G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday

I had listened to this book on my iPod as an audiobook and thought it was really good. I admit that I didn't fully understand some parts because this is a complex book that really challenges you to think. And audiobooks are sometimes lacking when it comes to books like this. You end up backing up and listening to certain parts over and over again. Don't get me wrong -- I love audiobooks and they are a great time saver. Also, sometimes I am just not in the mood for music (for instance, when I'm depressed) so being able to listen to a book is a godsend. However, I ended up buying a printed copy of The Man Who Was Thursday, because this is one of those books you need to read, not just listen to.

It was Dawn Eden* who got me interested in this book and in Chesterton's work. I have long been an admirer of C.S. Lewis and knew that Chesterton had a lot of influence on Lewis. But I had never gotten around to really delving into Chesterton's work. But knowing that this book started Dawn on a path that would lead her to where she is today made me interested. I have been reading Dawn's book as well, but I wanted to finish the Chesterton book first because I thought that it would help me understand her journey more completely. (Perhaps if Dawn's detractors put aside their preconceived assumptions, read The Man Who Was Thursday with an open mind and tried to understand it, they would get where Dawn is coming from a lot better. I assure them that it would be worth it.)

What this book does is that it completely turns the idea of rebellion on its head. The book's protagonist, Gabriel Syme, is a rebel against rebellion. He became this way because he was raised by a family that would be comparable to today's hippies and punks. Rebellion is seen as sort of a mindless game of trying to see how outrageous you can be...how much you can shock "the establishment". Rebellion such as this means nothing and amounts to nothing -- it is just nihilism.

I would like to quote one particular passage of the book that struck me. It is sort of a spoiler, so if you haven't read the book, would like to, and are annoyed by spoilers, skip the block-quoted part:

"Who and what are you?"

"I am the Sabbath," said the other without moving. "I am the peace of God."

The Secretary started up, and stood crushing his costly robe in his hand.

"I know what you mean," he cried, "and it is exactly that that I cannot forgive you. I know you are contentment, optimism, what so they call the thing, an ultimate reconciliation. Well, I am not reconciled. If you were the man in the dark room, why were you also Sunday, an offence to the sunlight? If you were from the first our father and our friend, why were you also our greatest enemy? We wept, we fled in terror; the iron entered into our souls -- and you are the peace of God! Oh, I can forgive God His anger, though it destroyed nations; but I cannot forgive Him His peace."

This struck me because I have often felt this way. The peace of God does seem like an offense at times. You have your own suffering and you see the suffering of others. You see loved ones and friends waste away and die of disease. You helplessly see unspeakable horrors unfold before you, like 9/11. You see those you love trapped in suffocating, miserable circumstances, not able to do a damned thing to help them. You see people who do their best and try their hardest to serve and do their duty and do what is right, only to be snarled at and spat upon by know-nothings. The "peace of God" seems almost like a mockery in the face of all these things.

Whenever my Pastor, during one of our services, prays for a family that has lost a loved one, he prays that God gives them "the peace that goes beyond all understanding". This sort of peace eludes me, because I don't understand it and I can't figure out how to find a place beyond understanding. I realize this is my flaw...my failing. Perhaps someday I will feel that peace and not resent it as the Secretary does.

* I have to also thank Dawn for leading me to discover a great band. Dawn has said that she first heard of Chesterton and The Man Who Was Thursday when interviewing Ben Eshbach of The Sugarplastic. I went to iTunes, listened to some stuff from this band, loved what I heard, and bought all of the available albums. I have also bought some older, out-of-print CDs by them. I still have some songs from them in my Radio Blog on the sidebar, which I have not bothered to change for about a year. Take a listen, because I may soon get around to changing the Radio Blog.

