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Solzhenitsyn and Two-Face

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us it oscillates with the years. And even within the hearts overwhelmed with evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains…an unuprooted small corner of evil.”

Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

If Solzhenitsyn is right, and he is, then there is perhaps no greater representative of humanity than Two-Face, the DC Villain. (Yes I hear your groans, Dear Reader. Bear with me for a moment; perhaps Solzhenitsyn and Two-Face really do belong in the same discussion. Maybe, just maybe Great Books (The Gulag Archipelago) and ComicBooks, (Two-Face: A Celebration of 75 Years) illuminate one another.)

In the most common origin story, Two-Face began life as crusading District Attorney Harvey Dent. While prosecuting a trial of a notorious mob boss, acid is flung at Dent, burning the left half of his face. His personality then splits; one part good and one part evil. In a 1957 story, plastic surgery repairs Dent’s face, but, alas, it gets burned again in exactly the same way (funny coincidence that), prompting the Omniscient Comic Book Narrator Voice to intone, “And it becomes clear that more than Dent’s face has been re-injured! The scar reaches right through to his brain!” Omniscient Comic Book Narrator meet Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

The punchline in this here rumination is that we are all Two-Face. But first the immediate objection: Two-Face has another notable quirk. He makes all his decisions based on the flip of a coin. Faced with a choice, the coin flips, and Heads he does Good, Tails he does Evil. You (probably) don’t do that.

Before you start thinking how much superior you are to Two-Face, ask yourself this: How do you decide to do the evil things you do? You aren’t perfect. Sometimes you do things that you think were wrong. There isn’t even a need for a universal moral code to make this point; pick whatever moral code you personally have for yourself. Sometimes, maybe often, maybe not so often, you do things that violate your own moral code. Why?

Now that you have thought about why you do immoral things, ask yourself this: is it better to do evil by choice or by chance? You choose to do things you think are wrong. Two-Face lets the coin decide for him whether to do something wrong. Which is morally worse?

You and Two-Face are both frequently faced with decision to make, and you both have to decide whether to do Good or Evil. Two-Face will choose Evil half the time, which is (hopefully) more often than you chose to do Evil. But if Two-Face used a 20 sided die and only did evil when a 1 comes up, does that make him any better? If you only do evil 1% of the time, does that make you better?

Like Solzhenitsyn said, the line separating good and evil runs right through your heart. You may like to think of yourself as a good person and all those other people out there as the evil people, but no matter how good you are, there is that evil part of your heart and no matter how evil those others are, there is that good part in their hearts. You are Two-Face. So are They.

At least Two-Face lets a coin decide if he will be evil. You just do evil voluntarily.

How happy are you that you are choosing whether to do good or evil? In a rather clever story from 2008 (“Two-Face Too”), you are put in charge of the ending. There are two possible panels to end the tale. One is the “they lived happily ever after” ending. The other ends with a gunshot and blood and death. Which is the right ending for the story? The story is being told by the Joker; he tells you to flip a coin to find out what happens. Heads, the happy ending. Tails, not so happy.

Take the thought experiment seriously for at least a moment. Do you get to decide how the story ends? Or does the story really only end when you flip a coin and find out the ending? Are you more satisfied with a story where you get to choose the ending or where the ending is decided for you? Note that most stories have an ending decided for you by an author. That never bothered you. Are you satisfied with an ending decided by a coin flip? Or would you rather be in charge of deciding the ending?

That part of you that wants to do evil, to do wrong, to do that thing that is really, honestly, truly just a little tiny bit immoral, what determines when that part of you gets to indulge itself? Story after story, you think how terrible Two-Face is because he flips a coin and does evil half the time. Story after story, you feel a righteous vindication that you are not going around flipping a coin and doing evil. Real day after real day, you just decide on your own with no coin involved to do the wrong thing. Story after story, Two-Face reminds you that you have that evil part in you.

Deep theological waters here. Alas, Batman is not there to save you from your evil ways. Batman is fiction. Kinda makes you wish there was a real savior to save you from yourself, doesn’t it?

