David Berlinski’s The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions

This review will be regrettably brief since, for some reason, I have waited a very long time to write this since finishing David Berlinski’s The Devil’s Delusion.  Even so, I wanted to post at least a strong recommendation of the work because of the significant contribution I believe it makes to the literature responding to the so-called “New Atheism.”  In fact, I would count Berlinski’s work up there with (though still beneath) David Bentley Hart’s insofar as responses to atheism go, though the works are very different in so many ways.

It is a perplexing and intriguing book from a modern polymath.  Berlinski is not a Christian and claims no particular religious beliefs at all, other than, I presume, theism.  He is Jewish by birth and a mathematician by profession.  He possesses a frequently humorous, sometimes eccentric and oftentimes dazzling intellect that probably warrants him the admittedly overused monikor of “rennaissance man.” He speaks of mathematics, philosophy, science, physics and theology in ways that reveal significant study in these field, and, refreshigly, he does so with an often-moving literary flourish.

Essentially, Berlinski is skewering the pretentiousness and patronizing absurdities of the assumptions of modernity, and, particularly, of scientific modernity, in this work.  He paints a picture of theories-run-amuck in many quarters of the scientific community.  These theories are then dogmatized, Berlinski suggests, by a thin-skinned and tight-knit community which utilizes a slick media machine to demonize any who dare to question the assumptions and conclusions of this machine.  The victims, he argues, are an unsuspecting public who cower before the double barrell approach of scientific obfuscation and media aggressiveness.

In saying these things, Berlinski is not pandering to ignorant, anti-science bigots who want to be shielded from uncomfortable conclusions.  Rather, he demonstrates his thesis in profound and provocative ways that I can only encourage you to read.  You may or may not agree with all of Berlinski’s conclusions, but I daresay you cannot read this work without appreciating his case that a great many of the mantras of modernity, scientific and philosophical, are buttressed by establishment-driven and media-propagated agendas.

Read this book.

 

Akers, Armstong, and Woodbridge’s (eds.) This We Believe

“Of the making of books there is no end.” This is true enough, but we might also say, “Of the making of doctrinal statements there is no end.” There has been a rash of Protestant and ostensibly Evangelical doctrinal statements published recently. However, “The Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Evangelical Celebration” is one of the more ambitious efforts out there today. Its list of signees is impressive and its marketing scheme (cheap mass-market editions and pastors’ edititions) has obviously been well thought out.

This We Believe includes the statement as well as chapters by noted Evangelical authors speaking in further detail to divided portions of it. While the chapters are by and large very good, the statement itself, presented in its entirety in an appendix, is the best part of the book.

I believe this is a very good statement. It is broadly Evangelical without being excessively latitudinarian. It speaks with conviction but not an undue harshness. It has obviously been prayed over and labored over for some time.

One hopes that this statement will receive a wide hearing and acceptance. The list of signees should guarantee the former. We may hope that a committment to biblical fidelity and cautious ecumenism will guarantee the latter. You will enjoy this book.

David Bentley Hart’s The Devil and Pierre Gernet

When I first heard that the inimitable David Bentley Hart was publishing a collection of short stories I was almost excited as when I heard that the inimitable David Bentley Hart is publishing a (still forthcoming) translation of the New Testament.  Hart is a Greek Orthodox theologian and classicist.  He authored the staggering book, Atheist Delusions a few years back, for which he won the Michael Ramsey Prize.  He is also a frequent contributor to First Things, where he is currently authoring the concluding article for each issue.  Furthermore, his The Doors of the Sea is one of the more erudite and provocative takes on theodicy that I have ever seen.

Hart is an intellectual who writes theology and history and observations with a certain literary flourish that stops just short of being pretentious but just after the point of establishing his brilliance as a thinker and writer.  He is a wordsmith with a keen sense of insight and perception. I almost never read him when I don’t come away bettered by the experience.

The thought of DBH writing fiction seemed only natural to me when I first heard of it, and it was with bated breath that Mrs. Richardson and I dove into the collection which we finished just a couple of days ago.  The Devil and Pierre Gernet is vintage Hart:  lush and occasionally recondite writing that never leads the reader so far afield that they cannot see at least the shadows of the intended gist.  I kept thinking of Umberto Eco while reading Hart’s fiction, an analogy that he perhaps would not appreciate given his recent piece on Eco, self-explanatorily entitled “The Inertia of Reputation.”  What I mean, though, is that Hart’s writing and style and approach is Ecoan at its best, which is to say that it tantalizes with arcanae without losing the reader in the author’s own idiosyncratic intelligence.

The stories are quite interesting.  “The Devil and Pierre Gernet” reads somewhat like a more nuancedScrewtape Letters set in narrative.  It is less didactic in nature, but equally forceful in its effect.  “The House of Apollo,” perhaps my favorite of the stories, deals with Julian the Apostate’s efforts at the re-paganization of the Roman Empire.  It is pitiful and humorous in its depiction of the frustrated Emporer’s misguided efforts and, perhaps more than any of these stories, depicts the central themes of Atheist Delusions in a fictional vehicle.  “A Voice from the Emerald World” was probably the most moving of the stories, depicting as it does a married couple’s efforts at coping with the death of their child.  “The Ivory Gate” and “The Other” are both well-written but curious stories on which I continue to ruminate, the former being about a dying man’s struggle with transendence and the implications of his own recurring dreams, the latter being about…well…as I say, I’m still ruminating on it!

