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So, You Want to Pray Like a Jesuit?

What is a book? When is a book not really a book?

Before now, I thought I knew; that doesn’t seem like a terribly complicated question after all.

War and Peace is a book. So is Thus Spake Zarathustra. So is Go, Dog. Go!

But what about a lengthy instruction manual for a Television? It’s bound like a book, and is longer than many things which are obviously books. Is it a book or is the category “Instruction Manual” not contained in the set of things called “books”?

The question is prompted by The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius.

I enjoyed reading this…what do I call it?…that is where I get stuck. It looks like a book; I thought it was a book. But, it is an instruction manual. It is much more like the instruction manual for my television than like anything I have in my office. (Well other than itself—technically it is most like itself).

Ignatius sets out a series of exercises which he believes will, over the course of weeks, draw one closer to God. It is a pretty rigorous set of exercises—hours a day for roughly four weeks.

Broadly speaking, the exercises would fall into the category of prayer, but here again we run into a definition problem. For example, one of the exercises is to spend the hour (Ignatius is really insistent on the fact that you need to spend an hour at a time doing each exercise) imagining the Last Supper.

Picture where everyone is sitting, what they are wearing, what they are saying to one another. Imagine the room and the food on the table. (Is there a dog?) Fill in all the details. This is all part of a reflection on the Last Supper.

This sort of imaginary thought experiment is quite common in the Exercises—there are lots of things to picture here. So, is that prayer? Again, I am not sure.

(Thinking through the types of prayer described in the Zaleskis’ excellent book, Prayer: A History:

Parts of the Ignatius exercise fit cleanly into the category of devotional prayer. But, I am not sure if a meditation on hell (week 1, fifth exercise) counts as prayer or not.)

What I am sure about is that I would not make a very good Jesuit. Not only would I have a hard time spending an hour imagining the details of the Last Supper or most of the other things in these exercises, I have a really hard time even imagining the act of imagining them.

Clearly some people find such exercises meaningful and profound and worthy of their time. Is it a failing that I think I would get nearly nothing out of the attempt to follow these exercises? Is it possible I am wrong when I read them and think, “Not for me”?

In other words, are the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius for universal application? Ignatius does note that not everyone is ready for the whole series of exercises—some people may not graduate from week one to week two, but does that mean week one is suitable for everyone?

If I spent a month in the summer at a Jesuit retreat going through these exercises, would I learn something and become a more Godly person? I don’t think so, but how would I know if that is just being shortsighted?

As I said above, I am glad I read through these exercises, but the only point in rereading them would be to actually go through the exercises.

Now you have now been warned—don’t pick this up expecting a book.

Tintin vs The Joker

File this in the improbable Good Friday pairing department:

Tintin vs The Joker.

Consider, for example, a pair of Tintin stories:

Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon.

Tintin books are the kind of thing you settle in to read after a long day at work. The Evil guys are dastardly and mean. Tintin is heroic and young. Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus and Snowy and the Detectives are all there for comic effect.

Tintin gets excited when he gets to drive a cool tank on the moon and you can feel his boyish thrill.

The mean guys show up and knock Tintin out.

(Tintin undoubtedly had a serious problem with concussions in his old age.)

Tintin is a little bit clever and a lot bit brave and saves the day with sheer determination. Over and over, book after book, the same basic story unfolds. They are wonderful. (And, they make great gifts for any kid who likes adventure stories.)

Now consider a pair of comic books of more recent vintage, written by Brian Azzarello and illustrated by Lee Bermejo:

Joker and Luthor.

As even a glance a the covers would suggest, these books are not like Tintin books.

They are supervillain books.

The superheroes show up, but are really the side characters in a story about the villain. Both are good and interesting reads.

They are, however, quite different in tone as befits the difference in the two villains. It is the difference between these two villains that intrigues me.

As any good Calvinist will tell you, at our heart, none of us are good. But, that’s just a euphemism. We are all totally depraved.

Yeah, I know people don’t talk like that anymore, but just a little introspection reveals that fundamentally the desires of our heart are evil. “Darkness is a harsh term, don’t you think?/ And yet it dominates the things I seek” is how Mumford and Sons put it.

There is quite a bit of variety in our Darkness, though. And that is where this pair of books comes in.

The test: Are you more the Joker or Luthor?

The Joker is Chaos and Destruction; he laughs at the world and destroys it for the Pure Joy of it.

Luthor is Arrogance and Pride; he wants to mold the world in his own image.

In neither world is there a role for Good or Love. Reading this pair of books was thus, if I am honest with myself, disturbing.

The Joker? Well he has no appeal to me; I am happy to see the Joker fail; I feel no sympathy for him. He is obviously the more popular villain though. Many people like the idea of smashing things.

