Wed - October 18, 2006
New book coming: Dinesh D'Souza blames 9/11 on the American Left
Dinesh D'Souza, a conservative scholar and author, has a new book coming out in which he holds the American Left responsible for 9/11.
Wednesday, October 18,
2006
Book being discussed:
The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left And Its Responsibility For 9/11
by Dinesh D'Souza
Dinesh D'Souza: The Left is Responsible for 9/11
I have read Dinesh D'Souza's book The End Of Racism , a book which I found to be amazing, with its thorough coverage of history and careful rebuttal of typical arguments made. (Dinesh D'Souza is a scholar at Stanford University.) Thus, when I saw the title of Dinesh D'Souza's new book, I was immediately curious. It is called The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left And Its Responsibility for 9/11 . Since I just got the book today, I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but here is what the back cover says about it:
=========================================================================
In The Enemy At Home, bestselling author Dinesh D'Souza makes the startling claim that the 9/11 attacks and other terrorist acts around the world can be directly traced to the ideas and attitudes perpetrated by America's cultural left.
D'Souza shows that liberals -- people like Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank, Bill Moyers, and Michael Moore -- are responsible for fostering a culture that angers and repulses not just Muslim countries but also traditional and religious societies around the world. Their outspoken opposition to American foreign policy -- including the way the Bush administration is conducting the war on terror -- contributes to the growing hostility, encouraging people both at home and abroad to blame America for the problems of the world. He argues that it is not our exercise of freedom that enrages our enemies but rather our abuse of that freedom -- from the sexual liberty of women to the support of gay marriage, birth control, and no-fault divorce, to the aggressive exportation of our vulgar, licentious popular culture.
The cultural wars at home and the global war on terror are usually viewed as separate problems. In this groundbreaking book, D'Souza shows that they are one and the same. It is only by curtailing the left's attacks on religion, family, and traditional values that we can persuade moderate Muslims and others around the world to cooperate with us and to begin to shun the extremists in their own countries.
=======================================================================
I am particularly eager to read this because of my experience with Dinesh D'Souza's writings, the way he so carefully thinks things through and logically delivers his arguments. He's not some ranting madman like Bill O'Reilly or Ann Coulter; he is careful in what he does. I'm in the middle of reading Richard Dawkins's book The God Delusion right now, so I want to finish that, but I think I will start this D'Souza book as soon as I finish The God Delusion.
In closing, here's the biographical information about D'Souza on the back cover: "Dinesh D'Souza, the Rishwain Research Scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, is the author of several bestselling books, including Illiberal Education: The Politics Of Race And Sex On Campus , What's So Great About America , and, most recently, Letters To A Young Conservative ."
Now listening to:
Death Of The Party
by Kudu
Book being discussed:
The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left And Its Responsibility For 9/11
by Dinesh D'Souza
Dinesh D'Souza: The Left is Responsible for 9/11
I have read Dinesh D'Souza's book The End Of Racism , a book which I found to be amazing, with its thorough coverage of history and careful rebuttal of typical arguments made. (Dinesh D'Souza is a scholar at Stanford University.) Thus, when I saw the title of Dinesh D'Souza's new book, I was immediately curious. It is called The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left And Its Responsibility for 9/11 . Since I just got the book today, I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but here is what the back cover says about it:
=========================================================================
In The Enemy At Home, bestselling author Dinesh D'Souza makes the startling claim that the 9/11 attacks and other terrorist acts around the world can be directly traced to the ideas and attitudes perpetrated by America's cultural left.
D'Souza shows that liberals -- people like Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank, Bill Moyers, and Michael Moore -- are responsible for fostering a culture that angers and repulses not just Muslim countries but also traditional and religious societies around the world. Their outspoken opposition to American foreign policy -- including the way the Bush administration is conducting the war on terror -- contributes to the growing hostility, encouraging people both at home and abroad to blame America for the problems of the world. He argues that it is not our exercise of freedom that enrages our enemies but rather our abuse of that freedom -- from the sexual liberty of women to the support of gay marriage, birth control, and no-fault divorce, to the aggressive exportation of our vulgar, licentious popular culture.
The cultural wars at home and the global war on terror are usually viewed as separate problems. In this groundbreaking book, D'Souza shows that they are one and the same. It is only by curtailing the left's attacks on religion, family, and traditional values that we can persuade moderate Muslims and others around the world to cooperate with us and to begin to shun the extremists in their own countries.
=======================================================================
I am particularly eager to read this because of my experience with Dinesh D'Souza's writings, the way he so carefully thinks things through and logically delivers his arguments. He's not some ranting madman like Bill O'Reilly or Ann Coulter; he is careful in what he does. I'm in the middle of reading Richard Dawkins's book The God Delusion right now, so I want to finish that, but I think I will start this D'Souza book as soon as I finish The God Delusion.
