Bear, and even atheist Sam Harris. He does not shrink from addressing the horror of war and even discusses Israel’s war against the Canaanites, drawing on the work of Paul Copan. He observes strong tradition of just war, the Geneva Conventions, and the beginnings of the Red Cross. Amid evil, goodness remains and eventually triumphs.

Throughout the book, he addresses objections and comes back to this in the final chapter, preceding his epilogue. He addresses:

  • Is everything common grace?
  • How can we know for sure?
  • Why doesn’t God act sooner?
  • Does common grace limit God’s activity?

Muehlhoff offers a discussion that is concise, carefully reasoned and illustrated with numerous examples from contemporary culture. He concludes the book with the hope that knowing God’s abundant work in everyday life will cause us to “see the world with wonder as we encounter good gifts daily” and fill our mouths with telling the deeds of this God.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Parable of the Talents

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Parable of the Talents (Earthseed #2), Octavia E. Butler. New York: Open Road Media, 2012 (first published in 1998).

Summary: The growth and heartbreaking destruction of Acorn, the Earthseed community founded by Lauren Olamina, and how Earthseed rose from the ashes.

In Parable of the Sower (review) Octavia Butler creates a leader, Lauren Olamina, of a new religious movement in a dystopian America, and describes how she gathers a band of refugees into Acorn, a community formed around the principles of Earthseed. This work continues that story through the narration of Lauren’s daughter, who eventually, with the help of her uncle found her mother’s religious writings and journals, after being abducted as an infant by the extremist wing of a Christian nationalist group.

The chapters of the book begin with an Earthseed verse, then a section in bold print by daughter Asha Vere (born Larkin) followed by journal entries of Lauren that tell the story of the growth and heart-breaking destruction of Acorn, and what followed. Acorn was the place where Lauren and her husband Bankole built a community of refugees on his land and formulated the teachings of Earthseed, gradually drawing convinced adherents. Everyone worked and contributed, children were taught, and products of quality were sold in neighboring towns. She began to think about how they could send people out to teach Earthseed elsewhere. Amid this, the child they hoped for so long was born, who they named Larkin.

Meanwhile, Christian America, a church-based nationalist movement with political aspirations gained increasing sway in a country that wasn’t working. They brought order, housed the homeless, and their leader, Jarrett, became president on a platform of restoring American greatness by cleansing the country of all “heathen” beliefs. Her half-brother Marcos, rescued from slavers, refuses to join Earthseed, drawn by Christian America and his desire to preach. Bankole sees what is happening and wants to take Lauren and Larkin to a quiet town. Lauren refuses, convinced of the truth of Earthseed and the potential of a movement that would eventually take the human race to the stars.

Until, that is, the Crusaders, a radical arm of Christian America come, seize Acorn, imprisoning the men and women separately, and taking all the children away, placing them with adoptive parents, including Larkin. The adults were all “collared” with electronic collars. Bankole dies during the attack as does Olamina’s close childhood friend Zahra. They are supposedly being “re-educated” but no one succeeds in being released. Women are assaulted by their Christian captors and expected to be submissive.

How they escaped, overcoming their captors, and how Earthseed arose out of the ashes occupies the later part of the book. It comes down to Lauren’s “talents,” her abilities to lead and persuade people to follow, not blindly, but willingly. It also has to do with her “magnificent obsession” that she pursues, even when her brother won’t follow, or face the evils Christian America had perpetrated. Likewise, she seeks her daughter for years, but ironically, it is Marcos who finds her, misleads her about her mother and educates her, showing her love her adoptive family never did and her mother never could.

There is so much here. Butler presciently anticipates the Christian nationalism and demagoguery of our own day and its appeal, as well as the xenophobia of anything that is “other” and the subjugation of women. That is chilling. Equally interesting is her exploration of what it means to be a founder of a religious group, to know to the core of one’s being that a revelation is true, and how one cannot do other than pursue what one knows in one’s being is true. Persecution, the loss of family, and arduous work are all part of it, but also the forming of a community of the convinced.

