Book Write-Up: Christy, by Catherine Marshall

I watched the TV series Christy in 1994, and again sixteen years later on the Gospel Music Channel.  It is based on Catherine Marshall’s novel, and it is about a nineteen year old girl, Christy Huddleston, who leaves the big city to teach in the Smoky mountains, working for a Christian mission.

For reasons that I detail here (though I flinch at some of what I wrote in that post), I did not care for Christy in 1994, but I really enjoyed it in 2010.  I have been reading Christian fiction lately, so I decided to read Christy, which is such an exemplary work of Christian fiction that there is a Christy Award for Christian authors.

It is a quality book, let me tell you that, higher in quality than most of the other works of Christian fiction that I have read.  While it does not use SAT words, the prose is a little less simple, so I feel a sense of accomplishment after reading it.  Moreover, the book has its share of religious discussions.  You have a pastor, David, who has been taught the historical-critical method of the Bible.  You have Miss Alice Henderson, a devout Quaker who still looks critically at Quakerism.  You have Dr. Neil McNeill, who believes that someone started the universe yet does not really believe in a God who cares for people, with all the suffering he’s seen as a doctor, his commitment to science, and the pain that he himself has experienced.  And you have Christy, a young woman trying to sort out and articulate what she believes and why.

There were many scenes in the book that made their way into the TV series and the movies, and there were scenes in the TV series and the movie that were not in the book.  The book also had scenes that I do not recall from the TV series and movies, such as the ones of Christy going to the city to request donations for the mission.  In many cases, the scenes were in a different order in the book from what they were in the TV series and movies.  In some cases, the book’s scenes were a bit different.  In the book, for example, the scene in which Pastor David is debating with Aunt Polly on her deathbed about what happens to people after they die (immortal soul vs. soul sleep?) presents Aunt Polly as having a bit more humility than she had on the TV show.  In the book, Aunt Polly had her convictions based on her interpretation of Scripture and her personal experiences, but she acknowledged that what happens after death is a much discussed and debated issue.

If I identified with anyone in the book, it would probably be David, the pastor, though I did not particularly care for David’s condescension to Christy.  David went to seminary and learned the historical-critical method.  He did not take all of the Bible literally, and he sought a naturalistic explanation for miracles (which I do not do myself, but I believe in other ideas of historical-criticism).  Yet, he admired Jesus as one who stood up for righteousness and justice, and he believed in an afterlife because, if nature manifests life after death through the seasons, why wouldn’t humans experience life after death?  David diligently serves the mountain community, but he questions his calling, since he entered the ministry to please his mother and sisters.  Miss Alice, who does not have the theological training that David has yet has lots of experience and wisdom, offers David valuable insights as he wrestles with whether to stay in the ministry or to leave.

Miss Alice was my favorite character in the book.  I pictured her as Tyne Daly, who played her in the TV series, even though Miss Alice in the book had blond hair.  Miss Alice encourages Christy’s questioning and attempts to figure out what she believes.  Miss Alice is a major proponent of reconciliation and sticking with relationships rather than ending them, which is a sore spot for me, but I still respected and admired her Christian walk.  In sharing with Christy why she believes that there is a God, Miss Alice referred Christy to the passage in John’s Gospel in which Jesus said that those who obey God know whether Jesus’ words are from God or are of human origin.  That seems to be a significant aspect of Miss Alice’s (and perhaps Catherine Marshall’s) theology: that one experiences God when one heeds God’s call to reach out and help someone, not just in a general sense, but when God calls one to help a specific person.

The book had valuable lessons.  I could identify with Christy when she wrote to businesses requesting donations, without telling the people with whom she worked what she was doing.  That led to disaster, as the mission began receiving a bunch of donations people did not want, and Christy ended up stomping on the mountaineers’ reluctance to receive charity, as well as the mission workers’ belief that one should not give to charity under pressure but only if one wants to do so.  Another part of the book that spoke to me involved sermons by David and Miss Alice.  David preached sternly against moonshining, and that offended people.  When someone got killed in a conflict over moonshining, there was a recognition that the funeral sermon needed to be tactful: it had to challenge the infighting and resentments within the mountain community, without appearing to attack the mountain people.  David let Miss Alice give the message, and it accomplished that very goal.  Miss Alice told the story of Lazarus.  Her message was winsome, but it firmly stood for what was right.

