Ron’s #13: A Passion for God by Lyle Dorsett

If you are like me, A. W. Tozer is an important writer in your Christian journey. The Pursuit of God and Knowledge of the Holy are still two of my favorite books, ones I reread regularly. Tozer is one of those writers that has a special place on my bookshelf because he painted a picture of what it means to hunger after Jesus Christ. Reading his books made me want to be a better Christian, closer to God and eager to learn and experience more of Him.

If this describes your view of Tozer, don’t read this book.

Lyle Dorsett’s A Passion for God highlights two aspects of A. W. Tozer: it shows that he is a godly man who lived a life listening to God and spending hours in prayer; it also displays a man who was a hard, cold man to his family. In short, A. W. Tozer was a real jerk!

This book is filled with juxtapositions. One on hand, Tozer is a backwoods, uneducated hillbilly, and on the other he is a self-educated Renaissance man in later life. He was humble and quiet, yet bold and passionate in his preaching. He loved people and served all of his churches well, yet ignored his wife and children. While the book is a general biography of Tozer (subtitled, “The Spiritual Journey of A. W. Tozer”), the constant frame story in this narrative is that he served God at great cost to his family. Tozer is the star of the story, but the book seems to be about his family, namely Ada, his wife. Throughout the book, I grew more sympathetic to Ada, who was dragged along, not consulted about major life moves, and left to care for seven children while Tozer spoke at conferences around the country. Their distance increased, and Tozer was unaware, or at least he didn’t seem to care.

I enjoyed reading about this deeply flawed man, and how God used him—and continues to use his work—in spite of his shortcomings. If God can use Tozer, think what He can do with me.

Ron’s #12: Hamlet’s Blackberry by William Powers

This pick comes directly from Mark; he reviewed the book last month, and he thought I’d enjoy it. He was right. I loved this book. After reading last year’s The Shallows, I have been thinking of ways to wean myself off of the Internet. I loved that The Shallows made me more aware that so much Internet usage is problematic for our brains. Hamlet’s Blackberry tackles the same problem, but with a different focus. Rather than showing how it affects our thinking, William Powers shows that hyperconnectivity affects our relationships and own deep thinking.

What makes this book unique is that Powers takes us through historical figures and their responses to the technology of the day. From Socrates and Seneca to Ben Franklin and Thoreau, Hamlet’s Blackberry shows how these men reacted and responded to the latest trends, and how it added to their greatness. They were not “early adopters” and eager consumers; rather, these were men who thought deeply and protected some aspect of their lives from the frivolity that the latest and greatest brings. This book served as an interesting history lesson as well as a treatise on a fulfilling life.

Powers is not a Luddite who demands that you chuck your iMac into a volcano and dress in sackcloth and ashes. The premise of the book in a sentence is: don’t let your hyperconnectivity take away from the moments that life is made from. It is a reminder that I can and should survive without constant access and obsessive checking email. I saw this in a small way this week on Spring Break. As I was watching my new son, Hudson, I was poring over Facebook reading comments by people I hardly know (and some I like even less). Here was my son playing with toys next to my chair, and I was missing it to comment on some nonsensical political jib-jab. It didn’t take reading this book to point out my glaring hypocrisy.

William Powers is a gifted writer with many powerful passages about technology. His last chapter titled, “Disconnectopia” is one of the strongest chapters. In it, he lays out his plan for his family to have Internet Sabbaths each weekend. While he does not seem to claim Christianity, he understands that principle that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man made for the Sabbath. There is a passage that I thought was especially powerful in assessing my own screen time:

“Does your screen time help you think and work better? Does it deepen your ties to your friends? Does it help you find that much-needed distance and space? Do your explorations enrich your understanding of the world? Do you come away in a better state of mind than you were in to begin with? These are all interior questions. And the more time you spend in the digital crowd, the harder it is to answer them in the affirmative. Inner life becomes not deeper and happier but shallower and more unpleasant” (130).

I want to disconnect to think deeper, to spend more time with my wife and my son, to know friends better, to learn more about Jesus and spend my time being more like Him. I want to disconnect because I know that real life is not lived through screens. I want to disconnect because when I do spent an inordinate amount of time searching for T.V. commercials from the 1970s or scanning eBay for old Apple computers, I feel my life slipping away. Chances are, you feel it too. The Internet highlights how I’m “living a life of quiet desperation,” as Thoreau stated. As a husband, father, and friend, that is not my calling. I am made in the image of God; I am not made to be merely entertained by images.

Hamlet’s Blackberry and The Shallows are perfect companion books to address this topic. I am not alone in predicting that as our screen time increases as a culture and the more disconnected we become, we’ll read more books on this subject. These two are a good starting point to avoid the rush.

Ron’s #11: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart tells the story of the Ibo tribe in Nigeria around the late 1800s. Okonkwo is one of the leaders in the tribe, admired for his strength and courage. He has many negative characteristics as well, particularly through our twenty-first century eyes: he is prideful, impatient with his son’s “manliness,” and he is violent to his wives. The main story is how the tribe reacts when European missionaries come to the village on their “iron horses” (bicycles). Okonkwo is faced with either acceptance or violence.

