Review: Changed Into His Likeness

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Changed Into His Likeness (New Studies in Biblical Theology), J. Gary Miller. Downers Grove: IVP Academic/London: Apollos, 2021. (UK publisher link)

Summary: A biblical study of how personal transformation takes place in the life of a believer.

Change is hard. How many of us keep those New Year’s Resolutions? At the same time, one of the claims made by Christians is that new life in Christ is transformative. J. Gary Millar, in Changed Into His Likeness explores what may be asserted from the teaching of scripture about the change that is possible, avoiding the extremes of over- and under-realized eschatologies. He considers the clear teaching that we both have been changed in coming to new life in Christ, and we will be changed. Meanwhile, there is the question of what may be expected in between, where believers live their lives this side of eternity, which is the focus of this volume.

Before engaging this question, Millar asks the question of what do we mean by “us,” considering what is meant by the image of God, and the various words used addressing body, soul, spirit, mind, etc. This relates to current neurophysiological debates. If we are merely material, change is simply a matter of re-routing neural pathways. He seems most sympathetic to the idea of “holistic dualism.”

He then turns to the biblical account of change, considering first the Old Testament. His contention, considering case studies from Noah to Solomon showing that positive change was not possible for those who believe, but rather decline. He then asks an intriguing question: were Old Testament saints regenerate, particular if this Spirit was at most upon them rather than indwelling them? The theologians he references dance around the question and he leaves this unanswered as well. But the evidence shows that transformation is not evident in the Old Testament.

He then considers the New Testament. Jesus, unlike the Old Testament saints fulfilled the law and expanded his treatment from outward to inward, limiting the provisions for divorce, and transforming the lives of those who encounter him, like Zacchaeus and the Samaritan woman. He frees from sin, and promises the indwelling of the Spirit, through whom he would bear fruit in their lives. Paul likewise speaks of the gospel’s transforming work. Believers abound in love, please God more and more, learn to discern his will, increasingly reflect the character of Jesus, are strengthened to serve, filled with God’s fullness, show a work of God moving forward to completion, and reflect God’s glory in Christ. He also traces the contributions of other New Testament writers. His summary of Hebrews could preach: We will grow in our knowledge of truth, focus on encouraging others, and experience the kindly discipline and training of God

He then does a historical theological survey from Augustine to the present, including fascinating material on Calvin and John Owen. He also characterizes James K. A. Smith’s focus on replacing cultural liturgies with richer, thicker Christian ones to be a flirtation with legalism. I think he misreads Smith here and does not distinguish what Smith proposes from his own recommended practices of a Word-shaped life. He makes these observations: Biblical change is complex, God’s work, trinitarian, flows from union with Christ, is word-driven, requires piety, and is comprehensive. This sets the stage for his own biblical theology of personal transformation. He highlights that it is a work of God, occurs through the gospel, enabling us to respond with repentance and faith. This change comes through our life in the church and in the world, and involves perseverance. Perhaps more simply, we change as we gaze upon Christ and are changed increasingly into people who reflect his glorious image (2 Corinthians 3:18).

This is much needed work in an era where the gospel has been hi-jacked either for personal prosperity or political ends, all of which reveal a shrinking understanding of the true and glorious transforming power of the gospel. Only this holds hope for those who have been failed by all the self-help teachers and those in the grips of sin’s tyranny in all its forms–our idolatries, our besetting sins, our injustices, and our fearful animus toward our neighbors. God can transform all of these–not with a wave of a magic wand but as we focus on Christ, are discipled by his word, are impowered to repent, believe, and change by his Spirit, and drawn by a loving Father in a community of mutual encouragement. This theology of change speaks into the lives of quiet desperation of believers who wonder what there is between having first believed and going to be with the Lord and who feel they are just going through the motions. Millar’s study is a vital resource that I hope enjoys much use by pastors and all who commend the Lord who is changing us into his likeness.

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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 Moon is a Harsh Mistress

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The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein. New York: Ace, 2018 (originally published in 1966).

Summary: In 2076, Luna, a colony of Earth on the Moon, decides to declare independence, to end the one-sided grain export to earth that will deplete lunar ice reservoirs, under the leadership of a sentient computer.

In 2075, the colony of three million on Luna lives underground in a warren of tunnels. Many are convicts, former convicts, and descendants of convicts. Nominally, they are ruled by a Warden whose main responsibility is insuring the continuity in hydroponically-grown grain shipments being shipped to earth via the catapult. He’s largely incompetent, and the real brain behind Luna’s operations is Holmes IV, a supercomputer, that, unknown to all but a computer tech who listened and treated him humanely, had become sentient. The tech, “Manny” O’Kelly-Davis engages him and teaches him to joke.