Related Posts
DC Comics Superman: A Celebration of 75 Years “Too Good for His Own Good”
McCarthy, Cormac No Country for Old Men “Destiny and the Coin Flip”

That is the Law; Are We Not Men?

Not to go on all-Fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
Not to eat Flesh or Fish; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
Not to claw Bark of Trees; that is the law. Are we not Men?
Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men?

Hmm. I’d like to say that 4 out of 5 ain’t bad. And yet, I know I stand condemned of violating the Law. Does this make me less than human? This recitation of the Law is in H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau. The Beast Folk (described below) use it to remind themselves what it is to be Human. You can hear the echoes of Leviticus.

The plot for those who don’t know: Dr. Moreau vivisects animals, turning them into men. The experiments are not successfully complete. The animals still retain some remnant of the beast even when they seem more like Humans.

So the Law is put in to tell them know how to behave. If you recite the Law often enough, maybe those habits will get ingrained. You’ll stop going on all fours and clawing the bark of trees and trying to eat the other newly created humans. The beasts learn to think of Moreau as God, punishing violations of the Law. His is the house of Pain. It will shock you to hear that things do not go well on this island.

Wells clearly wants us to think that the Law is silly, that Moreau is capricious and cruel. We are meant to be struck with horror at Moreau. But (Allegory Alert!), Wells is not simply wanting you to think about Moreau and his animals. Moreau is God who creates these beings and then gives them the Law in the hopes that they will behave better than their nature induces them to behave. When the created beings disobey the Law, Moreau causes pain. The created beings thus have to deny their true natures to conform to a painful process of becoming something they are not. And Wells wants you to read this allegory and realize that the entire Christian narrative is fundamentally cruel.

Yet, is the Law really all that bad? Imagine you were a beast, with a beast’s nature. Would not your life be better if you could overcome your nature and live a higher life? Why should we celebrate the nature of the beast? That isn’t a thought experiment at all; just think about your own life. Who can honestly say that he has committed no sin? Who can honestly say that they are not better than they would be in the absence of any Law or moral codes restraining their baser instincts?

Think of all the things you have done that you think are wrong. Not to do those things; that is the Law. Are you not human? Then you realize that, well, maybe you are a bit of a beast after all, not even living up to your own standard of righteousness. Wells seems to be suggesting that the whole idea of the Law is the problem; that it is absurd to ask beasts to behave like men. But is it? Is it absurd to turn bad men into better men? Should we all just revel in our own depravity? Why shouldn’t we be grateful for a standard of behavior that shows us how Men should behave?

But, this isn’t the sort of question Wells wants us to ask when reading his book.

I once spent a merry couple of hours talking about Moreau’s whole experiment with a group of students. Is it wrong to turn animals into men? If I could create dog-man, would that be good? Should a firm embrace diversity by hiring cat-woman and cow-man? Would we all be happy working with these new beings?

There was instinctive revulsion among my students when the question was raised—which is pretty interesting when you think about it. What would be so wrong with meeting a being which was born a pig and has been modified so that it can walk and talk like a human? Would you want to have dinner with pig-man? Or marry ape-woman? Is there something fundamentally morally wrong with the idea of creating such a being? Are there limits, ethical limits, to such things?

All in all, for a schlocky sensationalistic trashy novel, there are quite a few things worth discussing in it. Did Wells then write Great Books? I have a hard time thinking he did. Yet, here we are a century and a quarter after this book was published reading and talking about it.

That may well be the most troubling thing about this whole book.

Can’t You Read the Sign?

“Signs, Signs, everywhere there’s signs.”

Thus saith Tesla. And before that Five Man Electric Band. And before that C.S. Lewis. And before that John.

Not to disparage the first two, we’ll start with Lewis.

The Silver Chair is book 4 in the Chronicles of Narnia. (Yes, I know saying it is the 4^th book is fightin’ words in some circles.) If you haven’t read the Chronicles of Narnia, you really owe it to yourself to do so. They are all very quick reads which can be enjoyed by children as nice fantasy tales and by adults as a font of philosophical asides. But, (hopefully) you knew that already.

