Riverwood Presbyterian Church

Books

Cultural Consequences

by Jimmy Hopper

One of the Christian web blogs I enjoy is written by Greg Wilbur, Music and Arts director at King’s Meadow Presbyterian Church in Nashville. Greg was a Riverwood college student and while in graduate school at Alabama in the late ‘80’s and early 90’s, he directed the Riverwood Choir. His blog addresses mainly worship, movies, books and culture. The link to the Wilburblog is here.

While reading it recently, I came across a link to a fascinating article from the New Yorker magazine about the demise of reading in Western culture, Twilight of the Books: What will life be like if people stop reading? You can access it here. It is a long article that addresses a number of interesting issues about reading, cultural history, the effects of television, education, how we think, and the potential for historical change in culture. It is well worth the time it takes to read, espcially if you are a parent or are interested in education.

One of the really interesting ideas that the author develops speaks to the way our new visual arts, television and movies (as opposed to reading) increases emotionalism and personality cults in our culture. I have often been literally amazed at the emotional response to celebrity foibles, to the deaths of relatively obscure public figures (i.e. Princess Di), and espcially to the the choreographed emotional “worship” in American evangelism. There are a number of reason to decry these trends. One that I keep returning to is how emotionalism tends to be perhaps the most significant factor in the assualt against the concept of truth; if it is true for you, etc. This “true for you” is almost always an emotional response to how we want things to be and in my judgment is a devastating consequence of these new cultural trends.

Books

Novel Theology

by Jimmy Hopper

The Riverwood Book Group recently completed Graham Greene’s novel of love in wartime London, The End of the Affair. Greene was Catholic, and his “serious” novels deals with the moral ambiguities of life as seen from a Christian perspective but without glib answers. This aspect is very visible in The End of the Affair, in fact, Christian choices are the theme and essence of the book.

So that I won’t be a “spoiler,” since I know some members of Riverwood who want to read this book, I’ll quote this passage without much accompanting information about character, plot, etc. It is from a letter one character writes to another and it speaks of conversion:

What’s the use? I believe there’s a God—I believe the whole bag of tricks, there’s nothing I don’t believe. They could subdivide the Trinty into a dozen parts and I’d believe. They could dig up reconds that proved Christ had been invented by Pilate to get himself promoted and I’d believe just the same. I’ve caught belief like a disease. I’ve fallen into belief like I fell in love. I’ve never loved before as I love you and I’ve never believed before as I believe now.

As we considered this passage, it was said that it spoke strongly of both election and irresistible grace, a very “reformed” position from a practicing Catholic. Or, to put it another way, Truth is Truth.

Books

A New Way To Be Gay

by Tim Lien

Two weeks ago, J.K. Rowling (author of the Harry Potter series) took a break from swimming in cash, to speak to rabid fans at Carnegie Hall. The audience’s shock turned to outright happy bedlam when Ms. Rowling answered a fan’s question about a prominent character’s love life. Her response: “Dumbledore is gay.” The CNN story, here.

My problem with this revelation has nothing to do with Dumbledore’s gayness—it has everything to do with our post-modern conception of literature. If I were to tell you that Hester Prynne was a lesbian, then you would politely ask me to open up The Scarlet Letter and prove it from the text. The text must speak for itself. Her lesbianism would be a fantastical personal projection upon her character if the text did not prove it out. Because the genre is fiction, Dumbledore is only Dumbledore between the covers of the book. He does not exist, except within the book and in Ms. Rowling’s mind. Dumbledore may be gay inside Rowling’s mind, but the character (as presented in the books) cannot be gay, unless words describe him as such. Rowling could have said something even more outlandish. She could have said, “Albus Dumbledore is really a fire-breathing, burrito-shaped alien underneath his character’s mask.” Well, ok, we’ll believe you, but it has no bearing on the character that we see written in the books. They are two separate entities—Rowling’s imagination and Rowling’s actual written words. Gay Dumbledore and Book Dumbledore are two separate characters.

