Legal Copy
July 27, 2009
(Keep in mind this is more like the formation of a thought, as opposed to a well established viewpoint.)
If you die and go to heaven, are you unable to “mess up” from that point on? I don’t mean this in a “free-will” sort of way, as if suggesting that once a person gets to heaven they’re a robot or something, unable to do anything but strum a harp and bounce around from cloud to cloud forever and ever.
What I mean is, if Lucifer, as a created being, was able to … fall, to sin, while in the presence of God (as did Adam and Eve while in the garden, although there was some nice looking fruit involved); then do you or I have any better chance at eternal security after death? Or did I just miss that in the Salvation* fine print of one of the Gospels, like so much legal copy at the bottom of televised car ads.
Put another way: Even if you’re not a once-saved-always-saved Calvinist in this life, if you believe once-in-heaven-always-in-heaven, would that be a sort of Posthumous Calvinism**?
Theoretically, even if I live a good Christian life, even if I accept Jesus as my personal lord and live by the law of love, even if I spread the good word and get welcomed into heaven; I might be able to still fall from grace after the fact. And if that happens after the earth is finally judged and destroyed with fire (and all the rest of that Revelation stuff), it would seem the only other place to be sent would be Hell.
But… Hell is the place reserved for people who either willingly reject or never accept Christ in this life, right?
But (I know, another but) if this is all theoretically possible, which I think you must admit it is at the very least an interesting topic, then what’s the point of serving God and getting into heaven in the first place?
I’m sure I’m missing some obvious components right now, but it just seems all too likely that if Lucifer could fall before original sin, if he and a third of the angels could rebel, (and they supposedly didn’t even have fee will, but either way), then any one of us could do the same in the hereafter.
Given enough time, and eternity seems awfully long, I think heaven could eventually be a very quiet place.
Thoughts?
* Salvation not available to all people at all points in human history; either where those He (God) has Chosen were unable or unwilling to proselytize for whatever reason, or where the Applicant only sought Salvation after threats of torture and/or death. Terms of Salvation subject to change as society’s moral values and ethical codes evolve or adapt due to advances in science, reason or tolerance. Applicants are only responsible for fulfilling those Salvific Requirements deemed necessary by The Church at the time of their death. Applicants who accepted Salvation and ended up in a Persistent Vegetative State during which time Salvific Requirements were changed in any way by The Church will be immune to those changes granted they did not come out of said PVS. God will not be held responsible if Applicants are confused by rhetoric, reasoning, or apparent historical, scriptural, theological and/or soteriological “issues” resulting in Applicants choosing the wrong version of God or the wrong Church. Offer void where prohibited.
** Once you’re in heaven, you’re in for good.†
† But only if you believe that, of course.
A New Direction For Me
July 11, 2009
Well, I’ve come to a crossroads in life. This post will serve as a sort of “Where I Stand” at the moment, as well as where I think I’m heading and what I’m leaving behind.
Truth be told, I’ve been carrying a lot of religious baggage, and it’s taken so much effort to maintain and defend that baggage it finally hit me that it just doesn’t make sense anymore. I’m tired of having that “What about this odd little scripture?” talk. If something is absurd, then tell it like it is. Let’s call a spade a spade. If the emperor is naked, he’s naked. End of story. Defending his beautiful new wardrobe choice is just too far fetched and laborious and I have better things to do with my time, especially if I’m ever to arrive a realistic idea of something divine. Something worth being called God.
Here are some examples of what I mean:
When I was in bible college, about eight years ago now, we learned all about the Jesus Myth Hypothesis. I heard about it at school and at church for a few weeks running. More to the point, what I actually got at church and at school was a five minute version of the weakest points of the theory, and then a ten minute rebuttal that made the entire thing look ridiculous and unacademic full of ad hominem attacks and snide, Christian-eze remarks about those foolish “historians.”
I felt good. Justified. I felt confident in my Jesus, in the historicity of his existence and miracles, and even if I didn’t get it completely, I had faith. I felt better than I ever had about this religion thing. Birds sang and dolphins kissed and the whole world seemed right.