I just reread The Silver Chair, and this time out it got me to pondering the nature of signs. Hang out in religious circles long enough and you will hear many times that something or other was a “Sign from God.” Hang out in non-religious circles and you’ll hear the same thing without the “of God” part. The implication is the same in either case. Someone was faced with a decision and along came this external event which told the person what to do.

The intriguing thing about Signs from God or from some Undefined Sign-Generating Force is the need for interpretation. Signs of this sort do not show up in Red Hexagons. This type of Sign is something that is not obviously a sign at all. The question is how to interpret this thing that may or may not be a Sign.

The Silver Chair provides a marvelous example. Jill Pole shows up in Narnia and meets Aslan, who gives her Four Signs to aid her in the quest he has set for her. The Signs all seem pretty straightforward. Yet, as the story proceeds, Jill and her companions (Eustace Scrubb and Puddleglum) completely miss the first three signs. The signs pointed to things which were only obvious in retrospect. And therein lies the first problem with Signs. ”Find the ruined city of Giants” seems like a pretty straightforward command, but if the city is really, really ruined and it is dark and snowing, you may not recognize that those heaps of stones around you are actually the ruined city of Giants. You imagined something looking like a slightly ruined city with obvious buildings missing a few windows or a collapsed roof; you were not imagining large rocks in your way as you try to find a path.

Having missed the first three signs, our heroes reach the moment of crisis with the Fourth Sign. The sign was that the person for whom they were searching would be the first person who asks them to do something in the name of Aslan. Suddenly a raving lunatic who is tied to a chair utters that request.

“It’s the Sign,” said Puddleglum. “It was the words of the Sign,” said Scrubb more cautiously. “Oh, what are we to do?” said Jill.

Are the words of the sign the same thing as the Sign? How do you know? Maybe it is a coincidence? Maybe it is an accident? Maybe the Evil Queen knew about the sign and arranged this as a fake Sign?

“Oh, if only we knew!” said Jill.
“I think we do know,” said Puddleglum.
“Do you mean you think everything will come out right if we do untie him?” said Scrubb.
“I don’t know about that,” said Puddleglum. “You see, Aslan did not tell Pole what would happen. He only told her what to do. That fellow will be the death of us once he’s up, I shouldn’t wonder. But that doesn’t let us off following the Sign.”

In the fantasy land of Narnia, it all worked out nicely once they followed the Sign. As a children’s story it has a nice message about following directions.

But, Lewis is playing a deeper game than just thinking of this as a children’s story. It is the use of the word “Signs” that tips it off. The story would work just as well if Aslan had given Jill four instructions or directions or tasks; indeed all those words would fit the matter better than the word “Signs.” So, why use “Signs”? Why the repeated emphasis on the word “Signs”? Look at the discussion above and note the prominence and repetition of the word “Sign.”

Lewis is clearly referencing the Gospel of John in this matter. One of the (very many) fascinating structural details in the gospel of John is the author’s use of the word “sign.” At the end of the first miracle in this gospel (changing water into wine at the wedding in Cana), John writes, “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.”

A bit later on we get “This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.” Later still, “When people saw the sign that he had done, they said, ‘This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world.’” Towards the end of the gospel, we get Johns summary:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

The prominence of the word “sign” in John’s gospel prompted people to start counting, and there is widespread consensus that John carefully constructed the story to have Seven Signs, seven being one of the numbers of perfection. Alas, there is not total agreement on which seven events in the book are the Seven Signs—but that is a matter for another day.

It is the connection between Lewis and John that is of interest here. In what sense are the events in John actual signs? As John explains, they are signs because they point to something else. It looks like Jesus is just doing a miracle or a magic trick, but John wants the reader to realize that if you are focusing on the event itself, you are missing the thing to which the sign points. Jesus feeding 500 people with trivial amount of food is a sign pointing to something much larger.

Is it obvious that these events in John are actually signs? Is the fact that John tells us that something is a sign proof that it is actually a sign? Johns says that healing a kid in Capernaum was a sign. Is he right about that? I say that the fact that it is sunny outside today is a sign; am I right about that? The debate on either of those events between a believer that it is a sign and a skeptic is inevitably tedious. “Yes, it is a sign.” “No, it is not.” Repeat.