The reading of these stories requires some effort and some work, as the reading of most great stories inevitably does.  If you would like to read some very well-written, occasionally challenging, frequently humorous and always worthwhile tales, this is a great book to which to turn.

Martin Hengel’s Crucifixion

I cannot rightly remember, but I believe I picked up Martin Hengel’s wonderfully helpful little book,Crucifixion, while a student at Southwestern Seminary in the mid 90’s.  At that time, I did a thorough skimming of it, highlighting and underlining some of the more fascinating references to crucifixion from antiquity which I have subsequently used throughout the years in sermons.  I found it, at that time, extremely helpful and promising and I determined, after that initial approach, to read it more thoroughly later.  Having finally done so, I can say that this book is even more helpful than I previously realized.  Furthermore, it is strangely moving and inspiring in its theological reflections on the cross.

That being said, the work is not primarily theological.  It is rather a historical compendium of ancient references to the act of crucifixion.  Hengel primarily considers references from Roman and Greek antiquity, returning time and again to scriptural references throughout.

The book is significant for a number of reasons.  First, it is a fascinating compendium of primary citations demonstrating the ancient view of crucifixion.  Hengel combs historical narratives, ancient literary works and the mythologies of the time for any reference to the act of crucifixion.  The result is the construction of an illuminating and compelling case for the monolithic disdain of the cross throughout antiquity.  It definitively demonstrates the opprobrium with which the word and the act were greeted in that time.

Second, there is a helpful commentary element to this work.  While not intended to be a commentary, Hengel’s deftly-handled interaction between ancient references to crucifixion and the biblical references are extremely helpful.  After reading Hengel’s work, you will read the biblical references to the cross with a heightened sense of the cultural context in which the cross of Christ was raised.  This is most beneficial.

Third, and most importantly, Hengel’s book goes a long way towards returning the scandal back to the original gospel proclamation.  Few ancient ideas have been so domesticated as the cross. After two millennia of religious cultural diminishment, the cross stands as a mere religious symbol.  It is very difficult for those of us who have grown up in a culture in which the cross is a piece of jewelry, a tattoo, a sign on a billboard or a graphic design on a t-shirt to appreciate the horror and outrage that the original proclamation of Christ and him crucified received.  Hengel’s work will jolt you into appreciating this forgotten but crucial dynamic.

I mentioned that the work is strangely moving.  That is true.  In fact, it has an almost devotional quality about it, though that was not Hengel’s intent.  I daresay that no believer can read this book and not be struck once again by the beauty and grace of our crucified and risen Savior.  I daresay you will marvel, after reading the citations that Hengel has assembled and the explanations that he offers, that God chose to redeem His people in just this way.

Read this book.

John Piper’s A Hunger for God

John Piper’s A Hunger for God constitutes a biblically-grounded and carefully-reasoned look at an often-misunderstood and often-neglected topic:  fasting.  Piper argues that fasting does indeed have a place in the modern Christian life.  He makes the interesting point that fasting can be seen as the counterpart to (but in no way the enemy of) the Lord’s Supper.  In the Lord’s Supper, we eat to remember what has been done for us in Christ.  In fasting, we abstain to anticipate all that God has in store for us in Christ.

Piper’s discussion of Christ’s admonition against fasting to be seen by men was very well done and very balanced. He notes that “being seen fasting” is not necessarily the same as “fasting to be seen.”  It is a matter of the heart and a matter of motivation.  Furthermore, the biblical reality of corporate fasting helps us see that what Jesus was condemning was a self-righteous and shallow show put on before people in order to be thought of as holy.

Most of all, the book helpfully shows how the lesser gifts of God can blind us to God himself if we do not keep them in their proper proportion.  Abstaining from these gifts for a season is one of the ways we keep them in place and do not allow them to become idols.  I thought this argument was very well said and very convicting.  Most of all, personal experience shows it to be true.  We do not fast because food is evil.  We fast because even good things can control us if we do not maintain a higher appetite for higher goods.

I also appreciated Piper’s point that the very first thing Jesus did when beginning His ministry was fast in the wilderness.  He asks if this may not be a good idea for ministers today.  No doubt it would be, as it would be for all believers today.

Fasting seems to go through cycles of unhealthy proccupation or downright neglect (as far as the attention of believers is concerned).  It is one of those disciplines that begs for careful thought and a balanced approach.  I am happy to say that Piper’s book represents one of the most balanced and careful considerations that I have ever seen.

Read this book.  It really is excellent.