But I inevitably began to encounter the non-watered-down elements of the hypothesis, the really hard stuff, so of course, my defenses had to be sharpened. I eventually allowed contradictory ideas to remain true when it suited me and the defense of my faith. Ideas like:
Jesus may have looked like an archetypal messiah figure [sharing similar elements with the 'myths' of Zoroaster, Krishna, Dionysus, Herecles, Glycon, Horus, Ishtar and even the Buddha, to name a few]; but this was all because God wanted to send what the people wanted and expected already. God didn’t need to be original, humanity had made the choices for him.
&
Jesus was despised and rejected and eventually crucified because he wasn’t what they wanted or expected.
The more “evidence” I was faced with, the more creative and nuanced my defenses had to be in order to cope with apparent reality. I’d seek out books that defended what I already believed, what I wanted to hold on to, and books that bashed those darn overly-historical pictures of history.
As if that’s not enough baggage to carry around….
I was watching afternoon TV once when it clicked with me what I was actually doing with the Old Testament. In defending an over-bearing, abusive, malevolent image of God in the OT, you know, just chalking it up to his sovereignty or inscrutability or whatever, I was acting like the stereotypical abused girlfriend in bad movies. The one who knows she needs to move on but just can’t, because as bad as her boyfriend has acted in the past, he’s changed, he’s different now, and he says he loves me and it won’t happen again. All that stuff he should rot in jail for, well, I forgive him. I mean, he says he loves me, even if he doesn’t act like it.
But inevitably, the girl is pushed to extremes and finally musters the courage to leave the guy, who then threatens her or chases after her, and you can choose your own ending from there.
Point is, I realized it was futile to defend such a mountain of evidence against this OT image of God. Taken one at a time, sure, I can wade through here and there and do a decent job of defending scripture, but on the whole, there is just too much crap.
The real kick in the pants, however, is when you start reading for yourself from differing viewpoints and find out guys like Origen and Augustine didn’t take much of the OT literally. And neither did the Jews. You know, God’s chosen people. I went to bible college to get an education about the bible and for some reason no one thought it would be a good idea to tell me that. I’ve gone on defending the historicity of myths like the conflicting versions of The Creation Story in Genesis 1 & 2, The Great Flood and Jonah and The Whale. I mean, a story can’t mean what it never meant. Fiction cannot become Non-Fiction just because it backs up a worldview I want to defend. If these are teaching stories and myths historically, then I must allow them to remain so.
But let’s push it one step further, in case I haven’t made my point perfectly clear. I also had to ask myself; Do I believe in witches, zombies or fire breathing dragons? Or how about curses in the name of the Lord that incite she-bears to maul dozens of children?
The simple answer is No. And I never could come up with satisfactory defenses of these scriptures, so I just turned my brain off and relegated them into the “I’ll just have to ask Jesus when I get to heaven” category. Well, my brain is on and it realizes that’s all just another load of baggage, too, and it’s time I get rid of it.
So I’m wiping the slate clean, as it were. Or… well.. I mean that literally, too. I’m starting up something called The Clean Slate Project. I imagine it will have a few posts like this in the beginning, to get it all on the table and identify what we need to get rid of and why. I’m really interested, first and foremost, with investigating the idea that we can’t be moral without God’s help. I don’t think that’s true because I see moral people as well as immoral people, but I don’t see God helping or intervening in any way. If some people are doing it, they’re doing it of their own volition in my mind.
But more to the mater at hand, when it comes to Theophiliacs, I have to be honest when I state that I am beginning to think debating theology is almost pointless. We’re basing so much on scriptures that often never meant anything remotely close to what church tradition has decided they mean now. We’re arguing with an arsenal of opinions and viewpoints and writings and polemics, all to further our own ideas that, when you boil it down, are based on one of two basic things; what we were raised to believe, or how we have reacted to what we were raised to believe.
