--Today I'd like to draw your attention to Frank Peretti's THE OATH (Word Publishing). This novel was recently featured in a front-page article in THE NEW YORK TIMES on the increasing popularity of religious fiction. The story, which involves a mysterious threat that is stalking and killing the not-so-innocent citizens of a small town in the Pacific Northwest, has some of the overtones and some of the pacing of contemporary thriller fiction. Even when read strictly as a thriller, this is an entertaining book. Frank Peretti is a naturally talented story teller. (His radio drama, "Tillie", about the tragic consequences of abortion, is a classic.) The story was engaging enough that I stayed up for three nights straight to finish it (including one once-in-a-blue-moon night alone at home with free rein to watch ESPN to my heart's content). THE OATH compares well with many secular best sellers.
But this book really belongs in another, older genre, that dates back to THE INFERNO and PILGRIM'S PROGRESS--the Christian journey through doubt, fear, and sin to faith, hope, and love. If, on this Thanksgiving day, you're feeling lost or wrong in your life, and you are a person who is drawn to novels and fiction as a way to feel and learn, this would be a good place to turn, with an open mind and a humble soul.
August 5, 1995
When I was in college, I inadvertently became engaged in a debate with a family friend over the question of whether THE TAMING OF THE SHREW is sexist. I took the position that SHREW is not really a sexist play because, in my view, the action of the play is not a simpleminded demonstration of the inferiority of women, but rather, an illustration of the changes that each of us must make within ourselves to have individual and, thus, marital psychic harmony. In this view, the point of the play is not to decide how men's and women's responsibilities should be apportioned in a particular premodern society, but rather to meditate on a broader and more universal theme: the attainment of serenity.
I was reminded of this debate this summer when my friend John went to a Promise Keepers convention in Southfield. For those who haven't heard of this movement before, Promise Keepers is a Christian men's group whose focus is on, what else, keeping promises, essentially to put God and family first. John was quite distressed because the coverage in the Detroit newspapers portrayed Promise Keepers as a patriarchal, back-to-the-Fifties program, whose not so hidden purpose must be to subordinate women. John pointed out that quite the contrary, the purpose of Promise Keepers as he understood it is to serve God and family. As the Shakespeare story I told above may foreshadow, I find it quite reasonable to believe that men who strengthen their spiritual commitments can serve their families better. It's not always so, of course; there has been a lot of patriarchal oppression practiced in the name of religion. But I believe that ideology is less important than humanity.
I believe that when God looks down from eternity, he does not judge us on whether our ideology--or our theology-- was correct or advanced in the context of its times; he judges us on how well our lives have served His purposes. And, for Christians, the Four Gospels make those purposes quite plain. "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Nothing more and nothing less. My view is that just as TAMING OF THE SHREW has enduring value because it is a play about how to love, not how to hate, the Promise Keepers movement will have enduring value to the extent that it is a movement about how to love.
These thoughts and conversations are what made me curious enough to read SEVEN PROMISES OF A PROMISE KEEPER and THE POWER OF A PROMISE KEPT (Focus on the Family Publishing) this summer. The books are quite different. SEVEN PROMISES is the standard workbook for the movement. It's an interesting book, and it will help you figure out if Promise Keepers is for you. But it's a book written by a committee--I'm too lazy to type all 7 names that appear on the cover--and although it has quite a few good passages, it also feels rather choppy.
From the perspective of the book-lover, the sequel-- THE POWER OF A PROMISE KEPT, by Gregg Lewis--is the better book. It is a collection of short stories describing the effect that the Promise Keepers movement had on the lives of men who are struggling with questions about the meaning and purpose of their lives. The stories are quite interesting--Lewis has a lot of novelistic talent and the issues presented are universal enough to be moving even if you're not starting from a Promise Keepers perspective. There's a narrative "pull" to this book that's lacking in the earlier volume.
My recommendation: read THE POWER OF A PROMISE KEPT, then ask around at your church to see if there's a Promise Keepers or men's program there. That's the best way to find out if these books will help you get on the path to the "highest and best use" for your life.
Nihilism is a good cue to mention DEADLY SINS, the collection of essays originally published in the New York Times Book Review and reprinted last year by William Morrow & Co. Despite the stellar list of contributors--Thomas Pynchon, Mary Gordon, John Updike, William Trevor, Gore Vidal, Richard Howard, A.S. Byatt, Joyce Carol Oates--and the cleverness of the writing, this is ultimately a trifling book that doesn't measure up to the late Henry Fairlie's THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS TODAY. The fundamental flaw in too many of the essays (Updike, Vidal, Pynchon, for example) is that they do not take sin seriously; they assume explicitly or implicitly that it is an archaic concept in the light of modern psychological and cultural thinking. The genius of Fairlie's book was that he made precisely the opposite case--he explained why a medieval-sounding concept like sin still matters in our spiritual lives today.
August 26, 1994
For a non-church-going person raised in a materialistic social science family, I've always had a strong taste for reading Christian books. When I was 15 I read Dante's INFERNO and have returned to it many times (as well as to Niven and Pournelle's seventies remake of the same title). One of my favorite books of all time is Henry Fairlie's THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS TODAY, which I came across at the Swarthmore Public Library in the midst of a lonely freshman year otherwise devoted primarily to reading mystery novels from the forties.
Another much-loved favorite is C.S. Lewis's THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS. Ironically, as it turns out, one of the subtexts of this book--which I first read from a completely secular perspective, if it is possible to read a book about the Devil from such a perspective--is the story of how a young sceptic is brought to Christianity by his wife's love and the Christian fellowship of her believing friends and family. I say "ironically" because now much the same thing has happened to me. The call that I have heard for years has finally become too loud to ignore. I decided tonight to turn my life over to the care of God. I believe there is a God and I commit myself to do His will.
Editor's Recommendations, Summer 1996In this inaugural edition of IBIC's Featured Books, I'd like to draw your attention to several titles which have helped to shape my life and thinking.
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