Desire of the Everlasting Hills

There have been quite a few books written of late trying to explain how a simple Jew of the 1st century and the rag tag group of followers who remained after his death could have changed the world so radically. Thomas Cahill has now joined the list.

I enjoyed the combination of poetic prose and scholarship of Cahill. His scholarship, in particular, is impressive. Regarding the content, Cahill provides a very readable and respectful version of modern scholarship's interpretation Jesus. Cahill also provides a good review of the impact Jesus and the movement that followed had upon world history, ending with a wonderful description of the Trastevere community in Rome. (The latter is a great model for all who want to develop a missional church today.)

Though I enjoyed the book and found it thought provoking, I can't, however, fully recommend it. I feel Cahill misses the point too often when it comes to the nature of Jesus and the nature of the New Testament documents. Regarding the documents, his approach is humanistic. He regards the writings as purely the work of men and controlled entirely by the context from which they arose. There seems no room for inspiration in the sense that Evangelicals would use that word.

Regarding Jesus, Cahill's dismissal of John's gospel as being the interpretation of a late 1st century author (and then deeply edited by a later editor) eliminates the idea that Jesus was the Son of God in any sense that Evangelicals would use that word today and understand it in the context of the Gospel of John. Simply put, for Cahill Jesus is not divine.

That begs the question of how Jesus and the movement that grew from his memory came to change the world so radically. Cahill's answer is that "Anyone on earth could do what they (the Trastevere community) have done," and, I would infer, that Christians have done. I think that conclusion is seriously lacking in rational.

So read with your mind in gear. If you do, you'll find the read worthwhile.

Robinson Crusoe - the final chapters

I finished the last 65 pages. 

When you finish a book,  summarize the ideas that were significant to you in the last section you read. 

Compared to the first 190 pages or so, this section moved along quickly with a lot of action. But there were fewer "ideas" than in previous chapters. It was like Defoe had made his theological points and now wanted to bring the plot to a close. And he does bring the plot to a close by resolving all the conflicts, although he seems to resolve the problem of Crusoe's being shipwrecked on an island by a device that we'd call deus ex machina. (That means solving the problem by a surprise that doesn't seem to flow from situation.) 

A ship arrives by surprise (of course, any ship would be a surprise), but in this case the ship's crew is in mutiny and are attempting to maroon the captain and officers on the island, which they assume to be uninhabited. Crusoe sees this as his best chance to escape. He rescues the captain, and they overpower the crew who have taken them to the island. Then through a variety of means Crusoe and the captain trick the rest of the mutinous crew and overpower them as well. Of course the captain is so thankful that he takes Crusoe back to Europe, along with Friday. 

The denouement of the story also seemed contrived. I'm not sure why Defoe even wrote that last episode of fighting off wolves in the mountains.  It seemed far too contrived and unrealistic. 

When they arrive in Europe they are in Spain, not England. Crusoe looks up some old friends and finds he has become rich during his 27 year exile. He decides to go to England, and because he is afraid of sailing he goes by land. That means traveling over the Pyrenees Mountains in the winter. The travelers encounter a huge, huge pack of wolves and a bear that they fight off. But they finally make it to safety and then to England. 

Crusoe settles down to live on his income from the Brazilian estate. Finally, out of boredom or want of adventure, he assays to go again to the island to see how the men are doing whom he left (they are the mutinous crew and some Spaniards from the mainland). It has turned out well for these men as well, and it all ends happily ever after. 

  Conclude by making a personal recommendation. Is this a book you'd recommend to other readers. If so, why? If not, why?

I think the book is one that anyone who wants to be "well read" should read. But it is a book only students of literature will enjoy. It is a historically significant book being one of the first English novels and a prototype other similar works. But to be honest, it is not a book many today will find readable. It is filled with tedious detail and introspection and very little action, except for the last section. It was no doubt fascinating to the readers of the early 1700s, but today most readers do not have the patience for it. 

Nevertheless, it is a book I was glad to have read. 

Robinson Crusoe

pp. 182-190  Everyone recognizes that Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe as a religious tract. In the early pages Defoe tells of Crusoe's  turning to God  from a life of carelessness about spiritual things and occupation with the affairs of life. Only as he is shipwrecked alone on an island does he become introspective and begin to think about what life is about. But by the point I am in the story - twenty-seven years into his isolation - he has come to trust that God allowed all this for his good.

In the pages I read today, Crusoe is a well confirmed believer. But now he has a companion, an Indian he calls Friday. He has been trying to understand what Friday knows about God and to explain what he has come to believe. In the process he has to think through what he does believe. Those thoughts are, of course, Defoe's message. And that message is particularly inspiring.

Friday, who has become a believer in God also, now is thinking about going back to his people on the mainland about forty miles away. Crusoe is concerned that Friday will return to his pagan beliefs, but Friday is quite confident in his new faith. But if Friday does return, will he face danger from his own people?

Friday's answer is no; they will be interested in what he has learned. And what about Crusoe. So far he has been afraid of the Indians on the mainland. But now it is beginning to sound as if Crusoe will go with Friday to the mainland. Maybe there is hope that he could contact other Europeans and find rescue. We will see in the next few pages.

Robinson Crusoe

I began reading Robinson Crusoe again while the class is reading. I'm getting toward the end of the book. Robinson has saved the Indian, whom he names Friday, and is discovering how intelligent Friday is.

Robinson has been able to engage Friday in a conversation about God and has discovered that Friday already has some perception of God, though it is distorted by the Indian priests who are using their position to gain power in the tribe. (That sounds too much like the state of religion in England at the time Daniel Defoe was writing.)

However, being able to take Friday beyond his superstitions to an understanding of the real God is a challenge for Robinson. He realizes his own faith in God has not been sufficiently thought through.

