This 1999 book is likely of interest only to the staunchest of Lewis students.
In June we made a trip to Lake Jackson, TX to first watch two of our four grandkids and family pets, then to pick up grandson Ezra to spend a week with us. While there, I went through their shed and found books gathering dust. I brought two back with me: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and the Bright Shadow of Holiness by Gerard Reed. I’ve always intended to read The Hobbit, and have put it in my reading pile. I have other Tolkien items to read first. The other I couldn’t resist, being a Lewis fan. It came to the top of the pile in late October, and I finished its 177 pages in about 15 days.
I’m not sure that I got everything out of this book that I hoped to. It was kind of hard to understand the author’s purpose, and so I didn’t think that helped in my understanding.
This won’t be a long review. I’ll return this to my son-in-law on the next trip to Texas. I don’t plan on reading it again. I give it 3-stars. On to my next Lewis read, which will be an attempt at The Allegory of Love.
I’ve sold a few dozen of these, one of ten highest sellers.
I’ve been thinking about writing a series about faith. I’ve hesitated to do so because I should do a bunch of study first and plan out the series. But, what the heck. I think I’ll just wade in, start writing, and see where this goes.
Of course, I wrote a book about faith, comparing the faith exhibited by people in the Bible to Christians throughout church history. The book has sold fairly well (according to comparative sales of all my books, which isn’t saying much). I published that in 2019, so obviously I’ve been thinking about faith for a while.
Even after it started to gel for me and I wrote the book, it came home to me again when I read a book of Bertram Russell’s writings. It was a book of Russell’s letters responding to people who had written to him. I picked up the book at a library sale out of town, and moved it to the top of my reading pile. I reviewed it here. I was about 1/3 through it when I thought it was possible Russell made reference to C.S. Lewis, since they were, to some extent, contemporaries, though on the opposite side of the belief in God issue.
Then I saw the book had an index, and, sure enough, Lewis’s name was in it. I flipped to that page and read the letter. Someone had asked Russell about faith as discussed in some of Lewis’s writings. I didn’t keep the book, so I can’t go back and read Russell’s exact answer, but it was something to the effect he would rather put his trust in facts as determined by science rather than in faith based on myth. I tried to find that quote, or a similar quote by Russell, but I can’t, in my internet searching. But fortunately, I wrote a post about this here.
This got me thinking to the idea of trusting in science vs trusting in God. Science, for sure, is based on objective experimentation that is repeatable. But sometimes assumptions are necessary. Sometimes science starts out as theories that await hoped-for rigorous experimental data at a later point. Russell’s theory sounds good. You should be able to trust data based on rigorous experimentation as the highest and best data.
Except, I keep thinking back to freshman year chemistry (at college). Our professor looked like a 50-year-old-ish man. He said that his own chemistry professor, two-some-odd years before, said, “Forty percent of what I teach you will be proved wrong withing 25 years.” My professor was implying that some amount of the things he taught us would be proved wrong years hence.
I’ve never forgotten that. That also gives me pause whenever someone say, “Trust the science.” I want to respond, “You mean the imperfect science as we know it today, or the better science we’ll have in the future?”
But surely that’s not true of every branch of science. The things Isaac Newton learned in the 17th and 18th centuries have been proven again and again. We can certainly trust that, and many other areas of science.
But this post started out as about Bertram Russell. As I quoted him in my previous post:
I think that all religions consist at least in part of believing things for which there is no evidence and I think that in face of such beliefs loyalty to evidence should be substituted.
In other words, make all your decisions based on evidence, never on faith.
And I thought, how sad for Russell, to not have faith in something.
But, this post is too long. I’ll write another about faith on Friday.
Lynda and I are in the process of selling books. Not books I’ve written, but books in our personal inventory: books we inherited from parents or bought though the years. One man who bought one book from me wanted to browse what we had. In a box tucked away in our basement storeroom was a book Astronomy and the Bible. It was published in the 1980s, but I don’t remember seeing it before.