In closing, here's the biographical information about D'Souza on the back cover: "Dinesh D'Souza, the Rishwain Research Scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, is the author of several bestselling books, including Illiberal Education: The Politics Of Race And Sex On Campus , What's So Great About America , and, most recently, Letters To A Young Conservative ."
Now listening to:
Death Of The Party
by Kudu
Posted at 06:11 PM
Tue - October 3, 2006
Book Review: Righteous - Dispatches From The Evangelical Youth Movement
A secular Jewish journalist decided to see what young evangelical Christians were like, so she went on a cross-country expedition, hanging out with conservative Christians of all stripes. Her ethnography of this experience is quite interesting.
Tuesday, October 3,
2006
Book being reviewed:
Righteous: Dispatches From The Evangelical Youth Movement
by Lauren Sandler
Author Reports On What Young Evangelical Conservatives Are Like
Judging by the blurbs on the back cover of this book, it is directed toward secularists. Sam Harris, author of The End Of Faith , says of this book, "Our children are gleefully preparing a bright future of ignorance and religious fascism for us all. If you have any doubt that there is a culture war that must be waged and won by secularists in America, read this book." Kevin Phillips, author of American Theocracy , describes the book as "a frightening portrait." Brad Land, author of Goat , considers the book an "examination of a great national ill." Michael D'Antonio, author of Fall From Grace: The Failed Crusade Of The Christian Right , says, "Read this book and you will understand this Disciple Generation and the challenge it poses to a civil society."
But this book is not written as some call to action, in the way political books are. It is more like an anthropological study, where the author, an editor at Salon magazine, disturbed that George W. Bush won a second term via values voters, wanted to see who these people were, so she decided to hang out with these people and write about her experience. She limited her sample to evangelical youth culture, but within that age group, she found a wide variety of subcultures.
Apparently I'm not the target audience of this book; nevertheless, I found it to be fascinating. I was raised an evangelical and have remained an evangelical all my adult life (I'm now in my mid-forties). My interest in this book was seeing how someone from the outside would view evangelical culture, particularly the more "hip" factions of it, as opposed to the usual stereotypes of the white-dress-shirt, tie-wearing crowd. I get tired of journalists and academics spouting stereotypes about evangelicals that only reveal their ignorance about the culture. I was glad to see someone really take the time to see what these people are about.
While I was only expecting this book to be a look at how an outsider looking in views the culture, it turned out to be much more than that for me. I actually learned quite a bit about the various subcultures within the evangelical culture at large. Sandler studies a diverse group of evangelicals, from pro-lifers at a Christian rock festival and skaters , to more mainstream types like Mars Hill Church in Seattle and prosperity theology churches, to the polished business attire college students of a politically right wing Christian college . In one chapter, she covers the sons of the well-known Christian figures James & Tammy Faye Bakker, James Dobson, and the son and grandson of Billy Graham; this was an interesting contrast! I should mention that while the groups represented a wide variety of evangelical subcultures, nearly all were theologically conservative; not many liberal evangelicals (such as the Sojourners types) were included.
Throughout the book, Sandler tells of her experiences of hanging out with each of these groups, observing their behavior and speech, and talking with them herself. It appears that she was able to open a communicative connection with most of the people she encountered, that she was able to earn enough trust of those she studied so that they let her see themselves as they are, sharing their honest views with her.
Two strengths in this book that I'd like to mention. First, from time to time she includes some historical perspective that I found to be an excellent tie-in to the current situation. Secondly, she made an attempt to explain why such theologically and sometimes socially conservative movements appeal to youth in a post-modern world. I thought her analysis was good, although of course it misses some of the spiritual aspects that I wouldn't expect someone outside the faith to understand.
Throughout the book, though, Sandler never lets you forget her disdainful bias against these evangelicals. She says she is a secular Jew, and she makes it clear she is not impressed by what she sees, although I think she saw more positives than she expected to when she started this adventure. In fact, near the end of the book, she tells of two very positive experiences, one when a small group prayed for her, and another in a worship service.
All through the book she takes a kind of anthropological approach, albeit with sardonic comments and analysis peppered in. She seemed open to what she was learning about them, as if she were gaining a respect for them, even though she could not agree with them. Then in the last chapter she shocked me by her complete change of direction. No longer the anthropologist, she becomes a fierce preacher, with an alarmed call to arms that secularists must gather forces, unite, and fight back these frightening, dangerous people. I'm a bit baffled by this change of direction. Not that I ever thought, while reading the book, that she was going to say, "What do you know, I like these people after all," but still, I was not prepared for the nearly panicked warring cry she belts out in the final chapter, in the vein of the authors quoted on the back cover: "frightening," "great national ill," threat to "civil society," and "religious fascism"!
