Ron’s #31: Wise Blood by Flannery O’ Connor

Since Flannery O’Connor is my second favorite author, I’m surprised that I have not included one of her books on either year of the 52 books assignment. I wanted to, but I often try to save her for special occasions, as she only has two novels, and I don’t want to tire of them or her.

Wise Blood tells the story of Hazel Motes, a young man returning disillusioned from the Army. Something happened to Motes that caused him to see the folly in believing in God or Jesus Christ. To rebel against this belief, he begins a new career as a street-corner preacher proclaiming the freedom in the gospel message of his church, the Church without Christ. No God. No Jesus. No guilt. In all his proselytizing, it seems that Motes is running from a God that he preaches against, as if the hound of heaven chases him.

The cast of characters is a collection of misfits, hypocrites, and outcasts, all living in a world that they tell themselves is without God. Sometimes, as we run from God, we can run right into Him.

This is not a Christian novel, and much of the content will cause some frowning from the Left Behind fans. It is a novel about a worldview that refuses to acknowledge God, but he will continue to pursue us anyway. God’s chasing after Hazel Motes mirrors Hosea’s chasing after his adulterous wife (which is itself a metaphor for God chasing after the unfaithful Israel).

Flannery comments well on this novel that helps to explain the pursuit:

“For (non-believers) Hazel Motes’ integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind. For the author Hazel’s integrity lies in his not being able to. Does one’s integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do?”

Even without this deeper meaning, Wise Blood is an excellent, strange, and funny story that most will enjoy. After reading, you may see how the “ragged figure” is moving from tree to tree in the forest of your life.

Ron’s #30: Tears of My Soul by Sokreaksa Himm

As we prepare for our missions trip to Cambodia, the team all read Sokreaksa Himm’s The Tears of My Soul, an account of his experiences in Pol Pot’s Cambodia in 1975. It is an excellent account of the oppressive rule of the Khmer Rouge.

Reaksa was 13 when the Khmer Rouge “liberated” Cambodia from the monarchy, and quickly emptied the major cities by sending all families into rural communities.  This was a part of Pol Pot’s Year Zero campaign, to return Cambodia to its glory by sending it back to agricultural villages and removing “American-influenced” professions like teaching and medicine. If people question or challenge the leaders, they are “sent to school,” a deadly euphemism for death.

The boy Reaksa and his family worked for years as farmers, until the Khmer Rouge decided to eliminate all the new-liberated people (those who were moved from the cities after 1975), and brought his family to a pit and brutally executed all but Reaksa. This scene was one of the most violent accounts that I’ve read in print, bashing babies’ heads and chopping the adults with hoes and shovels. Absolutely wicked. Reaksa was in the pit assumed to be dead, but his lay there with his families’ blood and entrails staining him and weighing him down.

The book then continues with two themes: how to find a will to live after this, and how to reconcile these events with a good God. Both of these are Sisyphusian tasks for the young man Reaksa. I like that this book does not provide easy answers, even after he becomes a Christian in a Thai refugee camp. He still has questions after his conversion, but he refuses to dwell on them to let them sap his life. Rather, he seeks comfort in the God of the Universe who knows his pain and suffering.

The Tears of My Soul provided me insight into the pain of the Cambodian people after a devastating time in recent history. This is a massacre that occurred not in history books, but in my lifetime. I was six when Pol Pot snatched power in Cambodia, and I was eight when Reaksa’s family was murdered. Cambodians have a different experience than mine, and I think this book helps me to see that difference better.

This book also shows the devastating nature and logical conclusion of atheism. Pol Pot joins a long list of men who were vehement against God: Mao, Hitler, Stalin, and Lenin all killed in the name of no God. Fortunately, we have men like Reaksa who can tell the story.

Here's a news story on Himm's return to Cambodia and his forgiveness: httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO_kd5T7Ga0

Ron’s #29: Saving Leonardo by Nancy Pearcy

 

I love Nancy Pearcey and will read everything she writes. Last year, Total Truth was one of my top picks, and I think that Saving Leonardo will be one of my picks for this year as well.

We are reading and discussing this book in Apologia, and it is a perfect work to use on worldviews. Pearcey is clear, interesting, and smarter than you are! Saving Leonardo expands on/clarifies/details her two-story model of truth that she discussed in Total Truth. She shows how a variety of worldviews fragment truth into two parts: facts and values. The lower story, facts, is the “real” truth (“Science is ultimate authority”), while the values part is relegated to the less meaningful, less truthful top half (“That’s fine for you to believe, but…”). This division is contrary to the Christian worldview of a unified truth, with facts and values all the weight of its “truthiness.” Jesus Christ rose from the dead in history, AND He offers hope and eternal life for those who believe. The Christian worldview is unified in its view of personhood: the body AND the person is all human, contrary to pro-abortion views that the body may be present but it is not a person yet. The Christian worldview is unified in sexuality, stating that our gender and our physical body are one; one informs the other. Some on the extreme today would state that you can be whatever gender you like regardless who you are physically equipped with. If I want to act as a woman, great! These are divided truth splits, and therefore not truth at all.

Saving Leonardo also offers a crash course in art history, an area that is lacking from my education. I appreciated reading about worldviews and how they are reflected in a variety of art, both classic and modern works. Just for the art history overview, this book is worth its price.

This is a weighty book, both in content and in gravitational pull. It is worth your effort to spend time with Nancy Pearcey.

I want to offer the questions I wrote for our group discussion on chapters 1-5. If you are interested in the questions for the remainder of the book, please ask.

