David Marshall: “A Non-History of God”

For my write-up today on David Marshall’s Jesus and the Religions of Man, I will blog about Chapter 9: “A Non-History of God”.  The topic of this chapter is essentially the same as the topic of Chapter 5 of Marshall’s The Truth Behind the New Atheism: “Did God Evolve?” (see my write-up on that chapter here).  Marshall argues that a number of Asian and tribal cultures manifest a belief in a Supreme Being, and that many of them go so far as to overlap with other Christian themes, such as a sense that humanity is alienated from this Supreme Being, as well as hope for a savior.  (According to Marshall, some even expected the white man to come and enlighten them about the truth.)  In my post on “Did God Evolve?”, I quoted a Chinese reviewer on Amazon who felt that Marshall was mis-characterizing Chinese religion and culture in his book, True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture.  The reviewer said:

“This is the kind of wholesale distortion of reality to force it into a religious agenda. The writer one-sidedly presented the popular understanding of the concept ‘God’ among Chinese, while failing to mention the Confucian loath to things that are unverifiable and things inciting exclusive cultic worship of one god. The concept of Heaven or God in Chinese intellectual history had always connotated the totalistic relationship of the universe, the partaking of moral principles by human, rather than the Christian concept of a personal, monotheistic deity. Clearly what Marshall was interested in doing is not to appreciate and learn about the subtlety of Chinese spirituality, but to sell his narrow religious view through a medium which he had very little knowledge about.”

In Jesus and the Religions of Man, however, there is much more detail and nuance about the Asian and tribal cultures, at least in comparison with The Truth Behind the New Atheism.  Obviously, the entire cultures cannot be characterized as monotheistic and Christian-like in their ideas, for they may contain strong polytheistic elements, or a view that God is not personal.  Marshall acknowledges that.  But, for Marshall, the monotheistic, Christian-like elements are still present, or at least they have been there in the past.  Sometimes, they’re held by the populace and not the elite.  At other times, they’re held by the elite and not the populace.  Marshall believes that there are many cases in which monotheism came first in a culture and polytheism came later.  And then there is Shintoism in Japan, which does not even believe that the cosmos was created, and yet, notwithstanding Shintoism’s prominence, there are many Japanese people who hold that God created the universe.  Marshall refers to the view that Nestorian Christianity had some influence on Japan, but Marshall’s belief is that the truth of Christianity is written on people’s hearts, in some capacity.

Is Marshall correct on this?  To be honest, I don’t know.  I suppose that the best that I can do is to keep an open mind.  Among some academics, I have come across ideas that are similar to what Marshall argues in this chapter, even if they don’t overlap with Marshall entirely.  When I was an undergraduate, I was debating a bunch of liberals and skeptics (since I was a conservative Christian at the time), and I raised the point that the Bible is true because divine-inspiration was the only way to account for the elevated idea of monotheism emerging in a pagan culture.  An anthropology professor responded that I obviously don’t know much about the origins of monotheism, and he related that there have been tribes that I’d probably call “pagan” that had monotheistic tendencies.  My Mom has taken classes and read a lot on other cultures, and she notes that a number of them have some conception of a Supreme Being, and, sometimes, even the Supreme Being’s son.  My Mom is not for parallelomania, however, for she believes that we should recognize that, say, a trinity of gods in Hinduism is quite different from the Trinity in Christianity.

There is a part of me that likes what Marshall argues in this chapter.  A while back, I wrote about Madeleine L’Engle’s Swiftly-Tilting Planet (see here), and I said:

“L’Engle seems to believe that certain ideas are necessary for peace to exist. For her, God loves everyone, people of different cultures believe many of the same things, and divisions are partly the result of a lack of understanding. These ideas play out in her section on the Puritans. She says that God loves the Native Americans as well as the white settlers, and she also presents their religious beliefs as roughly the same. According to L’Engle, both Christianity and Native American religions hold that there was an ancient harmony in the universe that somehow got disrupted by evil. I don’t know enough about Native American religion to evaluate this statement. I’m sure that people in all cultures realize that the world falls short of some standard of goodness, but the dispute is how to solve the problem.”

As far as I could see, Marshall does not directly comment on Native American culture, but perhaps his sources do.  For me, there is a certain coziness that comes from believing that God has revealed himself, his plan, and his kindness to all cultures on the face of the earth, inviting them to receive his love.  And yet, Marshall’s apologetic chest-thumping for Christianity does prompt me to ask if there is some secular way to account for the similarity of motifs across many cultures—-an anthropological or a sociological explanation, for example. 

I’ll turn now to what Marshall says on page 201, which takes a different approach because it highlights the differences rather than the similarities among religions: “Pagan gods seldom if ever stood up to oppressors, human or divine, on behalf of the weak.  That was the historical distinction of prophets of the true God, and what Elisha’s confrontation with the prophets of Baal was all about.”