Butler is a compelling but uneasy read. There are brutal and heartbreaking passages, but also much to provoke thought. In a sense, these books might also be parables that might come with the words of the greatest parable-teller, “Let the one who has ears, hear.”

Review: The Gap Decade

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The Gap Decade, Katie Schnack. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2021.

Summary: A first-person account of navigating the decade of one’s twenties, the transition from adolescence to adulthood.

I first noticed the idea of this book in my work with grad students. They were living on their own, most were working while pursuing grad studies, they had cars, health insurance, paid taxes, and in some cases were married or had even started families. They looked like adults and I thought of them that way. Yet they did not yet feel they were “adults.” Perhaps part was that they saw themselves as “still going to school.” They described some of the things I’ve mentioned in the preceding sentences as “adulting” which suggests a kind of rehearsal for adulthood. I came to discover that this is descriptive of many in their twenties.

Katie Schnack captures this in her book, The Gap Decade. The title comes from the idea of a “gap year,” which many take before or after college as a kind of transition. Schnack suggests that the gap decade isn’t a choice, but a host of transitions “that the universe just dumps in your lap” that come with a ton of emotions from loneliness or even depression to exhilaration and joy and intimacy.

In an informal and quirky style, Schnack describes her own journey through the transitions of this decade. One is the finding of new friends in the places where one moves. Another is the waiting (sometimes literally at tables) one does on the way to find the work one wants to do. Then there is the work (or #werk) and the crazy things that happen like the boss who up and quit, throwing her stapler across the office (how not to quit). She describes a couple years in Austin where she learned to “embrace the stuck” while her husband completed an MFA program.

Working on taxes taught her and her husband how to make the hard things like doing taxes more endurable–snacks and pizza with champagne afterwards made it easier–and learned to apply that lesson to other hard things, like Tuesdays. She writes about finding the balance between tidy (which she is not) and good enough, and between taking care of oneself and enjoying one’s body, and going crazy in some exercise program. She describes the new appreciation of her home in Minnesota after living in other places, including knowing how to bait a fishhook and de-ice a windshield. It also means accepting change–that Christmas celebrations, even with family are different than childhood.

Living in a tiny apartment where both worked from home in New York exposed all their shortcomings, the grace and self-forgiveness they needed to practice, as well as some good life hacks–and the value of a bigger place to live. Like many couples starting out (especially during the recession that began in 2009), finances were tight and lean into their faith:

“When all my go-to comforts are stripped from me–a sense of physical and financial security, an understanding of what outcomes I can expect, my tangible needs and emotional needs being met–I have learned just to lean hard on God, with the expectation he will show up with enough to get me through. How? Just by the good ol’ “cry out to God” method because sometimes that is all we have to offer” (p. 124).

Another move, this time to Memphis led to a mental health crisis as Katie went through profound depression. She speaks candidly of the stigmas that still exist in the Christian community around mental health–particularly the stigma that one should not need medication. And she writes about the transformative experience of going to a therapist (not a Christian), an elderly woman with an eye problem who she dubs “Dr. Magic Wizard.” She finally was able to process the death of her closest college friend.

The concluding part of the book describes her and her husband’s journey into becoming parents–the deep grief of a miscarriage, carrying and birthing her daughter, and that as a mom it is still OK–or not–to wear a bikini. You can even survive showing up to register your daughter for daycare with a stray piece of pink underwear hanging out the back of your shorts, that you discover only after you leave.

Schnack is real, vulnerable, and funny. She lets you know you are not the only one to go through all of this stuff–a lot of people are. She describes a life of learning that she doesn’t have to have it all together. She tells stories of leaning into her faith in all sorts of practical ways–God shows up and she keeps showing up. The book ends with her turning thirty–far from flawless but also marveling how far she has come.

This is an encouraging book. I enjoyed the quirky writing style as well as the skill of weaving a number of “adulting” transitions into her narrative. This is a great book if you are wondering if you are the “only one” or know someone who is.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

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The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, Alan Jacobs. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Summary: An argument that we should read what we delight in rather than what others think is “good” for us.