As extraordinary as this relationship is, it is just the prelude to a series of events leading a body including Manny and the computer, now named Mike (short for Mycroft Holmes), to instigate a movement leading to a declaration of independence on July 4, 2076. Joining him is Wyoming (Wyoh) Knott, a female revolutionary agitator and Professor Bernardo de la Paz, who has recognized that Luna’s grain shipments to earth will use up Luna’s ice reserves in seven years, leaving the moon waterless and threatening the existence of the colonies. And Mike? He becomes Adam Selene, leader of the movement (as well his alter ego, Simon Jester, who loved to poke fun at Luna Administration as the impetus for revolution developed)

After independence, Manny and the Prof pursue a desperate course to head off an invasion from a vastly more powerful but dependent Earth. Despite their physical weakness due to living their lives in Moon’s low gravity, they go to Earth, even while they leave Mike and Wyoh to prepare an unorthodox defense of Luna. They hope to negotiate a peaceful transition to independence and a sustainable trade relationship that didn’t deplete Luna’s ice reserves, serving as ambassadors for Luna. Will proud Earth listen, especially the North Americans, or will they be as stubborn as the British monarchy 300 years ago? You can probably guess, if you don’t know the story. Will a war be necessary and will these scrappy revolutionaries have any better chance of succeeding? Mike had calculated their odds as one in seven.

The plot serves as a vehicle for exploring a variety of alternative possibilities–sentient computers being just one example. Line marriages address a two to one ratio of men to women, where one married into a line of interlaced marriages of men and women spanning generations and lasting over a century or more. Government, such as it is a combination of a function-driven bureaucracy and a cross between anarchy and libertarianism. The threat of being tossed out an airlock keeps most in line–the bad actors don’t last long. They develop a system of trade with little theft and where payment of debt is a high value. With the “harsh mistress” of the moon, perhaps they realized both responsibility and interdependence.

Of course, the most interesting question is what the relation of colonies on the Moon, or perhaps Mars, will be to Earth. More recent futurists and many in the space exploration enterprise have considered the colonizing of the Moon and Mars, particularly as life on earth becomes more environmentally tenuous. It is easy to think of Earth as the Mother planet. But if colonies become established, and people inhabit them for generations, what paths will exist to redefine these relationships to avoid interplanetary war? Admittedly, this is still a ways off, if ever. But Heinlein makes us consider questions that go beyond feasibility and technology–questions that in a way have always occupied us and need to be answered anew.

Review: The Free World

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The Free World, Louis Menand. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.

Summary: An intellectual and cultural history of the forces and figures whose creations contributed to the emergence of the United States as an intellectual and artistic leader in the years between 1945 and 1965.

The years between 1945 and 1965 were a time of transformation in the United States. The return of servicemen from the war fueled a boom in university education. An influx of intellectual and artistic refugees from Europe sparked a dynamic mix of ideas and artistic development. The boom in education and culture was accompanied by an economic and technological boom, fueling a widespread interest in music, art, books, museums and and the rapid growth of publishing and music and film industries. Something had happened in the country, where ideas mattered, and culture engaged, with an urgent and widespread interest.

The Free World is an account of the institutions, the people, and the cultural movements and moments of this period. The title is significant in two respects. One is an emphasis on the United States, fueled by Western Europe thinkers and artists, becoming a center of intellectual and artistic culture in a way it had never before. The second is the idea of freedom, that in a variety of ways was a theme running through the “slices” as Menand calls them of this history.

Menand’s approach to this sprawling intellectual and cultural history is to take slices, focusing on a particular aspect of that history and a particular network of key figures and their relationships. He begins with the advent of the Cold War, and the intellectual architect of America’s doctrine of Cold War, George Kennan, and the “Wise Men’ surrounding him, transitioning into a discussion of thinkers about power, anti-totalitarian George Orwell, and anti-communist James Burnham whose The Managerial Revolution foresaw the rise of the bureaucratic totalitarianism of mass culture.

Meanwhile, in occupied and post-war France, the existentialists (Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus) looked into the void, seeing nothing but absurdity, developing the philosophy of authenticity and radical personal choice and responsibility. Political and social theorists continued to wrestle with the connection between mass culture and totalitarianism. Hannah Arendt, influenced by Heidegger and the horrors of the Nazi camps wrote The Origins of Totalitarianism and sociologist David Riesman The Lonely Crowd on group conformity and how this would undermine personal autonomy, little realizing it also made room for alternative visions. Meanwhile, Claude Levi-Strauss, a pioneer in anthropology joined Roman Jakobson in developing Structuralism, a system for analyzing languages and cultural systems, eclipsing the concepts of freedom on which existentialism rested.

In the arts, a constellation of individuals led by Jackson Pollock and Clement Greenberg, along with other artists like Willem de Kooning, were trying to break out of the strictures of painting and art criticism (in the case of Greenberg). Menand chronicles the introduction of Pollock’s drip paintings and other similar works and the galleries and shows and the patronage of figures like Peggy Guggenheim that made this revolution possible. Meanwhile, the thinkers and writers were at work, a circle that included professor Lionel Trilling of The Liberal Imagination, poet Allen Ginsberg, and beat writer Jack Kerouac. Menand returns in a later “slice” to these figures and the further development of their work into the early post-modern deconstructive thought of Barthes and Derrida and the literature that followed.