I disagree with this, to a certain extent.  Social justice shows up in “pagan” cultures as well.  The Code of Hammurabi opens with an affirmation that Hammurabi as king is to protect the weak from the strong.  Egypt (like the Hebrew Bible) had something like gleanings, which is leaving grain for the poor.  And, on occasion, people in pagan cultures did speak truth to power and championed the rights of the oppressed (see here and here).  At the same time, I do agree with Marshall that the Hebrew Bible, at least in areas, takes social justice further than surrounding nations did.  For example, scholars have noted that the reason that Jezebel in I Kings 21 is baffled by King Ahab’s dismay that Naboth will not sell him his vineyard is that Jezebel came from a Phoenician culture that regarded all land as granted by the king, whereas Ahab’s Northern Israelite culture set more limits on the government and had more of a notion of private property rights.  Ahab felt that he could not just take Naboth’s vineyard, and Jezebel did not understand this, for she came from a culture where all land belonged to the king.  Many religious Jews and Christians may point to this as proof that the Bible is divinely-inspired, but there are also people who will seek a secular explanation for the apparent enlightenment of ancient Israel or the authors of the Hebrew Bible: the Israelites had a bad experience with despotism—-in Egypt, Canaan, or both—-and so they sought to construct a society that was not despotic.

Unity and Diversity

Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Volume I: Greece and Rome (Westminster: Newman, 1959) 63-64.

Copleston discusses the views of Empedocles, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in the fifth century B.C.E.

Ordinarily, I quote from the book that I’m discussing, but here I prefer the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s summary. (Don’t worry! A classicist is the one who put together the site. See Empedocles [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy].) Here it is:

Empedocles also posits two cosmic forces which work upon the elements in both creative and destructive ways. These he personifies as Love (Philia) – a force of attraction and combination – and Strife (Neikos) – a force of repulsion and separation…What is clear is that these two forces are engaged in an eternal battle for domination of the cosmos and that they each prevail in turn in an endless cosmic cycle. [W]hen Love is completely dominant she draws all the elements fully together into a Sphere in which, although the elements are not fused together into a single mass, each is indistinguishable from the others. The Sphere then, is an a-cosmic state during which no matter can exist, and no life is possible. Then as Love’s power gradually weakens and Strife begins to grow in power, he gradually separates out the elements from the Sphere until there is enough separation for matter to come into existence, for the world to be created and for all life to be born. When Strife has achieved total domination we again get an a-cosmic state in which the elements are separated completely and the world and all life is destroyed in a Whirl. Then Love begins to increase in power and to draw the elements together again, and as she does so the world is again created and life is again born. When Love has achieved full dominance we return once more to the sphere.

So Empedocles says that there are two forces: love and strife. Love brings elements together, while strife splits them apart. Both forces played a role in the creation of the cosmos. When everything was combined together into a single mass under the direction of love, there was no life. Consequently, strife needed to separate that mass into distinct elements for life to exist. But too much strife leads to disintegration, which is what Empedocles forecasts for the cosmos. After the universe’s disintegration, Empedocles asserts, love will combine the elements into one mass and start the cycle all over again.

Empedocles may have formulated his ideas with other Greek philosophical currents in mind. Copleston narrates that, in the sixth century B.C.E., the philosopher Heraclitus affirmed that the universe is diverse and continually changing, even as there is a divine unity that permeated it. For him, fire was the element underlying the cosmos, but the fire produced a variety of effects, resulting in the orderly universe that is now before us. Although the cosmos has a lot of diverse things that are in tension with one another, such tension maintains a balance that is conducive for order and our survival. “God,” for Heraclitus, is this order of the universe, and we should conduct our lives according to this cosmic reason (Copleston 40-43).

In the fifth century B.C.E., Zeno of Elea argued that there is no motion and multiplicity in the universe, for that is merely an illusion. Actually, everything is one, as far as he’s concerned (Copleston 58)!

So there seems to have been an issue of unity vs. separation in the philosophy of the sixth-fifth centuries B.C.E. Heraclitus thought that the existence of distinct things in the universe was actually consistent with its order, perhaps because different things could work together by doing their specific roles (compartmentalization). But Zeno may have viewed such a scenario as too messy, so he desired the order of there being only one thing in existence. And Empedocles posited a tension between unity and division, holding that both were assets and liabilities in terms of the creation and maintenance of the cosmos.

As I look at the universe, I see love and strife. Different things work together and contribute to our survival. The inside of a cell, for example, has distinct parts that perform their unique functions and ensure life. At the same time, there is also division and destruction, such as disease, animals eating one another, etc. And yet, paradoxically, even that division and destruction contribute to order. Animals eating one another can prevent the overpopulation of one animal group, etc.

In terms of Christian ethics, God created us different, yet he wants us to love one another, to see ourselves as somehow united with other human beings. Within the body of Christ, there are Christians with different spiritual gifts, yet they are all part of one body. Paul points out that a human body has different parts that help it to carry out its functions, and he likens that to the local church: diverse people work together in unity for a common purpose (I Corinthians 12).

My reading today reminds me of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wind in the Door. See A Wind in the Door for my comments. In that book, L’Engle encourages people to be themselves–authentic. Yet, she also points out that total autonomy and selfishness are a path to destruction. For her, there should be diversity and unity. So I guess she would agree more with Heraclitus, assuming I defined his position correctly!

Jesus the Literate, Slavery, Had Adam and Eve Done It Right

1. M. Bar-Ilan, “Writing in Ancient Israel. Part Two: Scribes and Books in the Late Second Commonwealth and Rabbinic Period,” Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Martin Jan Mulder (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004) 33-34.

“A high percentage of the population did not know how to read and it seems evident that in rural areas and in small towns only one man could read from the Tora. We might conclude that in such settlements there were more than 90% illiteracy (T. Megilla 3:12).”