As in one of the movies, Dr. McNeill in the book repents before God while Christy is suffering from typhoid, saying that he loves Christy.  That would have been more believable had Dr. McNeill spent more time with Christy, as he did in the TV series and movies.  Moreover, I tend to recoil from non-believers being depicted as non-believing on account of some pain that they personally experienced, for many non-believers arrived at their conclusions for intellectual reasons.  Still, I do give Catherine Marshall credit for depicting Dr. McNeill as a good and caring person, even when he was a non-believer.

I should also note that, although Christy was a schoolteacher, there were not as many scenes of her teaching school as I anticipated.  A lot of the book focused on the surrounding community and its challenges.

I still enjoyed this book, and I can see why it is so highly-regarded.

Luxurious Day?

I don’t know what to write today, so I will consult the Daily Prompt.  The question for today is: “You’re given unlimited funds to plan one day full of any and all luxuries you normally can’t afford. Tell us about your extravagant day with as much detail as possible.”

I wouldn’t want that sort of day, to be honest.  I’d always be measuring my emotions—-am I truly happy right now, or should I be doing something else to make myself happier?  I’d be stressing out over making the right choices and trying to experience as much as I can, since I may never have an opportunity to have such experiences again.

I also have pretty simple tastes.  I am not that big on traveling.  I’m content with hamburgers, pizza, tacos, pasta, and Subways.  I like staying at home reading or watching Netflix.

I’d ask if I can take those unlimited funds and use them to pay off my student loans.

Book Write-Up: Faith of My Fathers, by Lynn Austin

Lynn Austin.  Faith of My Fathers.  Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 2006.

Faith of My Fathers is the fourth book of Lynn Austin’s Chronicles of the Kings series.  The first three books of the series focus on the righteous biblical King Hezekiah, who ruled Judah during the eighth century B.C.E.  The last two books are about Hezekiah’s son and successor, the wicked King Manasseh.  See here, here, and here for my blog posts about the first three books of the series.

King Manasseh is notorious in the Hebrew Bible for his wickedness, his shedding of innocent blood, and his adherence to paganism.  Years after King Manasseh’s evil reign, King Josiah of Judah inaugurated dramatic religious reforms that II Kings and II Chronicles affirm were approved by God.  Yet, according to II Kings 23:26, God was so upset over what Manasseh had done that God still planned to punish Judah, even after Josiah’s reforms.

The thing is, Manasseh was the longest-reigning king of Judah in the Hebrew Bible.  He ruled for fifty-five years (II Kings 21:1).  That’s longer than the reign of King David, the man after God’s own heart (forty years, I Kings 2:11).  It’s also longer than King Solomon’s reign (forty years, I Kings 11:42).  A long reign is supposed to be a good thing, and so one can envision Manasseh’s long reign troubling certain biblical authors.  God is one who rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, right?  How, then, could the wickedest king of Judah have the longest reign?  Some scholars have speculated that the Chronicler attempts to solve this problem by telling a story about Manasseh repenting and then inaugurating religious reforms that were approved by God (II Chronicles 33).  (There are scholars, however, who believe that there is actually an air of historical authenticity to that story, since it says that the Assyrians carried Manasseh off to Babylon.)

Faith of My Fathers focuses on two characters: Manasseh the son of King Hezekiah, and Joshua the son of Eliakim.  Eliakim was a close adviser to King Hezekiah.  Manasseh and Joshua were close, and yet Manasseh was troubled.  Manasseh lost his father when he was still young, and that led him to question aspects of the Torah, which affirmed that those who obeyed the Torah (as King Hezekiah tried to do) would live long.  Manasseh was not that generous of a person at the beginning of the book, since he was reluctant to give to a beggar.  But his path down the dark side began as he came to be influenced by the occult.  A blind beggar woman read Manasseh’s palm and told him that Joshua would compete with him for power.  Later, Manasseh interrupts some people who are secretly trying to communicate with the dead, and one of those people, Zerah, convinces Manasseh that he should be suspicious of Eliakim and the prophet Isaiah.  Eliakim and Isaiah are close, and they know things that they have kept secret from Manasseh.  Isaiah even predicted when Hezekiah would die, and the sun went backwards at Isaiah’s word.  This raises questions in Manasseh’s mind: Did Isaiah somehow contribute to Hezekiah’s death?  And why has Isaiah not used such fortune-telling abilities to help Manasseh?  Is something sinister going on here?