Another arts movement, centered at Black Mountain College sought to implement a hands-on experimental approach, breaking with the strictures of theory in art, music, and dance under the influence of Josef Albers. Visual artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, composer John Cage, and dancer Merce Cunningham all were part of this circle. Menand does a masterful job describing the innovations of each of these figures. Meanwhile, rock ‘n’ roll was breaking onto the scene. Menand chronicles the unpremeditated recording of “That’s All Right, Mama” that launched the career of Elvis Presley and the intersecting growth of the record industry and disc jockeys who got them air time, often for pay, and the growth of television. He explains how all these factors created the environment for the surprising U.S. success of the Beatles. A later chapter on consumer sovereignty shows mass culture applied to advertising by McLuhan and the marketing of everything from pop art to cars with fins.

One of the most interesting chapters is the one on “Concepts of Liberty,” moving from the high philosophy of Isaiah Berlin in “Two Concepts of Liberty” exploring both negative and positive freedom (“freedom from” and “freedom to”) to the paperback revolution, and their covers and content and what constraints can be placed on this form of expression. This is followed by a discussion of the embrace of “freedom” as a key rallying cry in the Civil Rights movement.

In later chapters, Menand traces further developments in feminism and pop art and the central figures of Betty Friedan, Andy Warhol and Susan Sontag, the freedom literature of James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison, and the shift of cinematic artistry from Europe to America, advocated by critic Pauline Kael, who wanted films both smart and entertaining and how Bonnie and Clyde was a watershed film in this regard.

The last chapter comes full circle with George Kennan testifying in the Senate against American expansion of the Vietnam War in 1965, which he and the other Wise Men thought contrary to not only American interests but unnecessary for “containment” of communism in a country trying to free itself from colonialism. But the real story of “This is the End” was that the diversion of intellectual and cultural energy from the intellectual and cultural awakening of the previous twenty years.

Menand does us an incredible service in chronicling this intellectual and cultural history in “just” 727 pages. It could have actually taken far more, and with commendable concision he summarizes complex ideas and multi-faceted movements and the contributions of a variety of key people. The one thing I miss is the religious element of the country’s intellectual culture. Reinhold Niebuhr is mentioned in one line on a single page but was a formidable influence on Kennan and many others. Howard Thurman played a key role in shaping Martin Luther King, Jr. Paul Tillich and Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel did major intellectual work during this era, addressing the themes of freedom in this work.

Menand concludes his preface musing, “As I got older, I started to wonder just what freedom is, or what it can realistically mean. I wrote this book to help myself, and maybe you, figure that out.” He does not draw conclusions as he ends the work. He challenged me to think. Arendt, Riesman, and Berlin all have concerns about how mass culture, under the guise of expressive individualism can lead to tyranny. Yet by and large, the freedom of thinkers and culture-makers in this work, is the freedom of throwing off of constraints. And when we are indeed shackled physically or by unjust practices like colonialism, racism, or sexual discrimination, removing constraints is necessary to human flourishing. But the religious outlook would also recognize some constraints enable us to flourish both individuals and societies to flourish–constraints upon evil or unchecked and undisciplined affections, that in extreme form can lead to tyranny. But Menand is spot on in identifying freedom as an important theme for our cultural life, and one worthy of consideration. His intellectual and cultural history certainly points toward the sources of our contemporary ideas of freedom. It seems to me an urgent matter to discern whether these ideas are the best for both individual and societal flourishing.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Passbooks

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Mahoning Bank Passbook. Photo by Robert C. Trube

Remember passbooks? Like me, you may even have some old ones around your house like this one I found. This was how we saved money growing up in Youngstown.

It started for me when I set up my own lawn cutting business and started setting aside money to buy my own stereo. Each week, I would walk down to the Dollar Savings and Trust on Mahoning Avenue, a few blocks from my house (I don’t have that passbook anymore). I’d set aside some money for things like baseball cards and maybe save $10 a week.

The Dollar Savings and Trust on Mahoning Avenue was in a long, narrow building. When you walked in, there was an enclosed office in front, teller’s windows on the left, and on the right, a standing desk with chairs on either side. At the desk, you would fill out a deposit (or withdrawal) slip with your account, date, and amount, using one of those pens on a chain that seemed to work about half the time. Toward the back was a manager’s office and the safe with safe deposit boxes. I went in there a few times with my dad.

After you filled out the slip, you stepped across the aisle to an open teller window. After a while, you got to know the tellers, some who had been there for years. You gave them your money and deposit slip and your passbook. They would write or stamp the date, the kind of transaction, the amount, and your new account balance. Once a month, they also wrote in the accumulated interest in your account. And they would initial each transaction.

What a cool idea! They added money to your account (at that time 4 percent interest!) just for taking care of your money. They even paid you interest on your interest! Someone told me early on that one of the keys to getting rich was working for your money and then letting it work for you. They also said that you wanted others to pay you interest rather than you paying interest to them.

It turns out that banks did not always give customers a passbook. At one time, they just kept their own, handwritten account ledgers. Passbooks gave customers a certain amount of control and access to their own accounts. They also served as identification, much like a passport, which is of similar size.