 

William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist

Last year I saw a notice that a fortieth anniversary edition of William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel, The Exorcist, would be released.  I struggled a bit with whether or not read it, mainly because my dad had read it shortly after it came out and he tells the story of waking one night with a strong sense that he needed to get the novel out of the house immediately.  He did so immediately.  Of course – and this is no credit to my generation – the novel, while certainly terrifying, is in some ways less jarring to those of us who have grown up under its shadow (the movie was released in 1974, the year I was born) and who have been vaguely familiar with the basic gist of it than it was to the generation on which it was dropped.  Quite honestly many of the elements that scandalized the public in the 1970’s are pretty much available to all on prime time TV any night of the week now and have been for years.  This numbing, I repeat, is nota compliment to today’s culture!

If this story is less jarring to my generation, it is only just so (and I would love to know if others around my age even agree).  It truth, it remains a deeply unsettling and profoundly disturbing read.  It is not without merit that The Exorcist has been called the most terrifying novel ever written.

At the outset, let me address any who think it is unwise for a Christian to read something like The Exorcist.  To put it simply, it could be that no work of fiction has so shaped the spiritual psychology of a generation as this novel.  My friend Calvin Miller has told me of the paranoia that gripped the culture when the movie came out and of the floods of people scared of possesion who flocked to the offices of ministers and psychiatrists at that time.  Furthermore, this novel remains a widely read novel that has taken its place in the canon of truly culture-shaping works over the last half a century.

Is there a danger in reading too much on a subject like this?  To be sure, if one dwells too much on it.  I have read a number of books on demon possession over the years, but I have always managed to spread them out and never do so back-to-back.  That’s just my personal approach, though I do not deny there are believers who study the issue consistently with profit.

Furthermore (and, frankly, I do not offer this as an apologia for my reading habits, but just as an observation), Blatty’s work, whatever it may be, is certainly not cheap horror.  It is actually a very insightful and thought-provoking consideration of a very real issue.  Are there problems presented in the spirituality of the book?  Yes, at points, but may I point at that the book takes the reality of the devil, the danger of occult dabbling, and the power of God over evil very seriously?

As for the novel itself, it is a very well written story and very well developed.  The success of the novel is not merely because of the shocking nature of the tale.  It is also in no small part due to how successfully Blatty draws you into the characters and their individual plights.  Father Karras and Father Merrin in particular are developed with real sympathy and with a compelling kind of appeal that deepens their encounter with the possessed girl in profound ways.  Oddly, their characters are more intriguinging than even poor Regan’s.  Of course, Merrin surmises to Karras at one point that perhaps demons possess their victims less because they are interested in the victim than because they want, through the victim, to destroy everybody in their sphere of influence.  Blatty’s development of the characters surrounding Regan certainly bears that out.

Are there objectionable elements?  Absolutely.  Ragan’s speech and actions while possesed are truly disturbing and blasphemous, but Blatty is not presenting these for exhibition nor is he reveling in them.  In fact, you will find a genuine shock at blasphemy in this book that our culture has long forgotten.  Her actions (or, more accurately, the demon’s) are presented as tragic, as evil, as demonic and as the result of malevolent possesion.  They are not celebrated or exalted.  When the demon is vanquished, so are these profane fruits of his presence.

Would I recommend The Exorcist?  Hmmm, that’s tough.  I would not recommend it indiscriminately, nor do I think I would really recommend it per se at all.  What I would say is that here is a well-told story concerning some very dangerous themes but presented within the broad contours of a Christian paradigm.  It should be read, if at all, carefully and with discretion…if one feels that they can do so without causing themselves undue spiritual or psychological damage (i.e., there are likely dispostions that would not be well acclamated to reading or watching The Exorcist).

Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

This odd and eclectic little book contains a series of brief vignettes Vonnegut did for New York radio some years back.  The basic premise is that Jack Kevorkian takes him almost to the point of death (in a Huntsville, TX, death chamber) so that Vonnegut can go and interview dead people.  Each presentation reveals the upshot of these conversations.

The interviews are often humorous and sarcastic.  They usually wish to make a general point about this or that particular issue in American society.  They all reflect Vonnegut’s own interesting but usually leftist takes on American culture.

The book is intended to be a collection of witty social commentary, not a reflection on theology.  Even so, Vonnegut does explain his personal views on the afterlife:

About belief or lack of belief in an afterlife: Some of you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddhist, nor a conventionally religious person of any sort.

I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I’m dead. My German-American ancestors, the earliest of whom settled in our Middle West about the time of our Civil War called themselves “Freethinkers,” which is the same sort of thing. My great grandfather Clemens Vonnegut wrote, for example, “If what Jesus said was good, what can it matter whether he was God or not?”

The question from Vonnegut’s grandfather is tragic, for, of course, it matters a great deal whether or not Jesus was God.  Regardless, it is a helpful insight into Vonnegut’s mind.  He appears to foster a respect for the historical figure of Jesus while harboring none for the identity of Jesus.  As a Christian, this is a fatal misstep, but it likely describes the position of many Americans who seek to hold to the teachings of Jesus (selectively chosen, of course) while eschewing orthodox Christianity.  (C.S. Lewis, among others, dealt, in my mind, a definitive death blow to this kind of attempted end-around run in Mere Christianity.)

Interestingly, there is no hell in Vonnegut’s book (as he points out more than once) so even Hitler is in Heaven.  Some of the people don’t really even want to be there.  Regardless, Vonnegut’s encounters are thought-provoking at best and mildly irritating at their worst.