The author, Donald B. DeYoung, is a scientist and university professor of physics and astronomy. In his years of teaching and speaking at many events, both academic and Christian, he’s had to answer many questions. How are star distances measured? Has the earth’s tilt changed? What is a quasar? What is the Anthropic Principal? The book consists of these questions and DeYoung’s answers.
I found the book fascinating, and easy reading. The format of questions and answers facilitated quick reading, DeYoung’s answer style also made for easy reading. I was able to finish the book before the buyer came to pick it up.
Since the book was published in 1989, the two deep-space telescopes have been implemented by NASA. We know a lot more about the universe than we did at the time of publication. A few of his answers would be somewhat different in 2024 than they were in 1989. But except for that, the book seems accurate even today.
DeYoung is a professing Christian, and a believer in a young earth. He says there is some evidence in the cosmos for creation about 10,000 years ago. But he does a good job of presenting both old earth and young earth evidence. The reader can decide, taking DeYoung’s answers with other works, both scholarly and popular, and come to their own conclusions.
I give this book 5-stars. It’s a short read, and a good read. But it is sold, so I will likely never read it again. If you’re interested in the subject, and happen to find a used copy of this 35-year-old work, go ahead and read it. I recommend it.
Two books covering the same subject in different ways.
Among the books we have in our house are those that belonged to my late mother-in-law, Esther Cheney Barnes. She didn’t have a huge library, maybe 150 books or so. They have been in boxes the last ten years, I looked at them a couple of times, but didn’t want to mess with them.
Over the last six months, Lynda has been going through her mom’s books, sorting into keepers, reads and discards, duplicates of ones we might already have, and get rid ofs without reading. Two small books among those covered the same subject: the lives of the apostles. One was The Master’s Men: Character Sketches of the Disciples, by William Barclay. The other is Thirteen Men Who Changed the World, by H.S. Vigeveno. Both books are short, under 160 paperback pages. That was perfect, I thought, for taking on our last trip.
The two books, while covering the same subject, handle the source material very different. Barclay’s book is essentially a topical Bible study. He looks at what we know about each apostle from the gospels and Acts. Besides the Twelve, he includes a write up about Nathaniel and James son of Alpheus. But he does not include Paul the apostle. After giving the Biblical record, Barclay give information contained in early church records. When he does this, Barclay is careful to separate legend from info biblical accounts.
Vigeveno’s book reads more like creative non-fiction than a Bible study. He takes the same tact as Barclay, first presenting what we know from the Bible than adding what we know from legend. But Vigeveno tends to accept the legends as truth and incudes legendary information in the character sketches. He writes well, and the book is engaging, but Vigeveno’s book is a little less reliable than Barclay’s is.
1959 and 1958 were the dates of publication of the two books. The paperback books I read were from 1973 and 1980. So I think it’s fair to say those of you reading this review are unlikely to run across either of them. If you do, should you read them? I say yes. They are both entertaining short reads about a biblical topic.
But are they keepers? In my mind no. I don’t ever see myself reading them again. So off to the sale/donation pile they go.
A fun time at the library. Elijah is the one in the gray t-shirt in the middle.
Some things you can’t post to your blog, no matter how much you want to. This is one of those times.
The “gig” I referred to in my last post is watching grandkids and their pets in their home. Their parents and the two middle children are on a mission trip to Belize. They have their own difficulties, dealing with a severe water shortage resulting in their camp having running water only one hour a day. The pictures sent out show them doing good work.
75 pound dog named Nuisance tests strength of restricting gate, Details at 5.
Us, at the home front? It’s going. A few moments of excitement:
Yesterday, a coral snake (venomous) in the front yard. The dog found it, but fortunately I wasn’t the one walking it this year. My shoulder still hurts from last year’s snake-dog interaction.
Also yesterday, an altercation in the house between the dog, affectionately nicknamed Nuisance by me, and a cat or two resulted in a gate that restricts the dog’s access to the second floor. Took me a half hour to put it back in place.
Monday, as the mission team was leaving, a wallet went missing in the house. After an all hands search, they had to leave without it. Five minutes later we found it (a long story) and we rushed it to the rendezvous point so they could make it to the airport on time.