1. Why is knowledge of worldviews important to you as a Christian? What are some key areas that the biblical worldview is antithetical to the worldviews of our society? Do you agree with Pearcey that “people are hungry for alternatives to the dominant secular worldviews” (22)?
2. Before understanding the rest of the book, we must discuss the two-story concept of truth, a major premise of this work.  How is this is a good model to understand prevailing worldviews? (26)
3. Explain the method that Kunkle uses to discuss objective versus subjective truth  (29-31). How could this add to our conversations with others ?
4. Josh McDowell states that he noticed a change on university campuses in how students challenge his claims for Christianity. They used to say, “Prove it…Give me some evidence.” Now, they respond with, “What right do you have to say that?” What does this change say about the audiences and culture? (31)
5. How would you respond to the challenge stated regarding Christian missionaries?  “Why don’t you Christians respect other people’s beliefs and cultural traditions? Why do you think yours are superior? You have practiced cultural genocide, wiping out entire cultures in your imperialistic ambition to remake everyone in your own image” (33). What are some underlying worldview ideas in these objections?
6. How does the fact/value split apply to discussions on abortion, homosexuality, and gender? (Chapter 3)
7. What did you find new and/or unique in the discussions of art and worldview in chapter 4?
8. Kant’s dualism split nature (facts) and freedom (ideals). Pearcey shows that this leads to Bible stories becoming merely object lessons for us, even if they are not true. This split leads to the “two opposing streams” in philosophy (96). Discuss what we know about these two.
9. What are the worldview differences in the three representations of the assassinations of the monks? (108-110).
10. Using one of the many pieces in this chapter, show how worldviews are connected to art.
11. Pearcey reminds us that “Christians should speak out on moral issues not because they feel ‘offended’ or because their ‘cherished beliefs’ are threatened, but because they have compassion for those who are trapped by destructive ideas. Their motivation should be that they are compelled by the love of Christ (2 Cor 5:14)” (68).  How well does this describe you? How can you improve in this area?

Ron’s #28: Of Thee I Zing by Laura Ingraham

I like Laura Ingraham’s radio show with her blend of intelligence, wit, and sarcasm about politics and culture. I don’t listen regularly, but I pop in the podcast whenever I can. When this new book was released, I was interested in reading it. I was a little disappointed.

This is not a political book, and that may attract some readers. It is her take on pop culture: parenting, technology, education, television, etc. While this is usually interesting to me, it was not really discussed, and the book is a collection of short quips ala Jerry Seinfeld’s “Did you ever notice that….” I love Jerry Seinfeld, and I am not complimenting Ingram here. Her observations are rehashed stand-up jokes and unfunny commentary about society. Do we need to read again about how people update Facebook statuses with banal activities or how teenagers can’t speak properly? I was waiting to read about how small the bags of airline peanuts are.

Her observations sounded petty, complaining, and, at times, mean. I am not overly sensitive to harsh words in books, but Ingram came across as a real curmudgeon here, shouting, “You kids stay off my lawn” to her readers. From her radio show, I know that she is not like that, so I was disappointed that she decided to write a book like this.

After getting through the entire book with ho-hum zingers, it was the last line that bothered me the most.

“Inter-religious dialogue: Meaningless. You believe one thing and we believe another.”

This was how she ended her book. As if she didn’t alienate the readers enough with her groanings throughout the book, this last line was another way of stop the conversation altogether, especially about such an important topic. It is because you believe one thing and I believe another that we ought to have such dialogues. Isn’t this what the Great Commission is all about?

Ron’s #27: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Outside of the novella The Old Man and the Sea, I haven’t read any long works from Ernest Hemingway. As an English teacher, I ought to be ashamed of myself. I love his short stories and his terse writing style, so I added a Hemingway novel to my reading list this summer, and I was glad that I did.

Published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises was Hemingway’s first novel. It tells the story of a group of American and British expatriates living in Paris after the First World War. I know that many of the reviews for this book discuss how the novel captures the hopelessness and disenfranchisement the “lost generation” felt after the war. I suppose this is true, but what I noticed is that this is a group of folks that drinks and drink and drinks. After the tsunamis of beer, wine, and coffee consumed at Parisian and Spanish cafes, I felt like I needed to call AA to get help.

The narrator Jake Barnes is a writer in love with Lady Brett Ashley, a gregarious Brit in love with every man she meets, with the exception of her husband. Jake loves Brett, but Brett loves Mike, Robert, and even the matador she meets in Spain. She is in a perpetual state of infatuation and drunkenness. Jake achingly watches her flit through life and love, but somehow he is unable to grab her and ground her.

The Sun Also Rises is a good introduction to Hemingway’s writing style with its plain-spoken language, short sentences, and dialogue. It also includes the running of the bulls at Pamplona as a backdrop to the violence in the relationships between these friends. The novel is worth reading to get a sample why Hemingway was so influential on American stories.

A bit of a sidenote: Kristie and I visited Madrid in 2007, and watched a bullfight. It was one of the most gruesome things we’ve seen in our travels. You can read my post about it here.

This is when we decided to leave. Take a look at the guy sitting to Kristie's right. I swear that is Hemingway himself!

Ron’s #26: The Journey by Peter Kreeft

Peter Kreeft’s The Journey is a quick review of some major worldviews. It’s told in an allegory that “was an inside-out dream” of the author as a character in his own book, ala Pilgrim’s Progress or The Great Divorce. Along the path to truth, Kreeft is guided by Socrates, the person who teaches the pilgrim to interact with the major philosophers through questioning.

This is an enjoyable, quick book that most who enjoy philosophy and worldviews will find entertaining.