I’m stepping out of that ring. I don’t care anymore. I’m concerned with how I should live my life and lead my family. If there is some good advice in the Proverbs or elsewhere in the Bible, good. If there is some good advice in the Koran or the Tao, bring it on. As for the rest of it, I’m doing what any rational person, what any good scientist does, when faced with contradictory ideas. If something is obviously wrong in the face of new evidence, you let it go and don’t look back. Doing so only hurts for a moment, which is a lot less than a lifetime spent not understanding and wishing things made more sense.
To use a term our friend George Wood has made me familiar with, my cognitive dissonance is being resolved through this process, and you know what? I’ve never felt better. Once again the birds are singing, dolphins are kissing, and who knows, I may even go for one of those long walks on the beach.
Epilogue?
July 4, 2009
As a kid, I remember when I first ‘got’ David.
I was in middle school and I was struggling with the Psalms, which is exactly what made me keep coming back to them. It started with the famous twenty-third Psalm, which we had to memorize for something in church, and then I just kept reading. There was some confusion, however, when I came across these unsettling Psalms that didn’t seem to be very uplifting, didn’t seem to resolve. It’s like a lot of them start off very depressing and either end on a vaguely positive note, or just end. I didn’t understand poetry or literary critique at that age, all I saw was a guy who seemed very upset about half the time. I wondered, Why didn’t God just make him happy? He sounds pretty sincere, and that’s sort of what I’d learned in Sunday school was God’s goal, to bless those who bless and seek him. And yeah, I knew David had fouled up here and there, but I also knew he was trying to be better.
But then I got it. David was a real guy. As in, a real person with real ups and downs, real honest to goodness issues, and he was pretty open about them. He was constantly crying out to God for help or comfort, and he recorded a lot of that desperation in many of the Psalms. Then he would take heart in the old scriptures, often remembering back to how God came through for his forefathers and in those thoughts he found satisfaction.
I could relate to David an awful lot. I remember hearing my mom pray, and I don’t mean mealtime grace. I mean, when dad was on the rampage, mom was doing her spiritual warfare thing, and oftentimes it was hard to tell who God more likely to hear. As much trouble as I had with the inconsistencies I saw in my dad’s behavior and the anger and resentment it created in me, I saw the similarities between my mom’s desperation and what I saw portrayed in the Psalms. That was what I began to hold on to; desperation for God.
One thing that never really clicked with me, however, is that David was a classic manic depressive, and that is not healthy. I had become completely okay with my emotional ups and downs because I saw them reflected in the character of David. I never once thought I needed to make adjustments to myself in those areas.
And another thing that never clicked was, many other people I was around seemed to justify their behavior with biblical examples as well. Both my parents relied on the bible as a basis for their behavior; my mom in her praying for the family and my dad in his righteous anger at the family. I’m still not sure if my mom’s behavior was healthy or not, but I can be sure my dad’s wasn’t. He was a cranky, unhappy, grudge holding, bitter old man.
I’ve grown a lot since then, and so has my relationship with my parents, especially my dad. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how his character has pulled a total one-eighty. I’d hate to leave anyone reading this with the wrong impression. He’s a lot easier to get along with these days, and it’s taken a lot of effort to get to where he is, but for five or six years now at least, things have been pretty decent.
So where am I going with this, anyway?
Well, another thing that never really clicked with me was, God never actually responded to David or answered any of his pleas. David sort of cried out, then thought back to the good old days and tried to find solace in that. I was in the same boat, in some ways. I had rough times, but I had good times, too. So for years, I just tried to focus on the good times and ignore the crap that still went on. It was okay God never showed up in obvious ways, I sort of gave him credit post hoc for anything that went well and, though I don’t know why, I’d just learned to accept the things that went poorly as my own fault.
* * *
Recently I had a revelation; I can really only think of one person in the bible that God did respond to when questioned, which was Job, and boy did he have to earn that conversation. Even more surprising to me was how God really didn’t answer any of Job’s questions, either. He basically says, “Well, I’m God. Look at all the amazing things I’ve created. Do you dare question me in my awesomeness?” This scene is oddly reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy and her band address the Great and Powerful Oz and get put immediately in their place. Only Job never sees a man behind any curtain, never actually gets to have a real, civilized, sit down chat. I know, this is quite a stretch for some of you, comparing the Wizard of Oz with God, but it’s the best comparison I have at the moment. Any metaphor would probably be lacking.
