Category: Book review

Why the Christmas Story Bothered Me

The following is adapted from a December 2014 post in AndyUnedited.

The Christmas story always bothered me.

It never made sense. No, I’m not talking about the virgin birth. Not the angels singing to shepherds. Not the star in the sky. Not the wise men.

No, it was the part about there being no room in the inn. It never made sense. Middle Eastern hospitality is legendary. Strangers, travelers, those in need—you can count on the deeply ingrained culture of showing generosity and graciousness to those who need a meal or a warm bed.

They would never, ever turn away a pregnant woman—especially a woman who was a relative visiting her ancestral home in Bethlehem. Many close and distant relatives would have been living or visiting nearby to care for her. Turn her away? Send her to a barn? Never. It wouldn’t happen.

Then what did happen? In Luke 2:7, the Greek word traditionally translated as “inn” is better rendered as “guest room,” which is how the NIV puts it. Middle Eastern peasant homes were one large room though sometimes a guest room or “mother-in-law room” was attached. But since the guest room was already occupied, the owners of the house did the only sensible thing—they vacated the main house and gave it over to Mary and Joseph’s use.

The couple would not be alone either. When it came time for the baby to be born, Joseph would wait outside while women in the community would come and assist Mary. Luke didn’t mention the community because his readers would have known that without having to be told.

Then what in the world was a manger (a feed box for animals that Luke mentions) doing inside the house?

The single, main room of such a house typically had two parts: a smaller ground floor level and a larger level raised a couple feet for cooking, eating, and sleeping. Peasants would bring their animals into the lower level of the house at night for two reasons—to keep the animals safe from thieves and to provide warmth for the family sleeping on the upper level when it was cold.

Cut into the floor of the upper level where it meets the lower level was (wait for it) a manger. A place for hay to feed the animals.*

Some years ago I was describing this to a friend, and her eyes got huge. “That’s the kind of house I grew up in!” Her family had been missionaries among peasants in Syria. You can still find such homes there today.

Yes, Jesus was not born in a palace, but neither was he born alone in a barn. He was born in a common home of the people, a home that was opened up to him through a delightful demonstration of hospitality. When we welcome into our lives both family and strangers, the needy and the self-assured, we are living the Christmas story.

For the Christmas story is not one of “no room in the inn.” Rather it is one of wondrous welcome and generosity.

—

Image credit: Ambroz from Pixabay.

*See Kenneth E. Bailey, “The Story of Jesus Birth: Luke 2:1-20” in Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008), pp. 25-37.

A Flawed, Swaggering Book

I love big, bold books that offer a sweeping view of history. Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel is a stellar example. Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is not.

Harari does cover (as promised) the last 70,000 years of human history from the first proto-homo sapiens to the possibilities of future human genetic and bionic engineering. Yet his swaggering, blustering style (while entertaining) blocks the light he might otherwise shed on a variety of important topics.

His overall structure has merit. He begins with what he calls the cognitive revolution of perhaps 40,000 years ago. Sapiens expanded their inventions, art, and language far beyond any other animal. This allowed for cooperation that made up for deficiencies in size, strength, and speed.

The next major shift was the agricultural revolution of about 12,000 years ago which allowed sapiens to shift from roving hunter-gatherers to settled farmers. Harari’s controversial view is a thoroughly negative take on what most see as the foundation of cities and civilizations. He claims it was a poor trade in nutrition, safety, happiness, and justice.

The third transformation is the scientific revolution of 500 years ago. While most civilizations were previously based on received knowledge from the past, science celebrated ignorance which could motivate the search for knowledge. Europeans became supremely curious about the world, went exploring, and promptly conquered those who were not interested in new ideas, new tools, new weapons, or new discoveries.

Many reviewers have noted his slapdash treatments. The Guardian points out, for example, that his interpretation of the 1827 battle of Navarino in the war for Greek independence is wildly distorted, as even Wikipedia will attest. Marcus Paul also says, “He gives the (imagined) example of a thirteenth-century peasant asking a priest about spiders and being rebuffed because such knowledge was not in the Bible. It’s hard to know where to begin in saying how wrong a concept this is.” Instead, monks, friars, and abbeys “were central to the learning of the universities.”

The biggest problem in the book is introduced early, in chapter 2. According to Harari, every idea is a fiction, a social construct—nations, corporations, gods, values. None exist except in our imaginations. Ok, but . . .

On what basis, then, does he later claim that the slaughter of billions of domesticated animals since the advent of industrial agriculture may be the greatest crime in history? According to his own way of thinking, crimes (notions of justice) must also be fictions. After all, we (including Harari) only make up such rules. They don’t actually exist. But we use them to punish people, justify conquest, or write books claiming we are the ones who can offer an objective, dispassionate view when everyone else is wallowing in subjectivity.