To give you a taste, here is Vonnegut’s interview with Karla Faye Tucker:

It is late in the afternoon of February 3, 1998. I have just been unstrapped from a gurney following another controlled near-death experience in this busy execution chamber in Huntsville, Texas.

For the first time in my career, I was actually on the heels of a celebrity as I made my way down the blue tunnel to Paradise. She was Karla Faye Tucker, the born-again murderer of two strangers with a pickax. Karla Faye was completely killed here, by the State of Texas, shortly after lunchtime.

Two hours later, on another gurney, I myself was made only three-quarters dead. I caught up with Karla Faye in the tunnel, about a 150 yards from the far end, near the Pearly Gates. Since she was dragging her feet, I hastened to assure her that there was no Hell waiting for her, no Hell waiting for anyone. She said that was too bad because she would be glad to go to Hell if only she could take the governor of Texas with her. “He’s a murderer, too,” said Karla Faye. “He murdered me.”

Clearly, the intent is to use Tucker as a vehicle for Vonnegut to stress his disapproval of the death penalty.  As a literary device, it really is quite effective, regardless of whether or not one agrees with Vonnegut’s views on this or that issue.

So here is my own take on this book:  if you’d like to kill a little time by observing the musings of an interesting, often short-sighted, occasionally insightful and frequently humorous humanist, check it out.  Christians will find some aspects of the book disheartening and sad, and they should.  There is limited value in the work.  It does show the inner mental workings of one of America’s more interesting writers.  For a Christian, though, the book oftentimes lapses into the kind of modernistic and vapid platitudes one may encounter on any street corner on any given day.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five takes its place alongside Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 as one of the truly compelling (and oftentimes satirical) commentaries on the horrors of World War II.  I have been intending to read Vonnegut’s classic work for a good bit of my life now and regret that it took me this long to do so (actually, my Kindle read it to me on a trip to Memphis and back).

The book follows the story of a young World War II soldier named Billy Pilgrim, who, like Vonnegut himself (who appears in his own novel), survived the hellish firebombing of Dresden by American and British forces in 1945.  As a prisoner of war assigned by the Germans to a construction detail in the city of Dresden, Vonnegut and other American soldiers survived the firebombing while holed up in an underground German slaughterhouse (#5).

Vonnegut’s approach to explaining and describing the horrors of Dresden through the experiences of Billy Pilgrim is masterful.  The book has rightly taken its place as a modern classic.

Pilgrim, Vonnegut tells us, has become “unstuck in time.”  It’s the late 1960’s and Pilgrim, now a widower in his 40’s, begins to tell people, much to the chagrine of his embarrassed daughter, that he was once kidnapped by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore.  So the story is essentially Pilgrim bouncing from one point of time to another, including the war, his childhood and his abduction by the Tralfamadorians.

As the tale progresses, Pilgrim reveals a mind that has resigned itself to a kind of fatalism concerning the fallenness of humanity, though he seems to want to hold on to free will as a principle.  He has fascinating conversations with the Tralfamadorians concerning free will, concerning the nature of time, concerning the elusiveness of peace and concerning life itself.  He shows an amazing and often humorous sense of detachment and disinterest in the events of the war, to the great irritation of the other American soldiers and the general amusement of his captors.

Vonnegut uses the character of Billy Pilgrim in profoundly effective ways to offer observations and hints concerning his own resignation to the maddening absurdity of war and the vicious cycles in which humanity finds itself.  Though an agnostic/atheist/humanist (depending on which of Vonnegut’s statements you read), he makes frequent and (apparently) positive references to Jesus, most interestingly when he mentions that the Tralfamadorians are more interested in studying Charles Darwin (who, Vonnegut tells us, saw dead bodies as an inevitable reality of existence) than Jesus Christ.  In another instance, Pilgrim chooses to read a science fiction book about a man who decides to go back in time 2,000 years to the events of the crucifixion to see if Jesus really died.  Pilgrim is depicted as a Christian, though he possibly loses his faith.  It is hard to tell.

Again, the book’s designation as a modern classic is well deserved.  Slaughterhouse Five is a thought-provoking discussion of human nature, life, death (every death scene in the book is tellingly followed by the refrain, “So it goes.”), sin, virtue, war, society and human nature.  It is a helpful, interesting and, in many ways, saddening glimpse into one agnostic’s efforts to make sense of the depravity of man.

 

Frank Schaeffer’s Sex, Mom & God

After reading Frank Schaeffer’s Crazy for God a few years ago (which prompted me to write this open letter to him, to which he responded), I felt like I needed a shower.  I felt this way less because of Frank’s relentless skewering of his very flawed parents than because I found the dark pit of Schaeffer’s own undiluted bitterness and rage to be somehow…well…tarnishing.  Frank Schaeffer, despite his protestations to the contrary, is a very, very angry man.  I told him that in an email after I read the last book.  He responded by saying that he was getting tired of the accusation.  No doubt he is, but Sex, Mom, & God is not going to help him break free of the charge (nor are his frankly bizarre, weird, fear-mongering news show rants that can be viewed easily on YouTube).