Somebody needs to tell Ms. Rowling that Dumbledore is a fictional character.

Dorothy Sayers once received a letter from a lady wondering if one of her fictional characters was a Christian. Sayers simply dismissed the ladies’ concern and replied that his fictional status prevented her from caring whether he was or not.

It seems as if post-modern revisionism applies to any written work. So, regardless, of what you hear from the pulpit on Sunday, my entire sermon will really be about the perils of homosexual fire-breathing burrito-shaped wizard aliens. Just trust me on this one, it’s in my head.

Books

Book Group Update

by Jeff Miller

Well, 2007 is flying by. It’s almost time for the Reformation Celebration, Thanksgiving & Christmas come in rapid fire succession after that. For the RPC Book Group, that means it’s time to decide about next year’s books.

For those not attending lately, let me give you an update before I preview next year: We will finish looking at Pride & Prejudice next week. We have decided that we have time to squeeze one more in this year, so we will look at Graham Greene’s End of the Affair beginning on Oct 30 and lasting 3-4 weeks. We’ll then break until January.

Beginning then, we embark on a very eclectic group of titles. Here they are:

Jan- Orthodoxy GK Chesterton

Feb/Mar (6 weeks)- Brothers Karamazov- F Dostoevsky

March (remainder)-Wise Blood- Flannery O’Connor

Apr-Bondage of the Will- Martin Luther

May- Go Down, Moses-Wm. Faulkner

June- Macbeth- Shakespeare

July-Brave New World- Huxley

Aug- Lost Soul of American Protestantism- DG Hart

Sept- Paradise Lost- Milton

Oct- Nervous Splendor- Frederic Morton

November- Confessions- Augustine

Late this year, I’ll post a piece here &/or in Salt & Light and give a blurb about each title. Please take note of any or all that you want to participate in- we’d love to have your input & fellowship!

Books

Murder Gets A New Dress: Finicking Over Esthetics

by Tim Lien

At your next get-together don’t mention that you’ve just read Crime and Punishment. It’s really not a good opener. I mean, what will people say? “That’s great…one of the classics, huh?”
(awkward pause)
“Hey, did I ever tell you the one about the nun, the mechanic, and Harry Potter….”
Since, we’ve all had 150 years to read it, I don’t think I’m providing a spoiler—but stop reading if you think you’ll get to it soon.

Quick Summary: A poor university student (Rhodia Raskolnikov) murders a mean, old, haggling woman who is a predatory pawn-broker. Her sister comes in unannounced (during the deed) and he kills her, too. A double axe-murder. The rest of the book details the guilt and anguish that torments Raskolnikov. The following quote is in the final pages of the novel. And, to me, it was worth reading the entire book for this single page:

“…By going to suffer, surely you wash away half your crime?” she cried pressing and hugging and kissing him. “Crime? What crime?” he suddenly shouted, in a kind of sudden rage. “Killing a foul, noxious louse! An old pawn-broker woman no good to anybody, who sucked the life juices of the poor—why, for killing her I’ll be forgiven forty sins! I don’t think about it, and I don’t think about washing it away. Why does everybody push ‘crime, crime!’ at me? Only now do I see clearly the full depth of my mean-spiritedness, now that I’ve already decided to accept this unnecessary shame! Just because I’m worthless and have no talent, maybe also for my own advantage,…” “Brother, what are you saying!” Dunia cried out in despair. “You have shed human blood.” “Which they all shed,” he interrupted, almost frantic. “Which cascades, and always has, down upon the earth like a waterfall, which they pour like champagne, and for which they are crowned on the Capitoline and called the benefactors for mankind. Look a little harder and you’ll see! My own intentions were good, as far as people were concerned. I would have done hundreds, thousands of good deeds, instead of this one stupidity—not even stupidity, just clumsiness. Because the whole idea wasn’t quite as stupid as it seems now that it’s failed…(Everything seems stupid when it fails!) Performing this stupidity, I wanted to make myself independent, to take the first step, to acquire the means; then everything would have been cancelled by the relatively immense good…I couldn’t even take the first step…Because I’m vile! That’s what it all comes to! Anyway, I refuse to look at it your way. If I had made it I would have been crowned, but now—off to jail!” “Brother, what are you saying! That isn’t so at all!” “Ah, not the right form! Esthetically, not such very good form! Well, I don’t understand why blasting people with bombs or a barrage is better form. Finicking over esthetics is the first sign of impotence!…I never, never felt stronger or more convinced than now!”