Bar-Ilan is talking about the rabbinic period, but I’ve heard the same thing about New Testament times in Palestine. Bar-Ilan gives a quotation from an ancient source, the Tosefta, so let’s see what it has to say:

“A synagogue which has only one person who can read–he stands and reads [in the Torah] and sits down…even seven times” (Jacob Neusner’s translation).

Okay, I guess literacy wasn’t widespread in Palestine back then, if there were towns in which only one person could read. When rabbinic literature talks about kids learning the Bible and the Mishnah, therefore, it may either be setting forth its ideal of Palestinian life, or discussing an elite.

We read in Luke 4:16-19 that Jesus could read. There, Jesus reads from the scroll of Isaiah in a Nazareth synagogue. How could Jesus read, if most people back then were illiterate?

This is where some believe that Luke is wrong, historically-speaking. At DePauw, I knew an atheist who made that very point. “How is Jesus reading? Most people couldn’t read back then?,” he asked. I also vaguely recall that John Dominic Crossan regards Jesus as an illiterate peasant.

But maybe Jesus somewhere learned how to read. I once had a conversation with a colleague at Harvard Divinity School. He wasn’t aiming to go into academia, but rather into a Korean Christian ministry. But he took a New Testament class, in which he had to read John Dominic Crossan’s book on Jesus the peasant. His class got into a debate about whether or not Jesus could read. My friend remarked that Martin Luther King in his context probably shouldn’t have been literate either! For him, great men are great precisely because they are able to rise above the limitations of their context.

I’m not sure how right my friend was about Martin Luther King. Schools were segregated in King’s day, but at least African-Americans had schools to go to, and I’m sure they taught reading. At the same time, the South tried to trip African-Americans up with literacy tests. So maybe there were lots of people in the South who could read, and lots who could not, and this probably applied to both races: black and white.

But, if even illiterate towns had at least one literate person in the synagogue, then why couldn’t Jesus have been one of those literate people? Perhaps God set things up so that Jesus would learn how to read.

2. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1910) 349.

“In the period before us, however, the abolition of slavery, save in isolated cases of manumission, was utterly out of question, considering only the enormous number of the slaves. The world was far from ripe for such a step. The church, in her persecuted condition, had as yet no influence at all over the machinery of the state and the civil legislation. And she was at that time so absorbed in the transcendent importance of the higher world and in her longing for the speedy return of the Lord, that she cared little for earthly freedom or temporal happiness. Hence Ignatius, in his epistle to Polycarp, counsels servants to serve only the more zealously for the glory of the Lord, that they may receive from God the higher freedom; and not to attempt to be redeemed at the expense of their Christian brethren, lest they be found slaves of their own caprice. From this we see that slaves, in whom faith awoke the sense of manly dignity and the desire of freedom, were accustomed to demand their redemption at the expense of the church, as a right, and were thus liable to value the earthly freedom more than the spiritual.”

Schaff includes a similar quote from Tertullian, and he also refers to a fourth century statement by Chrysostom that slaves should be gradually emancipated. In pages 350-352, Schaff cites some interesting facts: that Christian tradition “makes Onesimus, the slave of Philemon, a bishop[;]” that the slave Callistus “rose to the chair of St. Peter in Rome” in the third century C.E.; that Clement calls slaves “men like ourselves;” and that Lactantius (third-fourth century C.E.) proclaims slaves and masters to be equal.

I picked this quote to write about because Ignatius’ statement about slavery stuck out to me, but I never got around to discussing it on my blog. Ignatius essentially says that slaves shouldn’t try to become free. What was Paul’s position? That depends on how one translates I Corinthians 7:21. The NRSV has the following:

“Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it. Even if you can gain your freedom, make use of your present condition now more than ever.”

This seems to imply that the Christian slave should make us of his state of slavery rather than seeking to become free. As Titus 2:9-10 says, “Tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect; they are not to talk back, not to pilfer, but to show complete and perfect fidelity, so that in everything they may be an ornament to the doctrine of God our Savior.” By being good slaves, Christian servants could lead their masters to Christ.

The NIV, however, has something different:

“Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you– although if you can gain your freedom, do so.”

For the NIV, a Christian slave should become free if he is able to do so.

The Greek looks rather ambiguous: it says something like “but if you are able to be free, rather use.” The debate concerns what the word translated “use” means.

But the New Testament is not always anti-slavery. I Timothy 6:2 instructs Christian slaves to submit to their Christian masters, so apparently the church didn’t require masters to free their slaves once they joined up.

At the same time, the New Testament requires masters to treat their slaves with kindness (Ephesians 6:9). Paul even tells Philemon to regard his servant not as a slave, but as a brother in Christ (Philemon 1:16).

The New Testament and early Christian record on slavery is rather checkered. There isn’t really a wholesale condemnation of the institution, yet masters and slaves were treated as equals. Does the latter part absolve Christianity of being pro-slavery? Some will say “yes,” and some will say “no.” I had a professor at DePauw who said that Southern slave-owners in pre-Civil War days acknowledged that their slaves were spiritual equals, yet, in their eyes, spiritual equality did not mean social equality. At the same time, shouldn’t spiritual equality lead to social equality? John Wesley certainly thought so, for he believed that a master wouldn’t beat a slave whom he saw as a brother in Christ. And Ephesians 6:9 is clear that masters shouldn’t mistreat their slaves.