Now, does Schaeffer have a right to be angry?  You bet he does.  If his own hyperbolic excesses would stop throwing roadblocks up, I personally would feel even more sympathy for him than I already do.  Frank did get a raw deal and he grew up in an unbelievably strange situation.

Frank is the only son of the late Francis and the still-living-but-very-elderly Edith Schaeffer.  Francis Schaeffer was an Evangelical superstar in the 70’s and 80’s in particular and, to some extent, still is today.  As I mention in the open letter linked above, his writings had and still have a profound impact on my own life, though for various reasons (Frank’s work included) I have cooled in my affection for Francis’ writings (and some of his later writings I’ve rejected almost in toto).

Frank indeed grew up in a strange world.  Growing up the son of hardline Presbyterian missionaries in a missionary chalet and spiritual-seeker-haven in Switzerland would have to have been a very unique experience (though it must be added that many, many people count their visits and time at L’Abri as seminal moments in their own Christian journeys…and I do wish I had been old enough to visit as well).  As Francis and Edith grew more popular, Frank was left alone for long periods of time as his parents went on their speaking tours.  He witnessed a double-life in his parents as well that scarred him deeply.  Francis had a terrible temper and would hit and throw objects at Edith.  Edith, on her part, would defend Francis, oddly tell her young son about his father’s demand for sexual relations every night and would speak patronizingly of Francis’ shortcomings and weaknesses to her children.

Frank himself became part of the family business, the heir-apparent as it were, producing the well-known film series, How Should We Then Live? and Whatever Happened to the Human Race? The latter film and book helped establish the Schaeffer’s at the forefront of the pro-life movement and played a pivotal role in calling Evangelicals into the pro-life and, more generally, into the political fray.  (I wrote a thesis paper in seminary on Francis Schaeffer’s role in the pro-life movement and the role of Whatever Happened to the Human Race?  I was surprised and mildly amused to see my paper cited in a footnote in Colin Duriez’s biography of Francis Schaeffer some years back.)  In this way, Frank (then called Franky) Schaeffer can indeed be credited with playing a part in the rise of the so-called Religious Right.  His own star rose in the 80’s as he became a kind of angry prophet for conservative Protestants in North America.  Frank wrote bestselling books (he is a prolific writer by any account), hit the speaking circuit and saw his own fame and financial situation grow impressively.

By Frank’s account, though, he was a living a lie.  He knew that he was profiting from a platform in which he was quickly losing trust.  He detested some of the creepier fringes of fundamentalist Protestantism and would soon break all ties to the movement he helped create.  He would eventually convert to Greek Orthodoxy (and write his fascinating but shrill defense of this act, Dancing Alone) and, even later, to political liberalism and to the anger-and-disillusionment-driven pseudo-Christian agnosticism which he seems to espouse today.

Along the way, Frank has created a niche market of literary parent lambasting.  He has vented his spleen against his parents, his upbringing and fundamentalism in general in the fictional Calvin Becker trilogy Portofino (an hysterical novel, by the way!), Zermatt, and Saving Grandma, and now in a non-fiction trilogy consisting of Crazy for GodPatience with God, and Sex, Mom, & God.  I suspect I am not the only Evangelical who has been impacted by Francis Schaeffer’s life and writing who yet feels a strange mixture of fascination, disgust, sympathy, understanding, anger, and eye-rolling at these works.

There is a long venerable tradition of sons writing against their fathers, but Frank’s work seems to go beyond even this.  He has what appears to be an almost unfettered pathological needto…tell…everybody…everything.  I can only imagine that getting paid to…tell…everybody…everythingdoesn’t hurt his penchant for self-disclosure.  And, of course, people like myself are to blame for buying and reading the stuff.  That being said – dare I say it? – I really do think I’ve now heard enough.

In Sex, Mom, & God, Frank Schaeffer has given us a full-scale polemic against his past and an often laughable defense of his current positions.  My goodness, I don’t know that I have ever read such a staggering collection of ad hominemsnon sequitors, category errors, irrationality, truly bad hermeneutics, even worse exegesis, stupefyingly bad theology, guilt-by-association, character assasination and flat-bad thinking in my life.

Yes, yes, Frank does score many points here and there and they are not unimportant.  Yes, large swathes of fundamentalist Christians have foisted a kind of weird, guilt-ridden approach to sex on their children marked by a constant harping on the dangers of sexual sin, the creation of the impression that sex itself isinherently sinful, a disproportionate fixation on sexual sin as opposed to more accepted sins, and the lack of a healthy, biblically-informed and balanced understanding of sex.  And, yes, as Frank acknowledges, the lack of a healthy and honest approach to sexuality has scarred many young conservative Christians who were unable to be open about that through which they were going or that with which they are dealing.  Only a person with his or her head in the sand would deny that there is a strange subterranean reality of sexual dysfunction in many Christians of certain ilks because of the heaping portions of shame they had shoveled  upon them in this area of their lives growing up.  It is no wonder that young boys who can’t speak openly of their struggles internalize that whole area of their lives and end up, in many cases, going into some weird corners of the modern, sexual, anarchic landscape.