Books

Censorship, or What Johnny Can’t Read Today

by Jeff Miller

I’ve heard a lot of talk recently about strange things such as censorship, banning books, etc. from people of our theological stripe.

Now I expect this from people who advertise themselves in certain ways. (Extreme hardline religious fanatics (of all religions), Fascists, extreme nationalists, Racist groups. etc.). The picture of Nazi Germany comes immediately to mind, but there have been and are many others. This comes from a two forked stream of ideas: control and fear. When a person or group decides that it is necessary to have control over another person or group, control of information is essential. Ideas have consequences and the wrong ideas can upset the whole cart. Fear of this happening begins with control and eventually leads to paranoia.

In the context of Christianity, this is very problematic. People will often use Scripture to try to support their argument for or against some particular issue. Many have positions of authority and therefore have ears ready to hear (and often adhere to or obey) whatever is said.

Here’s the problem: Once a little legalism slips in, the slope falls from underneath your feet. There is no end to legalism. Our base nature feeds on it. It only serves to increase the control of the leader or to puff up the adherents and root out the nonconformists.

Where am I going with this?

Some of our brethren in various parts of the country, I’m told, are taking it upon themselves to try to limit what the congregants in their local circles read and how they view theological issues, etc. Some, apparently, have lost jobs, for having read/subscribed to certain magazines. (Christian/theological magazines, at that- nothing that resembles immorality, etc.). Some are being told that certain subjects & theological ideas are off the table for discussion. This is absolutely insane! These people would be offended and appalled if you called them Papists (and they are not), but their current actions are reminiscent of an earlier time in which such things were done on a much larger scale. None of us is above this kind of foolishness if the conditions are right- we are, after all, idol factories and the most common idol of today is our autonomy, but I digress…

As believers in Christ, we are free in Him to enjoy all of life and to investigate ideas and critique them according to Scriptural principles.

Do I have disagreements with Biblical teachers- YES! (Probably most, actually.) Am I right to tell you that you and I can’t have fellowship if you read a certain book or author? NO. Not only would I not be right, but there is a very real sense in which I could be putting myself in what should be the jurisdiction of the Holy Spirit in someone else’s life.

Certainly, there are many books that you would be better off playing tennis or something rather than reading, that’s a different point. You only have a short time on Earth- don’t read poor books or drink bad wine. Again, I digress…

I came running to the Reformed tradition in order to get away from the aforementioned type of idiocy. I’m not going back…..

Books

RPC Book Group

by Jeff Miller

Actually, this shoud probably be in the category of “Shameless plugs”….

The RPC Book Group finished looking at Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath last night. It was a very compelling story, as you may know, of impoverished Plains people who moved to California in the early 20th century. looking for a way to survive. The discussions were, as always, scintillating.

We turn next, to a masterpiece of Tolstoy- Anna Karenina. This novel bridges the realist and modernist styles in fiction and has had long lasting impact on novelists which came in its wake. The story deals with many themes and ideas, but, like Dostoevsky, it is the presentation of facets of human nature shown in the various characters and their struggles which will likely spawn the most discussion. Although shown against the backdrop of stratified Russian society of the late 19th century, their struggles and ours are not as foreign to each other as we would think on first glance. And, as Jimmy says, it has one of the greatest opening lines in Literature: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

If you have opportunity & desire, please join us next Tues and following at Books A Million- 7 pm. Have some coffee or tea and enjoy some wonderful discussion about a whole host of ideas from a Reformed Christian perspective.