One more point: God can use a person even in slavery. Many of us are seeking to change our circumstances, but should that be our sole focus? Maybe God can use us in an unpleasant situation. That’s not to say that slaves shouldn’t have sought their freedom, since freedom is a good thing, and slavery could be really horrible. But it’s one more thing to think about as we consider the issue of the Bible and slavery.

3. Jacob Neusner, Judaism’s Story of Creation: Scripture, Halakhah, Aggadah (Boston: Brill, 2000) 117.

“Adam picked and ate. But here too there is a detail that cannot be missed. Even after three years, Israel may not eat the fruit wherever it chooses. Rather, in the fourth year from planting, Israel will still show restraint, bringing the fruit only ‘for jubilation before the Lord’ in Jerusalem. That signals that the once forbidden fruit is now eaten in public, not in secret, before the Lord, as a moment of celebration. That detail too recalls the Fall and makes its comment upon the horror of the fall. That is, when Adam ate the fruit, he shamefully hid from God for having eaten the fruit. But when Israel eats the fruit, it does so proudly, joyfully, before the Lord. The contrast is not to be missed, so too the message. Faithful Israel refrains when it is supposed to, and so it has every reason to refrain and to eat ‘before the Lord.’ It has nothing to hide, and everything to show.”

Neusner is discussing Leviticus 19:23-25: “When you come into the land and plant all kinds of trees for food, then you shall regard their fruit as forbidden; three years it shall be forbidden to you, it must not be eaten. In the fourth year all their fruit shall be set apart for rejoicing in the LORD. But in the fifth year you may eat of their fruit, that their yield may be increased for you: I am the LORD your God” (NRSV).

Suppose that Adam and Eve hadn’t eaten the forbidden fruit? Would they have stayed in their state of ignorance and simplicity? Or would God have allowed them to eat it once they became more mature? After all, the knowledge of good and evil is not necessarily a bad thing in Scripture. The Book of Proverbs is largely about distinguishing good from evil! Maybe Adam and Eve weren’t quite ready to do that yet. Or God wanted them to learn to obey him first, before they got into the realm of complex decision-making. Madeleine L’Engle once wrote that Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve was like offering a martini to a child!

C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra is about what would have happened had Adam and Eve obeyed God. It’s not Adam and Eve staying naked and simple for the rest of their natural lives! Adam and Eve actually receive glory in Lewis’ scenario.

I like the way that Neusner presents the issue: the Israelites learn to obey God when they refrain from eating the fruit for three years. Eventually, they eat as they rejoice before the Lord. Maybe that could have happened for Adam and Eve, and God wasn’t trying to withhold anything good from them.

I’ve Met the Austins

I just finished Madeleine L’Engle’s series on the Austin family. Here is my reaction to each of the books:

1. Meet the Austins (1960). There is a certain charm to this book, although nothing exciting really happens in it. I just liked hanging around the people. It’s like watching Fiddler on the Roof, Keeping the Faith, or 7th Heaven. You simply like the characters, even though the plot has no explosions or major villains. There’s something magical about being in the warmth of a family. One thing that I liked: There is a character named Maggie, whose father dies at the beginning of the book. She comes to live with the Austins and gets on everyone’s nerves. Still, they eventually accept her. There have been times when I’ve gotten on people’s nerves in my search for attention. And people can get on mine, too.

2. The Moon by Night (1963). I liked this book because it deals with theodicy, which asks how God can permit bad things to happen. Teenager Vicki Austin meets Zachary Gray, a young man with a bit of an ego problem. I first met him in A House Like a Lotus , and I didn’t like him then. But, in The Moon by Night, I found out that he had heart problems due to rheumatic fever, so I felt sorry for him.

There were three things that I liked: First, in a paragraph about suffering, one of the characters says that bad things actually make life worth living. It also states that a sign of maturity is noticing that there is a lot that is beautiful in the world. I haven’t reached that point yet, but I hope to someday.

Second, Zachary mocks the existence of God by asking Vicki why a loving God would allow Ann Frank to die. Vicki then has a discussion with Uncle Douglas, who calls himself the infidel of the family. I’m not entirely sure why, since much of what he says is the typical evangelical spiel on suffering. He points out that God gave us free will, and also that we can’t see the big picture, in which God has a plan. But he expresses himself with a humility that I do not find in a lot of evangelical apologists. He simply gives Vicki something to contemplate rather than acting as if he has the definitive answer on theodicy. He also says that there are arguments against God’s existence, but he believes because only God gives life meaning. Atheists will undoubtedly disagree with that statement, since many of them hold that life can indeed have meaning without a God. Personally, my reaction is mixed. If this short life is all there is, and there is no loving God looking out for us, then I can understand why some would consider life meaningless. I have problems with Christian apologetics, but I believe in Christianity because I hope it is true. On the other hand, if most are going to hell anyway (as conservative Christianity seems to teach), then life appears pointless for a lot of people, at least in my eyes.

Third, at the end of the book, Vicki gets injured after an earthquake and avalanche, and she is cold. She is initially angry with God, until she finally comes to accept his will. The weather then gets warmer. I’ve had similar experiences. I rant at God, and then I get so tired that I can no longer rant. After that, things begin to become better. I can feel God’s presence and a strong sense of peace. Some time later, I go through another round of turbulence.