But then it really hit me. With Job, God was actually just showing off to Satan, anyway. He allowed all manner of evil and pain, except death, to befall Job in order to satisfy a wager. And when Job calls him out in this injustice, God just pulls the same sort of I’m-awesome rhetoric, then gives Job his stuff back, in what I consider a tacit admission of guilt. (Argue all you want, the book of Job is just ridiculous if we insist it represents a loving and just God.)
Luckily, I’m not Job. I’m certainly happy for that fact, if not for my own sake then for the sake of my wife and daughter. I’d hate to get stuck in the middle of some cosmic wager and lose my family as a teaching lesson for Christians thousands of years from now.
So I’m not Job and that’s good, but I have been an awful lot like David, and it’s been this way for far too long.
The trouble is, David was not a healthy person emotionally, as the rest of his personal life and all its issues will easily attest. And neither was I for many years. The effects of that fact still occasionally spill over into my life and my relationship with my own family as I try to distance myself from the person I used to be.
Today, I’m no longer okay being David, riding out the ups and downs and waiting for God to show up. I simply don’t get comfort from old bible stories about all the great stuff God did, because that God seems to be away on business these days. And I certainly don’t want to earn that sort of conversation through Job-like trials only to be even more disappointed when God pops in for a quick muscle-flex, now-look-over-here move. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there is no God. I’m just letting go of the expectation that he might someday show interest in my life or well being. In my opinion, if he is God the way most Christians understand him, he’ll know where to find me when he decides it’s time.
And you also must realize, this only one facet in a very long and complicated process of researching biblical history, church history, scriptural tradition, theology, and many, many other factors. This has taken years of pushing God into a smaller and smaller corner as I learned more and more about the real world. In the real world, there are no miracles, and acts of God are, in fact, due to observable, natural phenomenon. I don’t need complicated, highly nuanced answers when science or nature provide me with more than satisfactory explanations that don’t ask me to suspend reason and don a helmet of credulity. God can still be God without old, facile definitions and worn out rhetoric.
I know this post may disappoint many of you, but you have to realize I’m at least equally disappointed, if not more so. Maybe my expectations were built up incorrectly and this is just one more step in disassembling those faulty presumptions before I am able to rebuild on a firm foundation. I don’t know. All I know is, for now at least, I’m done waiting around for something to happen.
ADJ
* * *
(P.S. I know this stance may preclude my involvement as a contributor to this blog, but I’ll leave that decision up to the rest of you guys. I still plan to stay involved in discussions, but I don’t want to be… oh what’s the term… unequally yoked?)
(P.P.S. Reading this again, I now realize I haven’t exactly stated where I do stand. I’ll let this be for now. The post is long enough already.)
I Couldn’t Pass It Up, Either
June 13, 2009
~signed, Martin Luther
Hah, what a joke, right? I mean, Martin Luther didn’t actually say that.
Right? Guys? …. Bueller?
*Cue the pin-drop sound effect.
I was doing some seemingly unrelated reading about Martin Luther a couple days ago when I came across the very quote we were joking about a little while back right here on theophiliacs. It makes for a funny sign (almost), until you discover the guy who penned this little phrase was Martin Luther himself, and that he actually meant it.
So unfortunately, it’s not a joke, and even more unfortunately, it doesn’t end there.
Luther follows that up with things like:
“There is, on earth, among all dangers, no more dangerous thing than a richly endowed and adroit reason. Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed.”
So apparently I’m a huge danger since I use my brain-meat to make rational choices. And so are you guys.
*Cue the Oh-no-he-didn’t sound byte.
* * *
A rather conveniently placed, uh... chicken.
You know, quite frankly, I’m sick of feeling like this. It’s like I’m one of the people in the crowd as the Emperor walks by with his cash and prizes hanging out for all to see, and some little kid is saying, “He’s naked, he’s naked! The Emperor is naked! Why won’t anybody listen to me?”