One of the most powerful scenes occurs early in the book when a slave boy from a neighboring village is captured and comes to live with Okonkwo and his family. After three years, Ikemefuna is treated as one of the family, even calling Okonkwo “father.” The Oracle tells that it is time to kill Ikemefuna, so the tribe takes him outside the village. Okonkwo is told not to, as this is his adopted son. After the first blow lands, Ikemefuna cries to Okonkwo for help, and Okonkwo runs to him killing him with a machete, just so others would not think him weak.

I taught this novel for the first time recently, and I was pleased at how students seemed to enjoy the story and discussions. There is much to discuss in this book: colonialism, culture differences, gender roles, and religion. Overall, it was a good experience. However, there was a disturbing part of having taught this. During discussions about Okonkwo’s beating his wives or killing his son, I heard over and over again, “Who are we to judge?” and “That’s their morals” and “We can’t force our morality on others.” I was stunned to see relativism so deeply ingrained at such a young age. We are training a generation of young people to think that it is wrong and America-centric to consider some actions as more correct than others. This may be true if we were talking about style of homes or clothing or television shows, but we are talking about something far more important than that. Some students in my classes could not admit that it is universally wrong to treat women like property or to kill your innocent son. They begin their objections with that pseudo-intellectual start, “Who are we…”

You are a human being, that’s who you are. As humans, we must address these universally wrongs: killing the innocence, enslaving others, abusing women and children. This is a good list with which to begin.

If you don’t agree, perhaps Okonkwo can come to your house and try to change your mind. A few minutes with him, I’m sure you’ll be quick to say how many universal crimes against humanity he commits.

Ron’s #10: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Here are a few reasons to love this book:

1. It’s a war book that’s not really about war. It’s about 19-year-olds so far out of their element that it is scary.

2. It reminds me of all the reasons why I do not want to be in a ground war like Vietnam or either of the World Wars.

3. It’s about World War I. How much do you really know about that war? Quick, who were we fighting?

4. The book is written in plain, simple prose to comment on the plain, simple boys fighting this war.

5. There are a few funny scenes when the men try to gain the attention of French women. Don’t try this at home…please.

6. It displays the inner conflict of being patriotic for one’s country and being scared as hell to fight.

7. It is a much better anti-war book than Slaughterhouse-Five, and I liked Slaughterhouse-Five.

8. It has a self-imposed subtitle: “The Greatest War Novel of all Time.” You gotta love that bravado.

9. It is told through the point-of-view of Paul Baumer, a German. How many books have you read with a sympathetic narrator of the enemy?

Ron’s #9: Abandon the Old in Tokyo by Yoshihiro Tatsumi

Before you criticize my pick here, I want to freely and proudly admit that this is a graphic novel. I have been a comic book fan for decades, and I still read an occasional graphic novel from the library. Not only do I grab the latest Spider-Man and Captain America (judge me if you want), I also read a serious book in this medium. I usually do not want to count them, but I felt that Abandon the Old in Tokyo is something different, and it was worthy of a comment.

First off, this is not a kid’s comic. There are no heroes or super villains, no altered people via radioactivity or mutants. Instead, these pages are filled with glimpses of common, desperate men in Tokyo. These eight short stories showcase how people can be so lonely and marginalized in an overpopulated city.

The title story is about Kenichi and the burden of caring for his ailing mother. It is the only story here with a true redemption. Kenichi first tries to hide her away which causes her suicide; he then accepts the responsibility and brings her to her final resting place.

“The Hole” tells the tale of a hiker who falls into a deep well, and he is held captive by a woman deformed by a mistake in her plastic surgery. The captor wants to punish men for their expectations of beauty by punishing this man. The story turns when the hiker’s wife finds him, yet has a similar punishment for him.

“Forked Road” shows how two boys go separate routes from innocence, and how they differ when they meet up again.

There are some real depraved scenes in this collection which we disturbing. I often think that reading prose of depravity is somewhat better than seeing pictures drawn of it. I cannot say I enjoyed reading this, but I wanted to get a small picture of Japanese gekiga, a term for “dramatic pictures” coined by Tatsumi himself to “describe the darker, more realistic style of cartooning.” These eight stories were indeed dark.

Ron’s #8: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Great Expectations is my third Dickens’s work in three months. I liked A Christmas Carol, loved A Tale of Two Cities, but I tolerated Great Expectations. Is there something wrong with me, or did I merely hit “Dickens Fatigue”?

This is a story of Pip, and boy living with his sister and brother-in-law, Joe. Pip meets two people that alter the course of his life: an escaped convict and an elderly recluse. He discovers through a mediator/attorney that he is the beneficiary of “great expectations,” a fortune that will allow him to move out of the country to London, receive an education, and learn how to be a gentleman. He sees how the upper echelon of society is not all its cracked up to be, and he feels like an outsider even among his friends.

I grew weary of the many, many characters throughout this novel, although the connection of Pip and Joe was especially sweet. The redemption of past sins is a theme here as well, seen as a small picture of our own quelled rebellion as we put down our arms against God when we encounter the gospel.

I’m not quitting Charles Dickens, but I will take a short vacation from him. He’s been one of those friends you love, but get tired of because you’ve vacationed together for too long.