3. The Young Unicorns (1968). This book is a suspense novel, and it reminded me of a Scooby Doo mystery. But it has some theological lessons. In it, there is a device that makes people submissive, and a bishop uses it to make humanity better. Madeleine L’Engle dislikes this, for she believes in human free will. One of her characters, a rabbi, says that God shows that he values us by giving us demands, or commandments. God grants us responsibilities, and yet we follow them out of our own free will. In the end, the bishop turns out not to be a bishop, but rather the bishop’s actor brother, who is using the device to gain power for himself. L’Engle’s point appears to be that God is not a tyrant: He gives us commands, but he wants us to see the value of them and choose them freely.

4. A Ring of Endless Light (1980). L’Engle wrote this book long after The Young Unicorns, yet the family doesn’t age that much. The theme of this book is affirming life in the face of death. Zachary attempts suicide, and Vicki’s grandfather (whom we first encounter in Meet the Austins) is about to die. But Vicki finds solace with biology student Adam Eddington and his dolphins, with whom she develops a remarkable rapport. Vicki’s grandfather, a minister, says that death encourages us to appreciate life, particularly our loved ones while they are still with us. That’s a good point, but Vicki’s grandfather is still a strange sort. He seems to question the doctrine of original sin, yet he calls humanity depraved because a group of people walked over a corpse with total apathy.

I read this book before The Moon by Night and The Young Unicorns. Here, I learn that Vicki is jealous of her beautiful sister Suzi. I identified with Vicki the first time I read that, but I got bored with her jealousy after reading about it in other books. I’m still glad that L’Engle mentioned it as often as she did, since it makes Vicki look real. It’s just that I can tolerate only so much complaining about the same things (unless I’m the complainer, of course).

5. Troubling a Star (1994). L’Engle wrote this fourteen years after A Ring of Endless Light, and Vicki is still in her teens. What’s weird is that she has a romantic relationship with Adam Eddington, a college student. The book is clean, so nothing inappropriate happens. But isn’t Vicki a little too young for Adam?

I personally didn’t care for this book. I didn’t follow the plot that well, and it was kind of like another Scooby Doo mystery. But the book has information about penguins and Antarctica, which is where Vicki goes, so science buffs may like it. The book seems to have an environmental theme: all things in nature have a purpose outside of their usefulness to humans. So L’Engle doesn’t like people exploiting nature for power. We also encounter Vespugia, the fictional South American country in A Swiftly Tilting Planet.

So I definitely recommend these books, especially the first four. The Austins are nice people, and L’Engle teaches some valuable theological lessons through them.

A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Last night, I finished Madeleine L’Engle’s A Swiftly Tilting Planet. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, such that I had a hard time putting it down. What is interesting is this: I didn’t experience much pleasure while I was reading A Wind in the Door, but it provoked a lot of thoughts. With A Swiftly Tilting Planet, however, I did experience pleasure, mostly from my desire to understand how the various plot elements fit together. But, strangely, it has not stimulated too many philosophical or theological thoughts in my mind, at least not thus far. At the same time, who knows what thoughts will emerge as I write this post?

A Swiftly Tilting Planet is about a South American dictator, Mad Dog Branzillo, who is threatening to start a nuclear war. Charles Wallace, the prodigious boy of A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door, is now 15, and he travels through time with a unicorn to prevent this catastrophe. He does so by entering various people throughout history. He does not possess them, but his mind melds with theirs, such that he absorbs their personalities while influencing them to make certain decisions. So the book has the feel of Quantum Leap and The Butterfly Effect, though there are differences.

Charles first enters a Native American boy, who shelters himself from exposure to a nearby tribe, which has a lot of violence, strife, and murder. He thus becomes the ancestor of a peace-loving tribe in the New England area. That tribe is later visited in the twelfth century by Madoc, the next person Charles enters. According to legend, Madoc fled from Wales with his brother due to his family’s violent struggle for the Welsh throne. In L’Engle’s telling of the story, Madoc is separated from his brother Gwyddr, yet Gwyddr later confronts Madoc when Madoc is about to marry into the tribe. Gwyddr’s goal is conquest and domination, but he flees to South America after he loses the fight with Madoc.

Throughout the story, Charles enters other characters who are somehow connected to Madoc and Gwyddr, including a Welsh Puritan, a Civil War author, and Chuck O’Keefe, the brother of Calvin’s embittered mother. Charles’ mission is to halt the perpetuation of Gwyddr’s war-mongering descendants in South America, and to encourage instead the thriving of Madoc’s peace-loving line. Charles succeeds in changing history, since he prevents the birth of Mad Dog Branzillo and causes there to emerge a peaceful leader in South America, one who is committed to the just distribution of the world’s resources. Through these seemingly insignificant yet interconnected characters, Madeleine L’Engle stresses a point that appears in many of her works: we are all significant, for our actions can have a major impact on the world, even if we do not immediately see it.