I know few Christians who would deny the problem here, but this is not the problem as Frank sees it.  Frank sees the Bible itself as the problem and the sexual ethic of scripture as the problem.  Of course, when you see the sexual ethic of scripture as Frank defines it, it is indeed terrible.  But he defines it thus only by some amazing hermeneutical gymnastics that frankly left me aghast.

I resoundly reject the notion that the Bible and the God of the Bible (as Schaeffer puts it) has a weird notion of sex.  Indeed, the sexual problems of some fundamentalist Christians are not the result of the application of the biblical principles but rather of the perversion of them.  The Bible’s sexual ethic of monogamy, marriage between a man and a woman and its strictures against fornication and adultery are healthy, God-given, and good common sense.  When I survey the modern tragedy of sexual ethics today, it seems to me that only a hack with an agenda and a penchant for the open fields of sexual anarchy would hate the good, healthy and protecting biblical boundaries that keep us from degenerating into mere animals.

Is there some sexual weirdness in the fundamentalist sub-culture?  To be sure.  But the greatest things are always open to the greatest perversions, and the perversion of a good thing does not make the good thing less good, it only makes the perversion of it that much more wicked.  If Frank Schaeffer wants to see sexual weirdness, sexual wounding and sexual confusion, let him spend another few years in the anything-goes fields of body-anarchy and sheer license that he now calls home (not that he himself practices these things, I hasten to add, but these are the hallmarks of the modernity he has now embraced and is now seeking to resuscitate).

Frank’s handling of the Bible in this book is breathtakingly and almost unbelievably bad.  He seems to posses virtually no understanding of the relationships of the Old and New Testaments, of the reality of Jesus as the hermeneutical key to scripture, of the difference between descriptive passages and prescriptive passages (good grief he does not get this at all!) and of the idea of progressive revelation.  He repeatedly, ad nauseum, refers to the Bible as a collection of “Bronze Age myths.”  He depicts the God of the Bible as a misogynistic, perverse, woman-hating, sex-obsessed, murderous tyrant.  In this regard, Schaeffer makes Richard Dawkins (a man whose writings he professes not to respect) sound like Mister Rogers.

I don’t know what it is, but Frank Schaeffer never a met a shrill denunciation he couldn’t amp up, a hyperbole he couldn’t stretch even further, or a non sequitor (a particular flaw of his that he traffics in on almost every page) he couldn’t embrace and trumpet.  He is a master craftsman of barely comprehensible blasts of unhinged vitriole and palsied jeremiads.

Again, among the drivel there are moments that almost (but not quite) make the whole painful ordeal of reading him worthwhile.  His autobiographical notes are, as you might imagine, very interesting.  His account of his meetings with Rousas Rushdoony (a truly strange, fringe-dwelling idealogue) and the Dominionists (Reconstructionists) is fascinating (though his guilt-by-association conclusions for lots of us who wouldn’t want to be within 100 miles of those guys are not).  His brief comments on Fr. Richard John Neuhaus and the founding of First Things, on Robert George and on Crossway Press were interesting as far as they went (though he scored no real points on any of these).  His comments on Billy Graham and some of his own conversations with the Graham children painfully illustrate that there is indeed a particular burden placed on the shoulders of the children of Evangelical superstars.

But over all this grist for the mill for Evangelical-dirty-laundry-voyeurs is Frank’s own, strange, idiosyncratic current position on life and God and sex.  In many ways, Frank simply sounds like a commercial for the more stridently-liberal wing of the Democratic party (albeit a commercial featuring some wild-eyed, crazy cousin of even that wing – again, YouTube “Frank Schaeffer” and you’ll get what I’m saying).  All the standard soundbites are there:  abortion on demand (though he thankfully wishes to see some limits on this – notably in late-term abortions), the propping up of the gay agenda, anti-Republicanism, the charge of racism against those who don’t like Obama, the alarmist rhetoric about a coming theocracy, etc.  There is a kind of trite and tired wearisomness to these aspects of the book and of Frank’s schtick in general.  In this regard, Frank Schaeffer kind of sounds like a radical-leftist-on-speed who is seeking to cram as many left-leaning platitudes into his remaining career as he possible can.  It’s almost as if he wants to match the Scylla of his former fundamentalist extremism with the Carybdis of his new-found fundamentalist leftist extremism.  As I say, all of this is yawn-inducing and worthy of skipping.  Moreso, it illustrates a point that seems glaringly obvious when one considers the totality of Frank’s work:  Frank is simply an extreme person who goes all in on his tangent of the moment (fundamentalism – abortion politics – Greek Orthodoxy – daddy bashing – liberal theology and politics) only to ricochet after it all plays out (for, after all, that kind of extremism is inherently very hard to maintain) onto his next soap box.  One does wait with baited breath for Frank’s next cause and spate of angst-driven monographs.

His theology, however, is a little more nuanced if nontheless still mired in an epistemological and theological trainwreck.  In short, Frank seems to still think there is a God.  He still even calls himself a Christian.  He seems to like Jesus, even though he doubts that a lot of what was attributed to Jesus was actually said by Jesus…especially, one notes, when the words of Jesus conflict with the programme of modern, leftist, “progressive” (an ironic monikor) politics.  He still attends the Greek Orthodox Church.