And I reply, “What are you talking about, kid? That’s best looking outfit I’ve I’ve ever seen!”
Then I come across some blasphemous headline in the paper the following week. No doubt shocked that the story says the emperor was, in fact, buck-naked, I take it upon myself to do some research of my own and prove that the article is a lie.
At which point it only gets worse.
In fact, as I am writing this, an article over at Unreasonable Faith posted yesterday morning came up in my keyword search for Martin Luther quotes, and that article happens to be along the same lines as what I’ve been finding out for myself the last few days.
Turns out Martin Luther was also quite anti-Semitic;
“Perhaps the Jews sent their servants with plates of silver and pots of gold to gather up Judas’ piss with the other treasures, and then they ate and drank his offal…”
“They [Jews] should be knocked to pieces, strangled and stabbed, secretly and openly, by everybody who can do it.”
Not surprisingly, based on those quotes and scores of others, but quite surprisingly to myself and doubtless many of you reading this now; the Nazi Reich Church of Hitler’s Germany based a lot of their anti-Semitic ideals on Luther’s writings and belief’s. The Protestant Bishop Martin Sasse lauded Luther as the “greatest anti-Semite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews.”
*Cue the jaw-hitting-the-floor sound effect.
Honestly, I couldn’t believe that this anti-intellectual “Reason is the greatest enemy…” quote was really something Martin Luther would preach, not when I first read it. And so, like a good, (brainwashed?) Christian boy I assumed it was the work of some paranoid, doubt-mongering atheist trying to smear Luther’s good name. I mean, the man who prompted the translation of the bible into readable languages? The Father of the Reformation? The man who gave us A Mighty Fortress is Our God? (Okay, bad example.) You mean to tell me that guy was a Jew-hating, reason-bashing masochist. Oh, I won’t even go in to the masochism stuff, suffice it to say I’m blown away by the fact that anyone ever followed this guy in the first place.
And I’ve also been reading about how the Lutheran church has historically been doing their best to keep more racists from using these ideas of Luther’s against Jews, especially since WWII. So, it’s something they just want to keep quiet?
Isn’t that like saying, “Well, our founding father was one of the biggest Jew haters of his time, and apparently an inspiration to the likes of Hitler and, ipso facto, a post-humous sponsor of the Holocaust…. but hey, some good came of it, too. Our priests can drink.”
*Cue the dramatic montage, set to cheesy I-don’t-know-what’s-right-anymore music.
Did Martin Luther do some good things? I’d still like to think so. I mean, the church would not look the way it does today were it not for his questioning of Catholicism. But I also have to reassess all of those things light of this new information. (New to me, that is.) He represents the primary historical branch from the Catholic church, which I’ve always believed was a good thing, but also represents a primary historical advocate of violence against the Jewish people, which I’ve always believed was a bad thing.
Sadly, it seems like the only way to avoid this sort of ongoing disappointment for a critical thinker like me is to stop reading anything that isn’t written primarily as a defense of Christianity. But once I turn my mind off to the other side of the argument and opposing viewpoints, haven’t I stopped reasoning and began looking only for support for belief simply because I want to believe? And wouldn’t I be doing exactly that which I took issue with just days ago, as spelled out in that anti-intellectual quote itself?
Or is reason truly faith’s greatest enemy, after all?
I’m dying here, guys. It’s just killing me. Honestly, I don’t want to throw out the baby with the bath. But I wonder, are we sure the baby’s even there to begin with?
* * *
(If you want a pretty decent and ‘relatively’ unbiased synopsis of his life, writings and thoughts, check the article over at wikipedia, which cites almost 200 references. A lot of it was familiar, even to me, a non-Lutheran, until I got down to the anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism section.)
Now I Know How it Feels
June 7, 2009
Let me start by saying I’ve been mulling over whether or not I should even post this. First of all, I don’t want to keep pouring salt in a wound that I know we’ve worked over many times here at theophiliacs. At the same time, I really think there’s value in looking at things from a different perspective. With that in mind, I only ask that we keep any discussion that follows friendly. We all know what each of us believes, for the most part, so I’m not here to prove a point, just to present a point of view.