The tirade in the last chapter weakens her book, but you can easily skip that chapter. There are 8 chapters, 232 pages, of very informative cultural study that would be enlightening to secularists and Christians alike. For evangelicals like me, the book provides interesting material on the lifestyles and views of other evangelicals. For secularists, the variety of experiences she reports on can help inform them how evangelicals really live and think, so that they will rely less on stereotypes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
October 22 addition:
The above review is what I posted at Amazon.com. Amazon now allows comments of response to reviews, and someone blasted me as being "narrow-minded": "This reviewer seems to be saying that you should only read those parts of the book that agree with your world-view. And I would assume that he applies the same philosophy to other reading material. If so, he nicely exemplifies the narrowmindedness that one generally associates with evangelicalism and other forms of religious fanaticism -- the very thing that Sandler is so alarmed about."
I was taken aback by this accusation, a bit perplexed as to how he even came to such a conclusion from what I wrote. The two people who posted comments in response to his clarified it for me, and defended me. Apparently, when I said you can easily skip the last chapter, he had made the assumption that I was saying it wasn't worth reading because it didn't fit my views. But I had pointed out in just the previous paragraph that the author made sardonic comments about the evangelicals all through the book, so clearly the book as a whole is not something an evangelical who only reads that which supports his views would read--or at least not respond to as positively as I did. To me, this commenter merely displayed how his prejudice caused him to jump to conclusions that were inaccurate.
At Amazon, for every yes vote a person gets on reviews, it increases their reviewer rank (no votes take away). If you find my review helpful, please go to the web page and vote yes on my review. Also, be sure to check out Lauren Sandler's Righteous website, a very nicely done website, for more information about the book, as well as pictures of some of the people she met along the way.
Book being reviewed:
Righteous: Dispatches From The Evangelical Youth Movement
by Lauren Sandler
Author Reports On What Young Evangelical Conservatives Are Like
Judging by the blurbs on the back cover of this book, it is directed toward secularists. Sam Harris, author of The End Of Faith , says of this book, "Our children are gleefully preparing a bright future of ignorance and religious fascism for us all. If you have any doubt that there is a culture war that must be waged and won by secularists in America, read this book." Kevin Phillips, author of American Theocracy , describes the book as "a frightening portrait." Brad Land, author of Goat , considers the book an "examination of a great national ill." Michael D'Antonio, author of Fall From Grace: The Failed Crusade Of The Christian Right , says, "Read this book and you will understand this Disciple Generation and the challenge it poses to a civil society."
But this book is not written as some call to action, in the way political books are. It is more like an anthropological study, where the author, an editor at Salon magazine, disturbed that George W. Bush won a second term via values voters, wanted to see who these people were, so she decided to hang out with these people and write about her experience. She limited her sample to evangelical youth culture, but within that age group, she found a wide variety of subcultures.
Apparently I'm not the target audience of this book; nevertheless, I found it to be fascinating. I was raised an evangelical and have remained an evangelical all my adult life (I'm now in my mid-forties). My interest in this book was seeing how someone from the outside would view evangelical culture, particularly the more "hip" factions of it, as opposed to the usual stereotypes of the white-dress-shirt, tie-wearing crowd. I get tired of journalists and academics spouting stereotypes about evangelicals that only reveal their ignorance about the culture. I was glad to see someone really take the time to see what these people are about.
While I was only expecting this book to be a look at how an outsider looking in views the culture, it turned out to be much more than that for me. I actually learned quite a bit about the various subcultures within the evangelical culture at large. Sandler studies a diverse group of evangelicals, from pro-lifers at a Christian rock festival and skaters , to more mainstream types like Mars Hill Church in Seattle and prosperity theology churches, to the polished business attire college students of a politically right wing Christian college . In one chapter, she covers the sons of the well-known Christian figures James & Tammy Faye Bakker, James Dobson, and the son and grandson of Billy Graham; this was an interesting contrast! I should mention that while the groups represented a wide variety of evangelical subcultures, nearly all were theologically conservative; not many liberal evangelicals (such as the Sojourners types) were included.
Throughout the book, Sandler tells of her experiences of hanging out with each of these groups, observing their behavior and speech, and talking with them herself. It appears that she was able to open a communicative connection with most of the people she encountered, that she was able to earn enough trust of those she studied so that they let her see themselves as they are, sharing their honest views with her.
Two strengths in this book that I'd like to mention. First, from time to time she includes some historical perspective that I found to be an excellent tie-in to the current situation. Secondly, she made an attempt to explain why such theologically and sometimes socially conservative movements appeal to youth in a post-modern world. I thought her analysis was good, although of course it misses some of the spiritual aspects that I wouldn't expect someone outside the faith to understand.