This is where Lewis enters the conversation. Is it a Sign or just something that looks like a Sign? How do we reason this out? There are, after all, truly many ways to interpret this event, only one of which is that it is an actual Sign. Some of those other ways of interpreting the event are every bit as reasonably and logically consistent and believing it is a Sign. “Oh, what are we to do?” asks Jill (and you). “Oh, if only we knew!” exclaims Jill (and you).

Puddleglum has the only possible answer. You don’t try to reason it out. You just decide. Is this a Sign or not? If so, do what the Sign indicates you should do. And then take the consequences. Figuring out if something is a sign, Puddleglum implicitly argues, is not the sort of thing you reason out through logical argument. You either believe or you do not. It’s faith.

This is why discussions about signs are so frustrating to people. Someone comes along and says they have a sign from God that they should do something which you know is preposterous or silly or wrong. So, you try to reason them out of it, but all your fine reasoning falls on deaf ears. The person who believes in the sign, by the way, is every bit as frustrated as you are; why can’t you read the Sign?

We often don’t recognize the prominence of faith in our understanding of the world. Sometimes the signs are right there in front of us, with John pointing to them in big letters saying “Look, here is a Sign.” We can spend a lot of time like Jill agonizing over what to do about those Signs. That agonizing will get us nowhere. Some things are not amenable to reason. Instead, we can do something much better. As Lewis writes in big letters: You have no choice; Embrace your inner Puddleglum.

Plato, Aristotle, and Jesus

Quiz: Name the five most influential philosophy books in Western Civilization. Go ahead, make your list. Don’t worry if you are not an expert in the history of philosophy. Just name the five most influential philosophy books of which you have heard.

There are a lot of viable candidates for that list of five. The number of possible lists is vast. But there is one book that, while it should be on everyone’s list, would show up on very few lists unless mentioned in advance. What is this most important work of philosophy that nobody remembers to list? The Bible.

In terms of influence on Western Civilization, it is hard to think of a book which would rate higher than the Bible. The only question is whether it is properly labeled a philosophy book. A few years back, when George W. Bush was asked to name the philosopher who influenced him the most, he replied “Jesus Christ.” That answer met with much derision. It is not his answer which is odd, however, but the derision.

Jonathan Pennington has set out to fix this state of affairs in his new book, Jesus the Great Philosopher. It is a book which should never have needed to be written. The main argument is so obviously true that it is hard to see how anyone could spin out a book stating the obvious. The fact that this argument is not obvious, however, is exactly why it is good this book exists.

Read the rest at the Circe Institute

Here We Come A-caroling

Joyful, all ye nations rise,
Join the triumph of the skies
With th’angelic host proclaim,
Christ is born in Bethlehem
Hark! The herald angels sing,

And you can join in that singing.

Here to help you in that endeavor is Hosanna in Excelsis: Hymns and Devotions for the Christmas Season, by David and Barbara Leeman. The book is a twist on the Family Devotional. Forty-three hymns, one per day from November 25 through January 6. (The final date is Epiphany. November 25, however, is odd. The authors say it is the first possible day of Advent, but that isn’t right. The earliest possible date for the first Sunday of Advent is November 27. It doesn’t take getting out a calendar and counting backwards to discover this by the way—it’s even in Wikipedia!)

The idea of the book: you gather with your family every day of the Christmas season. You first read about the hymn for the day. There are biographies of the writer of the hymn, the writer of the music to which the hymn is set, and a few paragraphs of a daily devotional. You and your family then sing the hymn together. If that idea sounds wondrous to you, no need to read the rest of this discussion, just get the book.

But, if you are of a discriminating type, you also want to know how this book is any different than just getting a cheap used hymnal and singing with your family. If this book has any value, it would have to be in the write-ups about the hymns and not the hymns themselves. There we have a mixed bag.

First, the really good news. By pausing each day to actually think about the hymn, these old familiar carols can suddenly reveal fresh surprises. We have all had that experience at some point in our lives. For me, the biggest puzzle when growing up was where on the map one would find that place called “Orient Are.” You can imagine the waves of relief when I realized it was just an oddly organized sentence structure; “We are three kings from the Orient” just doesn’t scan and loses the nice little rhyme with “traverse afar.” Poetic License.