Even when Manasseh is conducting his wicked policies, however, there is still some good in him.  There is a part of King Manasseh that respects the Torah.  After all, his father believed in it, and Manasseh grew up learning it and, on some level, respecting it as authoritative.  Moreover, when Zerah tries to persuade Manasseh to sacrifice his firstborn, Manasseh is very hesitant.  He remembers his father Hezekiah telling him that, back when he (Hezekiah) was a child, Hezekiah’s father King Ahaz attempted to sacrifice Hezekiah to Molech.  Manasseh has some distaste towards child sacrifice.  And yet, Manasseh is seduced by the power and prosperity he could gain from the occult and from paganism.  Zerah persuades him that the pagan path that he is promoting is actually consistent with the earlier stages of the Torah—-the Abrahamic religion, or at least the Torah before the priests got their hands on it—-and that his path leads to greater intimacy with the divine.  Manasseh also enjoys the services being held at night, since services in the daytime when it was hot made him feel oppressed by God; plus, Manasseh was becoming upset because kings of other nations were also priests, whereas traditional Yahwism excluded him from that role.  Manasseh proceeds down the pagan path and notices that nothing bad has happened to him—-actually, he has been doing quite well, and a channeler assures him that the divine council approves of his policies.  Manasseh concludes that he is on the right path.

Isaiah is executed in the course of Manasseh’s reign.  So is Eliakim, and Eliakim’s father, Hilkiah, dies in prison.  That means that Joshua, Joshua’s brother Jerimoth, and their mother Jerusha have to flee.  They are assisted by Maki, one of Joshua’s servants, and also Maki’s daughter Miriam, and two of Miriam’s brothers, Nathan and Matti, all of whom are considered to live on the wrong side of the tracks.  Shebna, the atheist adviser to Hezekiah, gets the news of what is going on and flees, too.  Eliakim’s daughter Dinah, however, is taken by Manasseh and becomes his concubine.

Joshua is bitter about the dramatic interruption to his life: he was being trained to be an adviser in the king’s court, and that was disrupted.  There were plans for him to marry a woman named Yael, and those got thwarted.  And, what’s more, he lost his beloved father and grandfather. Joshua becomes alienated from God.  When Joshua returns to Jerusalem from Moab to find Yael, he talks with his Torah teacher from his youth, and the Torah teacher gives him things to think about: perhaps this loss can serve to build Joshua’s character.  Joshua reflects that perhaps his experiences have made him a better person—-wiser, humbler, and less snobbish.  Joshua reflects that perhaps he kept the Torah to get a reward from God, rather than focusing on serving God.  Yet, Joshua still has a lot of rage inside of him.

Joshua leads a plot to smuggle the Ark of the Covenant, the priests and Levites, and even Manasseh’s righteous (albeit not particularly politically-motivated) brother Amariah to Egypt, where they can set up a true sanctuary for God.  Lynn Austin bases this, in part, on the existence of a Jewish sanctuary in Elephantine, Egypt.  There are a number of ideas about when that sanctuary came to exist, and one is that it was during the days of King Manasseh.

There were three things in particular that I appreciated about this book.  First of all, as in all of Lynn Austin’s books that I have read thus far, there is an acknowledgment of the complexity involved in trying to understand and apply Scripture.  Manasseh grills Isaiah about apparent contradictions between the Torah and Isaiah’s teachings: How can Isaiah claim to have seen God, for example, when the Torah affirms that no one can see God and live?  Some of Zerah’s arguments were pretty off the wall, and yet some were similar to what some scholars have argued: that there was a stage of the Torah that approved of sacrificing the firstborn, and a later hand modified that policy.  According to Zerah, the priests replaced sacrifice of the firstborn with monetary redemption because the redemption money would go to the Temple, into priestly hands!  Lynn Austin may think that there is a correct interpretation of the Torah and that it is clear-cut to seekers of truth—-that those who diverge from the true interpretation are misapplying the Torah or disregarding the context of passages.  (She makes such a statement in the Epilogue.)  Yet, it is interesting to me that she often lets things stay ambiguous in her book: people have different interpretations of the Torah or the prophets, and the “wrong” interpretations are not always refuted with sound exegesis.  Obviously, I disapprove of sacrifice of the firstborn (as does Austin).  My point is that I appreciate how Austin highlights different interpretations of the Torah, and the complexity involved in trying to apply the Torah’s principles.