Throughout the book, though, Sandler never lets you forget her disdainful bias against these evangelicals. She says she is a secular Jew, and she makes it clear she is not impressed by what she sees, although I think she saw more positives than she expected to when she started this adventure. In fact, near the end of the book, she tells of two very positive experiences, one when a small group prayed for her, and another in a worship service.
All through the book she takes a kind of anthropological approach, albeit with sardonic comments and analysis peppered in. She seemed open to what she was learning about them, as if she were gaining a respect for them, even though she could not agree with them. Then in the last chapter she shocked me by her complete change of direction. No longer the anthropologist, she becomes a fierce preacher, with an alarmed call to arms that secularists must gather forces, unite, and fight back these frightening, dangerous people. I'm a bit baffled by this change of direction. Not that I ever thought, while reading the book, that she was going to say, "What do you know, I like these people after all," but still, I was not prepared for the nearly panicked warring cry she belts out in the final chapter, in the vein of the authors quoted on the back cover: "frightening," "great national ill," threat to "civil society," and "religious fascism"!
The tirade in the last chapter weakens her book, but you can easily skip that chapter. There are 8 chapters, 232 pages, of very informative cultural study that would be enlightening to secularists and Christians alike. For evangelicals like me, the book provides interesting material on the lifestyles and views of other evangelicals. For secularists, the variety of experiences she reports on can help inform them how evangelicals really live and think, so that they will rely less on stereotypes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
October 22 addition:
The above review is what I posted at Amazon.com. Amazon now allows comments of response to reviews, and someone blasted me as being "narrow-minded": "This reviewer seems to be saying that you should only read those parts of the book that agree with your world-view. And I would assume that he applies the same philosophy to other reading material. If so, he nicely exemplifies the narrowmindedness that one generally associates with evangelicalism and other forms of religious fanaticism -- the very thing that Sandler is so alarmed about."
I was taken aback by this accusation, a bit perplexed as to how he even came to such a conclusion from what I wrote. The two people who posted comments in response to his clarified it for me, and defended me. Apparently, when I said you can easily skip the last chapter, he had made the assumption that I was saying it wasn't worth reading because it didn't fit my views. But I had pointed out in just the previous paragraph that the author made sardonic comments about the evangelicals all through the book, so clearly the book as a whole is not something an evangelical who only reads that which supports his views would read--or at least not respond to as positively as I did. To me, this commenter merely displayed how his prejudice caused him to jump to conclusions that were inaccurate.
At Amazon, for every yes vote a person gets on reviews, it increases their reviewer rank (no votes take away). If you find my review helpful, please go to the web page and vote yes on my review. Also, be sure to check out Lauren Sandler's Righteous website, a very nicely done website, for more information about the book, as well as pictures of some of the people she met along the way.
Posted at 05:10 PM
Sun - October 1, 2006
Book Review: The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard
Richard Foster places this book in importance with the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, John Wesley, John Calvin, Martin Luther, Teresa of Avila, Hildegard von Bingen, "and perhaps even Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo." WOW! But truly this is a rich book, deep in meaning and an instrument for instilling growth in the Christian life. Here is my review of the book.
October 1,
2006
Book being reviewed:
The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God
by Dallas Willard , Professor at University of Southern California's School of Philosophy
A HEAVY BOOK FULL OF TREASURES
This is my second attempt to read a Dallas Willard book. This is my first successful completion of a Dallas Willard book! He has a dense, dry reading style that is difficult to plow through. But I could see as I was reading this book that there were spiritual gems to be found throughout, so I plugged away through it. It took me about six months to finish this 400-page book, but I'm glad I made the effort. (Six months because I had to find times where I was in the right alert, diligent state of mind to read it.)
What got me into starting reading it was that it was one of three books our church, a Vineyard congregation, did as part of a Lenten book study with an Episcopalian church in town. Our pastor introduced the books to our congregation in this way: "The Divine Conspiracy goes right to the heart of our beliefs at this Vineyard church; The Heart Of Christianity is something that those our friends at the Episcopal church would feel at home with, and A Generous Orthodoxy is somewhere inbetween the two." Others in the book study had similar views as mine toward this book: it was difficult reading, but valuable. Of the three books, I got the most out of this book by far.
Willard takes two well-known New Testament writings, the Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer, and dissects them at length. But these two pieces are not what the book is about; they are merely his prime theological starting points for developing his thoughts. The author's goal is to stir his readers into pursuing Christian growth, discipleship of Jesus, rather than just "living a Christian life," and approaching such a life as "sin management." It is a book of instruction on how to quit trying to do the right things, and instead become an apprentice of Jesus--become like him from the inside out, rather than from the outside in.
