Bookwi.se

The Yearling was required summer reading my 7th grade year, and I likely would have hated it had I been forced to read it then (I started attending that school in 8th grade). But reading it now, in my late twenties, I loved it. A coming of age story, it follows the subsistence existence of the Baxter family in the 19th century Florida backwoods–particularly that of Jody, the only survivor of his mother’s many difficult pregnancies. The Baxters struggle through various trials: flooding that destroys much of their crop harvest and decimates the local animal population; strained relations with the Foresters, the rough and uncouth family nearest to their homestead; and an ongoing battle with a stealthy and cunning bear they’ve dubbed “Old Slewfoot.”

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Summary: A useful book to work through Hermeneutical issues (biblical interpretation) in modern culture, and worth reading as a book on parenting.

One of the things I am most thankful for is the fact that I was able to be a full-time nanny for my two nieces over a five-year period.  From about eight weeks after the birth of the oldest, until they both started preschool last year, I saw them almost every day, and most of the time I loved being a nanny.

Part of my thankfulness is because I am not going into parenting blind.  My wife has been a teacher for 17 years and is better at classroom management than pretty much anyone I know. Part of her job as an Academic Coach is to mentor other teachers and help them work through both their own professional development and to problem-solve with particular children who have not been identified as special education but are not being reached with standard approaches.

I feel we are fairly well prepared to parent our new daughter.

I have been aware of William Webb’s books for a while, but just have not ever gotten around to them.  They fit in with my focus on hermeneutics a couple of years ago, but I think I found out about them after I was getting a bit tired of the subject. Re-reading Mark Noll’s The Civil War as Theological Crisis and thinking through issues of culture and race as a Christian pushed these books back up to the front of my list. William Webb is probably better known for his earlier book Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis. (later review) I am sure I will read that eventually, but Corporal Punishment in the Bible is both intended to be a more popular-level treatment, and it is focused on parenting which I have been thinking a lot about lately.

William Webb is interested in something that is called a Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic. In simple terms, Webb suggests that God speaks down to us as humans, accepts where we are, and speaks to us there. Over time (both in scripture and in culture), there is a progressive movement that refines God’s instructions to us and points in a progressive understanding of revelation and obedience. The idea of this is pretty uncomfortable for many Christians, especially Evangelicals who like to think of God as unchanging. But Webb is not suggesting that God is changing, but that the way God speaks to us changes as our culture changes.

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Iain H. Murray’s book, The Undercover Revolution: How Fiction Changed Britain, has a fascinating premise–that the sharp uptick in the popularity of novels in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly novels written by secularists both ambivalent and hostile toward Christianity and her moral and social norms, was the catalyst for the massive cultural shifts that British culture (and Western culture at large) underwent during that time. In other words, Murray argues that it was the subtle, worldview-shaping power of stories–not science or rational inquiry, per se–that shaped and defined the religious and sexual mores of modern society.

It’s an unexpected argument, although it seems reasonable and intuitive once considered. But I remain unconvinced–not because I think Murray is wrong, but because he doesn’t really explain why or how the fiction and authors he reviews directly support his thesis. This is an extremely short book, almost a pamphlet, and can be read in one sitting. Murray provides a some brief biographical info and analysis of Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Hardy, and to an even lesser extent Bertrand Russell, H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw. He shows that their personal lives directly rebutted their public statements about religion, morality and and human sexuality. Despite proclaiming that one can be happy without monogamy (or marriage at all, for that matter), satisfied by “free love,” and fulfilled by agnostic or atheistic philosophy, their lives were absolute wrecks and utterly failed to vindicate their worldviews.

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Takeaway: Society has a responsibility for its own maintenance.

Unlike most of the rest of the world, I did not read Fahrenheit 451 in high school.  (I didn’t read most books that people seem to have read in high school.)

The story is set in the near future (written in 1953, but still feels near future.)  Guy Montag is a fireman.  In a world where all the homes are fireproof, it is firemen’s jobs to set fires, not put them out.  When people are found to have illegal books, it is the firemen’s job to burn the houses including the books after the people have been arrested.

After Guy meets and begins a friendship with 17 year old free thinking Clarisse, he starts questioning his life. Eventually he steals some of the books he is supposed to be burning and reads them.  He starts questioning society and why no one reads or remembers.  (Part of the subtext is that there is always noise and video and pictures so that people no longer want to read.)

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The essay, in which a writer has ample space–but not too much–to meander across seemingly unrelated topics before eventually drawing them together with whatever connection initially struck him, is a wonderful medium full of rich opportunity for reflection. Alan Jacobs is one of my favorite writers, and he is at his best when writing essays. Jacobs is the kind of writer and thinker who always makes me feel smarter, more contemplative, and broader-minded than I was before I picked him up. He does this as a professional academic, but without sounding like one. His tastes range from the modern “penny dreadful” to the high forms of ancient literature–and, to his credit, unabashedly so. His thoughts are as profound as they are genuine and unpretentious. And this collection was glorious.

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