* * *
Over the Easter weekend I decided to take the family to Duluth for a much needed break. It still feels weird that I can say “the family” and mean my wife and baby girl. We flew into Minneapolis where we were met by your resident heretic, Jeremy, and his wife, and drove up north together.
We stayed at Fitger’s Inn, which is an old brewery whose upper floors have been converted into guest rooms and suites, and still has a brewery in the lower levels. You can sample their many brews on tap, and buy some to take home if you like. This was the part of the trip that catered to Jeremy and I.
On Saturday morning the ladies wanted to go antiquing out and about downtown Duluth, the part of the trip that catered to the two of them. Now antiquing is a strange pass-time that involves finding old junk you like, among room-fulls of even more old junk, all of which which people have somehow decided is now worth a considerable amount of money, as opposed to fifty-odd years ago when our grandparents tossed most of these items into the everything’s-a-quarter-box at a yard sale. That old cracked plate with the blue pattern your aunt Tilly gave to the Salvation Army is now a hundred-fifty-dollar piece of history. Go figure.
Anyway, we were already out and about town when the ladies sprung this idea on us men. When it became clear it would not be a good idea to lug the baby stroller inside these antique stores because of how cramped they can be, the ladies turned to us with their best smiles and asked if we would like the pleasure of walking around downtown Duluth with a baby.
Now stop for a moment. Picture it; from all outward appearances, Jeremy and I would look like an interracial … well, gay couple … pushing around a baby that we obviously could not have … ‘made’ on our own. This image popped into my head, but I pushed it aside and thought, no way it could be that bad. Could it?
You might be surprised.
We walked around for a while, but the wind off Lake Superior was cold, so we eventually found a diner. The waitress seemed confused when we said we needed a table for two. I think I said something like, “Oh, and the baby, of course.” But it became obvious she was expecting a party of three or four. She sat us down anyway, right next to the entrance, which struck me as a good idea. If things got out of hand, we could dart for the door, I thought.
Then we ordered port, which was mistake number… oh I dunno, probably 5 or 6 by then, I wasn’t keeping track.
So we sat, sipping port in a diner, just the two of us, more than aware of the mounting curiosity growing behind our backs, getting the occasional well-I-never glances. The tension was palpable.
Then the baby started fussing like crazy, and it struck me she was teething, which she’d just started a couple weeks before. My wife just happened to have the Oral Gel for babies stuff in her purse. With her. In the Antique store. Meaning she’d have to bring it to us.
I saw the silver lining and called her right away. She found us in the diner and oh man, you could feel the atmosphere shift. For all intents and purposes, my wife showing up produced a collective sigh of relief. Suddenly the waitress wasn’t stumbling over her words. Suddenly the other couples in the restaurant felt more at ease, commenting on how cute the baby was. The world was right again and maybe we wouldn’t be going to Hell in a hand-basket after all.
* * *
Now I honestly don’t know what it would be like to deal with that sort of attention day in and day out. I don’t know if one could even stay in an environment like that. I do know that I could hardly take twenty minutes of it and I was more than relieved to have everyone know I was straight and married and the baby belonged to us, if only so my friend and I could have a conversation without the fear that we might be facing a lynch-mob by the time the check arrived.
Sadly, I know this actually reveals a level of prejudice on my part, too. True, it shouldn’t matter. But something was fueling the growing sense of judgement in that diner that only my wife showing up could effectively extinguish. That makes me sad for them, but disgusted with myself. As much as I say I’m open minded and tolerant and loving, I couldn’t stand the suspicious looks and glances for a matter of minutes. How revealing.
So I don’t know what the right answer is. I’m not promoting and agenda with this post, or saying to vote this way or that, or telling churches to change their stances. I’m just saying if we stopped for a moment and considered how our many opinions and thoughts on such a complex issue as this might come across to someone outside our particular sphere, we might be surprised how we’re being perceived. This is not an ‘us and them’ discussion, and as such it is with great care, not hastily formed blanket statements and generalities, that the dialogue must be handled, if one intends to make any progress.
