Bono on grace and karma

From the book Bono on Bono: Conversations with Michka Assayas (p203)

Interviewer: As I told you, I think I am beginning to understand religion because I have started acting and thinking like a father. What do you make of that?

Yes, I think that’s normal. It’s a mind blowing concept that the God who created the Universe might be looking for company, a real relationship with people, bit the thing that jeeps me on my knees is the difference between Grace and Karma.

I haven’t heard you talk about that.

I really believe we’re moved out of the realm of Karma into one of Grace

Well, that doesn’t make it clearer for me.

You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: and eye for and eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics – in physical laws -  every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It’s clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the Universe. I’m absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that “As you reap, so will you sow” stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.

I’d be interested to hear that.

That’s between me and God. But I’d be in big trouble is Karma was going to finally be my judge. I’d be in deep shit. It doesn’t’ excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace. I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don’t have to depend on my own religiosity.

Are some things more important to us than God?

Tim Keller has challenged me this morning with the final chapter of his book, Counterfeit Gods. He asserts that all of us have idols, and the task of being a Christian is to continually plunge new depths in you heart to uncover those idols. Idols, once uprooted quickly grow back. One of the questions he suggests to help discern those idols are these: What do you end up thinking or daydreaming about when there are no other constraints on your thoughts? When there isn’t a pressing problem or issue, what occupied your mind and gives you internal comfort? These can most likely point to your idols.

Why do we fail to love of keep promises or live unselfishly?… the specific answer in any actual circumstance is that there is something you feel you must have to be happy, something that is more important to your hear that God himself. We should no like unless we first had made something – human approval, reputation, power over others, financial advantage – more important and valuable to our hearts that the grace and favor of God. The secret to change is to identify and dismantle the counterfeit gods of your heart.

Can you help who you fall in love with? Can you be sure of marrying the right person?

A few years ago I wrote a short comment about a news article from the time and entitled the post ‘You can’t help who you fall in love with?’. Since writing it, it has become one of my most read posts. For some time, I’ve been meaning to flesh it out a little, and while the toddler is asleep it seems like a good opportunity…

Last week, Relevant magazine posted an extract from Tim Keller’s upcoming book on marriage, entitled ‘You never marry the right person’. Each marriage, he claims is a matter of making choices, and compromising.

We are lured into thinking that we will find a soul mate, another half, or someone to complete us. The movie Jerry Maguire brought is the phrase ‘You complete me’ which is a nice sentiment but it is untrue. This idea that a partner should bring us the ultimate in self-fulfillment comes from self-first consumer culture that we live in. We are used to self-help books, we are brought up to be fiercely independent, and we are used to doing things and buying things that fulfil us.

Yet when we apply this thinking to marriage, dating and partners we are on dangerous ground. The thinking is that love should not be hard, it should come naturally if you are truly soul-mates.

Tim Keller’s response is

“Why believe that? Would someone who wants to play professional baseball say, ‘It shouldn’t be so hard to hit a fastball’? Would someone who wants to write the greatest American novel of her generation say, ‘It shouldn’t be hard to create believable characters and compelling narrative’?

When one flawed human being relies on another flawed human being to complete him or her, it is never going to be completely straight forward. We are all less than perfect in different ways and we are never going to find a perfect partner to fill in the gaps of our own deficiencies.

The Bible talks about marriage as being, one flesh. The married couple are a single unit, but this is a unity that has to be worked at in relationship with God.

Nowhere in the Bible is love seen as a self-completing thing. It is always spoken about in relation to others – God, marriage partner, family, church and society. Love is not self-serving but others-centric. Love is a verb. The grand list of loving characteristics of 1 Cor 13 (written to a church, not a couple) are all acts of the will which involve putting the other before yourself – love is patient, kind, not self seeking etc. They point towards the character of God, who supremely demonstrated this love in Jesus. As we choose to love, and are given the power to do so by God, we identify with God’s character.

So, what do you do if you are attracted to someone? 

You will then need to decide what to do with that attraction. Attraction doesn’t need to lead to love.

Attraction, I believe, can’t be helped. We are attracted to all kinds of different people. Some may simply be people who happen to be nice to look at. For others it is an aspect of their character that appeals to us. Often we are attracted by characteristics that we don’t have, or that we’d like to get better at.

