Lynn Sislo comments on an article about a young preacher who has been charged with heresy by his denomination. It seems that the preacher has been teaching that non-Christians might still be able to go to heaven; the denomination’s position is that that’s false doctrine and that he ought not be teaching it.

I don’t mean to speak to which of the parties is correct (though I’ll note that Holy Scripture and nearly 2000 years of Christian tradition are on the denomination’s side). Nor do I intend to speak to Lynn’s contention that if the preacher is really called by God that he has no reason to care what the denomination says (though I could say a few words about human frailty, as well as the fact that if God called the preacher, he equally called the preacher’s superiors). Nor will I go into the various means the Church has used over the last 2000 years to determine the truth of various doctrines.

No, what I want to talk about is an interesting contention of Lynn’s. She says this about the article:

I like this part:

…said the Joint College in a statement March 29. Despite “repeated, compassionate and loving overtures,” it added, Bishop Pearson refused to quit preaching that doctrine.

“Compassionate and loving overtures” to force a preacher to stop preaching according to his beliefs, which are more compassionate than the official version.

It’s that phrase, “more compassionate than the official version.” What Lynn is saying, clearly, is that it’s more compassionate to say that non-Christians can go to heaven than it is to say that they can’t. And I’m trying to understand the logic here, because it purely doesn’t make sense. Where does compassion come into this?

It’s not as though the preacher’s contention that non-Christians can be admitted to heaven actually admits them to heaven, or that the denomination’s contention that they can’t be actually bars them from heaven.

Either there’s a heaven, or there isn’t. If there isn’t, it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans what either the preacher or his denomination says. If there is a heaven, as Christian doctrine teaches, then either non-Christians can be admitted or they can’t. This young preacher is either right or wrong. But whether he is right or wrong has no bearing on whether God admits non-Christians to heaven or not. So in what sense can he be held to be compassionate? Compassion that doesn’t lead to acts of mercy is just a cheap feeling.

Now, on the other hand, let’s suppose for a moment that there is a real heaven, and a real hell, eternal joy on one side, eternal torment on the other. And let’s suppose for a moment that Christians go to heaven and non-Christians don’t. I don’t care for the moment whether you believe this or not–just, for the sake of argument, suppose that it’s true. Let’s think about the implications.

The preacher is saying, “It doesn’t matter if you’re a Christian or not, you can still go to heaven and have eternal bliss.”

His denomination is saying, “That’s not true. If you’re not a Christian, you’re subject to eternal damnation.”

Now remember, we’re assuming, for the moment, that his denomination is correct. In that light, which of the two is the more compassionate? Is it more compassionate to tell people what they want to hear, and make them feel good, at the possible cost of eternal suffering? Or is it more compassionate to tell them things they dislike, and make them angry at you, in the hopes that some among them will win through to eternal bliss?

I know which of those two positions has the greater personal cost.

I don’t know what’s in Lynn’s mind. But when I hear this sort of thing, that somehow it’s more compassionate to tell people that their actions do not have eternal consequences, I always feel that I’m being maligned–that the speaker assumes that I like consigning people to hell–that it’s a bowl of cherries to me. That I think that the God that I believe in loves me and those like me, but hates the people whose actions I disapprove of.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t pretend to any moral superiority; God offers salvation and the hope of heaven to every man and woman. The Christian who calls people to God is like a man in a power boat, rescuing flood victims from the roofs of their houses. When he says, “If you’re not a Christian, you can’t go to heaven,” all he’s really saying is, “The waters are rising. If you don’t get in the boat, you’re going to drown.”

Meanwhile, our popular young preacher is telling folks to stay on the roof, the flood waters aren’t going to go that high. Maybe he’s right. Me, I’d rather be in the boat.

And frankly, I’d rather you were in it with me, because I really don’t want to watch you drown.

My kids think I am the nerdiest mother ever since I began teaching, or I
should say, reteaching myself basic algebra this spring. My 16 year-old son
mutters things about mumblemumble mom doing mumble algebra for mumble fun
and, like, mumble get a life, jeez mumblemumble. My daughter is a little
less subtle. She just declares to any and all that she has the weirdest mom
in the whole world. Do I care? Not in the least.

There is a story behind this. I didn’t just wake up to some odd biological,
midlife, menopause-related crisis with a burning desire to solve equations
for x or to delve into the mysteries of the quadratic theorem.