And you know, I commend my fellow theophiliacs contributors for doing just that.
Five Books That Were “There” For Me
June 3, 2009
Reed’s (somewhat) recent post of a similar nature inspired me to make a list of influential books in my life as well. First off, I’ll reiterate his sentiment: This isn’t an all-encompassing or top-anything list or something like that. It’s just a list of books that I can see affected my life.
Why five? Well, beyond these, it’s just too hard to decide which of my favorite books deserves a mention, since there are so many on my favorite list. These are simply the ones that stand out, in my mind.
1. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
First of all, Fight Club is not about fighting. If that’s what you think, I’m sorry, but you’ve been lied to or otherwise misinformed. (Yes, there is fighting in the book, but that is far from the point. (And yes, CP signed my first edition hardcover copy, “Happy Birthday, Tony,” since my wife got it for me on my birthday. Oh well… I’m over it.))
Now I know the very title probably elicits a certain knee jerk reaction from those of you with a particularly conservative persuasion, but at least give me a few paragraphs to show you what I mean.
Personally, I have to insist that this book was earth-shattering for me.
Up until my senior year in college I never read recreationally, and hardly even did any reading for normal class work. I hated English and Literature. Then someone told me that the cult classic movie, Fight Club, was actually based on an equally landmark novel. I had my doubts, but I picked up a copy. I just couldn’t believe a movie so ‘cool’ could also be a book. Books were boring and literature was for old people and nerds. Right?
Well, reading Fight Club literally opened up the world of literature for me. It’s cool, sexy, sardonic, transgressive, dark, humorous, cynical and completely in your face.
It is the perfect comment on the emasculation a man feels in modern society; from the way we are raised by our mothers, asked to be more civilized and mannerly, and then expected to just know how to be men someday, to the way church tells us God is our father, and yet he seems just as absent as our biological fathers. It addresses and questions basic value assumptions on many levels; societal, familial, sexual and even religious.
“We’re the middle children of history, no purpose or place. We have no Great War, no Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives.”
This is easily one of the most heavily quoted books/movies in my library. Sadly, I end up quoting the movie version of certain lines more often than the book. But this is probably because David Fincher’s directing and Jim Uhl’s writing (working alongside Palahniuk), along with the acting of Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, all do such a fantastic job of bringing the character’s alive. Many of the great movie lines are summed-up versions of several pages of evolving prose and character development. It’s hard to quote an entire chapter of a novel.
Believe me, there’s so much philosophy in this book, it is an absolute must-read, a milestone within our present culture. I would go so far as to say that it will be considered one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.
I still read it on a regular basis.
2. The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
I have all the Calvin and Hobbes collections. I’ve had them since I was a kid and I’ve worn them out. These books make up the exception to my overall avoidance of reading until my later years. I’m realizing more and more that they probably laid a lot of the groundwork for me to eventually begin asking philosophical questions later in life. If it weren’t for this foundation, a book like Fight Club might have been nothing more than sort of cool and rebellious to me. I might have missed the bigger picture.
Plus, I have to admit that I totally emulated many of Calvin’s stunts as a kid. Jumping off the roof with an umbrella as a parachute; oh yeah. Riding the little red wagon down the hill in our backyard and into the creek; You better believe it! In fact, my older sister and I took it one step further and tied the back axel of the wagon to a tree so we would be thrown out of the wagon at full speed.
A good time was had by all.
3. Inferno by Dante Alighieri
This was probably the second or third book I read that I really, really liked. I happened to read it right around the time I was picking up Palahniuk’s other novels and branching off into other dark, pulp or transgressional fiction authors like him. It was an unlikely affinity, since it is such an old and stylistically different work than what I was getting in to at the time.
However, I’d say the version I read was equally important in pushing me along on my journey into literature. It was heavily annotated, and learning all the philosophical and literary allusions brought the book alive for me. I’ve since gotten into the history behind it as well, which enriches the reading even more.