The Rage and the Pride

While on the subject of 9/11, I just finished reading The Rage and the Pride by the late Oriana Fallaci. It is an awesome, passionate book. She takes everyone to task, from Pope John Paul II to various political leaders to her fellow Italians. She is not afraid to tell it like it is regarding the behavior of Muslim immigrants in Europe. She refuses to be cowed by political correctness. She has some wonderfully vicious things to say about Arafat and Jane Fonda (for whom she has such contempt, she will not even write her name -- but you know it is Fonda to whom she is referring). She also has a lot of kind things to say about people like the Dalai Lama and Rudolph Guliani.

Fallaci has no use for the libertinism that passes for freedom these days...she sees this as a great weakness. Although she claims to be an atheist, it is clear that she is aching to be a believer. She writes about the beauty she sees in the Catholic Church. It is the clerics that turn her off. As far as I'm concerned, Fallaci was/is a prophetess.

I can only imagine what she would say about Rosie O'Donnell if she were still alive...

Book Meme

Barb has tagged me with this book meme. I'm going to include audiobooks in this, since that's the main way I "read" lately:

1. One book that changed your life:

Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. It was so instrumental in helping me to resolve a lot of confusion and doubts I had about my faith.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once:

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I've also listened to the audiobook of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis numerous times. John Cleese does a perfect job reading the book.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island:

Besides the Bible, probably The Screwtape Letters.

4. One book that made you laugh:

Give War a Chance by P.J. O'Rourke.

5. One book that made you cry:

That's a tough one. I think a good answer would be Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie. I was so fascinated by this book I read it twice. Such a tragic story. The description of the Russian royal family's final moments made me cry.

6. One book that you wish had been written:

Like Barb, I can't really think of anything specific. Perhaps more books by C.S. Lewis. It would be interesting to hear his opinions on what's going on in the world today.

7. One book that you wish had never been written:

I agree with Barb's answer. I would add The Communist Manifesto.

8. The book you are currently reading:

I'm not currently reading anything, but I recently finished the audiobook of The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. That is a fantastic book and I'd love to read or listen to it again.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. I just bought the audiobook of this one and I plan to listen to it soon. I have a couple of friends who love this book, and I've always wanted to read it.

10. Now tag five people:

Well, anyone who reads this and has a blog and hasn't done this meme yet, consider yourself tagged. ;-)

Currently on the iPod...

I'm listening to the audiobook version of G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. So far, it's engaging but it is also heavy listening. This lecture on the book has shed some light on where this book is going:

Gabriel Syme is a poet and a police detective. Lucien Gregory is poet and a bomb-throwing anarchist. At the beginning of the novel, Syme infiltrates a secret meeting of anarchists and gets himself elected to as “Thursday,” one of the seven members of the High Council of Anarchists. If you think it is paradoxical that there should be a governing body of those dedicated to destroying governing body, a hierarchy for blowing up hierarchies, you might be right. You might also note that the main reason Syme becomes a detective in the first place is because he is a rebel against rebellion. The policeman who recruits him explains that there is a difference between the real anarchists and the innocent ones who merely think rules are bad and should be broken. The real anarchists are something far worse than that. “They mean death. When they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without right or wrong, they mean the grave. They have but two objects, to destroy humanity and then themselves.” This is a prophetic description of the philosophy of the “real anarchists” who really would bring us the Culture of Death.

This seems to be one of those works that is timelessly relevant.

C.S. Lewis Slimed in the NY Times

Remember the way the media came after Mel Gibson before The Passion of the Christ was released? The smearing, the sliming, the lies and half-truths told about him and the film? Well, with the upcoming Narnia film, it's happening again to C.S. Lewis. Bunnie Diehl does a great job picking apart the New York Times article.

I've been listening to the audiobooks of the Narnia series and I don't at all see them the way the writer of the NY Times article and Lewis' critics see them. The writer (Charles McGrath) seems to have a problem with the lack of liberal sensibilities in the books:

And by the standards of political correctness, they commit a host of sins. They're preachy, they're sometimes gratuitously violent and they patronize girls. The villains, moreover - the Calormenes, who dwell in the south - are oily cartoon Muslims who wear turbans and pointy-toed slippers and talk funny.

Oh dear...crimes against political correctness! We can't have that! Actually, the main female characters are, from what I can see, strong and intelligent. And I didn't see the violence as being gratuitous or even explicit.

