Solomon wrote, “Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). Posts under this category mean that I’ve gotten to the end of another among the many.
The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis is a worldview game-changer. Rather, it’s a book about how certain attempted changes to the game are bringing an end to humanity, and in the name of humanity. That’s bad.
Ward’s book is a commentary on Lewis’s book, with background material and line by line explanations of references and persons that Lewis assumed his 1943 academic audience would know.
As with many commentaries, After Humanity is three times the length of Abolition‘s original text. Yet Ward knows his stuff (Ward’s Planet Narnia is one of my all-time favorite books), and the extra pages will repay the effort of reading. Maybe read Lewis three or ten times, then read Ward, then go back to Lewis yet again.
I’ve known about this book for years. I’ve had a guess about the gist of the book since being told the title. I’ve even had the book set strategically on my desk in eye-sight (evidence below) for over a year, both to remind me about long-term efforts, and to remind me to actually read the book. I finally did.
The story is fictional, and French. The guts of the story come from gathering details about a number of Gothic cathedrals built in Europe in the 12-14th centuries. It’s interesting that the only real qualification in the Preface is that the “story of its almost uninterrupted construction…represents a somewhat ideal situation,” and that’s still with the finished product taking eighty-six years.
The hand-drawn illustrations are good, and the life illustrations are even better.
“Being indistractable means striving to do what you say you will do.” That’s a good, stipulative definition.
What’s good about this book is that it urges personal responsibility rather than whining. Eyal reminds the reader that most of our distractions are chosen by us as a way to “relieve discomfort.” That may hurt, but it helps to get to the root. Eyal also works from a position of opportunity instead of fear. Email, tech, the Internet, etc., are tools, and don’t need to be treated as monsters. As he says, “Techno-panics are nothing new,” and I’m thankful he is not one of them.
Much of the book follows more expected productivity presentation, and I’d recommend Atomic Habits instead.
I’ve been plodding through this book since the middle of last November when a friend recommended it to me after I made noise about having an interest in starting a local newspaper. It’s the only book about journalism I can remember reading, and I’m satisfied with my time spent in it. I can’t imagine ever rereading it, and it would take a special case for me to recommend it.
Some of the observations were edifying, such as the goal of journalism to “create a public square with common facts.” Later, “Community creation has always been at the heart of the news.” And, “Journalism is our modern cartography. It creates a map for citizens to navigate society.” I do see news as “more of a service–a means for providing social connection and knowledge–then a fixed product.” The news is “the literature of civic life.”
But when it comes to recommended journalistic elements such as “disinterested pursuit of truth,” “loyalty” to citizens, and a journalist’s “conscience,” those sound good, sure, but what are the first principles for right and wrong, for faithfulness, and where do they come from? They can’t come from within the sphere of journalism, nor can they come from the citizens themselves. There must be a higher standard or there can be no ultimate answers.
Anyway, I’m thankful to have had the challenge to think through some of these issues.
This is a classic, relevant before it was even published as a book, and relevant ever since, with eternally relevant questions for non-Christians and immediately relevant reminders for believers. You should read it.
I’d known about the book for a long time but had never read it. Then, a few weeks ago when war started (again) between Russian and Ukraine, I saw on the tweetstream someone mention that he had started reading Mere Christianity, and I remembered that Lewis originally prepared most of the material for the book as he shared it over a radio broadcast series in England during WW II. Similar contexts, then and now, made now seem like the right time for me to pick it up.
I didn’t realize how many Lewis-ian ideas came from Mere Christianity. This is where the “Lord, Liar, or Lunatic” apologetic comes from. It’s where he says, “the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next” and “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.” It’s where he quotes George MacDonald that as a Father “God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy.” And it’s where he talks about how men who try to be original can’t be, but “if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before), you will, nine times out of the, become original without ever having noticed it.”
I don’t agree with Lewis (because I disagree with his reading of the Bible) on the degree of freedom in man’s will, and he is wrong (again, according to Scripture) about how some “people in other religions … [can] belong to Christ without knowing it.” While these false things can’t be ignored, they are, ironically, defeated by so many of the true things that Lewis says.
“It costs God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert rebellious wills cost His crucifixion.”
God is killing our need to be needed, and He is doing more than making us “nice,” He is making us new men. Mere Christianity will edify and fortify such men.
