Glamorous Powers
By Susan Howatch
Rating: 7 of 10

Having just finished the second in this Church of England series by Susan Howatch, I’m both enthralled and a little cautious with where this whole thing is going.  I’m beginning to think that Howatch is primarily interested in the question of deception: self-deception and the deception of others.  In both of the first two books, the main characters, Charles Ashworth and Jonathan Darrow, battle against both forms of deception primarily through the practice of confession to a spiritual director.

Howatch depicts in great detail the kinds of conversations that might happen between a directee and director.  There is no Carl Rogers “unconditional positive regard” in these interactions.  They resemble more a war of deception and anti-deception.  The director asks questions, make statements, suggests interpretations, contradicts, encourages, argues, and more in an effort to tear down the deceptive defenses that the directee is building around him.

This kind of interaction is both grueling and seemingly self-destructive except for the commitment of the truth-telling Christian community that surrounds it.  I’m enthralled with the depth of vulnerable relationships that develop between Ashworth (directee) and Darrow (director) in the first book, Glittering Images (reviewed here), and then turning things around between Darrow (directee) and Francis (director) in the second.  I’m even a little more than enthralled.  I’m envious.  When was the last time you had someone ask you really hard questions about your motivations for doing something?  I’m not talking about just one question, but several questions, over several days, even weeks.  When were you really ever open to such a grueling examen?  It does of course slow decision making down considerably!  Reading these books is putting in me a desire for that kind of truth-telling Christian community and the practices of confession that sustain it.

And yet I am a little cautious with the end goal of where Howatch is taking this practice of truth-telling.  The whole endeavor is so highly psychologized (sometimes explicitly so and other times implicitly) that one gets the impression that without years of psychoanalysis-like therapy one won’t find forgiveness and freedom in human relationships.

In each book the fundamental conflict for the main character turns out to be with his father (I wonder if that would hold true had the main characters been women rather than men?).  It isn’t until the character recognizes this fundamental conflict and understands it clearly and fully that he is able to move forward with healthy relationships in the present.  There is, I think, a great amount of wisdom in this idea, but there is also the potential of great danger too.

Howatch’s conception of “salvation” seems to be based in gaining the right knowledge about one’s past.  The problem with this is that we can never gain complete knowledge about our past.  Our self-understanding will always be finite.  We can gain some understanding that will help us in the present, but there are always more and more layers of brokenness and sinfulness to be found, explored, catalogued, understood, and confessed.  The good news of Jesus Christ is that we can be saved whether we understand all this or not.  Salvation (not just from guilt but also from brokenness) is a gift of God’s grace that does come at times in the form of knowledge and understanding, but at other times God works whether we understand it or not.

There are moments where Darrow receives a gift of peace and forgiveness from God in a mystical kind of way that is separate from the knowledge gained in the practice of spiritual direction and confession, but the overarching thrust of both books tends toward knowledge of the past as salvation.  Knowledge becomes the glamorous power rather than God’s grace.

Currently Reading/Listening:
The Shack by William P. Young
Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear by Scott Bader-Saye
Documents in Early Christian Thought edited by Wiles and Sante
Generation to Generation by Edwin H. Friedman
Turning Points by Mark Noll
Sacred Parenting by Gary Thomas
From Jesus to Constantine by Bart Ehrman
Essential Church by Thom S. Rainer and Sam S. Rainer
unChristian by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Christ the Lord Out of Egypt by Anne Rice
Audio Book
February 18, 2010
Tom Arthur
Rating: 8 out of 10

After reading Anne Rice’s spiritual memoir Called out of Darkness, I was intrigued to read her novels about Jesus.  Rice takes on a huge challenge: writing first person from the perspective of Jesus, Christ the Lord.  What was she thinking?!

Despite the challenges, Rice does a pretty impressive job of pulling off the whole thing.  The primary conflict driving the plot is Jesus’ own growing knowledge and understanding of his unique birth and history.  We hear Jesus’ own internal thoughts as he gains pieces of the puzzle and begins putting them together to make a coherent picture and narrative.  On this level of story telling, Rice excels, but she takes it a step further by drawing upon a vast amount of research on who Jesus would have been growing up first in Egypt and then in Israel as a Jewish boy.  Like her other novels, the historical details are immaculate.

The most intriguing aspect of Jesus’ Jewishness is that swirling around him is a mass of political turmoil and revolution.  Jesus sees first hand Roman soldiers kill Jewish civilians as they attempt to put down revolutionary riots in the temple courts of Jerusalem.  Jesus also experiences Jewish revolutionaries who steal from Jewish civilians in Nazareth to fund their marauding bands, and he witnesses the Roman mass execution of these revolutionaries by means of crosses lining the roads around Nazareth.

While Rice does not say where she is going with all this, I suspect that she is building a case for the radical nature of Jesus’ command to love one’s enemies.  It would be easy to see a young Jewish boy growing up in these circumstances either becoming cynical and nihilistic or joining in the revolutionary fervor, but Jesus is destined to do neither of these things.  Rather, he will command his followers to turn the other cheek and love even those who persecute you.  That’s a new kind of revolution.