Obviously, Madeleine L’Engle was against war, which she views as the product of selfishness and greed. Overall, she does not address the question of whether or not there are situations in which war is justifiable (e.g., self-defense, protection of the weak, etc.). She does offer some ostensible motives for Mad Dog Branzillo’s actions, for she says that he views them as just retribution against the West for its selfish misuse of the world’s resources. While she acknowledges that he has a valid point, she emphasizes that war is not the answer, since that would destroy both the United States and South America. In addition, Branzillo’s problem with the West is solved peacefully at the end of the book, under another leader. We are also left wondering if Branzillo’s motives are truly what he claims them to be, since he does come from a line of acquisitive people. Madeleine L’Engle offers important thoughts about war, but I wonder what she’d want the President to do if a real madman threatened to blow up the world. Going back in time to change history sounds good, but it is not a realistic option.

L’Engle seems to believe that certain ideas are necessary for peace to exist. For her, God loves everyone, people of different cultures believe many of the same things, and divisions are partly the result of a lack of understanding. These ideas play out in her section on the Puritans. She says that God loves the Native Americans as well as the white settlers, and she also presents their religious beliefs as roughly the same. According to L’Engle, both Christianity and Native American religions hold that there was an ancient harmony in the universe that somehow got disrupted by evil. I don’t know enough about Native American religion to evaluate this statement. I’m sure that people in all cultures realize that the world falls short of some standard of goodness, but the dispute is how to solve the problem. On the issue of a lack of understanding creating division, L’Engle discusses the Puritan witch hunts. The good characters have powers such as telepathy, the ability to see visions, and knowledge of herbs. L’Engle sees these as gifts of God, but Puritan New England does not share her view!

There is also a good section of forgiveness. Calvin’s mother is someone we indirectly encounter in A Wrinkle in Time. She’s not that good of a mother. She is bitter with life due to her experiences, and she looks old and worn out despite her relatively young age. Well, we learn that she once had a brother and a grandmother whom she loved very much, and her grandmother told her that hatred hurts the person who hates. She pointed to one of their ancestors, a princess who was abandoned by her royal husband (who married her on false pretenses, out of an impure motive). According to the grandmother, the princess never gave in to hate, and God took care of her through all of her afflictions. Unfortunately, Calvin’s mother gives in to hatred rather than trusting God. Still, she gets an opportunity to connect with her heritage (and hopefully heal) in the course of the book, and her actions end up saving humanity from destruction.

So, overall, I really enjoyed this book. I don’t agree with everything Madeleine L’Engle says, but she certainly makes me think, even while I’m being entertained.

A Wind in the Door

Last night, I finished Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wind in the Door. I was reading some wikipedia articles about Madeleine L’Engle, and wikipedia’s summary of A Wind in the Door was actually pretty good. Unlike the article on A Wrinkle in Time, which focused almost entirely on plot, the one on A Wind in the Door summed up both the plot and the themes.

As I read the wikipedia articles, what really interested me was that I had actually met Meg and Calvin before. When I was at Harvard, I read A House Like a Lotus on one of my flights, and the book was about Poly O’Keefe, the daughter of Calvin (a marine biologist) and Meg O’ Keefe (a mathematician). So they married, and Meg apparently outgrew her social awkwardness, though she managed to pass some of it down to Poly. The book was rather realistic, so I had no idea that Calvin and Meg had fantasy adventures when they were younger.

On a surface level, the message of A Wind in the Door is not that complicated. It is that we should view others as human beings with selves, value, qualities, and purpose. L’Engle calls this practice “naming” someone. The most noteworthy example concerns the principal at Meg’s elementary school, Mr. Jenkins, who is an extremely unlikable and intimidating character. Meg always feels inadequate in his presence, since she was always called into his office when she did something wrong (or unusual). Moreover, Meg’s odd (and genius) brother Charles Wallace is continually bullied at school, and Mr. Jenkins neither interferes to stop it nor recognizes Charles’ talents. Essentially, two other Mr. Jenkinses (who are actually demons) pop up, and Meg has to identify the real one. She dismisses the ones who are on a power trip, concluding that the real Mr. Jenkins is the insecure one who feels like a failure, yet has occasionally done some good things (as when he bought Calvin some shoes). Meg discovers that Mr. Jenkins has rarely been allowed to be himself, and she walks him through the process of self-discovery.

At first, Meg sees Mr. Jenkins as a drag on her mission, in which Meg, Calvin, Mr. Jenkins, and other characters find themselves in Charles Wallace’s body. Charles has a disease at a cellular level that is threatening his life, and a significant part of saving it is a technique called kything, which is a form of non-verbal telepathy in which people can be themselves. The characters need to kythe in order to communicate, but Mr. Jenkins is not good at it. The reasons are that he is old and reluctant to adopt new practices, and also that he is not secure enough to be himself around others, or allow others to be themselves around him. An angel continually tells impatient Meg that Mr. Jenkins has an important role to play in the mission, even though he is unsure what that role specifically is. In the end, Mr. Jenkins adds depth, helps others understand what is going on, and risks his life for the mission.

For Charles to be cured, a mouse-like part of the cell has to deepen, which entails maturing into a tree. A group of destructive demons, the Echthroi, try to discourage the mouse from performing his role. They tell him that he will have no fun as a tree, that he should try to take over the land, and that nothingness is preferable to his current position. Mr. Jenkins points out that selfishness–seeing oneself as the center, as opposed to performing one’s role in a bigger picture–is the root of much destruction in life (e.g., war, etc.). By not deepening, the mouse is actually acting against his own self-interest, since he’ll perish if Charles dies.

