Patricia Lyon. Carnival Mirrors. Bloomington: Westbow Press, 2012. See here to buy the book.
Carnival Mirrors is about Patricia Lyon’s interactions with
the Jehovah’s Witnesses. My impression in reading this book is that she
was never actually a part of them, but that she interacted with them
when they came to her door, or when she saw them at the supermarket or
other places. She also attended at least one of their services, and she
has extensively read Jehovah’s Witness literature. Lyon herself is
from the Holiness tradition of Christianity, which strikes me as very
conservative.
The book is about her problems with Jehovah’s Witnesses arguments,
her attempts to fact-check things in Jehovah’s Witnesses publications,
and her interactions with Jehovah’s Witnesses themselves. Her arguments
against the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ beliefs were all right, I guess—-I
especially appreciated her point that I Corinthians 1:2 affirms that
believers are calling upon the name of the Lord Jesus, which may imply
that they were praying to him, thereby possibly contradicting the
Jehovah’s Witness claim that the early Christians did not regard Jesus
as God—-but there are other works out there that tackle the Jehovah’s
Witnesses’ beliefs more effectively, with a more secure footing in
Christian history and biblical languages. What made Lyon’s book
especially interesting to me, though, was her presentation of how some
Jehovah’s Witnesses are: that they decry Christmas as pagan, for
example, yet they exchange gifts near Christmas Day, and they wear
wedding rings, which themselves have a pagan background. I did not know
this. While this book may give the reader some insight into Jehovah’s
Witness sociology, one should remember that Lyon is presenting her own
experiences, and that others’ experiences may differ. She narrates that
she visited a Jehovah’s Witness service and found the people there to
be very cold, for instance, whereas a couple of evangelical Protestants
once told me that they visited a Jehovah’s Witness service and found the
people to be really friendly.
Some of what Lyon said got on my nerves. She criticized a Jehovah’s
Witness publication for quoting a statement by Will Durant that the
concept of the Trinity had a pagan origin. Lyon did well to note that
Durant was critical of other Christian beliefs as well, including
beliefs that Jehovah’s Witnesses happen to hold. What I did not like,
however, was her statement that Durant, as a pantheist, was not
qualified to interpret the Bible, since he was not a Christian, and only
those with God’s spirit can discern spiritual things (I Corinthians
2:14). In my opinion, Durant was making a statement about history, and
that should be judged on its own merits, regardless of what his beliefs
were. Lyon herself draws from encyclopedias in her book, as if what
they say is valid, and we do not know if the authors of those
encyclopedia articles were Christians. I would like to add, though,
that there was one piece of Lyon’s discussion of Christianity’s
similarity with pagan ideas that I actually liked: she acknowledged that
Jesus believed in a realm of the dead called Hades, and that there were
Greeks who believed in that, too. Her conclusion is that the Greeks
were close to the truth. I believe that Jesus there was reflecting
views that were a part of his historical context, but I do respect
Lyon’s wrestling with this issue, from her religious perspective.
Lyon struck me as rather perfectionist in places, and, while that did
annoy me, it also interested me and challenged me. She tells the story
of a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses who told her that they would read
something that she gave them, but they did not. Lyon goes on to quote
Revelation 21:8, which says that liars will burn in the Lake of Fire.
Really? They were just telling her they’d read it to be polite! Lyon
also criticizes Jehovah’s Witnesses for listening to country music,
which she believes reflects a morose despair that people with the spirit
of God do not have. But what about the sad spirit that we see in some
of the biblical Psalms? After discussing a Jehovah’s Witness who owned a
restaurant where people brought alcohol, Lyon says that “she would not
want to associate with people like this” (page 27), especially since she
has seen the ill effects of alcoholism in some of her relatives’
lives. I can sympathize with Lyon here, but did not Jesus hang around
with tax-collectors and sinners, and was he not called a wine-bibber
(Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:34)? While Lyon did annoy me in these parts of
the book, she also challenged me to look at my own ethical standards,
and whether they are high enough. I should also note that, near the end
of the book, Lyon does appear more compassionate and humane. She
acknowledges that everyone is imperfect. While she is against divorce,
she tries to understand the perspective of a man who may cheat on his
wife because the wife pushes him over the edge. Against the Jehovah’s
Witness prohibition on blood transfusions, she says that human life
takes precedent over obeying God’s law, and she notes the time in II
Chronicles 30 when King Hezekiah let impure Israelites partake of the
Passover so that they would not be discouraged from worshiping God. She
criticizes a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses for refusing to talk to a man
who lusted after women, saying that such an attitude does not reflect
the love of God.
The book probably could have used some narrative early on in which
Lyon talked about how and why she became interested in the Jehovah’s
Witnesses; as a reader, I somewhat felt as if I were jumping into the
middle of the story.
I give this book four stars because I did find it to be an
interesting account of how a Holiness woman interacts with Jehovah’s
Witnesses.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from BookLook Bloggers, in exchange for an honest review.