Harari’s problem is that by his reckoning neither the subjective (which he denigrates) nor the objective (a perspective he subjectively values) exist since both are ideas. His own assumptions undo his many, overconfident historical, scientific, and moral judgments. All his self-assured pronouncements about religion, politics, and ethics must themselves be fictions. They become just as imaginary as his own supposed objectivity.

Sapiens has value. But it is so difficult separating the wheat from the chaff that it’s probably not worth the time.

A Classic Adventure Tale

I almost never read a book more than once. Yet I thoroughly enjoyed my fifth journey through Watership Down with my neighborhood book club. As I mentioned earlier, this classic adventure tale of friendship, loyalty, perseverance, and courage is so compelling you forget it is a 400-page book about rabbits!

Some of my favorite aspects of the book include:

♦ The wonderful cast of diverse characters we grow to love—the big, gruff, good-hearted Bigwig; the often-misunderstood Fiver; the raucous and faithful Kehar; the encouraging storyteller Dandelion; the clever Blackberry; the “court jester” Bluebell; the young and earnest Pipkin; and more—all of whose gifts are bound together by the wounded leader Hazel.

♦ Hazel’s courage and generosity of spirit seen especially when he goes alone to their archenemy Woundwort, not just to offer a truce but a visionary, constructive way forward that would benefit all.

♦ The beautiful arc of the plot from early crisis to major climax to final resolution. (Even the very first and the last sentences are parallel!)

♦ How the main storyline is paralleled throughout by stories of rabbit lore and mythology—with the two finally intersecting so touchingly on the last page.

♦ Favorite Moment: Bigwig’s dramatic announcement to his enemies that he is not his warren’s chief rabbit, leading them to imagine that some other larger, even more fearsome leader must be nearby.

♦ Favorite Line: When Woundwort fails to defeat Bigwig and then tries to bribe him, Bigwig tells him, “Silflay hraka”! (p. 448)

What did you love about the book?

Book Club Options

It’s my turn to choose the next book for our book club. Here are the options I came up with. What suggestions do you have?

Fiction
Watership Down by Richard Adams. A classic adventure tale of friendship, loyalty, perseverance, and courage. So compelling you’ll forget that it is a 300-page book about rabbits!

I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Engers. Perhaps the most endearing post-apocalyptic novel you will ever read, set on the shores and the waters of Lake Superior.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (the author of The Martian). Interstellar kidnapping, crossing alien cultures, a protagonist with attitude, saving the galaxy. What more could you want?

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. A very human sci-fi thriller set in Chicago that makes you care about the characters.

History
Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand (author of Unbroken). A broken horse, a broken jockey, a broken owner, a broken trainer—who somehow all heal each other in the underdog story of the century.

April 1865 by Jay Winik. An historian and diplomat who saw first-hand how civil wars around the world often ended badly—either in the genocide of the losing side or in an interminable guerrilla insurgency—tells why neither happened in the United States.

Shantung Compound by Langdon Gilkey. In this minor classic, Gilkey offers remarkably astute observations about human nature under pressure as he and hundreds of Westerners endured a Japanese prisoner of war camp in China during World War II—a camp that included my 96-year-old friend Ruth!

Symphony for the City of the Dead by M. T. Anderson. The dramatic story of how Shostakovich wrote a symphony during the siege of Leningrad and smuggled it out to be played around the world when the Nazi’s seemed invincible. Even more amazingly, the symphony was performed in Leningrad itself in August 1942, with the city surrounded.

Non-Fiction
How to Know a Person by David Brooks. In a day of hyper reactions and extreme tribalism, a book of stories and practical wisdom on reviving the lost art of conversation and making friends.

Educated by Tara Westover. The astounding memoir of how the daughter of a mega-dysfunctional, survivalist family in Idaho, lacking any formal education, ended up at Cambridge.

Factfulness by Hans Rosling. The subtitle says it all—Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, from a Swedish researcher and advisor to the UN. Mind blown.

Mastering with Grace, Sacrifice, and Generosity

When I first read Amor Towles marvelous novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, I was immediately struck by this:

“A man must master his circumstances or otherwise be mastered by them.”

I don’t think Towles means men and women should exert power over our environment and relationships, forcing them to conform to our will. After all, the hero of his novel, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, is forcibly under house arrest in the hotel he is staying at. He cannot leave without threat of death.

Rather I think Towles is focused on the attitude, the mindset we have when we face challenges, disappointments, tragedy, or injustice. But it’s an attitude that shapes our actions and ultimately our character. We can become victims of our circumstances, letting them force us into their mold, or we can rise above them.