You have Dante, living in exile, writing this epic poem and including within the story many of the people who brought him to ruin and exile in the first place. He imagines those social enemies in Hell, along the steps of his journey to the other side, suffering for their sins the way he saw fit. As far as revenge goes, Inferno is like The Count of Monte Christo on acid.
But there is also the salvation element in the figure of Beatrice; idealized beauty. I was finishing bible college when I read this for a class, and at a time when salvation was still a conundrum for me, it was strangely refreshing to see it presented in such a different light.
Personally, I highly recommend the Robert and Jean Hollander translation for its thorough annotations and footnotes. You can’t just read through a book like this and expect to get much out of it if you don’t have historical and literary context established by people who know what they are talking about.
4. House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski
Another book I read during my first leap into the world of fiction novels was House of Leaves. I really don’t know how to describe this one. It’s been slated as “a satire of academic criticism,” as well as a love story and a horror novel. It fits into all of these categories for different reasons.
You’ve got multiple narrators, unconventional type and layout choices, huge amounts of footnotes and references, many of which are to books that don’t even exist, coded messages both in the text and the several appendices; all creating the illusion of a strange, alternate reality. I won’t try to describe what it’s about any more than that.
I read this one again and again, and it gets better and better each time.
If you go for it, make sure to get the full color version. The red, blue, grey, purple and strikethrough text all add to the coded meanings and possible interpretations of the book. Also, the appendices in that version are in full color, which is a nice bonus.
The inside cover mentions a full-color “first edition” version including braille, but it is not known to actually exist. Interesting, indeed.
5. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
I just finished reading this recently, and it is one I know I will read again. Like House of Leaves, I’m reticent to try and sum this one up just yet, but for different reasons. It’s a ‘big’ book, in a sense. It has a very large philosophical scope, so any two or three paragraph summary would hardly do it justice.
What I will offer is one of the many quotes that just floored me as I read.
“You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it’s going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.”
The thing about this book is, while it’s considered a novel, it is not easy reading you should try to do at the beach. This book gets very deep into philosophical critique, and should be read when you have time to devote to a good section of text. If you miss things, it will come back to haunt you, but if you give this book your full attention and really think through it as you read, you will not be disappointed.
* * *
Other recommendations by these authors would have to include Palahniuk’s Survivor and Invisible Monsters, Danielewski’s Only Revolutions, Dante’s entire Divine Comedy and all of the Calvin and Hobbes collections.
If you want to dig a little deeper still, I’d recommend reading Craig Clevenger’s The Contortionist’s Handbook and Dermaphoria, Alex Garland’s The Beach, and James Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice.
Prop 8 Ruling Today: An Interesting Perspective
May 26, 2009
So I’d heard that the state senate here in California ruled on Prop 8 today. I Googled the topic to find out what had been decided. Turns out they upheld the ban on gay marriage.
During my search, I came across this interesting perspective: link. I’ve included an excerpt below, the part that really got my attention, but I encourage you to read the entire linked article. It’s really very good, and it’s not very long.
Excerpt:
“… Jehovah’s Witnesses vehemently oppose same-sex marriage on moral and Biblical grounds. Gays are not allowed to be Witnesses unless they live celibate and single lives. Members who insist on being in a same-sex relationship are shunned by the congregation. But none of the million Jehovah’s Witnesses in the U.S. supported Prop 8 because the religion mandates staying out of politics and culture wars.”
“… They don’t amend the constitution to force everyone to live their way. State laws are not needed to legitimize their moral views. Witnesses don’t see the state as an enforcer of a moral code. That’s the Bible’s job, they say. If you want to be in God’s Kingdom, simply live the code yourself – it’s not the Witnesses’ mission to enact laws to stop gays from marrying.”
“Some religious organizations are celebrating a restriction of rights for a minority they disagree with – making themselves the future target of an equally discriminatory people’s amendment. Because Prop 8 diminished the court’s protective role, there will be nothing they can do other than realize they should have been more careful about what they wished for.”
So, I wonder if, in the long run, this really *is* a win for those backing the ban. Thoughts?
Tony Hunt
jstambaugh
Shawn Wamsley