Alan Jacobs is not among the prophets of reading doom. He believes we should actually read what we want to rather than following prescribed lists of “great” books that we ought to read. He argues that the most important reason for reading is that it is pleasurable rather than it being “good” for us:

“So this is what I say to my petitioners: for heaven’ sake, don’t turn reading into the intellectual equivalent of eating organic greens, (or shifting the metaphor slightly) some fearfully disciplined appointment with an elliptical trainer of the mind in which you count words or pages the way some people fix their attention on the ‘calories burned’ readout…” (p. 17).

He proposes that we read “at whim,” that is, we read books when we are ready for them. That doesn’t mean we don’t read the great books. It means we don’t read them too soon. He also suggests that when we find works we like and wonder what else to read, that rather than reading books inspired by those books, we read upstream–that is, we read the books that preceded and inspired them. If we liked Tolkien, we should read Beowulf, a recommendation I agree with, especially if it is Seamus Heaney’s rendering! Now a more challenging one is his suggestion that, if we like Jane Austen, we read Hume, as many of her ideas come from him–but only under the sign of Whim.

Jacobs argues that one of the pleasures of reading is responding to the author and he describes the ways readers annotate their works and the value of this (he uses a mechanical pencil for precise underlines and sharpness of notes). Against those who worry that this will slow them down, he challenges the cult of page and book counts, contending that it is what, and not how much we read, that matters. He argues that many books become more boring the faster we read them, and that we ought to allow ourselves time to re-read, because we often miss much in our first readings.

Against those who complain of diminishing attention in an internet age, Jacobs contends that the thing that helped him most was getting a Kindle–it kept him reading, it promoted linearity, and allowed him to concentrate for a long time. Unlike reading on a computer or tablet, there are no notifications and no distractions or temptation to multi-task.

This takes Jacobs into a discussion of attentiveness and he introduces us to Hugh of St. Victor and the counsel of the Didascalion. He advises reading what we can, moving step by step, first cogitating and then meditating on the text, ruminating on it as a ruminant does its food. He contends that we need both the skills of skimming and deep and long attention, depending on the material and our reasons for engaging it.

Against those who want to turn libraries into chat-filled cafes, he argues that silence is often difficult to find, especially for the impoverished, who cannot afford the space. Libraries, or at least reading rooms, can be a place to preserve that. Against the contention that reading is solitary, he observes all the interactive possibilities from our engagement with the author to classrooms to book groups.

He concludes where he began, with the idea of serendip. Very little of our reading journey may be planned, though it may be cultivated, whether through Amazon recommendations, or the discoveries on the shelves of a bookstore or library. While pleasurable reading involves attention and the elimination of distraction, it should not be shaped by the shame or guilt of what one should read.

Like the author, I’ve been tempted at points by reading plans, and still wrestle, as a reviewer, with reading too fast, sometimes robbing myself of the enjoyment of a book. I no longer worry about reading plans, and usually have one book going that I just read for enjoyment. This was one such book, and I would recommend it for any who remember loving books, but for one reason or another struggle to read or get caught up in the tyranny of “should.”

Review: Following the Call

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Following the Call, Edited by Charles E. Moore. Walden, NY: Plough Publishing House, 2021.

Summary: A collection of 52 weeks of readings working through the Sermon on the Mount, meant to be discussed and lived out in community.

Back in 2016, I reviewed a collection of 52 readings from the same editor and publishing house, titled Called to Community. This book, similar in format, builds on that earlier collection.

Charles E. Moore has edited a collection of readings organized into 52 weeks of readings with contributions from a wide range of Christians throughout history, from Augustine to Tim Keller, from Martin Luther to Martin Luther King, Jr. The readings follow the Sermon on the Mount, section by section, portraying how a wide range of believers have understood and sought to live under this challenging message of Jesus.

A reading at the end of this collection of readings articulates the intent in creating this set of readings. Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes:

“This word, whose claim we recognize, this word, which issues from his saying ‘I have known thee,‘ this word which sets us at once to work and obedience, is the rock on which to build our house. The only proper response to this word which Jesus brings with him from eternity is simply to do it. Jesus has spoken: his is the word, ours the obedience. Only in the doing of it does the word of Jesus retain its honor, might, and power among us. Now the storm can rage over the house, but it cannot shatter that union with him, which his word has created” (p. 332).