And now they are largely a thing of the past in most places. Computerization and online banking have eliminated paper records, like passbooks. Now, most funds are deposited, withdrawn, or transferred electronically, and we only go to the bank if we need cash, or maybe a loan (even much of applying for a loan may be done online). Even then, we often use ATMs or drive throughs. I deposit checks with my smartphone. I can’t remember the last time I went into a bank and every time I went there, I dealt with different people than were there on my last visit. Now, I keep track of my accounts through the app on my phone or from my computer. It’s convenient, to be sure, but…

I do miss the personal relationships of the past. You knew the tellers names and they got to know yours. They knew your dad and other family members. It was fun to look at your passbook and see the steadily increasing balance of your account toward your goal of something you wanted to buy, or eventually, saving for college. Savings and scholarships meant I graduated without owing anything.

Passbooks were part of how we learned to save. The habit of going to the bank each week to save a bit of what I earned became a lifelong habit. Compound interest was the first lesson I learned about having money work for me. I felt like the tellers were cheering us on.

I wonder how children learn how to do this today. Looking around, I do see that banks have youth accounts. Often the banks are not as close by, certainly not in walking distance. Things can be done online. I wonder if parents need to be more involved than in the past. I could go to the bank myself, even at age ten, and that felt empowering. It meant I was growing up. In Youngstown.

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Review: Paul: Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity?

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Paul: Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity, David Wenham. Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans, 1995 (print on demand).

Summary: A study of the relationship of Pauline thought to the teachings of Jesus by a comprehensive effort to compare them on a number of major themes.

One of the more discussed questions in Pauline studies is whether Paul may be considered the real “founder” of Christianity as we know it. For one thing, Paul rarely quotes Jesus, and aside from the death and resurrection of Jesus, seems to have little interest in the ministry of Jesus. On the face of it, his teaching seems to have different concerns, everything from justification by grace through faith, the inclusion of the Gentiles, and the ordering of life in churches.

This work was brought to my attention when I reviewed Who Created Christianity, a festschrift honoring Wenham’s work. That work was not possible without this one, and I found it sufficiently interesting to dig into the work that began it all, published by Wenham back in 1995. Wenham’s project in this work was nothing less than a comprehensive comparison of the teaching of Jesus and the thought of Paul. His method, which he outlines in the first chapter is to set the teaching of Jesus and Paul side by side in six major areas in chapters two through seven. He considers that of Jesus first, and then that of Paul. This in itself reveals many areas of consonance as well as divergence. The second part of each chapter is even more important. Wenham looks for connection between Jesus and Paul, and whether this can be argued to go back to the teaching of Jesus. These may be one of the following: formal tradition indicators, where Paul indicates he is drawing upon the words of the Lord, such as in teaching on divorce in 1 Cor 7:10; references to things known by his readers that would have come from Jesus, as in 1 Thes. 5:1-2; verbal and formal similarities, such as Paul’s “yes, yes” or “no, no” in 2 Cor. 17-18, and similarities of thought.

Wenham deals with the question of correlates not demonstrating relationship. His own approach is one in which, if the accumulated evidence shows a number of highly probable or plausible connections, then it may be argued that there is a likelihood of dependence of Paul on the Jesus tradition.

In chapters two through seven, Wenham applies this method to the following:

  • The Kingdom of God
  • Who is Jesus?
  • Why the Crucifixion
  • Jesus and the Community
  • Living in Love
  • The Future Coming of the Lord

Chapter 8 takes a slightly different approach, surveying the life and ministry of Jesus, considering what Paul might have known of his birth, baptism and temptation, ministry, miracles, and lifestyle, transfiguration, passion, resurrection and exaltation.

Finally, Wenham draws together his conclusions in chapter 9, some of which I will highlight. While Paul doesn’t use kingdom language very often, he teaches that new creation, a new situation has come in Christ. Jesus speaks of himself as the Son of Man and Paul of him as the new Adam, and also uses the “Abba” language distinctive to Jesus. At the last supper, Jesus sees his suffering as redemptive and bringing in his coming kingdom and Paul sees the redemption of sinful humanity, and a strong connection in Paul’s writing about the last supper. Jesus speaks of the destruction of the temple and the community and mission of the twelve. Paul sees the new temple composed of Jews and those incorporated into the church through the Gentile mission. There is a common thread of the primacy of the law of love and a vision of the last things. Wenham also sees difference but contends that the pre-passion and resurrection setting of Jesus in a Jewish world, and the post-Pentecost, Gentile setting of Paul’s thought accounts for differences. He shows how Paul’s thought is a development rather than departure from the teaching of Jesus. He also has some intriguing ideas in a concluding note about Paul’s gospel sources in relation to the Mark, Matthew, Luke, and Q sources of synoptic scholarship.

While taking nothing away from Paul’s importance to the Gentile mission in the urbanized Roman empire, Wenham contends that “Paul would have been horrified at the suggestion that he was the founder of Christianity” (p. 409). Rather, he would consider himself a follower, indeed a “slave” of the one he encountered on the Damascus road.