Those are the plot and the themes. Now for my reactions. Although L’Engle’s message appears rather simple, there must be a lot of depth to it. First, I thought that Mr. Jenkins’ transformation was rather unbelievable, since he went from a cold, uncaring principal to someone who was willing to sacrifice himself for others. But Madeleine L’Engle may have had a reason for portraying Mr. Jenkins the way that she did. For her, there was a reason that Mr. Jenkins was cold and uncaring. Once he got through his own personal barriers, his true self–the one underneath his cold exterior–could more fully emerge.

Second, I thought that the Echthrois‘ message to the mouse was contradictory. They were telling him to embrace nothingness, even as they encouraged him to try to take over the land. But you need to exist to rule something, don’t you? Again, there may be an explanation for this, but I will probably need to think a lot before I discover it. I’ve encountered this sort of inconsistency in other stories. In George Lucas’ novel Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kanobe says that Darth Vader pictures all of life perishing in an apocalyptic catastrophe; yet, there he is, trying to increase the empire’s power and restore order to the galaxy. In the New Testament, the devil seeks to discourage Jesus from going to the cross (Mark 8:33), yet he enters Judas and helps bring about Jesus’ crucifixion (John 13:27). Evil doesn’t always make sense.

Third, I’m wrestling with Madeleine L’Engle’s views on communitarianism. On one hand, she values individuality and resists conformity, almost like Ayn Rand. In A Wrinkle in Time, for instance, the sinister IT enforces conformity and makes everyone do the exact same thing, and he is not tolerant of mistakes. On the other hand, L’Engle seems to argue in A Wind in the Door that people are not ends in themselves (or the center of the universe), since they have roles to perform in a larger picture. I’m sure there’s value to what she is saying, but something about it rubs me the wrong way. It strikes me as rather Soviet, or it seems to treat humans as part of a factory, or as cogs in a machine. I know that she’s not for making people into drones, but she’s not entirely Ayn Rand in her view on humanity.

My final point for today is this: There are many evangelicals who love Madeleine L’Engles‘ works, since they often incorporate biblical themes. But Madeleine L’Engle has also been on the religious right’s hit list, since her works often appear on lists of banned books. I can understand why some Christian conservatives are leery of her fiction. There is one wikipedia article that associates Charles’ telepathic ability with New Age concepts about the next stage of human evolution. So Madeleine L’Engle must have been the J.K. Rowling of her day! At the same time, I like the way that she teaches Christianity in an outside-of-the-box sort of way.

Christmas Musings 2007

Today is Christmas, 2007. What am I doing today? Yesterday, I was privileged to receive my video of It’s a Wonderful Life. This was fortuitous. I could have gotten it after Christmas, but It’s a Wonderful Life is Christmas fare, or, more accurately, Christmas Eve fare. As I watched it, I really felt bad for George Bailey. Here was a person who continually helped others, but he never had an opportunity to do what he wanted to do, which was to see the world. I know that the story is fictional, but I’d like to think that George and Mary Bailey got to visit Europe, Asia, and South America at some point in their lives. Of course, the problem is that they would have to leave the Building and Loan to Uncle Billy during their absence, and I can imagine Uncle Billy running the company into the ground. Maybe one of George and Mary’s boys (or girls) grew up and helped run the company, allowing the couple to have some vacation time. But where would the Baileys get the money for travel? Well, at the end, George got more than the $8,000 that he needed. Maybe his neighbors wouldn’t mind if George and Mary used it to see the world. George did earn this privilege, after all.

Today, I watched a Christmas episode of Highway to Heaven, in which Richard Mulligan (Empty Nest) plays a newspaper columnist who finds the Christmas spirit. I’ll watch another episode later this evening, one that reflects Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. At the moment, I am taping A Christmas Story. I’ve never seen it before, and it is a renowned Christmas classic. I’ll also watch that this evening. At 3:00, I saw one of my favorite episodes of All in the Family, the one in which a draft dodger spends Christmas with someone who lost his son in Vietnam. It is a tear-jerker!

While watching television, I’ve been reading two books by Madeleine L’Engle: A Wrinkle in Time and Wind in the Door. I finished Wrinkle last night. I appreciate the books, but I have a hard time experiencing pleasure when I read them, and I don’t exactly know why. I appreciate them because they are about God using socially marginalized people for his righteous purposes, and I also like the way that the socially awkward Meg becomes friends with the popular jock Calvin, whose life is not as rosy as we might expect. There is also a character who speaks in quotations, since she cannot come up with words of her own in social situations. I identify with her problem here! Too bad my Latin is not good enough for me to quote Cicero in daily conversation. The books also have jewels of wisdom. For example, in Wrinkle, one of the eccentric characters likens life to a sonnet: a sonnet needs a specific number of beats to be a sonnet, but it can still contain a variety of possible words. I interpret this to mean that there is one righteous path, which can encompass a variety of possible choices.

I went to church this morning. Drawing on Aquinas, the priest talked about the different ways that Christ is united with humanity. He said that a person who has faith yet lives a sinful life is in danger of becoming eternally lost. At the same time, he affirmed that God can still work with such a person, since there is a connection between him and the divine. The priest urged us to develop a deeper relationship with God. His specific steps for doing this included: (1.) Become a Catholic, if you are not one already, (2.) Go to confession, and (3.) Read about the saints. I usually don’t feel “fed” by this priest’s sermons, since they are rather philosophical and often promote ritualism as a spiritual solution. But they do intellectually stimulate me, which is more than I can say for evangelical and mainline Protestant churches (BORING).