The assumption throughout is that this is a kingdom manifesto, describing the way Jesus’s followers will actually live, rather than some unrealistic ideal. Furthermore, and this is emphasized in the subtitle, the Sermon on the Mount is meant to be lived together and the book is written to be discussed together. Each weeks readings, from one to four writers and covering five to eight pages, are meant to be read, along with the pertinent portion of the Sermon, in a small group. A study guide at the conclusion of the text offer several probing questions and additional scripture passages to aid discussion. The aim is that a group would help one another take steps to live out the Sermon week by week.

The readings are offered in four sections with an introductory article to each section by Moore. They are:

Kingdom Character (Matthew 5:1-16). A highlight in this section was the short reading from Oscar Romero on persecution. He observes: “It is very easy to be servants of the word without disturbing the world in any way” (p. 71).

Kingdom Commands (Matthew 5:17-48) Jen Wilkin writes on law and the place of obedience and offers this example: “We don’t train our children to obey us so that they can gain our favor. They already have our favor. We, being evil, train and equip them to obey because it is good and right and safe. And how much more does our heavenly Father love us?” (p. 87).

Kingdom Devotion (Matthew 6:1-18) William H. Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas offer these convicting words: “Those who are being formed by praying, ‘Our Father who art in heaven, holy be your name’ are not permitted to about the holiness of God by attempting to put a leash on God, then dragging God into our crusades and cruelties” (p. 195).

Kingdom Priorities (Matthew 6:19-7:28) Dallas Willard challenged my own understanding of the teaching about pearls before pigs: “Pigs cannot digest pearls, cannot nourish themselves upon them….The reason these animals will finally ‘turn and rend you’ when you one day step up to them with another load of Bibles or pearls, is that you at least are edible” (p. 287).

This is but a tiny sampling of the rich fare offered in these readings. You may wonder if you will find enough to discuss in the few pages and short passage for each week. I suspect once you get going, if there is good trust and spiritual openness among you, that you will find there isn’t enough time.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher via LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: A Christian Field Guide to Technology for Engineers and Designers

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A Christian Field Guide to Technology for Engineers and Designers, Ethan Brue, Derek C Schuurman, and Steven M. Vanderleest. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022.

Summary: Explores in practical terms the intersection of faith and technology in areas of design norms and ethics and how technology might serve the common good.

It is common in Christian higher education circles to discuss the intersection of faith and learning. Often, this is highly abstract and conceptual and in fields like engineering, computer science, and design, these discussions seem far removed from the technical problems those trained in these fields are trying to solve. The three authors of this work have worked both in industry and academia and bring their experience together with a well-informed faith to offer a work that digs into the specifics of how Christian faith informs design, ethics, and the uses technology serves for the common good. They articulate what they are trying to do and why they call it a “field guide” in their Preface:

“The vision for this book is to provide a guide for Christian engineers and others working with technology to responsibly navigate today’s technological terrain. A field guide is a resource that helps the reader identify things (usually plants or animals) in their natural environment. We hope this book serves as a field guide interested in engineering and technology to identify and discern technology and its cultural environment. Furthermore, since all readers will be users of technology, and many will be practitioners, this book provides some principles and advice that we hope will be helpful to Christians who wish to be faithful and honor God in the technological aspects of their lives.”

The authors begin with the underlying hopes that inspired people like the Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison, and Samuel Morse and make the connection between our dreams and hope in a sovereign God who makes all things new. They root this vision in the early chapters of Genesis, a skillful creator who works iteratively to “very good” design standards, who entrusts his creatures with responsible caring and imitating the creator in their care (we were technologists from the start!), who accept deceptively marketed fruit in disobedience to their mandate, introducing futility into work and estrangement into relations, leading to a long term project of redemption and restoration.