First of all, my daughter is LD and needs mucho help with homework. She
actually gets mathematical concepts quite well; it’s figuring out what the
problems are saying and what is the stupid question that is hard for her.
Copying from one spot to another, as in copying down a problem and then
recopying it as you do the work, is another difficulty. So quite often I am
explaining and checking math. That’s ok when we’re talking long division or
fractions. Percentages are a snap. So is factoring and figuring out common
denominators. But you start combining letters with numbers in any equation
and I start getting just a wee bit befuddled. Faking it doesn’t work either.
Tried that—-she got every problem wrong. I got a snotty email from the
teacher. And next year she’s in high school with real algebra, not just the
watered down, wussy 8th grade version. Yikes!

Second, I am unemployed right now. I have a fair amount of free, quiet time.
There are only so many times you can clean the house. The dog is not a good
conversationalist. Boredom sets in.

Saxon is fairly well known in the homeschool circles. He uses a simple
format of 4 lessons and then a test. Each lesson teaches one small increment
or concept with 5 or 6 worked examples. Then you are given a couple practice
problems specifically on the concept taught. Finally, there are 30 problems
that review all the material learned up to and including that lesson. There
is a 20 problem test given at the end of the 4 lessons that is actually
testing things learned in the prior lesson set. So on the test after lesson
80, you are questioned on the concepts taught up to lesson 76. By reading
the explanations and then following along as the examples are worked, you
pretty much have all the teaching you need because everything is taught in
very small steps. There are no tricksy problems. All is straight forward and
above board. It takes me roughly an hour to do a lesson.

The critique I’ve heard of the program is that there isn’t enough
repetition. Some kids need the 5 extra worksheets with 50 problems each to
get the concepts and in a schoolroom situation, the teacher needs those
resources in order to teach. It also is just straight math. No “real life”
applications aside from the word problems. No hands-on learning activities
demonstrating why a certain concept is important to a particular profession.
Actually, I like that about the book. My daughter’s book from school is so
full of culturally diverse examples and cool scientific applications, it’s
hard to find the math problems in it. Curriculum committees might not find
it so wonderful, tho.

So I ordered the next book in the series, Algebra 2, and I may take this new
little passion all the way to calculus. I am finding the lack of ambiguity
in math comforting somehow. There is an answer; all you have to do is
correctly follow the steps. As an adolescent I found that frustrating beyond
belief. As a middle-aged adult, it’s kind of nice that at least in some
things in life, there are concrete answers to certain questions even if they
are questions like “what is the slope-intercept method for finding the
equation of a line on a rectangular coordinate grid?”

Keeping Watch is a stand-alone book, but the major character
is one of the minor characters in another of her books, Folly.

It has an interesting premise. Allen Carmichael rescues children from hopeless
situations. To be more exact, he kidnaps them for an organization that
places them in safe homes when either their parents or social services
refuse or can’t keep them from abusive situations. Often he helps both a
mother and the children escape. Rarely, is it just the child. And it’s all
completely illegal also making his life just a little abnormal.

This time his organization, headed by a Feminist With An Attitude, has been
contacted by a child who claims his father is going to kill him. They call
in Allen to watch the house and the child to substantiate the claim. He has
all sorts of interesting skills with technology and is able to, indeed,
verify that the child is in danger and that the father is extremely abusive.
He takes the child, with the kid’s consent, and places him in a family
chosen by his organization in the wilds of Montana. And then he decides to
quit. Living below the radar is too stressful, too dangerous and he’s got a
love interest in his life. Except the kid’s father disappears under
suspicious circumstances and Allen begins to wonder if the kid set them all
up, taking out his father after he was safely away.

The other half of the book, the background to all this, is Allen’s
experiences in Vietnam. He has lived for years with post traumatic stress
disorder and the residue of killing children in Nam. The risk of the rescue
effort is his therapy and expiation for the past.

The whole book is fascinating. There really is an organization like the one
described in it. In fact, King references it in the novel. Her descriptions
of people’s mental states are spot on without being over the top. The
waffling that Allen goes thru, not knowing if the kid is a psycho or a
victim is so believable. And it has a realistic ending. I’m thinking about
rereading again soon just because I enjoyed it so much.

At last we’ve reached the final volume of Brust’s epic three volume
novel, The Viscount of Adrilankha, and it’s a doozy: all the
swashbuckling, derring-do, and ridiculously long conversations you’ve
come to expect, plus the end of the story complete with a “Where are they
now?” section.