That being said, he is more of a watered-down theist lapsing here and there into agnosticism and, on his really, really angry days, dipping his toe into atheism.  The God Frank Schaeffer believes in is not the ugly God he claims to find in the Bible.  No, the God Frank believes in is infused with the best virtues of modernity:  He (or She or It, according to Frank) is a God who likes love and puts no boundaries anywhere accept, one assumes, on really bad things like when a pedophile claims to love children, or when a Republican claims to be against gay marriage, or when an Evangelical professes to believe in inerrancy, etc.  But other than that, the God-of-Frank wants people to love each other in whatever combinations they feel inclined to muster without fear and without guilt.  Sex is a REALLY big deal to Frank and he now knows that God has no hangups with sex.  Frank’s God loves everybody and doesn’t dislike much except for religious people and all of their phoney, hooey books that claim to speak for God.  Frank’s God is kind, gentle, nice, sweet, politically-liberal, socially progressive, thinks Obama is doing a great job, hates Republicans and wants people to feel an unquestioned mastery over their own bodies and what they choose to do with them.  Franks God, in other words, thinks just like Frank.

How Frank knows these things about God presumably ought not be asked by skeptics.  For Heaven’s sake (if there is a Heaven, right?), don’t point out to Frank that he is living parasitically off of the Christian worldview he professes to hate so much and that his idiosyncratic renderings of that worldview could only come about because he was immersed in it in the first place.  Don’t point out to Frank that the very stuff with which he has crafted his new ideology was taken on the sly from the book and the church and the faith he is now scoffing at and redefining.

Furthermore, don’t ask Frank how it is that he could be so very uncertain of so many things…but simultaneously so very certain that God is the God who just happens to think as Frank now thinks.  It is an almost tired truism nowadays that the tolerant are profoundly intolerant of those who don’t buy their version of tolerance and that the agnostics can sound eerily fundamentalistic about what they profess actually to know about the God they profess is unknowable.  You might also want to avoid reminding Frank of Voltaire’s idea that God created man in his own image and man has returned the favor, and that the liberal elites of a society or as prone to this malady as religious fundamentalists.  What is more, don’t ask Frank if it’s not just possible that his view of progress might actually be a staggering regress or if the age of abortion-on-demand, sexual anarchy without boundaries, political leftist ideology and fashionable agnosticism might not in time come to be judged as even more vapid and silly and degenerate than the “Bronze Age myths” he professes to detest.

There are other things you likely should not ask Frank.  You probably shouldn’t ask him about the fact that he has now published six volumes in which he profits off of the weaknesses of his parents.  At what point does one feel a bit, well, hypocritical about dragging out ole mom and dad for another good thrashing and another good book advance?  Or you probably shouldn’t ask Frank – because he likely would not answer – why it is that throughout the book he quotes surveys and statistics showing the support of the American people for this or that position with which he agrees, but strangely never discusses the fact that gay marriage referendums are resoundly struck down by the majority of Americans in given locales whenever they come up.  After all, is it honest and good thinking to cherry-pick the stats that bolster your own assumptions while ignoring those that don’t?  And due to the personal nature of it, you likely shouldn’t ask Frank if he really thinks his appeal to his mother’s thumb’s up to him writing this book holds a lot of weight and really gives him a pass from the charge of tackiness and creepiness when he goes on to say that his mother is so elderly that she is frequently confused and forgets the names of her grandchildren?

In truth, it’s probably best not to ask Frank too much of anything.  The shock-haired, crazy-eyed Jeremiah on the corner wearing the sandwich sign and spitting into the bull-horn isn’t really one for questions, is he?  His whole point is to be heard and to rage against the blindness of the passers-by.  The street-corner prophet doesn’t do nuance, doesn’t do careful hermeneutics, doesn’t represent his opponent with care and accuracy.  No, he screams…loudly…and then he moves on.

Frank Schaeffer is a tragedy, not the least because of what the fundamentalist Christian ghetto did to a mind that is clearly sharp and perceptive, if painfully misled and marred.  Most of all, his tragedy is found in his equation of the whole with the part, of his (once again) tossing of the baby out with the bathwater.

Frank, it’s possible to think Rushdoony was really dangerous but that the gospel is true and has been preserved in the churches for two-millennia.  It’s possible to agree that some Christians have indeed botched the whole subject of sex while still affirming that fornication and adultery are sins and that the sexual strictures of scripture were put there to protect us and not to hurt us.  It’s possible, Frank, to hate the idea of an imposed theocracy but to see the blatant stripping of the public square (to use the terminology of Neuhaus) as a tragic and unnecessary crime.  Regardless of what you say, Frank, yes it is possible to see homosexuality as a sin and to call gay people to repentance but not hate gay people and not wish to see gay people hung on the gallows.  Frank, intelligent people can see God’s Word as trustworthy and true, the church as flawed but beautiful and the gospel as essential and life-giving, and many do.

Pray for Frank Schaeffer.