From theological foundations, the authors focus on the responsibility of engineers, beginning with the example of New York’s Robert Moses who designed bridges with low clearances to prevent the poor from riding busses to the parks Moses designed. It was not a mere fluke of neutral bridge design but a deliberately racist and classist decision. They go on the puncture a number of myths about design neutrality, the most chilling of which was the employment of IBM engineers in the 1930’s to develop calculating devices allowing the complex control of a train system shipping millions to the camps, even after they knew how their work was being used. They point out failures of engineering responsibility in the collapse of Hyatt Regency walkways and exploding gas tanks on Ford Pintos. Beyond the failures is the positive responsibility of Christians to design technology for shalom, the wholeness and flourishing of those served by that technology.

Christian principles come to bear throughout the design process. The field guide proposes “design norms” that inform the creation and evaluation of technology, detailing analytical, cultural, clarity, social, stewardship, harmony, justice, caring, and faithfulness norms. They recognize that there might be tradeoffs between norms, the place where theologically informed creativity comes into play. They discuss different system of ethics, and the normative standards of the field, and then challenge Christians to an ethics that go beyond these in the pursuit of love of neighbor, care for the creation, and justice.

Engineers need to be aware of the hubris of building towers of Babel, monuments to human autonomy and pride, particularly in a technicism that thinks all human problems are reducible to technical solutions. History can teach us and, in one of the most illuminating chapters, they use the example of electric vehicles, which actually preceded internal combustion engine powered vehicles. They show all the misconceptions about why this technology failed and our flawed ideas about progress that may actually have been regressive. Looking to futurist ideas is also instructive as Christians thread a way between the unbounded optimism of movements like transhumanism and technological pessimism to view technology as a gift whose use we rehearse for good as we anticipate the new creation.

Many Christians struggle with whether to leave off their technology to pursue the mission of Jesus. The authors offer a strong argument for how God may be honored in technological fields. The book then concludes with a fictional exchange of emails between a professor and former student in industry that pull together and apply the different themes of the field guide.

I appreciate the “heavy lifting” these authors have done to identify specific issues of responsibility, design norms, ethical issues, and their thoughtfulness about the uses of technology. I think of many students with whom I wish I’d had the opportunity to discuss this book (a prospect enhanced by the discussion guide that is included with the book). This is quite simply the most useful book I’ve come across for those in technological fields about how they may do their work Christianly. The combination of principles, case studies, and well-known examples make this highly accessible. This will be my “go to” field guide to recommend in the future for engineers and designers.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: The Professor’s House

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The Professor’s House, Willa Cather. New York: Vintage Classics, 1990 (originally published in 1925).

Summary: The move to a new home, academic success and his daughter’s marriages, and a deceased former student and son-in-law, precipitate a crisis for Professor Godfrey St. Peter.

The first sign was when the Professor paid up the rent on his old house so that he could still use his spartan old study, furnished only with a table, a sofa with Tom Outland’s old blanket, a couple seamstress’s forms left by Augusta, the family seamstress, and an unreliable heater that required leaving a window open for safety’s sake. The lavish new home had plenty of room since his daughters had married. But this was the place where he wrote the multi-volume history, Spanish Adventures in North America, that was the cornerstone of his academic success and the awards that followed that made the new house that Lillian had always wanted possible. Up until then, any niceties had come from her inherited income.

St. Peter’s older daughter Rosamond had originally married a former student, Tom Outland, who died in the war, but not before leaving her a patent that her new husband, Louie Marcellus, has commercialized, with lavish profits that he uses to lavish favor on Rosamond and her family. The younger daughter, Kathleen, less vain and more sensitive has married a journalist. There is tension between the two, particularly as the Marcelluses take their parents on trips, including a proposed trip to Paris.

St. Peter decides not to go, pottering about in his old study, revising Tom Outland’s journals. The book takes a break at this point with Tom speaking in the first person about a magical season of discovering an ancient indigenous people’s village high up on a mesa in the Southwest, cataloging his discoveries. His partner stakes him the funds (gambling winnings) to visit Washington to recruit researchers to come, to no avail. He then returns, only to find his partner sold them out, resulting in their final alienation. Tom then migrates to the college where St. Peter is professor, works with a physics professor on his invention, graduating with a patent. Part three of the book returns to the professor, and a crisis in his life with which the book concludes.