All three books we read in the book study had a focus on The Kingdom Of God. Reading these books helped me get a new understanding on the whole essence of Jesus' frequent descriptions of The Kingdom Of God. Willard scorns the view that being born again is about nothing more than getting a ticket to heaven, and points out the fruitless and empty lives of those who take such a view. If God's kingdom is among us, and we are to strengthen his kingdom, doing so is not merely a matter of getting other people to accept their tickets to heaven; it is fully living as Christ did when he was among us in the flesh.
Willard confronts our attitudes about Jesus, attitudes that we are generally not aware we have until he carefully exposes them and their implications. This can be painful to read at times. At other times, seeing God in a new way, a much better way than previously understanding him, is where the treasure comes in this book. This is not "new" theology, not catchy new illustrations of God's nature, or anything trendy like that. It is merely exposing where Christianity has gone wrong, where it has let cultural and traditional ideas infect Christians' views of what Jesus was saying, and thus what he expects of us.
Throughout this book, Willard tears down traditional understandings of the Bible and what Christianity is about that don't ring true, and views in the American culture that Christians have bought into that distort our understanding of God. Then he reconstructs the theology, followed by a very specific "how-to" section on what you need to do to become an apprentice or disciple of Jesus. Thus, the book covers both the understanding of the Kingdom, and also the guidance on how to respond to that understanding.
As I stated at the beginning, this is not a quick, easy read. However, I consider it to be important material, and worthwhile for wading through. You have to dig for the hidden gems, but they are gems indeed. And it's not like you could just get the gems by themselves, as in a Reader's Digest version or featured quotes -- digging for them (reading the entire book) is what makes you even realize what it is you have found.
I have reviewed this book at Amazon.com. Please visit the web page by clicking here , and vote yes on my review if you find it helpful. Thanks!
===============================================================================================================
For the remainder of this posting, I would like to include quotes from the book. The quotes are far more meaningful if you have read his explanations leading up to them, but to get that depth of meaning, you'd have to read the book.
Page 48-49: "What must be emphasized in all of this is the difference between trusting Christ, the real person Jesus, with all that naturally involves, versus trusting some arrangement for sin-remission set up through him--trusting only his role as guilt remover. To trust the real person Jesus is to have confidence in him in every dimension of our real life, to believe that he is right about and adequate to everything."
Page 242: "Prayer simply dies from efforts to pray about 'good things' that honestly do not matter to us. The way to get to meaningful prayer for those good things is to start by praying for what we are truly interested in. The circle of our interests will inevitably grow in the largeness of God's love."
(This reminds me of a part in the movie Bruce Almighty where God is telling Bruce to pray, and Bruce prays for world peace. God replies, "That's a nice prayer...if you're Miss America. Come on, what's really on your heart?")
Page 243: "Accordingly, I believe the most adequate description of prayer is simply, 'Talking to God about what we are doing together.' That immediately focuses the activity where we are but at the same time drives the egotism out of it. Requests will naturally be made in the course of this conversational walk. Prayer is a matter of explicitly sharing with God my concerns about what he too is concerned about in my life. And of course he is concerned about my concerns and, in particular, that my concerns should coincide with his. This is our walk together. Out of it I pray."
The following is the most important quote in the whole book to me, the one that shook me more than anything else in the book:
Page 244: "And God's 'response' to our prayers is not a charade. He does not pretend that he is answering our prayer when he is only doing what he was going to do anyway. Our requests really do make a difference in what God does or does not do. The idea that everything would happen exactly as it does regardless of whether we pray or not is a specter that haunts the minds of many who sincerely profess belief in God. It makes prayer psychologically impossible, replacing it with dead ritual at best. And of course God does not respond to this. You wouldn't either."
This paragraph was an arrow shot to the center of my heart. I've always had so much struggle maintaining an active prayer life. This paragraph painfully exposed why: Unbeknownst to me before reading this paragraph, I had the view that God is going to do what he's going to do anyway, but he just wants me to submit it before him. With this underlying belief, yes, prayer is a dead ritual, and his "answer" is a charade. It's a fatalistic view of life and of God; no wonder prayer time doesn't stick.
Page 250: "Prayer as kingdom praying is an arrangement explicitly instituted by God in order that we as individuals may count, and count for much, as we learn step by step how to govern, to reign with him in his kingdom. To enter and to learn this reign is what gives the individual life its intended significance."
Page 273: "Anyone who is not a continual student of Jesus, and who nevertheless reads the great promises of the Bible as if they were for him or her, is like someone trying to cash a check on another person's account. At best, it only succeeds sporadically."