Before acting on this attraction, it is always worth asking whether this person would be a good match for me. Are they a nice person, fun to be around, interesting? Do they have some of the same values that you have, such as attitudes to money, family, faith? These are all things that would help any potential relationship go more smoothly. In these cases, the attraction can be helpful and we may decide to pursue it.

Sometimes, pursuing  the attraction is not a good idea.  What if the person is unavailable to you such as they are married already? For example, if a married man is attracted to another woman (this itself is not a crime) but he must choose what to do with that attraction. He may want to put in boundaries to remove or reduce the temptation, for the benefit of his marriage. He may avoid that woman and make sure he is never alone with her. Or if he has to meet her and part of his job or something, he could always meet in a public place. He could also confide and be accountable to someone else. There are many ways to reduce the temptation that would inevitably destroy his marriage, and avoid the attraction turning into something else. Each little step is a choice. It is worth asking the opinion of those who are close to you, and who know you the best.

There may be other reasons why the person is not available to you – for example, parental pressure or culture or distance. These situations can be emotionally painful. I remember falling for a person of another faith. In hindsight, it was absolutely right for s not to get together, but it was hard at the time. Is the barrier a good or necessary one? Your family may disagree for good reasons, or not. You will need to discern this. You may need to walk away and consciously choose not to pursue the attraction any further.

But it is always crucial to remember that the other person in a relationship is not there to complete or fulfil the other. Each is there to learn to love one-another in ways that they could not have imagined at the outset of the relationship.

Keller again:

The hard times of marriage drive us to experience more of this transforming love of God. But a good marriage will also be a place where we experience more of this kind of transforming love at a human level.

We never marry the right person. Love is a verb. Love is a choice

Science and faith: The creation story

There’a a very interesting post at the Jesus Creed blog which examines claims from John Polkinghorn’s new book about creation.

Polkinghorn, was an eminent Cambridge scientist before he was ordained and was involved in the discovery of quark particles, basically says that he doesn’t think that the creation accounts in Genesis was supposed to be literal scientific accounts of how the world was formed. The fact that there are two of them (Gen 1 and 2) which contain different details is an indicator of this.

Instead, they contain

true myth – with a truth so deep that only story can convey it.

This position resonates with my thinking. I have never been a fan of young earth creationism and see science as sitting alongside faith, complementing not opposing it. The creation stories are then more about explaining truths about God’s relationship with mankind and his creation, and mankind’s relationship with God, the world around, and one other. With this approach you can maintain scientific integrity without having to ignore vast chunks of the bible.

This still leaves questions open to which I don’t yet have adequate answers, such as who were Adam and Eve, and were they real or also metaphorical in order to convey truth. And if they were myth, at what point in the genesis narrative does is start to become historical? (for example, I believe that the flood in Gen 6 happened, so presumably if Adam and Eve were metaphorical, somewhere between Gen 3 and 6 the narrative shifts to being about real people rather than simply illustrative of God’s truth ).

So there are still lots of unanswered questions, but Polkinghorn’s approach is useful to those with a scientific mindset.

My 12 most read posts of 2011

1. The Best Caramel Shortbread – Not my most interesting post but it keeps showing up at the top of search requests! I updated it in December 2011 to include a recipe.

2. Lucio and Kaka show their faith – Comment on the place of faith in football, written just before the 2010 world cup.

3. Henry Scott Holland: “Death is nothing at all” – Some thoughts on the popular poem by Henry Scott Holland which is often used at funerals.

4. You can’t help who you fall in love with – A response to a news article where a prison guard falls in love with an inmate.

5. The poor in the gospel of Luke (iv) – One of a number of posts examining what Jesus says about the poor and injustice in the gospel of Luke. For the whole series, click here.

6. Into the Wild – movie review – review of the 2007 film about the true story of Chris McCandless.

7. New Starbucks Logo – Comment on the new starbucks logo announced in Jan 2011.

8. Kieran Richardson and Kaka – More about faith and football following Kieran Richardson’s “I belong to Jesus” T-Shirt and goal celebration in November 2011.

9. Martin Luther on Religion and Politics – Quote from Martin Luther.

10. Why didn’t the rapture happen? Will it ever? – Response and critique of rapture theology following Harold Camping’s failed prediction of the end of the world in May 2011.

11. Donald Miller reviews Love Wins – Donald Miller’s take on Rob Bell’s controversial book.

12. I just can’t find it in me to be glad one more person is dead… – Quote in the aftermath of the killing of Osama Bin Laden. See also Has Bin Laden been brought to Justice.