That is exactly what Alexander does. Instead of falling into despair, he makes the most of his new situation. Rather than seeking revenge, he looks for how he can contribute to the life and people of the hotel—both guests and staff. He takes a job in the hotel restaurant. He becomes guardian of an abandoned girl, and then the girl’s daughter. He falls in love. Over the course of decades, he makes a profound and lasting impact on the lives of many people—even though he is imprisoned!

Anthony Ray Hinton is a true-life example of this. Wrongfully imprisoned and placed on death row for decades, he transformed from a cauldron of anger to a beacon of light for those around him. As chronicled in his astounding book, The Sun Does Shine, he mastered his circumstances long before he was finally exonerated and released.

The examples Towles and Hinton give are ones of shaping our circumstances not with force but with goodness, sacrifice, and generosity. Thus Towles memorable line about circumstances may need a slight alteration. The point is not to control our situation or ourselves in any way we wish. Rather it is a choice between two masters:

“We must allow grace to master us or we will be mastered by our circumstances.”

A Cautionary Tale

In many ways, Fierce Attachments, a memoir of a daughter’s relationship with her mother, is a sad tale. After the sudden and early death of the Vivian’s father, her mother is consumed by her grief, using it to shield herself from others. Though Vivian wants to connect with her mother, she has difficulty. Her mother—a strong, intelligent, capable, and opinionated (!) woman—cannot see her daughter or the world through any other lens than herself.

But we should not judge her mother too harshly. Even many of us who have not experienced a sudden, traumatic loss, still live like this. We are simply focused on ourselves and have difficulty getting out of that frame to see people from their own viewpoint.

Vivian and her mother can’t connect and can’t separate. What makes this raw book even more tragic is that while Vivian criticizes the narrow path her mother has taken, almost inevitably it seems, Vivian ends up doing the same. She has relationships with men, but she can never really attach in a deep and lasting way. She even wonders if she intentionally picks men who are incapable of that kind of connection.

In How to Know a Person, David Brooks mentions Gornick’s memoir as a cautionary tale. While there are practical ways to know a person better, he says, we also need to be alert to the many paths which can prevent that from happening.

This memoir, however, is a cautionary tale in another sense. It highlights that while grief can be healthy, it can aslo bind us if it becomes the consuming fact of our life. Grief is a dreadful and necessary journey through the valley of the shadow of death, but the valley is not the destination.

The Crux of Faith

For Christians, the cross may be so familiar that we cease to see it and be shocked by it.

To help us, Bran Zahnd offers an untypical theology of the cross. As the author suggests, The Wood Between the Worlds is an exercise in theopoetics—akin to meditations on nineteen aspects or implications of the death of Christ. Since other excellent volumes cover the standard topics of atonement, substitution, forgiveness, and salvation, Zahnd turns his attention elsewhere.

We read, for example, that while humanity was exiled from Eden and the Tree of Life, now all are welcome at the cross, the true Tree of Life. We also find a profound chapter on Pontius Pilate, and how we are all at some level stained by skepticism and dirty hands. In addition, Zahnd offers a wonderfully clear explanation of Rene Girard’s important work on the social dynamics of scapegoating today and throughout history.

Insights and icons from Eastern Orthodox Christianity weave in and out of these and his other uncommon subjects such as Ellie Wiesel’s doubts, the harrowing of hell, and Mary’s ponderings.

Much of the book considers power and weakness. In this light Zahnd takes up uncomfortable topics such as capital punishment, pacifism, and James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree.

While today’s church often focuses on power, the gospel writers emphasize suffering, loss, and weakness. When Paul says, “God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Cor 1:25), he “doesn’t mean that when God is weak, God is still stronger than human might. That wouldn’t be scandalous. It would be just a typical boast about power as conventionally understood. Rather Paul is taking us into the deep mystery of the cross, saying that God’s power is precisely located in the weakness” of the cross. [p. 29].

Power corrupts as the Ring of Power in Tolkien’s trilogy twists those who seek it. All our attempts to use power are likewise subject to corruption. Christianity is tainted when it aligns itself with government-sponsored violence as all sides did in World War I and as we still see today. We cannot justify such actions by misunderstanding the imagery of armies and destruction in the book of Revelation. For it is the slain lamb who is the central victor of the book.

Through mystery and metaphor, in this mind-provoking and soul-provoking book, Zahnd explores the literal crux of the Christian story.