But, Luthor?

Uncomfortably, I read his tale and realize part of me is just like him.

He hates Superman, hates the idea of a force more powerful than Man, a force which would come to Earth to Save us from Ourselves…Save Me from Myself…well, part of me also wants to resent that idea…it’s is so…humbling. Cue St. Matthew’s Passion.

Now combine these two pairs of comic books. Imagine if Tintin came up against the Joker? Who would win? Sadly, it doesn’t seem like much of a contest.

To beat the Joker, we need a hero much more powerful than a good, decent, heroic lad.

…and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

Tempting the Church

What would an update of C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters look like?

The Wormwood Archive, by T. G. Brown

Who should read it?

Anyone curious or worried about the state of the Church in America.

Seriously—anyone who fits into that category would benefit from reading this book. It’s short (143 pages) and a quick read. It is deeply insightful about the nature of the modern evangelical church.

C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters is one of the pop classics of the modern church.

If you haven’t read it, it’s typical Lewis. Screwtape is a senior devil giving advice to a junior devil (Wormwood) about how to corrupt a man.

It clever and interesting and mostly good fun.

Brown’s book updates Lewis’ book. Wormwood is now trying to corrupt an entire church. It is an easier task.

The concept is what makes the book so insightful. There are many complaints about the state of the modern evangelical church. Many.

Many of these complaints they fall into the “See how Horrible those Church Growth/Vineyard/Seeker Sensitive types are” category. There is also the opposite: “See how Horrible those Old-Fashioned/Stuck on tradition types are” category.

What Brown does well here is imagines that this isn’t a case of Terrible, Horrible people trying to do Terrible, Horrible things. What if we have a case of good, well-meaning people who end up doing Terrible, Horrible things because they were seduced into thinking they were doing the Right Thing? What would the temptation of the Whole Church look like?

This book is, in other words, a lot like Whitaker Chamber’s masterpiece, “The Devil.” (Life, 1948, reprinted in Ghosts on the Roof). If you haven’t read it, you should.

(That advice is for everyone; the Chambers’ essay is worth reading for anyone who enjoys Great Books and Ideas.)

What tempts the modern church? As the devils in this book indicate, the church is tempted by the desire to become more efficient at what it does.

It wants more customers—because after all a happy customer is a saved soul, right?

It wants a better market image—after all a better image means more customers which means more saved souls, right?

It wants more direction and a better management structure and a more contemporary feel. It just wants to be a better, more improved version of itself.

The Church has to change with the times, don’t you know? It can’t stay stuck in the past. Read the media, won’t you? (And there is another problem—why did I just write “read” the media? Who reads anymore? Watch the media. And add some videos and PowerPoint slides to that church service while you are at it.)

Christians are so old-fashioned, stuck on outdated principles. If we want to reach the modern generation, then we need to figure out what the modern generation wants.

And before you know it, the church is no longer recognizable. Spending all its time thinking about what it looks like, the Church forgets what it is supposed to actually be. It is not that thinking about all the ways to modernize the church are necessarily bad. But, what happens when that is all the Church thinks about?

This idea that the church has been seduced is surely correct. For anyone attending a modern church, evangelical or otherwise, there is a disturbing regularity with which the shock of recognition hits

Who hasn’t felt this temptation, the temptation to help improve the church a bit, just a bit, because God, well, he can be so Old Fashioned sometimes, and if only He were around today, then He would probably want this change too, and after all, I’m supposed to be helping God out with the Church things, aren’t I?

The Road to a Heretical Church is paved with Good Intentions.

Related Posts
Schaeffer, Francis The Church Before the Watching World “The World is Watching the Church”
Lewis, Sinclair Elmer Gantry “Church Scandals and Elmer Gantry”

A Real Horrorshow Book

In the category of violent books: Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange.

O my brothers, Your Humble Narrator would like to tell you it is a real horrorshow book, the kind thou ought to recommend to all thy droogs.

But, it’s not really all that amazing. It’s good, to be sure. It is fun to read. But it is not nearly as deserving as the praise it receives would suggest.

As for the movie—just stay away. Part of the problem this book has is that it spawned a feverish adolescent fantasy in the mind of the movie’s director, Stanley Kubrick.

This is a case where the movie not only isn’t as good as the book, but if one sees the movie before reading the book, then it will be very hard to read the book on its own terms.

Without a doubt, the prose is the only thing which really gives this book any chance of being worthy of attention. It is a joy to submerse yourself into the jargon and style of the narrator, Alex. (The narrator is the original Your Humble Narrator.)

From the inspired coinages to the mock Shakespearean style to the elaborate euphemisms for the ultraviolent acts of a depraved youth, uncovering what Alex means is a treat.