What’s the best book you’ve read this year?

Novels – I spent a lot of the year reading Les Miserables, Victor Hugo’s long, in-depth epic set in the days of revolutionary France. His description of how the French lost at Borodino reminded me of Tolstoy’s description of the battle of Borodino, another Napoleonic battle just outside Moscow. Hugo suggested that in addition to the intelligence of the British commanders, the influential factors were a French general who turned up late, leaving Napoleon short-handed, and a sunken road which was not on the maps and which ended up swallowing a whole legion of french cavalry. Besides this, Les Miserables is of course wonderful and uplifting tale of faith, forgiveness, redemption, law and grace. It’s central character is unexpectedly given a second chance and uses the rest of his life making up for his past mistakes and showing the same grace to others that was shown to him.

I elso enjoyed a few more John Grisham novels – the Chamber, the Rainmaker – but the highlight being his debut, the Firm, which is excellently written and which keeps the suspense going all the way through. It’s quite different from the film so is well worth reading.

I would also highly recommend Enduring Love by Ian McEwan – an explosive beginning giving way to a tense tale of obsession – all the characters demonstrate their own obsessive behaviour with the ultimate being against the main character. The movie, which stars Daniel Craig and Rhys Ifans, maintains the same degree of tension but changes some of the circumstances to better fit the movie format.

Non-fiction, I’ve enjoyed getting into Donald Miller’s insights into Christian Spirituality. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is about his search for a narrative out of the chaos of his life. I then read his earlier book, Blue Like Jazz: Non-religious thoughts on Christian Spirituality, which is about as accessible an overview of Christian living as you might find (although he comes at it from a different angle to most).

I did read Love Wins, the book that made all the fuss for Rob Bell back in March. I read it in August (but have not blogged about it since I read it!). It’s worth reading, if only to find out what the fuss is about. I think he only really steps outside the bounds to orthodox Christian belief in one chapter, but alludes to it is several others. The trouble with Rob is that he doesn’t like to be pinned down to any precise viewpoint in order to bring the most people into the conversation.

That’s about it. Check out my books tag for what else I’ve been reading this year.

So Much For That, Lionel Schriver

The most recent novel in our book club is from Lionel Schriver, the bestselling author of We Need to Talk about Kevin. I haven’t read that one, and after So Much for That! I don’t think I will.

Shep Knacker is the unlikely hero, who always dreamed of an early retirement with his wife Glynis to a cheaper part of the world. Taking the $800,000 he got from the sale of his Handyman business in New York, he planned to spend his last years in a hot climate where $800,000 is a fortune and he could live very comfortably for the rest of his days. This, he called the Afterlife.

After years of procrastinating, he finally books two one-way tickets to Pemba, Zanzibar, on an island off the coast of Tanzania. Only they can’t go. Shep’s wife Glynis has been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.

The back cover of the book shows a quote from the Literary Review which says ‘British readers will close this excellent novel feeling grateful for the NHS’. They are right. throughout the novel Shep and Glynis’ nest egg is gradually eaten up. Despite them having a comprehensive medical insurance policy from his job (Shep still works for the company he sold), there are fees for co-pays (insurance excesses) and out-of-coverage care. It turns out that to get an expert in Glynis’ rare cancer they have to turn to a doctor who is not one of the recommended care providers of the insurance company. I could rant on here about the absurdity of the American health insurance system, where doctors views of over-ruled by profit-making corporates and how, despite it’s deficiencies, the British NHS is far superior, but I won’t. I think that, as the author is an American living in London, she already knows this. As the main character laments:

For the sale of [my company] Knack alone I paid two hundred and eight thousand dollars in capital gains. Add up all I’ve shoveled those sons of bitches since high school, and it has to be somewhere between one and two million bucks. And that’s the same government who, when my wife has cancer, won’t buy her a single Tylenol.

The money is a backdrop to the story, but most of it deals with the gradual decline in the health of Glynis and of their nest egg. But there are also more medical issues. Shep’s father, Gabe, is slowly fading out. His best friend, Jackson, has a daughter with a rare genetic disease and another daughter on antidepressants (from years of being the ‘left out’ member of the family, as she has no such condition). Added to that, Jackson has taken an ill-advised course of cosmetic surgery which, when his wife finds out, adds strain to their marriage and finances.