The dish I made on Monday we are still eating. The trying-not-to-be-seen teenager ate only one meal of it, then has been having cereal.
Found a missing library card. It was in the garage. I found it while gathering up recyclables yesterday. No idea how it got there.
Elijah and I went to the library Tuesday for a program, only to find I misread the schedule and it was on Wednesday. So we went back Wednesday. It was a good program and Elijah liked it.
Tomorrow we go to a 1:00 p.m. program at the local planetarium. If it’s good, we might go back Saturday and Tuesday for other programs.
Meanwhile, I’ve been unable to get much writing done. I won’t make my goals for this month.
So that’s the news about my gig. We’ll still be doing it on Monday, when no doubt I’ll have more excitement to report.
It’s watching two of our four grandkids, the four cats, one nuisance of a dog, and the house. Cook, taxi, housekeeper. Doing okay, though I keep forgetting about one step down from the entry to the living room, which is dark and dangerous. May have to put a rug down or something.
Saw our daughter, son-in-law, and two middle grandkids off this morning on a 10 day mission trip to Belize. Here’s hoping all goes well on their end, and ours.
Tried to write today but couldn’t get much done after the hubbub of this morning. Perhaps tomorrow will be better.
And hopefully my Friday post will be better as well.
I continue to work my way through the writings of C.S. Lewis, hoping to get through them all in my lifetime. I got a late start on it, so am having to read them a little faster than I would like. Thus, I’m not sure I have the comprehension I want of his works.
The most recent book of his I completed was God In The Dock. This is a collection essays Lewis wrote over his lifetime, many of which were published in magazines, a few being pulled from things never published. The book itself was published posthumously by Lewis’s editor, Walter Hooper. The book is divided into four parts: theological essays; semi-theological essays; and essays on ethics rather than purely Christian. The fourth part to the book is excerpts from a number of letters that Hooper felt made a good addition to the book, consistent with the other subject matter.
I read this book in three different time spans, one each for parts 1 and 2 and a third for parts 3 and 4. I think this was a good way to do it. It kept me from becoming bogged down reading the same kind of things all over again. And the short nature of essays made it easier to concentrate on what Lewis was saying in them, as compared to his longer works that caused me to zone out.
One essay that particularly stood out to me was “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment”. Lewis wrote it in 1949 when the U.K. was debating whether incarceration should be retributive or healing. Lewis makes a good case that maintaining a prisoner in jail until he is “healed” can be a form of tyranny. Never declare the patient healed and you can hold him forever. The article, which was published in an Australian magazine, prompted response letters and a rejoinder by Lewis. Oh, he did live to argue and debate! I intend to study this sequence of article and letters more to get a better handle on the subject. It’s always good when you can
I think Hooper did a very good job in putting this anthology together. But it does get a little confusing. The version I had was in an even larger anthology titled The Timeless Writings of C.S. Lewis. But God in the Dock was also published as a stand-alone book. But as I look at the contents, it seems that several essays varied depending on the edition of the book.
Also, Lewis had one specific essay titled, “God in the Dock”, from which the book title is derived. That creates some difficulty. When someone says, “Lewis said this in God in the Dock, are they referring to the essay or the anthology? And which essay within the anthology? It makes citing the work somewhat difficult.
I give the book 5-stars. Although some of the essays weren’t stellar, that will be true in any anthology. I’m keeping the volume in my growing C.S. Lewis collection. Most likely I’ll never read it again cover to cover, but I’ll re-read different essay in it and perhaps write my own in response.
Is this an appropriate meme to be sharing? Somehow I think not. It certainly doesn’t comply with the law of love that Jesus spoke about on several occasions.
Here’s one more in my series of social media posts. This one is a little longer than the other ones. I’ve seen it worded two or three ways. It’s based on the premise that people act stupidly. Now, I know that the word “stupid” is out of favor at present. You ought not call anyone stupid, which is usually meant to demean their intelligence.
The meme I see fairly regularly on Facebook, and I suspect it would also be on other social media platforms, is something like this.
I have got to stop saying “How stupid can you be?” I’m beginning to think people are taking it as a challenge.