 

Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why

This is not the kind of book I normally read, but the other day my daughter mentioned the book Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher.  She told me it was a very popular book among teens, that it dealt with the issue of teen suicide, and that it was soon to make its way to the big screen with Disney star Selena Gomez playing the role of Hannah.  With this in mind, I listened to my Kindle read me the book over a 6-hour period while driving on a recent trip out of state.

Thirteen Reasons Why is a pretty engrossing read (or, in my case, listen).  It begins with a young man receiving a box of seven audio tapes on which he finds the voice of his friend Hannah.  This is jarring to him because Hannah had recently taken her own life.  The tapes contain Hannah’s explanation of her own suicide and names thirteen individuals who played a part in her decision to take her own life.  Whoever received the tapes was to listen to all of them (and, if they so chose, to travel to the various spots on the enclosed map to better understand where the various episodes she describes on the tapes happened).  The tapes were then to be sent to the next person included in her story.  In all, then, the tapes were to be listened to by all thirteen people involved in Hannah’s story.  To quell the threat of somebody simply destroying the tapes, Hannah reveals at the beginning of her story that an unknown person held a second set of tapes and would release them in a public manner if the tapes did not make their full rotation.

My initial interest in hearing this story was based on (a) its seeming popularity among teens, (b) it’s coming greater popularity once the movie is released and (c) the subject matter of suicide, especially in a teen book.  I was particularly interested to know whether or not the book in any way encouraged or romanticized suicide.  Furthermore, I was curious to know how the book would handle the issues of life, death and ultimate meaning (questions inevitably intertwined with the issue of suicide).

It is easy to see why teens would find this book interesting.  It’s written in a very engaging manner.  The unusual format of the story is actually very effective in building anticipation, tension and curiosity in the reader.  Asher uses this format to great effect and I found it to be a very intriguing method of writing.

The book contains some objectionable material.  There is some profanity, which is to be expected in a secular novel dealing with teenagers.  There is some sexual material, but I do want to add that these sections are not needlessly gratuitous and they do indeed stand at the core of the story.  I say this because a large part of Hannah’s story involves the unwanted sexual advances, comments, and gossip of which she finds herself a victim.

I thought back to my own high school days while listening to this novel.  Who can deny that gossip about “loose girls” floats through school hallways with frequency and with devastating effects.  Hannah’s story powerfully reminds the reader of the devastating power of lies and gossip.  It is a gripping tale of the kind of viciousness one encounters in high school.  Girls in particular seem to be the special objects of these kinds of whisper campaigns, and the book did make me wince as I tried to remember if I had joined in whispering or laughing at some salacious story involving some girl in school.

One of the poignant points of the story is just how powerful our actions are.  High school is a brutal place, again, maybe especially for girls.  Hannah’s tale, as it unfolds, reveals through her vivid description of the various episodes leading up to her desperate and tragic action just how deeply words and actions cut.  It reminds the reader that playing fast and loose with somebody’s reputation or moral character is a terrible thing to do and can have catastrophic consequences.

Without giving the story away, I was struck by Asher’s insertion into the story of an element of moral ambiguity and conflict on Hannah’s own part.  I will go so far as to mention Hannah’s own inactivity in the face of a crime perpetrated upon another.  In the story, Hannah is cognizant of and crushed by her own inactivity, and it contributes in its own way to her own crumbling life.  Even so, it keeps the story from becoming overly-simplistic in its categories and it very effectively leaves the reader with a great sense of conflict over and tragic irony in Hannah herself.

In all, though, it must be said that Asher has created a profoundly effective tool for introspection and awareness.  I daresay that nobody will read this book dispassionately.  It does indeed accomplish the task of creating awareness as far as our interpersonal relationships go.

That being said, I listened to the story with a growing sense of unease.  By the time it was over, I understood the source of my unease:  namely, the almost complete absence of any element of transcendence.  I do not mean by this that I was shocked by the absence of the gospel (disappointed, of course, but not shocked – the book is not and never claimed to be a religious work).  But one does wonder at the absence of mere transcendence or any evidence of a real grappling with transcendence on the part of Hannah in the story.  She never seems to ask what comes after death, what the greater meaning of life is, or of any awareness of transcendence at all.  She never seems remotely concerned with the question of what lies beyond, or of the greater questions of meaning, truth, or God.  There is a brief, tongue-in-cheek reference to religion on her part, but that is it.

Again, as the work is a secular work, I shall resist the rather obvious point that I wish Hannah had given thought to the truthfulness of the gospel itself.  Many people live and die with no concern over the gospel.  That is tragic but, again, not surprising.  But I do find the lack of any interaction on Hannah’s part with questions of transcendence itself to be frankly unbelievable, especially on the part of a character that evidences real thoughtfulness.  Yes, I am fully aware of the fact that the particular circumstances that would lead a teenager to contemplate suicide can grow so large that they would eclipse transendent reality, but I find the absence of this element in a character so possessing of introspection and awareness (and the story reveals that Hannah is fully possessing of both) to be a major flaw.

The book is a mixed bag.  Regardless, it is a story that is well-known and is about to be even more well-known.  It might just provide a wonderful discussion opportunity with your teenage kids.