This is the third time I’ve read Virgil’s epic. I had to look up my previous reviews to see what I said, probably about how much I didn’t like it. This reading was different, not because I found a different translation, but because I had a different motivation. I’m giving a talk about it in a couple days, and preparing for the talk pushed me to pay attention to it more closely.
I don’t think I enjoyed it more, or liked it more, but I definitely do appreciate it more. In God’s prophecies and purposes (and I do mean the true God, not the so-called gods Virgil references), the river of Western civilization flowed to and through and from Rome, and the Aeneid provides the city’s origin story, which did seem to bring about a sort of peace within the Empire among those for whom Virgil’s poem provided good patriotic feels.
You definitely should read this at some point. It would be even better if you could read some of it in Latin, which, as it turns out, is actually much more colorful. You could also check out this (new to me) translation by C. S. Lewis, though he only finished a little more than two of the twelve total books in the story. And last, you could check back in a few days when I post the notes from my talk.
2018, March 28 – Read the whole epic thing this time around for our Tenebras class. The gods do not agree, Turnus is mad, and watch out for Camilla.
2013 – Read much of this poem, but not all, this time through with the Omnibus class. Shows the power of story, and the power of art to tell a story, for providing purpose to a people’s culture.
Many years ago I heard John Piper say that one of his seminary teachers had encouraged each student to choose a theologian and make that theologian his, as in, “consider the outcome of [his] way of life, and imitate [his] faith” (Hebrews 13:7). While I’ve appreciated almost all of Piper’s biographies on different men, Jonathan Edwards was obviously Piper’s choice.
I am a different man (Christian, husband, father, shepherd) because of God’s use of Edwards in my life; affections for the win. I also am abundantly thankful for John Calvin, and even named my only son after him. But when I really got down to making a choice, I decided to try to read all the things I could by Abraham Kuyper. Most days I try to pick up and plod through five minutes of whatever is my current Kuyper.
On the Church is one of the twelve volumes in his Collected Works in Public Theology. It’s a collection of various writings on the subject, and I had actually read some of the entries before (for example, Rooted and Grounded, which is fantastic, is its own booklet). It was really interesting to read Kuyper’s almost giddy enthusiasm for the state of the (Calvinistic) church in the United States, free from State encroachments and entanglements. This is, if it ever was as great as Kuyper describes, no longer the case.
Kuyper loved the Church/churches, pastored a few churches, started a new denomination of churches, and constantly worked to edify the churches whatever hat he was wearing at the moment. More than that, Kuyper loved the Head of the Church, and consistently points to Him.
Jesus Christ himself can be established as the binding agent of the fellowship of the church. He in fact must be the lively center of the whole organism of the church; he is like the hub of the wheel, by whose rotations and circular motions the entire effort of the church receives its impulse and is moved. He is that splendid sun, whose shining radiance glitteringly illuminates the whole church body, by whose glowing heat the heart of the whole church is warmed and inflamed.
It’s probably been too long since I’ve read a book-length treatment of preaching. There are probably too many blog posts about it these days, and while they are fine, they are not always as well vetted. It compares to the productivity bloggers who write up their exhaustive thoughts after one whole week trying a new system/app.
Brooks’ book comes from lectures he gave at Yale University (in 1877) after almost twenty years of preaching. While I don’t think he and I would be doctrinal twins, I certainly appreciated his homiletical observations.
For what it’s worth, Brooks wrote “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and was a contemporary of the well-known evangelist, D. L. Moody (from whom my father-in-law and brother-in-law were named).
Here are just two of my (many) underlined quotes, both tagged in my system as #emergency for when I need some vocational encouragement:
“And so the first business of the preacher is to conquer the tyranny of his moods, and to be always ready for his work.” (p. 63)
And:
“A man’s first wonder when he begins to preach is that people do not come to hear him. After a while, if he is good for anything, he begins to wonder that they do” (p. 60)
I read this again because the men’s group at our church is working through it this year. Watson is full of wisdom. And like Proverbs, the book can be hard to read in big chunks, partly due to Watson’s pithy language and partly due to the proliferation of proverbial wisdom; you want your mind to marinate.
Though man is in the title, it’s not just something for males; ladies would benefit. But ladies would also be abundantly blessed without reading it if the men in their lives lived out the application Watson pictures.
Just one quote as an example (get and read the book for more like it):
“He who hath only a painted holiness, shall have a painted happiness.”