Reading through this book, I had a similar Epiphany. Consider the incredibly well-known line “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” It turns out there is a comma in that line. Where is the comma? My guess, and I suspect that you Dear Reader assume the same, was that the comma is after “Ye.” “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentleman” is a nice message at Christmas. Merry Gentleman all being wished the gift of Rest at this fine, but busy, time of year. Ah, but that is not where the comma is. The line is actually “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.” It is not addressed to merry people, but to all people, and the wish is that God will bring the joy to all.

Let that sink in for a minute and then think about how Dickens employs the song in A Christmas Carol. An urchin sings the song through the keyhole of Scrooge’s establishment. If the comma went after “ye,” then the episode is just there to give more evidence of how much Scrooge—who is most certainly not a “merry gentleman”—hates Christmas. But, put the comma in the right place, and the episode is suddenly an invocation; the street urchin’s song proclaims the message of the entire story. Indeed, a nice paraphrase of the line from the hymn would be, “God bless us, every one.”

Who would have thought so much hinged on the placement of a comma? The biographies had a similar fascinating revelation. “Hark! The herald angels sing, “Glory to the Newborn King.” It would be hard to get a more familiar first line. Charles Wesley wrote the poem, which was set to music written by Mendelssohn. Except: Charles Wesley did not write the first line.

The first line of Charles Wesley’s poem reads, “Hark! How all the welkin rings, glory to the King of kings.” Welkin is an Old English word that means, “the vault of the sky” or “heaven.” It exclaims that all of heaven rings glory! A friend of the Wesleys, the famous reformed evangelist George Whitefield, took the liberty of publishing Wesley’s carol, changing the words to proclaim who sings glory. “Hark! The herald angels sing, glory to the newborn king.” Wesley was furious with his friend!

One final insight from reading though this book. From which hymn are the flowing lines taken? “Nails, spear, shall pierce him through, the cross be borne for me, for you.” You know the hymn. It is, indeed a very common Christmas song. “What Child is This?” has embedded in it both the sweet image of a baby sleeping on Mary’s lap and the horror of nails being driven through that same baby’s hands and feet. These Christmas carols are rather rich in content.

This book provides many opportunities for reflections like these. But, alas, along with the good, you have to take the bad. The devotionals are a mix of interesting insights and cringe-inducing literalism. An example of the latter. The carol “Ding, Dong! Merrily on High” opens with this verse: “Ding, dong! Merrily on high, in heav’n the bells are ringing. Ding, dong! Verily the sky is riv’n with angels singing!” The Leemans’ commentary begins with this paragraph:

Is it scriptural that in heaven there were bells ringing? Not precisely. But Jesus tells us “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents….joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:7, 10). Certainly, there was joy in heaven when Jesus was born, as the angels knew what it would mean to all the world. Historically, bells are associated with religious rituals, and steeple bells would call communities together for church services. Bells are also used to commemorate important events. At the declaration of peace at the end of WWII, bells rang for hours and hours throughout England.

The only possible response to that is “Yougottabekiddingme.” How is it possible that anyone would think the most important thing to discuss regrading this carol is that while there is no scriptural warrant for bells ringing in heaven when Jesus was born, that is OK because, gosh, people use bells for lots of important events, like when World War II ended? I dearly wish observations of this sort were unique to this hymn; sadly, they are not.

We don’t want to focus too much on the good and bad of the Leemans’ commentary, however. Of much greater importance is thinking about the carols themselves. And, there, you have a marvelous opportunity. Put on some carols and sing along. Hosanna in Excelsis, indeed!

Related Posts
Sproul, R.C. Growing In Holiness “Binging on Daily Devotionals”
Wigglesworth, Mark The Silent Musician “Conducting and Lecturing”

(Moody Press sent me a copy of the book in exchange for this review.)

Seven Deadly Virtues

“The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”

That is from Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, published in 1961. One way to think about John Koessler’s Dangerous Virtues is as a book-length treatment of that quotation.