This is not only a wonderful contribution to Pauline studies but also to biblical theology, in considering the continuity, indeed the origins of our Christology across the gospel. I suspect there are those who would be more skeptical of Wenham’s connections and conclusions, giving less credence to dependence upon Jesus. But what Wenham does accomplish is the removal of the wedge some would drive between Jesus and Paul, while doing full justice to the biblical material. So much of Pauline studies has been dominated by the “New Perspective” discussion which may lead to overlooking Wenham. Amid discussions that may threaten to eclipse Jesus, this work both honors Paul and exalts Christ.

Review: Notes from No Man’s Land

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Notes from No Man’s Land, Eula Biss. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2009.

Summary: A collection of American essays connected to four places the author lived, all exploring the realities of race in which we all are implicated.

Telephone poles. An essay on the introduction of (and resistance to) telephone poles on the landscape becomes an essay on lynching. It turns out that telephone poles were used to hang many black men. Biss writes of how she once thought the “arc and swoop” of phone lines a thing of beauty. Now she comments, “they do not look the same to me. Nothing is innocent, my sister reminds me. But nothing, I would like to think, remains unrepentant.”

This striking comment captures a theme running through this book. Wherever we go in America, if our eyes are open, we recognize that we are implicated in our nation’s racial history. Nothing is innocent. And yet what also comes through in these essays is that Biss is not resigned to this state of affairs–repentance, a turning, is yet possible.

In her essays we follow Biss from New York to San Diego (and trips into Mexico), Iowa City, and the Rogers Park neighborhood of north Chicago. She describes locking kids into a Harlem school where she is teaching on 9/11 and how New York depleted her. In an essay sharing the title of Joan Didion’s “Goodbye to All That” she speaks of how “New York took everything I had” and like Didion, she left, but unlike Didion, she has not returned, and questions how Didion tolerated so many myths about the city.

She moves to San Diego, working for an African-American newspaper. One of her most telling essays describes Eve Johnson’s struggle with Child Protective Services to gain custody of her own grandchildren, and the repeated barriers she encounters because she is “too black” and her persistence. She notes that she never saw such stories in the New York Times.

Her next move is to Iowa City. She writes about her research into the Black company town of Buxton, no longer in existence that seemed idyllic. There was a fabric of community organizations and a strong sense of identity and self-respect among the black residents. She dares to wonder about the kind of “integration” in which Blacks are a small minority in a sea of white, as was the case with dissatisfied Black students at the University of Iowa. Is such integration really a form of assimilation rather than an affirmation of identity? She also discusses the race blindness she encounters as people decry “looting” after Katrina, but downplay thefts by students after a tornado tore through their city.

The title essay, “No Man’s Land” is set in Rogers Park, a neighborhood on the north side of Chicago, bordering Evanston. It was originally called No Man’s Land because of its location. It is also highly integrated with no racial majority, yet she writes both of the racial fears that persist among whites like her in this diverse community and of her husband’s hope that “more white people don’t move here.”

Her concluding essay is titled “All Apologies” and explores the meaning of apologies both in personal life and in our racial history. Amid this is her telling observation: “Some apologies are unspeakable. Like the one we owe our parents.”

Biss dares to explore both our implicatedness in racism, and the ambiguities of living among one another with all that history. She recognizes the ambiguity in her own family, the mixed racial ancestry that gives her a cousin able to move between white and black communities, even while on the basis of appearance, she cannot. Her essays reveal a very different version of our national character from what many would have the textbook versions to be. She sees both the beauty and value of people and cultures, and the blindness, the hardness, and the obfuscations that sustain these disparate versions of America. In her spare, reflective prose she does not offer answers but invites us to sit with her and see.

Review: Orient Express

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Orient Express, Graham Greene. New York: Open Road Media, 2018 (originally published as Stamboul Train in 1932).

Summary: Seven people on a train between Ostend and Constantinople intersect in various ways, making choices about the kind of people they will be.

Seven people on a train from Ostend to Constantinople. Mabel Warren is a hack reporter who drinks too much and is on a routine assignment when she recognizes that Richard John, a school master is actually Dr. Czinner, a dissident returning to his native country to hopefully lead an uprising, the story of Mabel’s career. Warren is accompanied by her assistant who is also her lover, Janet Pardoe, enroute to visit a relative, and secretly hoping for a different life. Myatt is a successful young Jewish businessman, an importer of dates, among other things. Coral Musker is an worn out dancer with a heart condition, attended by Richard John, exposing him as a doctor. When she collapses, she is given Myatt’s berth because she couldn’t afford her own, obligating her in the way women often have been obligated to men, which Myatt doesn’t refuse, even though he is drawn more to Janet Pardoe.

Two others play lesser parts. Mr. Savory is a popular writer, perhaps collecting material and also interested in Janet. Finally, joining them in Vienna is an elusive thief, Josef Grünlich escaping a murder charge when a safe-cracking job went south. Meanwhile, Mabel Warren, victim of another thief in Vienna is not able to reboard the train. Because Czinner refused to compromise his plans to save being exposed, Mabel wires the story to her paper, setting up Czinner’s apprehension. Coral and Josef Grünlich get caught up in it.

What is striking is the contrast between one character shaped by noble ideals and six others who live by looking out for number one. The others have their chances but basically are survivors like the great mass of us. There is also the element of a journey where the constraints of ordinary life, and relational commitments are in flux, particularly evident with Mabel and Janet, and Myatt and Coral.