Nietzsche Is Still Laughing

Deep in the recesses of Charles Taylor’s massive tome A Secular Age on the huge shifts that have transformed the Western world in the last five hundred years, he tells a story–a story of a friend visiting a political gathering:

A Buddhist acquaintance of mine from Thailand briefly visited the German Greens. He confessed to utter bewilderment. He thought he understood the goals of the party: peace between human beings, and a stance of respect and friendship by humans towards nature. But what astonished him was all the anger, the tone of denunciation, of hatred towards the established parties. These people didn’t seem to see that the first step towards their goal would have to involve stilling the anger and aggression in themselves. He couldn’t understand what they were up to.*

Taylor says that the person who would have been most delighted with the irony of this story was Friedrich Nietzsche. The late nineteenth-century German philosopher was famous for his idea of “will to power.” He thought, essentially, that there was no morality, no ethics. These were just thin, convenient covers for seeking to gain what we wanted—to impose our control on others!

Such a story would prove to Nietzsche that he was right, that people don’t operate by ideals, even the most high minded. It’s all a sham, a fake, a charade. Even a political party supposedly built on the foundation of peace with the natural world quickly degenerates into vitriol and violence.

We may think this view is cynical. Nietzsche just thought it was reality.

Like those pursuing progressive ways to make the world better, conservative Christians may also disagree with Nietzsche. But in a day in which some think that Jesus’ admonition to love our enemies is wrong or that it just doesn’t apply when it comes to asserting our political will, Nietzsche is still laughing.

—
*Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 698.

Image credit: openart.ai photograph of Friedrich Nietzsche laughing.

Lessons in Stereotypes

Lessons in Chemistry (now an Apple TV series) is a fun and funny book that takes on serious issues. (The lead character’s dog is a special delight.) Set in the Eisenhower era before women were as prominent in the workplace, the story points out many of the foibles, fallacies, and injustices of a male-dominated culture.

The book highlights the unnecessary limits, the ill treatment, and the stereotypes so many once had and sadly still have of women. But an irony is that the book also seems to perpetuate certain stereotypes.

With one or two exception, men seem to be consistently portrayed as greedy, inept, sexually violent, selfish, domineering, and clueless. Those who adhere to religious faith are similarly derided. They are depicted as either charlatans or benighted souls who haven’t managed to make it out of the dark ages, carelessly damaging lives along the way.

People are complex. Heroes have flaws and villains have virtues. May the world abound with books that affirm the complicated value and dignity of all people and groups (even with sometimes deep imperfections) without having to drag any down to lift others up.

How to Know a Person

I was sitting around a table with some friends. How did the topic come up? I don’t quite recall.

We were talking about World War II, and Ralph said, “You can’t trust the Germans. Look what they’ve done in two world wars. And don’t say they’ve changed because skinheads and nationalism are on the rise there. We just should never have let them become an independent nation again. We should have carved up the country for good.”

I was a bit surprised to hear such ideas about a group of people who have little malice thrown at them these days. He didn’t sound angry. He wasn’t loud. He was outwardly calm, but I sensed there was emotion underneath.

I responded evenly by saying it seemed helpful to have them as allies, as a force for economic and political stability in central Europe. Clearly he still disagreed.

Then I remembered what I had just read in David Brooks’s new book, How to Know a Person. He told a story of being on a panel discussion with someone who had a very different view of the culture wars. Brooks responded not with anger or diatribe but by stating his side with a bit of cool dispassion.

Later Brooks realized this was the wrong approach. Instead he should have at least asked more questions about what the other person thought and why.

Taking Brooks’s lead, I decided I too was wrong and that the important thing in this moment was not to try to change Ralph’s mind, not to correct him, however wrong his attitudes might be. My job first was to listen to him, get to know him, and maybe love him a little better.

So I started asking some questions, genuinely wanting to know more: “What’s behind your thoughts here? When and how did you first start to think this way?” And quietly he began to tell us more of his story.

His father and uncles had been in the war. What they saw and went through was terrible. And his wife had been born in central Europe. Her family had suffered at the hands of the Germans for multiple generations.

Ralph was not speculating on geopolitics. For him, this was personal.

Brooks is a consummate journalist who is excellent at summarizing the best research of experts while telling stories of others and himself that move us and create understanding. While offering excellent material on how to get to know people as individuals, he reminds us that everyone is situated in a group, in a history, in a place. We also have to explore and appreciate those to truly hear others.

In a day of hyper reactions and extreme tribalism, we seem to have lost the vital art of conversation, of making friends, of connecting with others more than superficially. Brooks tells us how with practical, sensible wisdom.

I don’t remember the last time I had put the ideas of a book into practice so quickly as I did with Ralph. Before I would have just sat in stunned silence. But now I knew how to respond positively. How to Know a Person is that kind of book, a book worth rereading.