Koessler’s book is a very clever examination of the Seven Deadly Sins. Quick test: Can you name all seven? Probably not, and the reason for that is one of the things Koessler’s argument explains. Oddly, your best hope at knowing all seven was seeing the thriller/horror movie Se7en. Knowing the structure of Dante’s Purgatorio would also work, but (alas) more people watch Brad Pitt movies than read Dante. So, before we get to Koessler, we need a refresher on the Seven Deadly Sins.

Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Greed, Gluttony, Lust. The order is not random; they are listed from most to least serious. The first three are instances where love is misdirected to harming others; the last three are corruptions of the love good things; Sloth is a deficiency of love. If those descriptions seem odd, Koessler’s book explains why.

Here is another quick test: which book of the Bible contains the list of the Seven Deadly Sins? Answer: None of them. A version of the list was first set down in the fourth century AD by the rather obscure Evagrius Ponticus. The list of seven we know was formalized by the much better known Pope Gregory I in the late sixth century. Dante and Aquinas cemented the Seven into a taxonomy of sin.

Why do we no longer think in terms of those sins? Koessler argues that we have collectively performed a fascinating inversion. In the modern age, we have recast all seven of those sins into virtues. We have done this by forgetting the actual nature of the sin and then recasting the manifestations of the sin into virtuous acts. In doing so, we no longer have a proper view of sin at all.

First, Koessler notes, we have a remarkable ability to treat sin as akin to being graded on a curve. I am not as bad as that person, so my sins are not so bad. If we are honest, we know better than this, so we actually have an even better defense mechanism:

Others treat sin the same way they do high cholesterol. They know that if they ignore it, things will go badly. But they hope that if they take certain basic measures, it can be kept under control. This approach to sin takes two primary forms: one is medical, and the other is athletic. The medical model sees sin as a kind of disease. The athletic model approaches sin like a weakness that can be remedied through discipline. Either view makes sin seem manageable. If sin is a sickness, it can be cured through treatment. If it is a weakness, that weakness can be eliminated with training

Note in both the medical and the athletic view of sin, it is an annoyance that needs to be overcome. We are basically doing alright except for a couple bad habits that either are out of our control (medical) or we can fix tomorrow with a bit of training (athletic). In neither case do we actually see sin for what it is. “Indeed, one way to understand the nature of any sin is to see it as a distortion of the good that God has provided.”

In a chapter devoted to each sin, Koessler artfully shows how we have converted the sin into a positive good. Pride? Self-esteem isn’t bad, is it? Envy? Why shouldn’t we be annoyed when evil prospers or that political party with the wrong views or that church with the bad theology is in the ascendency? Wrath? That’s righteous anger, honest. Sloth? Weekends and retirement are really nice. Greed? Why should we be satisfied with what we have? Gluttony? Why should we ever say “No” to enjoying good things? Lust? Well, it’s not like we can stop that.

The problem is even worse. By the time we have inverted all the sins, we have completely forgotten what virtue looks like.

However, contemporary interest in virtue seems to be primarily negative. Our ideas about what is good do not necessarily serve as a basis for self examination and personal improvement. Often, they merely provide the grounds for carping against others who fall short of our standard.

Therein lies the most intriguing part of Koessler’s argument. By thinking about sin instead of virtue, we have all been led astray. We focus on sin, ours or, even better, other’s. We downplay our own sins and amplify those of others. We feel a bit guilty about our own sin, but then try to rationalize it away. “I am not really envious, I just want my fair share.”

What we never really do is think about virtue. We play the game of thinking we are virtuous because we don’t commit the sins those other people are committing. But, while we ask how we can sin less, we rarely ask how we can be more virtuous. Why? Being virtuous is terribly hard. Thinking about wrath is easy; I just need to make sure I am only angry at the right things! But, instead, thinking about how to love my enemies, well, that is just too hard.

Koessler’s book is a marvelous read. Given its structure, it is also perfect for an eight week group discussion, one week on the introductory chapter and then a sin a week for the next seven weeks. Guaranteed to provoke all sorts of discussion.

(Moody Press sent me a copy of the book in exchange for this review.)