I hesitate to say too much about the plot, given that this is the final
volume not just of the extended novel but also of the Khaavren series as
a whole; I don’t want to give anything away. I will, however, make two
relatively general comments.

First, to my great joy and delight, Vlad Taltos is mentioned in this one,
in the context of Morrolan’s endless party at Castle Black. At least, he
doesn’t really appear as all of the action predates his birth; but Paarfi
mentions that the party is still on-going, even at the time of writing,
and that throughout its long history many of the notables of whom he has
written have frequently been found there…along with, occasionally,
other less savory elements. Which is to say, Vlad.

Second, we get an interesting insight into how truthful Paarfi is. In
Teckla, a Teckla tells Vlad of an encounter he has with a
wrathful Lyorn who can only be our old friend Aerich. In this volume we
see the encounter from Aerich’s point of view. Needless to say, there
are discrepancies….

Anyway, you should go out and buy The Phoenix Guards, the first
title in this series, if you haven’t read it already.

To paraphrase an old joke,

Q: What’s worse than an earworm in your head?

A: Half an earworm.

For those who haven’t heard the term, an “earworm” is one of those songs that gets stuck in your head and won’t leave. But it’s a lot worse when you can only remember half of it. If you remember the whole thing, it just goes round and round and round and you can try to ignore it. But if you only remember half of it, it goes round and crashes each time and attracts your attention.

And when one half of an earworm meets one half of a different earworm, well…I shudder to contemplate.

(Do I speak from present experience? Why, yes. Yes, I do.)

I intentionally posted my list of ten books (see the previous post) without looking at anyone else’s list, and I see that I’ve done it a little bit differently than some other folks have. In the other lists I’ve looked at, folks have listed books that were important to them during the various stages of their lives, that is, books that influenced them at a particular point in time but might do so no longer.

I, on the other hand, tried to list books that not only were influential in my life, but which still are. This probably explains why I had to pad my list a little; much as I love P.G. Wodehouse, I can’t claim that he’s influenced my world view or personal philosophy or faith.

So…what books have influenced me in the past, but have world views I would now reject?

Off-hand, I can think of two, both of which I encountered when I was in high school and wishing (for reasons I won’t go into at the moment) that the Christian faith in which I’d been raised would go away and leave me alone.

The first was Atlas Shrugged, one of the few books the very mention of which can cause any otherwise polite and well-mannered on-line forum to dissolve into rancor and ad hominem attacks in a matter of moments. I was a devoted follower of Ayn Rand for a year or so and did not abandon her until my resurgent faith and intellectual honesty made it necessary.

I do however retain one idea that has its roots in Atlas Shrugged, and so perhaps I should have included it in my list yesterday. It’s not an idea that appears in Atlas Shrugged; it resulted from my reflections on Rand’s gospel of selfishness and the Bible’s gospel of mercy and charity. Simply put, it is the idea that moral obligations are not necessarily reciprocal.

Ayn Rand tells me that the poor, huddling masses have no right to my goods, my money, or any other fruit of the sweat of my brow. And to this I agree. No man has any right to demand that I give him anything whatsoever, simply on the grounds that he needs it. And Rand further says that it is evil to give without receiving; that economic transactions are the basis for human morality. And this I deny.

My Christian faith tells me that I must feed the poor and clothe the naked. And to this I agree–not because the poor and naked have deserve my goods, but because Christ has given me the forgiveness that I do not deserve. As he has given freely to me, so I must give freely to others, not because of their claim on me, but because of his.

And so I find myself in the odd position of agreeing with Rand who the villains are in her book, but disagreeing with her about the proper response of her heroes.

The other book that comes to mind is (of all things) Harry Harrison’s Deathworld Trilogy — not because it’s a particularly weighty piece of work, but because it’s where I first had my nose rubbed in the fact that moral values are not universal. And, as with Rand, I find that I agree with Harrison on the facts, but not on the conclusion. It is true that moral virtues differ from place to place, and from age to age. It is not, therefore, true that all moral values are relative, as Harrison’s hero would have it, or that a society’s moral standards must be judged by how functional they are for that society. Rather, as C.S. Lewis points out in The Abolition of Man, values are in fact absolute; and any society’s values will differ from the absolute according to that society’s besetting sins.