Page 296: "And what does 'dwelling' or 'continuing' in his word mean? It means to center your life upon the very things we have been studying in this book: his good news about The Kingdom Among Us, about who is really well off and who is not, and about true goodness of heart and how it expresses itself in action. We will fill our souls with the written Gospels. We will devote our attention to these teachings, in private study and inquiry as well as public instruction. And, negatively, we will refuse to devote our mental space and energy to the fruitless, even stupefying and degrading, stuff that constantly clamors for our attention. We will attend to it only enough to avoid it."
Page 298: This is a direct quote from William Law in his book A Serious Call To A Devout And Holy Life: "You see such a mixture of sin and folly in the lives even of the better sort of people.... It was this general intention that made the primitive Christians such eminent instances of piety, that made the goodly fellowship of the Saints and all the glorious army of martyrs and confessors. And if you will here stop and ask yourself why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it."
Page 302: "There is a widespread notion that just passing through death transforms human character. Discipleship is not needed. Just believe enough to 'make it.' But I have never been able to find any basis in scriptural tradition or psychological reality to think this might be so. What if death only forever fixes us as the kind of person we are at death? What would one do in heaven with a debauched character or a hate-filled heart?"
Page 307: "We often speak of people not living up to their faith. But the cases in which we say this are not really cases of people behaving otherwise than they believe. They are cases in which genuine beliefs are made obvious by what people do. We always live up to our beliefs--or down to them, as the case may be. Nothing else is possible. It is the nature of belief."
Page 324: "Now we need to understand that what simply occupies our mind very largely governs what we do. It sets the emotional tone out of which our actions flow, and it projects the possible courses of action available to us. Also the mind, though of little power on its own, is the place of our widest and most basic freedom. This is true in both a direct and an indirect sense. Of all the things we do, we have more freedom with respect to what we will think of, where we will place our mind, than anything else. And the freedom of thinking is a direct freedom wherever it is present. We need not do something else in order to exercise it. We simply turn our mind to whatever it is we choose to think of. The deepest revelation of our character is what we choose to dwell on in thought, what constantly occupies our mind--as well as what we can or cannot even think of."
Page 334: "The key, then, to loving God is to see Jesus, to hold him before the mind with as much fullness and clarity as possible. It is to adore him."
Page 337-338: "We will never have the easy, unhesitating love of God that makes obedience to Jesus our natural response unless we are absolutely sure that it is good for us to be, and to be who we are. This means that we must have no doubt that the path appointed for us by when and where and to whom we were born is good, and that nothing irredeemable has happened to us or can happen to us on our way to our destiny in God's full world. Any doubt on this point gives force to the soul-numbing idea that God's commandments are, after all, only for his benefit and enjoyment, and that in the final analysis we must look out for ourselves. When the 'moral failures' of well-known Christians (and unknown Christians, for that matter) are examined, they always turn out to be based on the idea that God has required them to serve in such a way that they themselves must 'take care of their own needs,' rather than being richly provided for by God. Resentment toward God, not love, is the outcome, and from such a condition it is impossible to consistently do the deeds of love."
Page 356: In describing a time in college when he first discovered what I am about to quote, where he spent a whole day reading and meditating upon the Gospel of John: "In particular, I had learned that intensity is crucial for any progress in spiritual perception and understanding. To dribble a few verses or chapters of Scripture on oneself throughout the week, in church or out, will not reorder one's mind and spirit--just as one drop of water every five minutes will not get you a shower, no matter how long you keep it up. You need a lot of water at once and for a sufficiently long time. Similarly for the written Word."
Page 378: (regarding the afterlife) "We will not sit around looking at one another or at God for eternity but will join the eternal Logos, 'reign with him,' in the endlessly ongoing creative work of God. It is for this that we were each individually intended, as both kings and priests."
Page 379: "The intention of God is that we should each become the kind of person whom he can set free in the universe, empowered to do what we want to do. Just as we desire and intend this, so far as possible, for our children and others we love, so God desires and intends it for his children. But character, the inner directedness of the self, must develop to the point where that is possible."
Book being reviewed:
The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God
by Dallas Willard , Professor at University of Southern California's School of Philosophy
A HEAVY BOOK FULL OF TREASURES
This is my second attempt to read a Dallas Willard book. This is my first successful completion of a Dallas Willard book! He has a dense, dry reading style that is difficult to plow through. But I could see as I was reading this book that there were spiritual gems to be found throughout, so I plugged away through it. It took me about six months to finish this 400-page book, but I'm glad I made the effort. (Six months because I had to find times where I was in the right alert, diligent state of mind to read it.)
What got me into starting reading it was that it was one of three books our church, a Vineyard congregation, did as part of a Lenten book study with an Episcopalian church in town. Our pastor introduced the books to our congregation in this way: "The Divine Conspiracy goes right to the heart of our beliefs at this Vineyard church; The Heart Of Christianity is something that those our friends at the Episcopal church would feel at home with, and A Generous Orthodoxy is somewhere inbetween the two." Others in the book study had similar views as mine toward this book: it was difficult reading, but valuable. Of the three books, I got the most out of this book by far.