In other words, people in general are really, really stupid. And just when you think they can’t be any stupider than they have been so far, they go and do something even more stupid.
This grates on me. Behind this meme is the thought by the one posting it that everyone he/she knows is stupider than he/she. The person has an expectation that everyone he encounters in life is below him on the intelligence scale. Or on the behavioral scale.
I look at Jesus’s command to love one another, love your neighbor, and love God. Somehow this meme doesn’t fit that command. You might say, “I’m just telling it like it is.” You might think so. You might even be way high on the behavioral and intelligence scales. But saying this meme is not loving others.
It’s your choice. Post the meme if you want to appear arrogant. I’m going to do my best to live out the law of love.
I’ve seen this several places. Somehow it grates on me.
This second post in the series about advice found on Facebook somewhat stunned me. It came in a post titled “A Prayer for Removal of the Wicked”. Here’s the text of it.
Father, we ask in the name of Jesus that all WILLFUL WORKERS OF WICKEDNESS be removed from position of power, prominence and prestige. Open the eyes of those being deceived and place people who stand for your righteous cause in the high places of government and influence.
I have to tell you, I have mixed feelings about this. At least until I think about it. Do I want our government to function efficiently, honestly, and ethically? For sure. Would I like to see every government employee be an ethical person and do only good, never wickedness? Of course. Am I so naive that I think everyone in government has good as their only attention? No, I know that in any large group of humans there are plenty of people who meet the definition of “willful workers of wickedness”.
Should we pray for as stated in that posted prayer? You would think so, but I wonder. As Christians, where is our hope? Is it in government? Or in God? If in government, where is there room for God? If in God, why would we pray a prayer so all-encompassing as to ask God to remove all those from government whose conduct does not meet with our definition of goodness? Because, before you declare some people wicked, you have to define wickedness.
Well, that’s easy, you say. Sin is the definition of wickedness. But no two people can agree on the definition of sin; hence, no consensus definition of wickedness is to be had. But surely there is a degree of wickedness so bad that we can agree on that? Let the prayer be limited to the wickedness we all can agree on, and ask God to run all of them out of government. So to pray that prayer means we are setting ourselves up as the ones who define what wickedness is.
I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t seem to be following the law of love. How could we rephrase that prayer—assuming the presence of wicked people in government at any or all levels is a true problem—so that it complies with the law of love? How about:
Father, we ask that you help our government to be a force for good, not evil. We pray that government workers and leaders at all levels work only for the good of their constituents.
That would be a prayer I could pray. As for that prayer suggested on Facebook, I think it better to leave it un-prayed.
You all have probably seen something like this on social media.
Yes, Facebook, like all social media, is full of advice. Is any of it worth listening to? Or actually modifying your behavior to emulate it? I’m thinking of doing a series of short posts—not necessarily consecutively—discussing some of them. Or, perhaps I’ll do one or two and find it a waste of time. But here’s the first.
If you treat me right, I’ll treat you right. But if you cross me, I’ll hurt you right back.
I have seen this over and over on Facebook. It’s probably on other social media platforms as well. I’ve seen it said by men and women, though more often by men. The people who say this seem to span many ages, though I think they come more often from those considered middle aged.
Is this good advice, something worth making one of you life behaviors? When I think of wise maxims people have grown to accept as useful guides to behavior, I think of the Golden Rule.
Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
But that’s just the opposite of the Facebook advice, which can be rephrased as
Do to others as they have done to you.
That’s just the opposite of the Golden Rule. Let your behavior be governed by others—not just by others, but by behavior that you dislike or even find reprehensible. You wind up behaving just like them.
I also see in this Facebook phrase a touch of passive aggressiveness. That may not be the right use of that psychology phrase, which I’m not sure I ever fully understood. But you are saying something aggressive that you will enact in a passive way—your behavior totally depending on how others behave toward you.
How much better to treat others, not how they have treated you, but in love. To return insult with blessing; evil with good; hate with love.
So, when you see this advice on Facebook or other social media, counter it with the Golden Rule. Don’t let your behavior be dictated by that of others.