It is good that  a bestselling novel has decided to deal in depth with cancer and dying. It is not something that people like to engage with and the  author has, I think, captured the reactions of friends and family. At first there is genuine compassion and offers to help, but after a while, as Glynis becomes more housebound and fades from public view, the visits become more infrequent. There is general awkwardness in some of the interactions as family members of the afflicted don’t know what to say. It is a more in-depth treatment than Jenny Downham’s Before I Die, but unsurprisingly, not as good as Tolstoy’s first person narrative in The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Like, Downham, but unlike Tolstoy, there is no thought given to what might happen after death (she makes her thoughts on religion clear in the loss of faith of Shep’s father (p429)) or even on the fear of the process itself – the focus of Schriver is on what the life is like before it and in particular, a description from a carer’s point of view.

Schriver is also very perceptive in the language that is used in the treatment of cancer and, whether this is helpful or not. In the book, as in the UK, we fight against cancer, battle it, struggle against it. Whist the doctors think this is important to keep up the patients resolve, this shows through in Glynis being unable to face up to her own death. While she is continually battling it, there is always a chance, however tiny, that she will recover. The doctors always want to try the next new drug (which, incidentally, is very costly) regardless of the side-effects or the probability of success. Near the end of the book (and at the end of his resources), Shep has a showdown with the doctor over what her struggles and his money has bought them. The response is that she has lived ‘a good two or three months longer than expected’. Shep questions whether, with so much medial intrusion, they have in fact been a good three months at all. They merely served to displace Glynis’ attention so she didn’t actually face up to the fact that she was dying.

Whilst it raised some interesting points, I would not recommend this book, primarily because it drags. At 530 pages it is a good 200 pages too long. I do not say this because I’m against long books – I’ve read War and Peace and Les Miserables among others, however Lionel Shriver could have got her point across in fewer words. She was over indulgent in her own writing.

Not a writer I immediately connect with, but I can see that the book has been written with thought, especially for those caring for others with illnesses. I’ll give it 6/10 but suggest you spend your time reading something else instead.

Thinking about Atonement

I’m preparing a sermon on atonement, and brainstorming what comes to mind with that word, one of the first things is the novel by Ian McEwan of the same name, which I read some years ago.

The shorter definition of the word ‘atonement’ is to make “satisfaction or reparation for a wrong or injury; amends”.

Set in 1934, McEwan’s novel, Atonement, follows an upper class family who are enjoying a hot day in their country house whilst being visited by their friends. The oldest daughter, Cecilia is back from Cambridge for the summer, as is Robbie, her childhood friend and the son of one of the estate workers. There is an attraction between them which grows on this summers day. Thirteen year old Briony is trying to prepare a short drama to perform with her cousins… and is feeling decidedly left out by the attention that Cecilia and her shortly-to-return older brother are getting.

That day Briony witnesses a number of things which she was not meant to see, and which she was not able to understand. First, she reads a letter from Robbie to Cecilia declaring his love – in a very brusque fashion. Then, she stumbles into the library interrupting a passionate embrace between them and thinks it may be some sort of attack. Finally, in the dim light of dusk in the garden, she sees the part of a sexual assault on her fifteen year old cousin, Lola. She did not get a good view of the perpetrator, but in her mind it had to be Robbie. That is the story she becomes convinced of and sticks to. Robbie is arrested and taken away, and Cecilia doesn’t talk to her sister again. This wrong conclusion, which Briony was only too happy to jump to, has dramatic implications for Robbie and Cecilia’s lives.

The book then jumps forward a number of years to narrate Robbie in the retreat from Dunkirk, and then further again when Briony has trained as a nurse and is looking after returning wounded soldiers – spurred on to do this by the memory of what she had done. Working for good can surely undo the mistakes of the past. This third section of the novel is dominated by Briony attempting to make amends for the hardship she has caused to Cecilia and Robbie. It is quite simply an attempt at self-atonement for her thirteen-year-old mistake. The novel ends with peace – Robbie and Cecilia on the banks of the Thames, war and confusion behind them, looking towards a happier future.

The twist in the tale comes in the epilogue when the story leaps forward to 1999. A now aged Briony is just about to publish her novel (memoirs?), with the Robbie and Cecilia story dominating. What he have been reading until that point is, in fact, not Ian McEwan’s prose, but the story written by one of his creations, Briony Tallis. Robbie did not survive the retreat at Dunkirk, succumbing to fever on the beach. Cecilia died in a bomb shelter in London during an air raid. Briony’s novel is the only way she, who has been battling guilt all her life, can come to atone for her mistake and give Robbie and Cecilia a happy ending.