The first time I ever read the book, the version had a glossary in the back to translate Alex’s language. That is the sort of innovation which utterly destroys a book like this. If you are going to read it, just read it.

The argument of the book? It is an exploration of the nature of Free Will. The book tries to isolate why people have a hard time with the idea of determinism and free will.

Do we choose to do Evil? How important is it that we preserve the ability to do Evil? If we could condition Evil people to do Good deeds by making it so that the very thought of an Evil Act induced overwhelming physical revulsion, would that be a good thing to do? If people are compelled to Act Properly because we had made it impossible for them to Act Improperly, then have we made society better?

People like the idea that they choose to do good things. But, they also like the idea that they do not choose to do bad things, that when people do bad things it was somehow determined by Forces Beyond Our Control.

What this book does is ask which of those two things is more important. Is it more important
1) to preserve the idea that we choose to do good, or
2) to preserve the idea that evil is out of our control?

If the latter, then should we alter the deterministic aspects of evil so that nobody will ever choose to do evil? If we end up doing good because doing so is beyond our control, are we better humans?

But, if we want to preserve the idea that what makes us human is the ability to choose to do good deeds, then doesn’t it necessarily follow that we must celebrate the ability to choose evil? We don’t have to celebrate evil itself, but don’t we have to celebrate the possibility that we choose to do evil?

The biggest problem with the book is that it cheats in the end.

The original last chapter is an argument that Free Will triumphs. But, since Alex chooses to Be Good in the end for no apparent reason, the book ends up reading like some fairy tale of an evil youth maturing and magically becoming a good member of society.

Dropping the last chapter (as was done in the original American publication) isn’t an improvement—then we end with an evil character whose evil is somehow stamped on his soul with no possibility of choice. This is also simply a cheat because we know that there used to be a different last chapter with the opposite conclusion.

If the entire rest of the book can be an argument for completely opposite conclusions, then it is really obvious that this book is not actually arguing anything.

Nice prose in the service of a Big Question but providing No Answer, not even a bad answer, just no answer at all.

So, read it for the prose, which is a real joy. But, don’t spend too long imagining it is a deep book.

After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?

Jean Hatzfeld has an amazing pair of books about the Rwandan genocide.

If you haven’t read Machete Season and Life Laid Bare, you should. The first explores the genocide through a series of conversations with the murderers; the second looks at the same events through interviews with the survivors.

Jean Hatzfeld has an amazing pair of books about the Rwandan genocide. If you haven’t read Machete Season and Life Laid Bare, you should. The first explores the genocide through a series of conversations with the murderers; the second looks at the same events through interviews with the survivors.

They are brutal books.

Tales of nice normal people picking up machetes and hunting through swamps looking for their former neighbors in order to hack them to death. Day after day after day.

It is hard to decide whether the accounts are more chilling when told by those who survived or those who spent a month killing their neighbors.

Hatzfeld has a third book. The Antelope’s Strategy. The subtitle: Living in Rwanda after the Genocide.

The book picks up after an amazing turn of events. The genocide ended when the government fell. Not surprisingly, the killers are imprisoned. (Well, maybe it is surprising that they were imprisoned rather than executed.)

But then, seven years later, with the agricultural fields throughout the country lying fallow and a need for workers to grow food, the government announced that the killers would be released. They returned to their old homes, suddenly living side by side again with the very people they had formerly tried to murder.

So, imagine you live in a Rwandan Village. Take you pick: which is the harder situation?

1) You survived the genocide by hiding in the swamps, evading the butchers, and now the very people who used to hunt you live next door—not just people like the people who hunted you, but the very same people;

2) You spent some time running through the swamps trying to kill people, and now you suddenly find yourself living next to someone whose family you hacked up with a machete and who only lives now because he evaded you.

Rwanda is full of people in both those situations. Hatzfeld interviews them. And the big question:

Can you forgive?

Is it even humanly possible to forgive in this situation?

Is it humanly possible to love your neighbor as yourself in this situation?

This is a gut-wrenching book in a very different manner than the previous books by Hatzfeld. In those books, the reader is faced with the depths of the depravity of Man.

In this book, we are faced with the limits of the ability of man to be good.

It is Right and Good to forgive. God forgives; we should forgive. (“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”—it’s the Lord’s Prayer, after all.)

Not only is there depravity at the heart of man, but man has no ability, literally no ability, to be this forgiving.

“But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

The next time you are annoyed at someone on the other side of the political spectrum in America, remember this book.

Let’s be honest—nobody has wronged you this much. You have nothing to forgive that is on the same scale as the sorts of things people are forgiving in this book.

We should all learn to be a little more forgiving.