Books

On “Thirteen Moons” and Selective History

by Jimmy Hopper

The Riverwood Book Group recently completed Charles Frazier’s second novel, Thirteen Moons; his first novel, Cold Mountain, having been an extraordinary effort. As always, we had some great conversations about the book and the ideas generated both by the book and by the conversations.

Thirteen Moons essentially concerns the Southern Cherokee tribes and their interaction with the United States, the new nation formed on lands that they, and other tribes had considered their own. The group enjoyed the novel but it was, in my opinion, a mixed bag with a driving narrative through the first third and the “Trail of Tears” section, but meandering otherwise. It seemed to me that Frazier tried to both realistically portray certain of his characters but to also use them as symbols for such ideals as youth, a way of life, etc. In some cases, particularly the the part Indian girl Claire, he ended with neither.However, this post isn’t a book review, but a look at selective history.

The term, “Trail of Tears,” has been known to me since my youth, but as a fact of American history; and I’m an aficionado of American history, I knew nothing except that it concerned the removal of Southern Indians to Oklahoma. I knew no details, no human history, no politics; nothing except the fact that the removal had to do with the land being overrun with settlers and there was no place for the Indians. I guess I should have figured something, if only because of the word “tears” in the description. Walking from North Carolina to Oklahoma is with your possessions is enough to make one cry, I supposed. I also should have figured out how it was done from the simple fact that Andrew Jackson was president at that time. There was simply no way there was any consideration for humanity toward them from a man who didn’t consider them human.

The truth of it is that the entire episode was a disgrace; one in a long series of disgraces culminating in the Wounded Knee massacre that now exemplifies the taking of this country from its original inhabitants. I remember reading Thomas Jefferson’s comments to Meriweather Lewis regarding the tribes he would find “beyond the wide Missouri” and realizing that the the Manifest Destiny was there from the beginning as a matter of right. The tragedy of the Trail of Tears is well described in Thirteen Moons, in fact, the capture and execution of “Charley” (Tasli in history) and his men is unforgettable. There is a sense in which the Cherokees and Creeks were lucky, however. There was still an Oklahoma to which they could be sent. As the movement neared the Pacific Ocean, limited genocide became more in vogue. The ganeral aspect of untaught, sanitized American history probably served the country well when an astonishingly patriotic nation was called on to save the world from Fascism in the 20th Centrury.

Recently I found and read a historical marker on the street to the west of the new Tuscaloosa News building and near Capitol Park. It commorates a speech given by Chief Eufaula of the Alabama Creek Indians to the state legislature immediately before they embarked on the “Trail of Tears.” In it, he speaks of how he believed that the “men who built the great houses” had sought to destroy his people.” Now, he says that he feels that the “white Father doesn’t want harm to come to his “red children” but has their best interest at heart. He gets his shots in, though. They are being moved from the land of their ancestors, where “their fathers’ bones are buried.” They are forced to obey “laws they don’t understand.” He closes, poignantly, with the statement that “the Indian fires are going out in Alabama” and that, hopefully they will be re-lit in the west. He concludes with “This is all I have to say.” The sum of it is heartbreaking.

The question raised with the Book Group had to do with where the Christians were during all this. Christians were conspicious by their absence. There was not even one Bonhoeffer speaking out against injustice and evil, made official by an impersonal bureaucracy but still evil.

Books

The Book Group

by Jimmy Hopper

Two or three posts down, I posted about an article reviewing “Christian” diet books, and I compared that concept with one in a book we had been reading and discussing in the Riverwood Book Group. This is not to re-hash that post but simply to note how the book and our book group conversation enlightened my thoughts on the subject. The connection noted in the blog post would probably not have been made without it.