Currently Reading/Listening:
Misquoting Jesus (audio book) by Bart Ehrman
The Great Divorce (audio book) by C.S. Lewis
American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists by John H. Wigger
An Introduction to Pastoral Care by Charles V. Gerkin
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
Community Gardening by Ellen Kirby and Elizabeth Peters

Many Waters by Madeline L’Engle
February 15, 2010
© Tom Arthur
Rating: 6 of 10

Many Waters is the fourth in Madeline L’Engle’s time quintet, which began with the well-known Wrinkle in Time.  Each of these books follows the Murry family as they travel across time and space on various adventures to save the world.  Many Waters follows the twin brothers, Sandy and Dennys, as they accidentally walk in on one of their father’s experiments and are transported back in time and into the story of Noah and the flood.  Two key motifs show up over and over: the question of theodicy (how to believe in a good God while evil persists) and the question of faith and belief.

The story of Noah and the flood is ripe for an exploration of theodicy.  How is it that a good God could wipe out everyone on the earth with a massive flood while only saving one family?  Sandy and Dennys and the rest of Noah’s family wrestle with this question throughout the book.  At the beginning of the story Sandy and Dennys show up in the dessert and are ill prepared for survival in this harsh climate.  Noah’s family finds them and begins to nurse them back to health.  When Noah first comes across Dennys in his tent, he speaks what seem like harsh words to his daughter saying, “You will have to learn, daughter, that you cannot nurse every broken-winged bird or wounded salamander back to health.”  “I can try!” she says.  Noah responds, “Perhaps you make them suffer more that way…than if you let them die?” (85).  This is a kind of realistic approach to the question of suffering.  Interestingly, Noah’s daughter does not let Dennys die, and he and his brother end up playing a significant role in reconciling Noah and his father.

Toward the end of the story, the question of suffering comes up again.  As the seraphim (angels) are discussing why El (God) would have Dennys and Sandy to travel across time, one of them says, “I do not think El sent them.  But neither did El prevent their coming” (345).  While the seraphim are not directly discussing the question of suffering, we catch a glimpse into L’Engle’s idea about how God’s sovereignty over creation works.  God does not necessarily cause everything to happen, but God does not prevent every evil thing from happening either.

The question of faith and belief shows up over and over throughout Many Waters.  The key plot device that explores the relationship between faith and belief is the appearance of unicorns.  They have to be believed in before they will appear.  At one point when Sandy is being held prisoner he remembers how a unicorn could help him escape.  He hears “in his mind’s ear” that “some things have to be believed to be seen” (290).  Sandy is able to believe in unicorns at this point and one appears and helps him escape.  This is a classic question of whether faith comes before or after believing.  St. Augustine taught that believing is a function of faith.  St. Anselm spoke of faith seeking understanding.  Our Western way of learning has turned this order around saying that we must see something and believe it before we can have faith; we must understand before we are able to have faith.  What we have become blind to is how much faith is involved in believing anything, even scientific claims!  (For a further exploration of the role of faith in science see Lesslie Newbigin’s Proper Confidence).  I think L’Engle is at her best when these kinds of issues come up.

While these two questions are important questions for many people, I did not always find L’Engle’s exploration of theodicy compelling, but I did appreciate her insight into the relationship of faith and belief.  Perhaps some of my disappointment with the question of theodicy was due to the story itself dragging at times.  Occasionally I wanted a chapter to end so I could get on with the story (the role of the Nephilim or the “sons of God” is particularly interesting).  Overall Many Waters is an imaginative exploration of the story of Noah and the flood that many readers will find intriguing, and will help some readers consider new ways of thinking about some difficult questions.

Currently Reading/Listening:
Misquoting Jesus (audio book) by Bart Ehrman
American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists by John H. Wigger
An Introduction to Pastoral Care by Charles V. Gerkin

Tales from Watership Down by Richard Adams
Jauary 29, 2010
© Tom Arthur
Rating: 4 out of 10

I suppose the letdown was inevitable.  I was so delighted by Watership Down (read my review here) that when I saw that Richard Adams had written a sequel, I immediately checked it out of the library and dove in.  I was disappointed to find out that the sequel doesn’t really have any coherent plot line.  It is very much like reading Tolkien’s posthumously published Histories of Middle Earth.  As the title of this book implies, Richard Adams has really written several short stories about the characters of Watership Down and compiled them in this book.  There are three parts to the book.  The first two have to do with the stories and mythology of El-ahrairah, the legendary rabbit of universal rabbit lore.  In the original Watership Down, these stories of El-ahrairah played the role of shaping the imagination of the rabbits so that they could envision different possibilities to the obstacles of rabbit-life.  Taken out of the context, these stories of El-ahriairah are quaint, but not nearly as engaging.   There’s not much else to say about this book.  If you want to live a little while longer in the world of Watership Down, you’ll enjoy reading this book, but you might be disappointed by what you find.

Currently Reading/Listening:
Misquoting Jesus (audio book) by Bart Ehrman
American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists by John H. Wigger
An Introduction to Pastoral Care by Charles V. Gerkin
Many Waters by Madeline L’Engle