All this is clear enough to me now. But at the time, I found Harrison’s ideas–or, rather those of his characters–shocking, subversive, and compelling. And though I would have stoutly denied being a relativist had you asked me, it’s still the case that some of the habits of mind I formed then persisted for years. For example, if all morality is relative, then the standards of any group you’d care to name are as valid as my own. The problem is, it’s not really possible to believe that–it’s not really possible to believe that two contradictory things are both right, not when both of them are right in front of you. Not at first. And so what happens is, you start to deprecate your own values in favor of the values of everyone else. You start giving more weight to the values of other cultures and less to your own–and that makes you feel tolerant and broadminded, not like those people who claim that they know the real truth.

The trouble is, that point of view is irrational at best–for the other cultures don’t agree either. In the end you’re swept hither and thither by tides of opinion, for your moral compass has been swept overboard.

I’ll stick with the values I grew up with, thanks. I’ll undoubtedly have to fine-tune them from time to time–but at least I won’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Over at Brandywine Books, we’ve been asked to blog the ten books that have shaped our lives. I got curious thinking about what my ten books would be, and here’s what I came up with, in no particular order.

1. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
2. Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis
3. The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis
4. The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis
5. The Bible
6. The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis
7. The Most of P.G. Wodehouse, by P.G. Wodehouse
8. H.M.S. Surprise, by Patrick O’Brian
9. Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett
10. The Dunwich Horror, by H.P. Lovecraft

The first six are the books that formed my worldview. It might seem that C.S. Lewis is over-represented, but that’s true in my head as well. I thought about tossing in something more of Tolkien’s (“Leaf by Niggle” is another favorite) but decided that nothing else of his was as influential in my life.

The latter four are by the authors whose writing I’d most like to emulate; I picked a representative volume from each. I feel odd including them, because they haven’t particularly shaped my thinking, but my only other options were to stop at six books or to pad the list out with four more books by Lewis.

It seems that they are going to publish a series of books containing the complete run of Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts” comic strip, and the first volume, spanning 1950 to 1952, has just come out. That round-headed kid sure looked different back then! Beatrice has the story.

I don’t think I would class this book as a mystery, per se. Or, to be more
specific, it does not follow the normal patterns and conventions of the
genre. It isn’t exactly a thriller either, though my experience with that
genre is limited at best. I’d call it suspense. Hitchcock could have done
wonderful things with this book.

The story revolves around Rae Newborn who moves to an island off the coast
of Washington that she has inherited from her father. The island is not
inhabited having been turned into wildlife sanctuary of some sort years
before, but near its only navigable beach is the ruin of a log cabin flanked
by stone towers originally built in the 20’s or 30’s by her great-uncle. Rae
is a world famous woodworker/artist who also happens to suffer from severe
chronic depression and suicidal ideation. She comes to the island to try to
recover something of her life after losing her beloved husband and young
daughter in a car accident, sparking off yet another breakdown and long path
back up from the pit. She has also suffered an attempted rape while still
on the mainland, leaving her shaken and paranoid and only that much more
depressed. She also comes to the island to rebuild the house. The work,
the fresh air and mostly the solitude are her prescription for therapy
over drugs and doctor’s offices. And she’s doing
well beating back her paranoia and fears when she finds a footprint near
the spring she is piping her water from.

The book really showcases King’s own interest in building and woodworking.
You can tell this woman has actually worked with tools and wood and building
plans before. It adds to the verisimilitude of the book. It also brings up
the mysterious element in the novel since Rae’s great-uncle vanished years
before with no further contact with the family and the house was burned to
the ground just after he left it. Rae uncovers clues about him while
salvaging the wreckage. And she begins to feel the presence of someone else
on the island. Ghostly, almost. Is it her paranoia or is it real? There is
the footprint, but she could have left it herself without knowing. Honestly,
until the end, I couldn’t figure out which. I didn’t see the ending coming
at all.

It’s an interesting read. Very different from the humorous mysteries she
normally writes. Actually, though, I found myself thinking about it, almost
hoping she would write a sequel so I can find out what happens to the house
and to Rae and the island.

I’d meant to post a review of Steven Brust’s latest, Sethra Lavode, tonight, but things are heating up on the Snit front. With luck I’ll get to it tomorrow.

In the meantime, Deb, you got any more reviews to send me? I believe I’ve used the lot.