The book is fraught with the tensions that are pulling at St. Peter’s life. There is the spartan life of the scholar (and of Tom on the mesa which St. Peter had visited) in contrast with the life of luxury that both Lillian and her elder daughter Rosamond craved, that St. Peter’s success and Marcellus’ business acumen made possible. There is the tension between the elder and younger daughter and their husbands, the younger of which, St. Peter trusts, despite, or perhaps because of his modest means. There is the growing coolness between Godfrey and Lillian as neither can embrace the life of the other. St. Peter’s stubborn hold on his study and his refusal to go to Paris, which he loves, is a kind of passive resistance after acceding to the life Lillian desires. Tom seems to represent something of an ideal that St. Peter had not had the courage to pursue.

The summer of the Paris vacation was a last respite before returning to his teaching and the comfortable life Lillian wanted (or perhaps the growing awareness of their estrangement). As their return approaches, he experiences a weariness for which the doctor can find no bodily cause, setting the stage for his final crisis.

The structure of the book seems disjointed, with the second part a separate narrative in which Tom Outland is the main character. The only thing I can think is that it explains St. Peter’s fixation with Tom by setting their lives in contrast. The question remains of how or whether St. Peter will resolve the tensions in his life, tensions such as all of us live with, tensions that can fray to the breaking or result in creative resolutions.

Review: Transfiguration and Transformation

/ rtrube54 / 2 Comments

Transfiguration and Transformation, Hywel R. Jones. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 2021.

Summary: “Transfiguration,” referring to Christ and “transformation,” referring to the believer translate the same Greek word, metamorphosis. This work explores both why the difference and what the connection is.

Metamorphosis. This Greek word is used to describe both what happened to Jesus on the mountain with Peter, James, and John and what happens in the believer as the become increasingly like Christ. We say Jesus was “transfigured” while describing what happens to believers as “transformation.” In this compact but carefully argued book, Hywel R. Jones explains both the distinction and what the significance may be that the same word is used.

The first half of the book considers the transfiguration of Jesus. He looks at the setting, as a hinge point at the end of the Galilean ministry and the journey to the cross. He considers this both in terms of its historicity and as revelatory of the one fully God and fully human as the incarnate Son. Jesus’s divine nature is revealed in all its splendor without destroying his humanity. His careful exegesis looks at the significance of the kingdom in all three accounts and the successive scenes of the transfiguration, the appearance of Moses and Elijah, and the interruption of Peter and the Father’s word. Finally, this leads to its purpose–to prepare both Jesus and his disciples for his death, that his self-abasing death and the exaltation of God are one thing in this one human-divine person.

The second, and longer, part of the book discusses the believer’s transformation, inaugurated in our regeneration to new life through the Spirit of God and increased through our ongoing sanctification as we behold the glory of Christ, as our minds are renewed, and as we are recreated in the image of God. Finally, we experience transformation perfected in our glorification, where we become like Christ, purified of all sin and raised as Christ was raised in new, glorified bodies.

Hywel R. Jones summarizes the essence of the difference and connection of these two experiences of Christ, and of the believer as follows:

‘The transfiguration of Christ shows how the divine can penetrate the human without destroying it. The transformation of the believer shows how the human can become conformed to the divine without its ceasing to be human. This is the ultimate metamorphosis that is compatible with Christian truth.’

Hywel R. Jones, p. xvi.

In Christ, his full divinity was revealed through his full humanity. For the believer, we are not nor will be divine, but are rather being formed into fully human but utterly accurate reflections of what God is like in Christ. Neither the divine nature of Jesus or the divine image of God in human beings diminishes the humanity of either.

Jones gives us a study that both reveals the glory of God in Christ and the glorious transforming work God in Christ Jesus has begun in us , is continuing, and will bring to perfect completion when we see Christ. Against scholarship that diminishes the glorious deity of Jesus to emphasize his humanity, Jones portrays the Son to be listened to, whose glory would be revealed in suffering. And for those of us who wonder if there is hope for us muddling sinners, he offers hope rooted in the work that began in our conversion, is continuing day by day as we keep looking at Christ, and will be gloriously completed. We see both the greatness of Christ, and in that greatness, the greatness of our destiny, all captured in that one word, metamorphosis.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.