Willard takes two well-known New Testament writings, the Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer, and dissects them at length. But these two pieces are not what the book is about; they are merely his prime theological starting points for developing his thoughts. The author's goal is to stir his readers into pursuing Christian growth, discipleship of Jesus, rather than just "living a Christian life," and approaching such a life as "sin management." It is a book of instruction on how to quit trying to do the right things, and instead become an apprentice of Jesus--become like him from the inside out, rather than from the outside in.
All three books we read in the book study had a focus on The Kingdom Of God. Reading these books helped me get a new understanding on the whole essence of Jesus' frequent descriptions of The Kingdom Of God. Willard scorns the view that being born again is about nothing more than getting a ticket to heaven, and points out the fruitless and empty lives of those who take such a view. If God's kingdom is among us, and we are to strengthen his kingdom, doing so is not merely a matter of getting other people to accept their tickets to heaven; it is fully living as Christ did when he was among us in the flesh.
Willard confronts our attitudes about Jesus, attitudes that we are generally not aware we have until he carefully exposes them and their implications. This can be painful to read at times. At other times, seeing God in a new way, a much better way than previously understanding him, is where the treasure comes in this book. This is not "new" theology, not catchy new illustrations of God's nature, or anything trendy like that. It is merely exposing where Christianity has gone wrong, where it has let cultural and traditional ideas infect Christians' views of what Jesus was saying, and thus what he expects of us.
Throughout this book, Willard tears down traditional understandings of the Bible and what Christianity is about that don't ring true, and views in the American culture that Christians have bought into that distort our understanding of God. Then he reconstructs the theology, followed by a very specific "how-to" section on what you need to do to become an apprentice or disciple of Jesus. Thus, the book covers both the understanding of the Kingdom, and also the guidance on how to respond to that understanding.
As I stated at the beginning, this is not a quick, easy read. However, I consider it to be important material, and worthwhile for wading through. You have to dig for the hidden gems, but they are gems indeed. And it's not like you could just get the gems by themselves, as in a Reader's Digest version or featured quotes -- digging for them (reading the entire book) is what makes you even realize what it is you have found.
I have reviewed this book at Amazon.com. Please visit the web page by clicking here , and vote yes on my review if you find it helpful. Thanks!
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For the remainder of this posting, I would like to include quotes from the book. The quotes are far more meaningful if you have read his explanations leading up to them, but to get that depth of meaning, you'd have to read the book.
Page 48-49: "What must be emphasized in all of this is the difference between trusting Christ, the real person Jesus, with all that naturally involves, versus trusting some arrangement for sin-remission set up through him--trusting only his role as guilt remover. To trust the real person Jesus is to have confidence in him in every dimension of our real life, to believe that he is right about and adequate to everything."
Page 242: "Prayer simply dies from efforts to pray about 'good things' that honestly do not matter to us. The way to get to meaningful prayer for those good things is to start by praying for what we are truly interested in. The circle of our interests will inevitably grow in the largeness of God's love."
(This reminds me of a part in the movie Bruce Almighty where God is telling Bruce to pray, and Bruce prays for world peace. God replies, "That's a nice prayer...if you're Miss America. Come on, what's really on your heart?")
Page 243: "Accordingly, I believe the most adequate description of prayer is simply, 'Talking to God about what we are doing together.' That immediately focuses the activity where we are but at the same time drives the egotism out of it. Requests will naturally be made in the course of this conversational walk. Prayer is a matter of explicitly sharing with God my concerns about what he too is concerned about in my life. And of course he is concerned about my concerns and, in particular, that my concerns should coincide with his. This is our walk together. Out of it I pray."
The following is the most important quote in the whole book to me, the one that shook me more than anything else in the book:
Page 244: "And God's 'response' to our prayers is not a charade. He does not pretend that he is answering our prayer when he is only doing what he was going to do anyway. Our requests really do make a difference in what God does or does not do. The idea that everything would happen exactly as it does regardless of whether we pray or not is a specter that haunts the minds of many who sincerely profess belief in God. It makes prayer psychologically impossible, replacing it with dead ritual at best. And of course God does not respond to this. You wouldn't either."
This paragraph was an arrow shot to the center of my heart. I've always had so much struggle maintaining an active prayer life. This paragraph painfully exposed why: Unbeknownst to me before reading this paragraph, I had the view that God is going to do what he's going to do anyway, but he just wants me to submit it before him. With this underlying belief, yes, prayer is a dead ritual, and his "answer" is a charade. It's a fatalistic view of life and of God; no wonder prayer time doesn't stick.