“how can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity of higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her. In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all.”

The irony is that there was no atonement either in the fictional story that Briony dreamed up, or in the real post-epilogue twist of McEwan. There can be no atonement as the only ones capable of giving it to Briony are dead, and she knows it. The atheist McEwan knows it too.

 

Book club averages so far

Here’s what our book group has thought of the novels we have read so far. The links take you to my reviews which do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the group!

Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd – average of 8/10

Generation A, Douglas Coupland – average of 6.6/10

16 Lighthouse Road, Debbie Macomber – average of 5/10

next, we’ll be reading: So Much for That, Lionel Shriver

and then: The Novel in the Viola, Natasha Solomon

The Secret Life of Bees

Having just finished the novel, The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd in advance of our book group meeting tonight, it just leaves me enough time to write a quick review of it. I have actually read this book before, about five years ago after coming back from a long summer of work experience and holiday in South Carolina, where the book is based and where the novel is set.

It is also, following Generation A by Douglas Coupland, the second book running that our group has read where some of the major developments rely on bees.

Set in the deep south the 1964 , the year the civil rights act was passed, it follows a young teenage girl called Lily Owens who lost her mum when she was four. Her father was a bitter and angry man who ran a peach farm. Since her mother died she was being brought up by Rosaleen, one of her father’s black workers who he plucked out of the fields to work as a nanny. Lily misses her mother and misses real love and affection from anyone except Rosaleen and she treasures the few trinkets she has as a memory of her mother – including an icon of the black Madonna which bears a handwritten inscription, Tiburon, SC.

One day when Lily was about 14, she was accompanying Rosaleen into the nearby town to register to vote. Many of the white men didn’t want blacks registering and Rosaleen gets herself into a scrape which results in her being charged, beaten up and jailed. That night, afraid of the fury from her father, Lily breaks Rosaleen out of the hospital where she is being held and they run away  - towards Tiburon.

There, they stumble into the place which was the origin of her mother’s Black Madonna icon, a pink house of middle-aged black sisters, August, June and May, who keep bees and make Black Madonna honey.  Lily lies about who she is but it later transpires that they knew from the outset – as her mother had been there ten years earlier. She is welcomed and is slowly healed of her hurts and pain, and gradually learns the truth about her mother and the accident that killed her.

It is beautifully written, with deep characters and rich descriptions of the pink house, the process of keeping the bees, and the rather odd rituals of the sisterhood of women. There are also two scenes of racial tension which transport you into the mood of the time. The novel speaks of out need to be loved and accepted right from early on in our lives. When this isn’t there it pervades and colours everything else and one cannot really move on until it is dealt with. In the house, Lily is loved and accepted. There is no pressure for her to tell the truth about who she is but the sisters allow that to come out in her own good time, only after she knows she is safe. Lily had to learn how to trust, receive love without feeling undeserving, and ultimately, to forgive herself for her unwitting part in her mother’s death.

There are many phrases and quotes of the book which I liked. For example, when Lily first enters Tiburon and finds herself staring face-to-face with the same picture of the Black Madonna which is adorning a honey jar in the general store, Lily muses:

I realized it for the first time in my life: there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, shining brightly, and we don’t even know it.

Some of this mystery comes alive in the author’s description of keeping the bees.

She was also looking for herself. As August was telling the story of a statue of the Black Mary whilst they were both preparing the honey jars, Lily reflects:

I was so caught up with what August was saying I had stopped wetting labels. I was wishing I had a story like that one to live inside me with so much loudness you could pick it up on a stethoscope, and not the story I did have about ending my mother’s life and sort of ending my own at the same time.

Everyone needs a story greater than themselves: this is, I believe, a universal truth of human nature. However, so often, the stories we do construct for ourselves are uninspiring or unhelpful and merely obscure the person we were created to be. Lily learned that she had to own parts of her true story and come to terms with it, as the same time as realising that this story didn’t define her. There was another story of who she was and what she could become.

Ultimately, the novel is about healing, redemption, self-awareness, forgiveness and love. Not romantic love, but the everyday love and stability of a close-knit community that does wonders for an individual’s self-worth and self-perception – the simple act of living life alongside each other. Lily needed to love herself and know that she was loved.

Score 4.5/5. I wonder what the group will think this evening!

There is also a rather fine movie of the book starring Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson, Queen Latifa, Alicia Keys, and Sophie Okenedo