I guess that’s what reading is about; to open your mind to possibilities and to the thinking of others about ideas and events. The Book Group does that in a rich, wonderful way. The group reads a book together and because, I believe, of a certain accountability inherent in the concept, gets deep into it. We then discuss it, always looking at it from each one’s own unique perspective but also from the well known “Christian world view”, since we are Christians. The books are not all “Christian” books; we’ve looked at secular fiction, social commentary, and other caterogories, but all are looked at from the perspectives described above. The results have really been great.

The Book Group was founded by Blake Johnson, who is currently doing his own “rigorous thinking” in the wilds of Kentucky, but will join us again at some point. We meet each Tuesday at 7 PM at Books A Million for fellowship, coffee (or whatever) and conversation. We have both men and women and everyone is welcome, so, if you are even the least bit intrigued, and certainly if you love books, come by and try us out. If you have friends who are non members of Riverwood but who would still be interested, bring them along. I think you will enjoy it, and I know you will be stimulated by it.

Books

The Monster of Me

by Tim Lien

There are many of you that know that I am currently preaching through the epistle of Philippians. A condensed summary of Saint Paul’s letter can be expressed with, “joy in suffering.” To accompany my sermons with illustrations, I started reading Elie Wiesel’s trilogy about the Jewish Holocaust during WWII. “Certainly,” I thought, “these horrific accounts will supply my need for illustrations that depict true suffering.” This past week I finally finished the third installment. (Book 1: Night, Book 2: Dawn, Book 3: The Accident)

As I was reading Night, I noticed that I had a wincing expectation for the graphic and horrible. I knew the Nazi concentration camps were ghastly libraries of sordid stories—I just needed solid facts, names, and eyewitness accounts to confirm this. All of the stories made me sick, sad, and angry. But I knew they would.

Nothing, however, prepared me for the hollow aching void I felt after I finished The Accident. It is a cruel, hopeless, and penetrating observation into the soul of man. Wiesel’s desperation with humanity, the inaction/non-existence of God, and final observations of meaning in the midst of depravity—lead him to a restrained and minimal hedonism found in friendship and “lies that breed true happiness.”

But the haunting of Wiesel is what haunted me after I had closed the cover. He writes that the survivors of the holocaust did not use their freedom to punish and hate the Germans. Rather, these “living dead,” who could show no capacity for truly living, were more saturated with the guilt, shame, and debasement that occurred within their own souls. They were consumed with self-hatred for every act they performed to protect their own lives. Wiesel mercilessly and accurately reveals the internal state of every “normal” human being. (And not the sadistic victimizer, but the victim!) And then he stops. No solutions. He offers only philosophical silence.

The lingering effects of Wiesel’s trilogy have been brutally helpful, in that, I have been reflecting long on the nature of my own heart. Of course, I have heard it said: “We are no different from Hitler, save the blood of Christ.” But embedded in those self-effacing statements is the assumption that we, too, are capable of atrocities given the same circumstances. However, Wiesel coldly and consistently points out that the human heart is the same under normal, urbane, educated, and cosmopolitan influences. The acts that were constantly relived with cold sweats and nightmares came from quiet, peaceful, small-town people. In other words they came from me, you, and the sweet lady up the street. And this is where Wiesel’s scathing blade cuts the deepest, leaving little hope for humanity and even less for life.

But as a believer in Christ as Messiah, I think that this is precisely where the Gospel is given any incredulous magnitude: when we see the great depths of the human capacity to manifest evil, while simultaneously seeing the hope granted by Christ to make us clean. Being able to say to the man who beat an old man to death for a piece of bread: “Believe, and you are righteous” To the men who pitched babies into the air for Nazi target practice: “Believe, and you are righteous.” To the man who wrung his own crying baby’s head off to protect his family from being discovered: “Believe, and you are righteous—your sins are no more.” To the girls tortured as sex slaves at the age of 12: “Believe, you are clean, virginal, and righteous.”