McGrath also describes the books as having a "stodgy" message. Perhaps the message just flies right over his modern, oh-so-liberal head.

One more thing...much is made of C.S. Lewis' private life in this article -- particularly things that happened before he became a Christian. Like a lot of people, he apparently had some difficult, mixed-up family and personal relationships. Big deal.

Note: Edited for clarity.

Update: Gene Edward Veith posts this take-down of both the NY Times article and Phillip Pullman, one of Lewis' most obsessive critics. (Via Bunnie Diehl.) Here's more about Phillip Pullman from Peter Hitchens. (Via Veith.)

Update 2: I should have known that Get Religion would have a good post on this as well. Also, via the trackbacks in that post, this commentary by Michael Spencer.

The problem with so many journalists...

...is demonstrated by the exchange Hugh Hewitt recently had with sportswriter Dayne Perry. This post on Lex Communis has the good part and some great commentary to go with it. (Thanks to Kathy Shaidle.)

I found this exchange particularly interesting because I recently finished listening to the audiobook of Witness by Whittaker Chambers. When I was younger, I was led to believe that there were no communist spies in high places -- that it was all a bunch of silly cold-war paranoia. I was led to believe that there were only kindly, wise, peace-loving liberals who were accused of being communists by the evil, warmongering right-wingers.

I fell for this fairy tale and didn't question it all that much. When I wrote a research paper about McCarthyism in high school for my AP American History class, I remember my sources pretty much agreeing that Alger Hiss got a raw deal. I dutifully parroted this line of thinking and got an A- on the paper.

Long before I read (or rather, listened to) Witness, I started to question the "received wisdom" on this matter. It seems I vaguely remember hearing a few years ago about documents that confirm that Alger Hiss was indeed a spy for the Soviet Union. These documents are the Venona files that Hugh Hewitt brings up in the transcript linked above. As Kathy Shaidle points out here, the Venona files were made public ten years ago.

When I listened to Witness, I remember feeling so angry with these people. Here they were, living in freedom in this country, living in their nice houses, driving their nice cars and doing all their nice upper-middle-class things. And at the very same time, they were trying to destroy this country and destroy all those nice things and the freedom that makes them possible. If Alger Hiss (and Whittaker Chambers, before he rejected communism) had his way, the same miserable, squalid existence forced on the Russian people would have been forced on us.

Yes, this makes me angry. I'm glad these people were exposed. The media's and Hollywood's successful whitewashing of Hiss and others like him makes me angry, too. While McCarthy was wrong in the way he went about things, he was not wrong about the problem. And say what you want about the sleazy things Nixon did later when he was President -- when it came to the Hiss trial, he did the right thing.

Radio Blog Non-Update

I've decided the current songs in the Radio Blog are going to stay until next month. I don't have time to pick out new songs right now. And I think the audiobook of The Screwtape Letters is too long for the Radio Blog. However, I have made other arrangements* if you're interested in it.

*Hurry -- only for a limited time!

Update: I'm taking the audiobook down at midnight Friday night, so get it while you can.

Women and Media Spin

I was intrigued by this book, Spin Sisters by Myrna Blyth, when Laughin reviewed it on her journal a couple of weeks ago. Then I ran across this review of the same book (found via Thunderstruck) in Godspy.

I'll let the Godspy review sum up the premise of this book:

The female media elite, who edit the women's magazines we buy and host the news magazine programs we watch, are subtly feeding us negative, destructive messages that don't reflect our lives.

And here's more:

...Blyth points to polls that show that the average woman doesn't feel the way the mainstream media portrays her. She further says that women in the media sell victimhood because they believe it's true. Their answers to women's problems stem from their out-dated feminist ideology, liberal views, and pampered, wealthy lives.

Not hard to see, nor to believe. What can be tough, though, is separating agenda from truth as the two are so often woven together in the stories we're told. Two ideas are worth pondering when it comes to what we get served from the media: the power of an emotional story and the politicization of news.