Page 250: "Prayer as kingdom praying is an arrangement explicitly instituted by God in order that we as individuals may count, and count for much, as we learn step by step how to govern, to reign with him in his kingdom. To enter and to learn this reign is what gives the individual life its intended significance."
Page 273: "Anyone who is not a continual student of Jesus, and who nevertheless reads the great promises of the Bible as if they were for him or her, is like someone trying to cash a check on another person's account. At best, it only succeeds sporadically."
Page 296: "And what does 'dwelling' or 'continuing' in his word mean? It means to center your life upon the very things we have been studying in this book: his good news about The Kingdom Among Us, about who is really well off and who is not, and about true goodness of heart and how it expresses itself in action. We will fill our souls with the written Gospels. We will devote our attention to these teachings, in private study and inquiry as well as public instruction. And, negatively, we will refuse to devote our mental space and energy to the fruitless, even stupefying and degrading, stuff that constantly clamors for our attention. We will attend to it only enough to avoid it."
Page 298: This is a direct quote from William Law in his book A Serious Call To A Devout And Holy Life: "You see such a mixture of sin and folly in the lives even of the better sort of people.... It was this general intention that made the primitive Christians such eminent instances of piety, that made the goodly fellowship of the Saints and all the glorious army of martyrs and confessors. And if you will here stop and ask yourself why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it."
Page 302: "There is a widespread notion that just passing through death transforms human character. Discipleship is not needed. Just believe enough to 'make it.' But I have never been able to find any basis in scriptural tradition or psychological reality to think this might be so. What if death only forever fixes us as the kind of person we are at death? What would one do in heaven with a debauched character or a hate-filled heart?"
Page 307: "We often speak of people not living up to their faith. But the cases in which we say this are not really cases of people behaving otherwise than they believe. They are cases in which genuine beliefs are made obvious by what people do. We always live up to our beliefs--or down to them, as the case may be. Nothing else is possible. It is the nature of belief."
Page 324: "Now we need to understand that what simply occupies our mind very largely governs what we do. It sets the emotional tone out of which our actions flow, and it projects the possible courses of action available to us. Also the mind, though of little power on its own, is the place of our widest and most basic freedom. This is true in both a direct and an indirect sense. Of all the things we do, we have more freedom with respect to what we will think of, where we will place our mind, than anything else. And the freedom of thinking is a direct freedom wherever it is present. We need not do something else in order to exercise it. We simply turn our mind to whatever it is we choose to think of. The deepest revelation of our character is what we choose to dwell on in thought, what constantly occupies our mind--as well as what we can or cannot even think of."
Page 334: "The key, then, to loving God is to see Jesus, to hold him before the mind with as much fullness and clarity as possible. It is to adore him."
Page 337-338: "We will never have the easy, unhesitating love of God that makes obedience to Jesus our natural response unless we are absolutely sure that it is good for us to be, and to be who we are. This means that we must have no doubt that the path appointed for us by when and where and to whom we were born is good, and that nothing irredeemable has happened to us or can happen to us on our way to our destiny in God's full world. Any doubt on this point gives force to the soul-numbing idea that God's commandments are, after all, only for his benefit and enjoyment, and that in the final analysis we must look out for ourselves. When the 'moral failures' of well-known Christians (and unknown Christians, for that matter) are examined, they always turn out to be based on the idea that God has required them to serve in such a way that they themselves must 'take care of their own needs,' rather than being richly provided for by God. Resentment toward God, not love, is the outcome, and from such a condition it is impossible to consistently do the deeds of love."
Page 356: In describing a time in college when he first discovered what I am about to quote, where he spent a whole day reading and meditating upon the Gospel of John: "In particular, I had learned that intensity is crucial for any progress in spiritual perception and understanding. To dribble a few verses or chapters of Scripture on oneself throughout the week, in church or out, will not reorder one's mind and spirit--just as one drop of water every five minutes will not get you a shower, no matter how long you keep it up. You need a lot of water at once and for a sufficiently long time. Similarly for the written Word."
Page 378: (regarding the afterlife) "We will not sit around looking at one another or at God for eternity but will join the eternal Logos, 'reign with him,' in the endlessly ongoing creative work of God. It is for this that we were each individually intended, as both kings and priests."
Page 379: "The intention of God is that we should each become the kind of person whom he can set free in the universe, empowered to do what we want to do. Just as we desire and intend this, so far as possible, for our children and others we love, so God desires and intends it for his children. But character, the inner directedness of the self, must develop to the point where that is possible."
Posted at 06:11 PM
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Published On: Oct 22, 2006 07:18 PM
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Published On: Oct 22, 2006 07:18 PM