Books

BookTV Viewership Doubles

by Tim Lien

With seventy-plus channels available on cable television, BookTV doesn’t even seem like a viable economic venture. Most of their potential viewers are probably reading a book, anyway. But Sunday night, BookTV’s ratings enjoyed a rare spike when I joined Prof. Robert “just-call-me-Bob” Koshansky* (from Kankakee, “just-south-of-Chicago”) in watching a woman pitch her book to a meager crowd, the cameraman, Mr. Koshansky, and myself. I missed the actual title of the book, but it was a biography on Harriet Beecher Stowe.

[*Yes, Mr. Koshansky is a fabricated, fictitious character used to emphasize the small amount of people watching BookTV.]

I just finished The Minister’s Wooing, by Stowe, so I was pleasantly surprised to see her enjoy some Prime Time. Well, it was 10:30pm, my time. But it was Prime Time somewhere. Stowe’s famous quote was printed on a backdrop behind the vivacious biographer:

I wrote what I did because as a woman, as a mother, I was oppressed and broken-hearted with the sorrows and injustice I saw, because as a Christian I felt the dishonor to Christianity— because as a lover of my country, I trembled at the coming day of wrath.

A good quote, but this is one that I had underlined in The Ministers Wooing:

He was called a good fellow, — only a little lumpish, — and as he was brave and faithful, he rose in time to be a shipmaster. But when came the business of making money, the aptitude for accumulating, George found himself distanced by many a one with not half his general powers. What shall a man do with a sublime tier of moral faculties, when the most profitable business out of his port is the slave-trade? So it was in Newport in those days. George’s first voyage was on a slaver, and he wished himself dead many a time before it was over, — and ever after would talk like a man beside himself, if the subject was named. He declared that the gold made in it was distilled from human blood, from mothers’ tears, from the agonies and dying groans of gasping, suffocating men and women, and that it would sear and blister the soul of him that touched it; in short, he talked as whole-souled, unpractical fellows are apt to talk about what respectable people sometimes do. Nobody had ever instructed him that a slaveship, with a procession of expectant sharks in its wake, is a missionary institution, by which closely. packed heathens are brought over to enjoy the light of the Gospel. So, though George was acknowledged to be a good fellow, and honest as the noon-mark on the kitchen floor, he let slip so many chances of making money as seriously to compromise his reputation among thriving folks. He was wastefully generous — insisted on treating every poor dog that came in his way, in any foreign port, as a brother — absolutely refused to be party in cheating or deceiving the heathen on any shore, or in skin of any color — and also took pains, as far as in him lay, to spoil any bargains which any of his subordinates founded on the ignorance or weakness of his fellow-men. So he made voyage after voyage, and gained only his wages and the reputation among his employers of an incorruptibly honest fellow.

It was amazing to see the continuing relevance and prescient wisdom of Stowe’s observations from 1859. I can’t help but think that we have our own correlating “slave ships,” that we use to justify our own evangelistic ends. Talk amongst yourselves.

Books

Oak and the Calf

by Jeff Miller

I’m halfway through listening to The Oak & The Calf by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It is an enthralling tale of his difficulties and triumphs in writing and publishing in Soviet Russia. It is a memoir, not of the author so much as a literary memoir. The story of his writings and their publication is rather astounding. Even 20 years post Cold War, it is amazing to hear of the inner workings of the various Soviet committees. There was, of course, much pressure brought to bear on individuals who did not toe the party line and much work by many individuals to work around the Soviet system to get what they wanted/needed.

I guess I always tended to think (by not thinking, actually) of the Soviet citizenry having one mind, manipulated by fear, dictated by the state, etc. Humanity always struggles against tyranny as much as possible at any given time. I have been reminded of Solzhenitsyn’s (and others’) determination and fortitude in the face of grave circumstances. I am thankful for the example he and others have left for us in living a life of dignity despite hardships the like of which I have no basis of knowledge.

If you have an interest in Soviet Russia in the 1960s & 70s, you might pick this up at some point.