This is early Graham Greene. It is said he wrote this to make a bit of money. But we can already see one of the characteristic elements of Greene’s work–characters in a liminal place and how they will respond. This lacked the focus and weight of later works, but nevertheless held your interest, wanting to see what the end of the journey held for each.

Review: The Great Quest

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The Great Quest, Os Guinness. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2022.

Summary: An invitation to the examined life in the pursuit of a meaningful existence, a well-lived life.

The meaning of life. It sounds like one of those discussions for a first-year intro to philosophy class as we are challenged by the dictum of Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” In response, we often joke about it. Or we make it an absurd joke, as in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in which the supercomputer Deep Thought computes the answer to the Ultimate Question of the Meaning of Life, The Universe and Everything, as 42.

Os Guinness believes the absence of meaning in modern life of significant concern. Citing the statistics of rising suicide rates and falling birth rates in the modern world, he believes the quest for meaning to be pressing:

The truth is that the urgent need of our times is a fresh seriousness about human existence and a renewed openness to ultimate questions. Answers to ultimate questions are not only vital to each of us as individuals but to whole societies and civilizations. Indeed, there are no great societies or civilizations without confident answers to ultimate questions, and such answers need to become vital again in our schools, our universities, and our public discussion as well as in our families.

Os Guinness, The Great Quest, p. 4

Guinness contends that one needs meaning as one needs oxygen and his plea as he introduces this book is that if we haven’t thought these things through, that we do so. He also identifies some of the reasons we fail to do so: distraction, bargaining that we’ll do it later, and the noise and interference of our busy lives. But for those serious about asking the questions and reaching the conclusions that come of an examined life, Guinness offers to be a guide on the journey.

Guinness lays his cards on the table. He is a convinced Christian, while respecting other religions and worldviews. He proposes to be as fair as possible because he wants people to think things through. He also asks of his readers a personal engagement in their search, ready to say, “here I am” if the transcendent comes calling. While welcoming reason, he eschews the ability of proofs to do anything more than suggest that a belief is reasonable.

With these preliminaries out of the way, he outlines four phases in our search

  1. A time for questions. Warning of the psychological objections to our questions and belief in finding meaning as “bad faith,” he notes the insatiable capacity of humans to ask and some of the perennial big questions: Where did we come from? What can we know? What are we? Where are we going? What can we hope for? The questioning may reveal the inadequacy of the beliefs, the view of the world we have embraced. We may find experiences in the world that shatter our conceptions, signals of transcendence that encourage us to look deeper.
  2. A Time for answers. We begin with conceptualizing, weighing different ideas and how they address our questions. We critically assess the differences and compare different “answers.” How would each shape the way we live if we thought the world that way. For Guinness, there are three main families of answers, those of the Eastern families of faith, those of secularists, and those of the Abrahamic faiths. As we work through these possible answers to the great questions, Guinness concludes, “Does any faith that you as a seeker may consider answer your questions? Does it do so in a way that switches on the light in the darkness and fits like a key in the lock…?”
  3. A time for evidences. One might think answers are enough. He contends that the only reason to believe anything is on the basis of reasonable evidence that it is true–Does it align with reality? Do the facts fit? In detail and as a whole?
  4. A time for commitment. Finally we must commit ourselves to whatever we believe is true. Guinness frames this in Christian terms of discovering “that loving and being loved [by God] is the very heart and soul of faith and the meaning of life” and saying “Here I am!” to that God. Whatever the “faith” one commits to, Guinness warns against the myth that it is about the search and not the destination–equating this to the legend of the Flying Dutchman, doomed to never dock but to sail forever.

Some may object to the Christian framing of this work. While there are statements by those of other “families” throughout, the preponderance becomes increasingly Christian in the progression of the phases. Guinness has warned us and certainly speaks in the terms he knows best, particularly when it comes to commitment where he speaks warmly of entering into loving relationship with God in which one finds meaning and purpose.

So, the reader must decide how far to go with Guinness as guide. Strictly following his four phases without being guided by the Christian examples, I could well see a person ending up in any of the three main “families” and any of the branches of those families. And to do so would certainly be to live an examined life rather than the muddled life of distracted modernity. Guinness can offer further guidance for someone wishing and willing to consider a thoughtful account for how one may embrace Christian faith. The illustrations from both his own life and others may well ring true with one’s own journey and help make sense of it.

I suspect this book may work best as something two friends, who trust and can be candid with each other, may discuss, even if one believes and the other is seeking. I could see a process of working through the phases together that would leave neither unchanged. Indeed, one of my thoughts on reading was that reaching a place of commitment ought not end the living of an examined life, and it has often been the dialogues with seekers, skeptics, and those in deep pain that have driven me deeper into the questions, the answers, the evidences, and my own commitment.

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

The Month in Reviews: December 2021

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It’s been a busy month at Bob on Books! I reviewed 18 books this month from T. S. Eliot to Louise Penny. Reviews ranging from children’s to crime fiction, from devotionals to memoirs, a couple books for Christians in higher ed, Revolutionary war history, evolutionary neurophysiology, natural ecology, and more!