God of Small Things

“For who hath despised the day of small things?”

God says that. (Zechariah 4:10)

Arundhati Roy entitled a novel: The God of Small Things.

Is this a coincidence?

Hard to believe that it is, but Roy’s novel of India and Zechariah’s prophecies in Ancient Israel don’t seem to have any obvious similarities. Indeed, consider the context of that line for Zechariah:

Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,
The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it; and thou shalt know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto you.
For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth.

(That is the King James Version by the way (though you probably instantly knew that)—I don’t normally read the KJV, but I like the way the question in the middle there is phrased.)

Roy’s God of Small Things is introduced in a dream described thus:

“If he touched her he couldn’t talk to her, if her loved her he couldn’t leave, if he spoke he couldn’t listen, if he fought he couldn’t win.”

Yeah, I don’t know that that means either, and it isn’t clear the novel explains it.

Maybe there is no connection between Roy and Zechariah, but it seems weird that there isn’t.

All of which is a long way of saying that Roy’s novel is extremely good, but not because it provides an exegesis on the book of Zechariah.

(Though it is rather hard to believe Roy wasn’t referencing Zechariah, so maybe I am missing something….I need to stop pondering this…really, I need to just stop…)

Small things (to start afresh). Is there a moment in your life around which the whole of your life pivots? A moment to which everything you did before inexorably led and everything after necessarily follows? A moment that every small thing in your life was either a cause of or an effect of that single moment?

That is the thesis of Roy’s novel, and she does a marvelous job exploring it. This really is a book worth reading—indeed, it is one of those books I was surprised I had not read earlier in life. But thanks to a former student who was shocked I hadn’t read it and thus bought me a copy to remedy this failing, I finally read it.

The novel unfolds with the before and after circling around and around that central moment. We only find that central moment in the last chapter.

There is a very clever bit of plotting in the construction of the novel. The nature of the central event is tipped off early, so there isn’t a big shock at the end if you are paying attention.

But, and this is the really impressive part, the event that I assumed would be the pivot point, the event I assumed would be the final chapter, was contained in the penultimate chapter. The real central point, also not a surprise event, is only surprising because it comes at the very end. It is the moment to which the whole novel leads and follows.

As soon as you see it, as soon as you realize that this event and not the one you thought it was, is the real moment around which the whole novel circles, you say “of course.”

It is a marvelous feeling. Here you are enjoying one book, watching it all unravel to get to the middle and then you discover that the middle you that you were uncovering isn’t the middle after all, that an event which you thought was just a precursor to the middle was in fact the middle. All of the lives of all these characters all hinged on that one moment. All of the decisions reaching back generations led to that moment and all the things that happened afterwards happened because of that one exact moment.

So, great story, well written. But, is it right? Does your life have such a pivot point?

Disturbingly, Roy’s argument is that the pivot point may not actually be an event in which you participated or even witnessed. The pivot point of your life may not even happen to you and may not even happen until after you are dead and yet your whole life was just leading to that pivot point.

It is the idea of this pivot point in life that is intriguing me. In Christian theology, all of human history has a pivot point at the Crucifixion of Christ.

But, what about your life or my life? The reason this is so hard to decipher is that even if it exists, how would I know? What if my pivot point comes at the age of 57 or 74? What if it happened when I was 12? In either case, would I know?

Indeed (terrifying thought, this) what if writing these reflections on Roy’s novel are the unique pivot point of my whole life—that this moment is unique because it is the sole moment in my life in which everything I have done up until now led to this exact moment and everything afterwards happens because of this moment?

Here I have comfortably lived my life assuming that my life had a trajectory, that one thing followed another in a perfectly predestined fashion, but the inexorable nature of life never raised the possibility of a crucial moment in that life. Every moment is crucial.

This is Eliot’s argument in Burnt Norton, by the way. I guess I have lived my life assuming this is the case:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.

And in that reading, there is no unique pivot point. All time is unredeemable.

So, why does Roy’s hypothesis haunt me is much? In the universe of Eliot (and me), every moment is sacred and inviolable. But if every moment is sacred, then no moment is special.

In Roy’s novel, there is that one moment that is different.

What troubles me is this: if there was a moment that was special, shouldn’t I acknowledge it as such? Obviously.

But, what if there were two special moments? Well, then both should be thought of a sacred and special. Three moments? The same. Four? Five?

And adding up, what if every moment is sacred? What if every single moment is a fixed point, eternally present and unredeemable. Then should I be in awe at every moment in my life, holding onto the thing that makes this moment the moment of my life that everything has led to and everything will come from?

If I agree with Eliot (and I do) that every moment is The Moment, then why don’t I treat every moment as The Moment?