Second, I liked the character of Hadad, who was Shebna’s grandson.  Hadad was a drunk and was a disappointment to his late grandfather (who still loved Hadad), and yet Hadad made a decision to do the honorable thing and help Joshua.

Third, the scene in which Joshua and company are trying to get out of Jerusalem—-while rescuing the tightly guarded Amariah and Dinah—-was quite tense.  I wondered how they would do it!
In terms of criticisms, I have mixed feelings about how Manasseh at the beginning of the book was depicted as not-so-generous to the poor.  In the previous books, Shebna, the atheist, was not particularly compassionate, either.  I could envision somebody taking the sorts of stances that Shebna did—-after all, many Republicans today take similar stances (don’t encourage refugees, don’t forgive debt, etc.)—-and yet I would prefer for there to be some acknowledgment that even a non-believer can be generous to the vulnerable.

I also have mixed feelings about how Joshua got Dinah rescued—-he essentially blew up a grain silo to distract the guards, and this took the lives of eight people.  I was hoping that Joshua, or at least one of the righteous characters, would have expressed some remorse about that, even if there were not many other alternatives.

That said, I enjoyed this book, and, sometime in the future, I will read the last book of this series.  I am hoping also to read Austin’s Civil War trilogy, for I am curious as to how she depicts the different stances regarding slavery, and how the Bible was used to defend and to oppose it.

Better to Give Than to Receive

At church this morning, the theme during the children’s part of the service is that it is better to give than to receive. The pastor’s puppet, Jake, had a long list of Christmas wants, and the pastor was trying to teach Jake to give gifts, not just receive them.  Jake told the pastor to close his eyes and Jake would tell the pastor what his gift would be.  “What do you see?,” Jake asked.  “Nothing,” the pastor replied.  “And that’s exactly what I’m giving you for Christmas!”

This whole theme was pretty ironic because that Bible verse was on my mind a couple of days ago.  We were at the Goodwill, and I was looking at the books and movies.  I usually try to set a limit on how much I will spend, but, overall, I base my determination of what I will buy on what I want—-what I may enjoy reading or watching, or what may be useful to me, either now or down the road.  But I saw a couple of Gene Autry DVDs—-each DVD had four movies—-and I remembered that my pastor was a Gene Autry fan.  I decided to get those for him, even though those movies would bring personal enjoyment to him and not to me.  I think I made the right decision.  I wonder how I would have responded to the theme of the children’s part of the service had I made the opposite decision!

Focusing on giving rather than receiving is a challenge for me, but it is necessary.  What will motivate me to say “hi” to people, even though I am afraid that they will not return my greeting, or even when they have not in the past?  The answer is: the rule that it is better to give than to receive.

II Chronicles 10

In II Chronicles 10 and I Kings 12, Northern Israelites, led by Jeroboam, go to King Rehoboam and challenge him to lessen their burdens of taxation.  Rehoboam confers with the elders, and they advise him to do so, since that will win over the people.  Rehoboam also consults with some young men, and they advise him to be really harsh with the Northern Israelites and to flex his muscle.  Rehoboam goes with the young men’s advice, and the result is that Northern Israel secedes.

The Orthodox Jewish Artscroll commentary maintains that there are differences between the stories in II Chronicles 10 and I Kings 12.  In I Kings 12, the elders are offering Rehoboam advice about the immediate situation, and that advice is about how the king can manipulate the Northern Israelites so that they will serve him.  The elders, after all, say “If today” (I Kings 12:7), indicating that they are speaking of the situation at hand.  And they essentially suggest that Rehoboam serve and speak kindly to the people, and the people will then be his servants.

In II Chronicles 10, on the other hand, the elders are offering Rehoboam a model of kingship in general, as a way to guide Rehoboam on how to address the situation at hand.  The Artscroll notes that, in II Chronicles 10:7, the elders are advising Rehoboam about how he can be of benefit to the people.  They are saying that kingship is to benefit the people.  Rehoboam is then to use that as a guide in handling their demands.

The Artscroll says that Rehoboam’s harsh response to the Northern Israelites was misguided, but it denies that the response was evil, for the harsh response arguably accorded with precedent.  Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 8a says that Joshua used a rod to beat Israel’s head, and B.T. Sotah 40a interpreted I Chronicles 28:2 to mean that the Israelites would be David’s brothers if they listened to him but his subjects if they did not.  But Rehoboam’s response was still misguided because it encouraged the Northern Israelites to rebel.