As I was thinking about a topic for today’s blog entry, a question entered my mind: Why did Christ come to earth? I remember reading a book by John Shelby Spong, This Hebrew Lord, in which Spong was stumped by someone who asked about Jesus’ significance. Evangelicals and other Christians would probably deem this an easy question: they would say that Jesus came to reveal God’s will, bring forgiveness of sins, and inaugurate a kingdom of justice for the poor. But these things existed before Jesus came. People already knew that they were supposed to love God and neighbor. God already forgave sins (though evangelicals will probably argue that the blood of Christ was the basis for atonement in pre-Christian times). And people already knew that they should help the poor. What did Jesus bring that was new? Well, he did make God’s rules stricter. Now, we can’t get a divorce or lust after women. I’m sorry, but I have a hard time getting enthusiastic about a stricter law.

Another topic that came into my mind was Christmas’ pagan origin. I grew up in an offshoot of the Worldwide Church of God, which did not observe Christmas. Many argue that Christians transformed a pagan festival (Saturnalia) into the “Christian” holiday of Christmas. Others contend that the pagans were the ones who stole Christmas–from the Christians (see The Celebration of CHRISTMAS ). If Christmas has pagan origins, should it be observed? On one hand, Deuteronomy 12:30 seems to prohibit the use of pagan customs in the worship of God. It says: “Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following [the Canaanites], after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise.” On the other hand, the Bible does describe the God of the Hebrews through pagan imagery (e.g., a god who slays a chaos monster), and there is also overlap between biblical and pagan customs (e.g., temples, animal sacrifices, etc.).

I guess that the way I approach this issue is as follows: I myself don’t really keep Christmas, since I am usually alone on that day. But I don’t have a big problem when others observe it (not that their actions are my business in the first place). God dislikes pagan customs that compromise his character, such as child sacrifice or orgies in worship. But I don’t think he stresses out when people set aside a day to fellowship and honor Christ’s birth, assuming that they are indeed doing that in their celebration of Christmas (rather than being materialistic). Christmas is a time to think about certain virtues, such as generosity. But we should be generous throughout the year, not only on Christmas.

So these are my Christmas reflections. Maybe I’ll have more after watching A Christmas Story–I will have to see. Happy holidays!

Madeleine L’ Engle (November 29, 1918-September 6, 2007)

I never finished Madeleine L’ Engle’s Wrinkle in Time. The first book of hers that I encountered was not even in that series: it was about a shy girl at a new school, and that drew me because you usually do not see shy people as the main characters of books or movies. But, overall, I had difficulty getting into her fiction.

But her Genesis Trilogy knocked my socks off. It was my spiritual food during my second and third years at Harvard. Basically, these three books were her ruminations on the Book of Genesis. But that was not all. She loved to go on tangents, talking about her day-to-day life, current events, her thoughts on God, and her late husband, who played a doctor on the soap All My Children. She was probably the most open author whom I have ever read. She shared her struggles to live a Christian life and to become a better person. Like many of us, she tried to love the unloveable and value everyone as God does. And, like me, she wrestled with shyness. I remember her story about her first lecture and how she literally grabbed the podium throughout her speech. But she eventually concluded that her shyness was a form of selfishness. I am not sure if I would totally apply that to myself, but I should think about the extent to which the shoe fits.

The first book of the Genesis Trilogy that I read was about the Joseph story. What intrigued me was that she tried to write from the perspective of the characters. There was Reuben, the neglected firstborn who had a romance with Jacob’s maidservant. There was Dinah, a woman drawn to paganism who did not understand her father’s male God. There was the priest of On, who worshipped the sun and yet was intrigued by the God whom Joseph served. And there was God, who was with the characters throughout the entire journey.

One part of the trilogy that often enters my mind is her comment on Gad. She was discussing the twelve sons of Jacob, and she came to Gad. She said that we do not know much about Gad, but we do know one thing: he had access to the divine logos that permeated the world. She was obviously grasping for straws–she had to say something about Gad–but she was revealing her theology: she viewed God as one who loves, binds, and has a plan for every human being, and even all creation. As her critics pointed out, she flirted with universalism, and I cannot accept such a doctrine as Scriptural. But I have problems with the conservative Christian view (or one CC view) that God is not lovingly involved in the non-Christian world.

She made me think about this issue. She related that she was talking to a group of Southern Baptists, who were grilling her on her universalism. She asked them if they were perfect, and she challenged them to make two columns: one that had Bible passages about God’s wrath, and another that had Bible passages about God’s love and mercy. She thought that the second list would outnumber the first. At the time, I was reading Ezekiel for my weekly quiet time, and my reaction to Madeleine was “Not so fast!” I think the wrath passages slightly outnumber the love passages.

Some day, I might give a Wrinkle in Time another shot. We like the books that speak to us where we are, and a book that I did not like a few years ago may speak to me in this stage of my life. But the Genesis Trilogy touched me during my Harvard years. For that, I’d like to say to Madeleine L’Engle, “Thank you.”