Also, it was the time of the year to pick my Best Books of 2021 as well as the Top Viewed Reviews of 2021 (no overlap, by the way!). It was a great way to look back on my year of reading reviewing, 198 reviews in all! So here are the books I read as 2021 came to a conclusion.

The Idea of a Christian Society, T. S. Eliot. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014 (First published in 1939). Three lectures given in 1939 putting forth Eliot’s ideas for a Christian society in the light of rising pagan, totalitarian governments in the pre-World War 2 world. Review

Beyond the White Fence, Edith M. Humphrey. Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2021. A group of cousins visiting “Gramgon” and a neighbor boy have a series of adventures in which they meet their patron saints, passing through a portal just beyond the garden gate. Review

From Pentecost to Patmos, Second Edition, Craig L. Blomberg and Darlene M. Seal with Alicia S. Dupree. Nashville: B & H Academic, 2021. A New Testament Introduction covering Acts through Revelation, with introductory material and commentary, review questions and bibliography for each book, useful as a textbook or reference. Review

A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Gamache #12), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Books, 2016. Gamache returns to the Sûreté as Commander of its Academy, and finds himself at the center of a murder investigation of one of its corrupt professors. Review

Struggling with Evangelicalism, Dan Stringer, Foreword by Richard J. Mouw. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2021. Traces both the author’s personal struggles with evangelicalism and a four step process of healthy struggle involving awareness, appreciation, repentance, and renewal. Review

The Parables: Jesus’s Friendly Subversive Speech, Douglas D. Webster. Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2021. A study of the parables of Jesus, why he used them, how they conveyed his message and what that message was, and what they mean for our preaching. Review

The Haygoods of Columbus: A Family Memoir, Wil Haygood. New York: Peter Davison Books/Houghton Mifflin, 1997 (The link is to a different, currently in-print edition). A memoir of Haygood’s growing up years in Columbus, his extended family, the glory and decline of Mt. Vernon Avenue, and finding his calling as a writer. Review

Thriving With Stone Age Minds, Justin L. Barrett with Pamela Ebstyne King. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021. An examination of the ways evolutionary psychology and Christian faith intersect in understanding what sets us apart as human beings and how human beings may thrive. Review

With Fresh Eyes, Karen Wingate. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2021. Sixty reflections of a woman born legally blind, who gains significant sight in one eye, seeing not only the world, but also the world’s Creator with new eyes. Review

Abundance: Nature in Recovery, Karen Lloyd. New York: Bloomsbury Wildlife, 2021. A collection of essays describing both the loss of and recovery of abundance in the natural world, where people have caused harm and brought renewal. Review

Absence of Mind, Marilynne Robinson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. The text of Robinson’s 2010 Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy, challenging “parascientific” explanations reducing the mind to nothing more than the physical brain. Review

A Sacred Journey, Paul Nicholas Wilson. Bloomington, IN: WestBow Press, 2021. A practical description the journey toward faithful Christian presence in secular institutions. Review

The British Are Coming (The Revolution Trilogy [Volume 1]), Rick Atkinson. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019. A history of the first two years (1775-1777) of the American Revolution, discussing the causes, personalities, and key battles. Review

Finding Your Yes, Christine E. Wagoner. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2021. An exploration of what it means to listen for God’s invitations and say “yes” to them. Review

Singing in the Shrouds (Roderick Alleyn #20), Ngaio Marsh. New York: Felony & Mayhem Press, 2014 (originally published in 1958). Alleyn joins a ship bound for Cape Town seeking a serial murderer, one of nine passengers. Review

Riding High in April, Jackie Townsend. Phoenix: Sparkpress, 2021. A freelance writer faces some crucial life choices as she joins her software entrepreneur partner of fifteen years in Asia as he tries to launch an innovative open-source platform. Review

Refuge Reimagined, Mark R. Glanville and Luke Glanville, Foreword by Matthew Soerens. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021. A case for welcoming refugees based on the biblical ethic of kinship, and the responsibility of kin to provide a home for those who have none, with applications to the church, the nation, and the international community. Review

The Vocation of the Christian Scholar, Richard T. Hughes, Foreword by Samuel L. Hill. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2005. An account of the calling of a Christian scholar, emphasizing drawing deeply on the theology of one’s own and other faith traditions, and living in the paradoxical tension of one’s faith and one’s disciplinary scholarship. Review

Best Book of the Month. I consider Dan Stringer’s book, Struggling with Evangelicalism, an extremely important discussion. So many of those I know who would identify in some way with this religious stream within the American church have wrestled with whether to stay or leave. Dan has as well and shares his process. He distinguishes between “brand” and “space” in a way that is helpful to me. There is so much with the “brand” I cannot embrace, but the core convictions and values have shaped me, and I won’t leave that space, even as I’ve learned to value other streams. This book gave me language for my own struggle.