Am I convinced by what the Artscroll is saying?  Overall, not particularly, but I will admit that I Chronicles 10 spells out that the king is to benefit the people.

Sire, Dawkins, Apologetics

I was reading a post by Christian apologist Stephen Bedard a few days ago.  In this post, Bedard was reviewing a book by another Christian apologist, James W. Sire, entitled Apologetics Beyond Reason.  Bedard says the following:

“James Sire, in his book Apologetics Beyond Reason, makes it clear that he is unhappy with the evidential apologetics popular among apologists today. He offers as an example the Kalam Argument put forth by William Lane Craig. Sire confesses that he would fall into the presuppositional camp of apologists…The basic idea that Sire offers is that instead of arguing to God, we should be arguing from God. In order to do this, Sire uses a number of examples from literature to show that God is the presupposition. In this, he is using something called literary apologetics.”

This interested me because I read this blog post soon after writing my review of Kevin Diller’s Theology’s Epistemological Dilemma, in which Diller argued that the thoughts of theologian Karl Barth and Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga are actually compatible.  Both Barth and Plantinga, I would say, believe that we should reason from God rather than to God.  For Barth and Plantinga, people who know God do so because God has revealed Godself personally to them, not on account of their reasoning their way up to a belief in God through philosophical or historical arguments.  I do not know to what extent Sire agrees and disagrees with Barth and Plantinga, but there does appear to be some overlap.

Bedard’s post also interested me because it reminded me of when Sire came to speak at my undergraduate institution, back when I was a student there.  Incidentally, Sire came to speak there at the same time that atheist Richard Dawkins was there.  Some evangelical students attended Dawkins’ Question and Answer session in order to trap Dawkins, but other evangelicals attended Sire’s lecture, bringing non-believing friends with them.  While many thought that Intervarsity invited Sire specifically in response to Dawkins’ appearance, Intervarsity insisted that it did no such thing—-that it was a coincidence.  Actually, one Intervarsity leader told me that Dawkins and Sire showing up at the same time was not particularly helpful, since people were asking Sire about evolution, even though that was not Sire’s field of expertise.  (Actually, I asked Sire about that topic.)

I attended Sire’s lecture.  My understanding of Sire’s argument is that we see in Scripture that God tells Moses “I am that I am.”  God is what God is, not what we want God to be.  Sire asked us to consider that as a proposition.  He may have also said that he could not envision human beings making that sort of proposition up, so it probably came from God.  (I’m writing from memory, which is not perfect.)

The non-believing students there, and even some believing students, were not particularly impressed.  “What if you don’t believe in the Bible?,” the first questioner asked Sire.  Sire said that he was not resting his argument on biblical authority, but was asking us to consider “I am that I am” as a proposition.  After the event, I was giving a student a question to ask Dr. Sire on my behalf about the Holocaust (since I would not be able to attend Sire’s Q and A the next day), and a non-believing student saw that and sarcastically said, “God does not have to explain himself to us—-he is the I Am!”  The next morning, at class, a non-believing student was telling our professor about Sire’s lecture.  The non-believing student thought Sire was using circular reasoning—-appealing to the Bible to defend the Bible.

The non-believing students may not have grasped the subtleties of what Sire was saying, but I could understand their concern: Sire did not prove to them the existence of the God of the Bible.  He, in their eyes, did not give them any foundation for it.  This was just one lecture, though, and I may want to read some of Sire’s books, where he fleshes things out more.

Something that did impress me was when I saw Sire the next day at Richard Dawkins’ lecture, taking notes on what Dawkins was saying.  Sire was not afraid to hear an alternative point-of-view.  As an academic, that interested him.

Atheist Fiction

One blog that I read is Bob Seidensticker’s Cross Examined.  Bob is an atheist.  In a recent post, he was talking about two books that he has written: A Modern Christmas Carol, and Cross Examined: An Unconventional Spiritual Journey.  They are works of fiction.


I was thinking of requesting review copies from Bob, but I decided to buy the Kindle books instead, since their price is low.  In my mind, it’s all right for me to buy low-cost Kindle books, as long as I don’t do so every single day!  Also, I already have plenty of review books lined up, so I don’t want to feel rushed to get to Bob’s book.  On my online Kindle, they are there for my convenience.

I’ve been reading Christian fiction.  I might as well give atheist fiction a chance.  I enjoy stories that explore big questions.