And here's a great point from Laughin's post:

The reason women are targeted by the media is because women spend the money. So by scaring the crap out of women with stories of missing children, death, and sob stories, the media is able to keep the attention of women and therefore sell more ads. I am not sure if Blyth gets into marketing so much, but I see it all the time. Locally, channel 10 is the worst offender when it comes to the "You could DIE" mentality. "You could DIE" and to fix it, you need to write the government and demand this that or the other.

Women's magazines have never interested me all that much. And I don't like the sob sister mentality of a lot of media that's aimed at women. Even though all this media manipulation is pretty obvious to me, I'm interested in reading a book by someone who was once one of the manipulators. So I guess I'll be adding this one to my wish list.

(On a totally unrelated note, it looks like Laughin may be having her baby this weekend...congratulations Laughin!)

On Being Salt

I'm currently reading this book: Roaring Lambs by Bob Briner (d. 1999). I thought I would bring this up because there is a pretty good discussion going on in this Thinklings post regarding what Jesus meant when He said, "You are the salt of the earth..."

Here's an excerpt from the second chapter of the book:

When Jesus said, "You are the salt of the earth," He was speaking to anyone then or now who accepts Him as Savior. It is one of the clearest declarations in Scripture from Jesus to His followers. Notice, He did not say for us to become salt. He said we are salt. Once we accept Him into our lives we automatically are the salt of the earth.

The second part of the verse gives us insight into what being salt should mean: "But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men." So, just being salt is not enough. In fact, if we are salt and are not being salty, isn't it fair to say that we are good-for-nothing Christians? That's what the Scripture says to me.

But the question is what do we do? How do we act as salt in our world? The answer lies in the way salt is used. Salt is both a seasoning and a preservative. It seasons by adding taste and enhancing flavor. It preserves by cleansing and retarding spoilage. In both cases, the salt must be brought in contact with is [sic] object for its power to be realized. Sitting in the shaker, it does no good. It might as well be thrown out.

Any thoughts on this?

Left and Right Christians

Bene Diction links to this post on Connexions regarding the aforementioned David Limbaugh book. Richard Hall pooh-poohs the premise behind the book and then says the following:

So let me just offer one little reminder. "The Right" do not have a monopoly on Christianity. They are not the only ones taking their Bibles seriously. They are not the only ones on their knees in prayer. They are not the only ones with a passion for the gospel. Guess what? Some of us are committed disciples of Jesus and we've reached different conclusions about what that means. Get used to it.

Fair enough. Hall is right...I mean...correct about that. However, as a conservative, I would appreciate it if my fellow Christians on the left side of the political spectrum would give me the same courtesy. I mean, one of Richard's commenters actually trotted out this hoary old slogan: "The Christian Right is neither." I take that to mean that, since I'm a conservative, I can't be a Christian. Doesn't this slogan mirror the attitude that Richard is denouncing in his post? Or is it okay if the same attitude is expressed by a liberal?

As an aside here, let me address the topic of David Limbaugh's book Persecution. I haven't read the book and I have no current plans to read it right now. (Nothing against it -- I just don't have the time.) Some have said that what's presented in the book isn't real persecution. And I agree -- being ridiculed and harassed isn't comparable with being enslaved, killed and tortured. But you have to wonder if harassment might turn into true persecution somewhere down the road. I mean, in societies where Christians are persecuted, I'm sure it started off with little things...some harassment here, some inconveniences there. I think it's good to be vigilant and to not be too complacent.

Harry Potter Indifference

It seems like everybody in the Christian side of blogdom has something to say about Harry Potter, pro and con. For the record, I've never read a Harry Potter book nor am I interested in reading one. However, I have nothing against anyone reading a Harry Potter book. If you think Harry Potter books are bad, you may as well put away those Tolkien books or Lewis' Narnia books as well. That also means no watching The Wizard of Oz, no reading of fairy tales (or viewing Disney movies based on those fairy tales) and no reruns of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie on TV Land.

That's all I have to say on this subject...