The book is obviously intended to be critique of civil religion in England in the 1700s. But it also probes some of the issues we face today, such as if it is necessary to preach the gospel to primitive people who may already have some knowledge of God, and how to do so.

Unwilling

A novel is not real life. We all know that, yet in the middle of a good novel we find ourselves engaged in the world of the novel as if it was our own, as if it were real. We may even enjoy the novel's world more than our own real world. We willingly suspend our disbelief to enjoy the novel's world. And sometimes not.That was the feeling I had as I completed Split Second.

    I began the book with high expectations. The author, David Baldacci, was someone my wife recommended. (She likes crime thrillers.) And the back of the book said Baldacci is the author of "fourteen consecutive New York Times and international  bestsellers." What could go wrong?

     Well, the plot for one.

    It started well, actually it started very well. Secret Service agent Michelle Maxwell is head of a detail guarding presidential candidate John Bruno. The candidate, who is on the campaign trail somewhere in rural America, demands they take a detour so that he can pay his respects to an old friend recently deceased whose body is at a really out in the boondocks funeral home.

     There are the usual bunch of innocuous-looking characters in  disguise hanging around the funeral home (which builds suspense), but agent Maxwell sees nothing threatening. She allows Bruno to view the body alone with the friend's widow.  Whereupon, Bruno is kidnapped.

     It sounds like an interesting story at this point. There are the appealing characters of agent Maxwell and former agent Sean King.  There are the ingenious bad guys. There is danger. There is a cliffhanger at the end of each chapter. And there are the usual smart, sharp shooters.

     That should have made for an engrossing and entertaining Christmas vacation read.  But it didn't. The plot was way too convoluted. The bad guy was unbelievable. And the author needed to repeatedly rely on deus ex machina to save the good guys and to advance the plot (like dropping a red herring into the middle of the action just to confuse the reader, two escaped convicts, who have otherwise no relationship to anything else going on.

     There is, of course, at the end the expected explanation of all the loose ends. as in most detective stories. There is the happy ending when the two unlikely but victorious sleuths walk off into the sunset hand in hand. But I found myself unsatisfied. I felt tricked. I entered the world of the novel and after 480 pages found it too unreal to believe. It was fun while it lasted, I guess, but I don't think I'll read another Baldacci novel.
    

Robinson Crusoe

What is the title and who is the author of the book? What is the genre? How many pages.

I began reading Robinson Crusoe last year as the English classes were doing independent reading. I had long been interested in reading it because it is considered one of the very earliest English novels. But its length put me off. It is, after all, 254 pages long in my edition, and the type is small. But nevertheless, I began.

Summary of the part read so far.  How many pages read in this reading?

I am now on page 147 having read about 4 today. Robinson after living a life of fun and adventure caring little about anything else, has been shipwrecked on an island in the Caribbean. The time period is the 1600s. The Spaniards and the Portuguese have settle in the Americas. But there is little development of civilization and certainly none on the remote islands of the Caribbean. So Robinson is alone and with little hope of ever seeing another civilized man.

He does have a lot of materials, which he rescued from the broken up ship, however. So he begins to build a home for himself in a cave. He plants some vegetables. He has a gun and powder, so he hunts, finding a herd of wild goats on the island which provide him with ample food.

Along the way with time for contemplation he begins to think about what Providence might have brought him here and cast him away. He recognizes the carelessness of his life, and reading in a Bible he salvaged from the wrecked ship, he discovers God's mercy for him and becomes a believer.

It is of note that Daniel Defoe, the author, is obviously intending this novel to be a morality play or story. There is a great deal of mention of spiritual things and lessons learned by Robinson.

In the few pages I read Friday Robinson is contemplating whether he should attack and kill the savage Indians who come regularly to the island. His reasoning is that they are violating God's laws by murdering their own kind. But after thinking about it some, he decides that they have not harmed him and that he should give them over to God for His judgment if there is to be any.

What do you think about the book so far? 

That is a serious observation for an Englishman in the mid-1600s. The English were at that time encountering Indians in their settlement of North America. How should they treat these people who seemed all too savage and without morality to them? Defoe is recommending tolerance. Let God be the judge if He chooses to be.

This is one of many moral and spiritual lessons Defoe has to illustrate in the book. They are good lessons for us as well as his original readers.

A Sample Independent Reading Blog 2

When you finish a book,  summarize the ideas that were significant to you in the last section you read. 

     What will Christianity look like in the future, given the growing church in South America, Africa, and Asia? That is the question Phillip Jenkins addresses in the last few chaptesr of The Next Christendom. The answer is that it will look much more like the church of the first few centuries than the Western church does today. It will have a greater understanding of supernatural forces. It will have a far greater understanding of the power of God in the church than we in the American church have. It will be more energetic in  taking the gospel to the yet unreached than the Western church is today.  For me that is encouraging.

     On the downside, there will likely be tensions between the Western church and the Southern churches. Southern churches are far more conservative than their mother churches in the West. Already division are showing over issues of morality. Southern churches reflect far more closely the morality of the New Testament. Western churches have compromised with the world. That renewal of biblical morality is refreshing to me, but it will come at a price.  It will also probably run into conflict with the other major religions, Islam and Hinduism. That is most likely to happen when there are already political tensions among nations with majority religious populations in power. That is concerning to me.

Conclude by making a personal recommendation. Is this a book you'd recommend to other readers. If so, why? If not, why?

     The Next Christendom is not an easy read. Is is chock full of facts and statistics and notes. It is not casual reading. But for someone really interested in the church - past, present and future - it is a worthwhile read. I recommend it to pastors and Christians with an interest in history. I don't think many high school students would enjoy it or even complete the reading.