Best Quote of the Month. Karen Wingate lived most of her life legally blind until eye surgery vastly improved the vision in one eye. I loved how she described in her new book, With Fresh Eyes, the moment she came to grips with the change this would mean for her, which her doctor described as “better than ever”:

“Despite low vision, God had given me all I needed. I could fill pages with stories of how God provided me transportation to travel all over the country even though I don’t drive. A Bible seminary that didn’t have services for disabled students recruited undergrads to read textbooks to me. At every point when work and my poor eyesight collided, computer technology took a leap forward, relieving the strain of seeing. I had an education, a family, a career, and a good ministry. God had answered my childhood prayer to help me live my life despite poor eyesight. I had learned to be content and grateful for the vision I did have.

“And now this. Better Than Ever” (pp. 36-37).

She offers sixty reflections on seeing the world better than ever and the spiritual lessons that came with this improved vision.

What I’m Reading. This week I’ll be reviewing Os Guinness’s new The Great Quest (and interviewing him on Wednesday!), as well as a Graham Greene classic Orient Express and an award-winning collection of essays by Eula Biss, Notes From No Man’s Land. Over the holidays, I decided to tackle several longer books that I have long wanted to read: Raymond E. Brown’s magisterial study, The Birth of the Messiah, David Wenham’s Paul: Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity, and Louis Menand’s The Free World, a sweeping survey of the intellectual history of the twenty years after the end of World War 2, when I was born and growing up. Finally, I’m taking a dip into a Heinlein novel I never read, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and just starting a book by a good friend and former colleague, Robbie Castleman, Interpreting the God Breathed Word. It is on how to read and study the Bible–something I always hope to grow in even as I teach others.

Well, there you have it! Maybe these offer some ideas for what you might read in 2022. And if you need more suggestions of reading goals, check out my Bob on Books 2022 Reading Challenge. Happy reading!

The Month in Reviews is my monthly review summary going back to 2014!

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — New Year’s Grit

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One of the more interesting books I’ve read in recent years is Angela Duckworth’s Grit. The book explores how grit is a combination of purposeful passion and perseverance. As I read the book, I thought about how much I learned about grit by growing up in Youngstown. I think about how many of those winter snowstorms we dug out of–and then went to school. We hardly ever had snow days. We watched our parents go to work, often to hard, physical, and sometimes dangerous jobs. We had parents who struggled through the Depression. And many of us had to reinvent ourselves when the big employers pulled out of the city. Some of the city’s sports heroes are football players like Frank Sinkwich or boxers like Ray “Boom-Boom” Mancini. If you were knocked down, you got up. Or you knocked the other guy down first. Grit.

We’ve faced a hard couple of years. Youngstowners don’t sugarcoat things. We buried people we love. We got sick and recovered. We saw businesses struggle. But if we are reading this, we survived (and hopefully will, to the end of this thing). That’s no small thing. As I think of the year ahead, this seems to be a time for Youngstown-strong grit–even as we have lived with grit through the pandemic.

I saw a story yesterday on WKBN’s website about the Westside Bowl and the couple who have turned it into a popular entertainment venue. It exemplifies Youngstown grit. The old Gran Lanes was our favorite spot on the West side for bowling. Then it sat vacant for years. A West side couple, Nathan and Jami Offerdahl had a dream, then spent three years between 2015 and 2018 working out a business plan. They opened with a small downstairs venue for 200, then took out half the lanes, created a larger upstairs venue, kept half the alleys, and served good pizza and booze. When COVID hit, they came up with a “pay it forward” pizza promotion that allowed them to pay the bills.

Grit is disciplined passion. It is just plain hard work from planning a business to renovating a venue. It perseveres during down times. It keeps finding a new way to do things. And grit sticks to its values. The Offerdahls created an intimate, artsy venue that bands love and refuse to tear out additional lanes to make the upstairs venue larger. (From the Gallery pictures, it really looks like a great concert venue.)

Rather than resolutions, which I don’t think Youngstowners are big on, I wonder if this is a good year to get on our Youngstown grit. That doesn’t mean being mean and nasty or hard-hearted. I think the ICU personnel caring for our sickest are among the grittiest people we will encounter. They are tired but they keep showing up, shift after shift. Grit can mean caring for an aging loved one–Youngstowners take care of family.

Maybe this is the year you decide to pursue a passion you’ve long thought about, like the Offerdahls. Surviving a pandemic can have a wonderfully focusing effect. It could be giving yourself to volunteer work that makes some part of the world a little better place. Maybe it is pursuing a business or creative venture. And think how good it will be to persevere in developing a skill or launching a new venture when you’ve had all that practice in persevering with social distancing, quarantines, masks, and the like!

Gritty people know how to celebrate. Their celebrations aren’t empty celebrations just to have fun. From weddings to wakes, we knew how to celebrate, enjoying the fruits of work, the efforts of raising kids, and the preciousness of life and family. No wonder we insist on good food and plenty of it at our gatherings!

I’ve written so much in this series about the gritty people who built Youngstown from the early settlers to the laborers, the civic and cultural leaders, and the builders of industries, and even some of the great buildings of the city. Whether we still live in the Valley or make our homes elsewhere, this is a time for grit and resilience.

I look forward to sharing more stories of Youngstown and the character and grit that shaped our city. I wish you a Happy and “Gritty” New Year!

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!