Faith is an odd bird. It makes people do things they didn’t imagine they had the strength for. It pulls them through tough times. It’s the glue that holds us together, when everything else is falling apart. It makes people achieve greatness. It makes people fly planes into skyscrapers.
It’s the only feeling we have that is metaphysical in origin. It cannot be proved or charted on a graph. It’s invisible to others, and only slightly visible to ourselves. That said, much of what the Western world faithfully accepts as divine truth comes from one source: a book. The Bible, to be specific the Old and New Testament. Jack Miles, in his new book Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God, continues the work done in his Pulitzer-winning God: A Biography, now turning his attentions toward the New Testament as a work of art, rather than a spiritual guide.
And the Bible is, when you get right down to it, a book. Sure, it has historical reference points, but then again, so does most of what Tom Wolfe writes, and outside of a couple of well-heeled Atlantans (and Wolfe himself), no one’s anointing him a savior.
The single most prickly point that Miles posits here relates the coming of Christ, as well as other Biblical tales, to an assumption of a Vulnerable God. Such an opinion is sure to invite controversy, as believers, feathers a-ruffle, generally argue that God is perfect, and therefore incapable of imperfection. Miles argues that perfection cannot be attained without the presence first of imperfection, nor good without evil, or light without the presence first of darkness. Miles’ literary eye sees God responding to the persecution of Jews under Rome by becoming Christ, “revising in the process the meaning of victory and defeat,” and offering the promise of a goodness that all could achieve, at least in theory. In giving humans free will, likely the most important move of creation (being the only beings created, as the Bible states, “in His image”), He ceded over the power to us, both his biggest mistake (wars, rape, murder, et al) and ultimate triumph. A totalitarian relationship with man only serves God. For us to serve God, there must also be a divergent path. Without choice, there would be no redemption. And this, Miles says, is one of the reasons God committed a sacred suicide (If no one can kill God, only God can kill God).
This is, of course, one man’s synthesis of the Bible. Indeed, the only way anyone can understand that book or any book is to run it through their own machinery, and come to their own conclusions. It doesn’t make the Bible any less powerful that there are a number of interpretations thereof. Like all great literature, it makes it more powerful, Miles seems to argue. Whether or not scholars like Miles or Harold Bloom like it should be of no consequence. All books, including the Bible, succeed (or fail) in a 50/50 relationship between the writer and reader, and the most important questions to be asked are the most personal. Does it make you want to read more? Does it move you? Does it make you reconsider your thinking, or confirm something you already knew to be true? Does it change your life? *
Creative Loafing’s Charlotte Bestseller List
Compiled by Ann Wicker
Hardbacks
1. Skipping Christmas by John Grisham
2. John Adams by David McCullough
3. Christmas In Plains by Jimmy Carter
4. Fire in the Rock by Joe Martin
5. Journey Through Heartsongs by Mattie J.T. Stepanek
Paperbacks
1. The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2002 by Ken Parks
3. Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose
4. Heaven and Earth by Nora Roberts
5. Tie: The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz & Exploring Christanity by James C. Howell
Participating bookstores: Barnes & Noble-Arboretum; Borders Books & Music; Little Professor-Cornelius; Little Professor-Park Road; Newsstand International.
CL Recommends
Following are some recent books we recommend.
Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris. The sequel to Morris’ The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt covers the presidential years of one of America’s most amazing citizens – years that included building the Panama Canal, founding our national parks system, and winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Morris’s style grabs and doesn’t let go.
Half A Life by V.S. Naipaul. The new novel from the latest Nobel Prize winner tells of Willie Chandran, a restless character suffering from what can be called “Naipaul’s Disease,” a malady stemming from the migration and cultural displacement that accompanied the break-up of the old European colonial system. Naipaul is the truest kind of writer: he refuses to provide us with comforting lies.
New South Women: Twentieth Century Women of Charlotte, North Carolina by Mary Kratt. Charlotte author Kratt tells the fascinating story of some of the groundbreaking women in the city’s history who helped break the grip of boring old men in suits on the reins of local power. It’s a sad and often touching story, but one that must be told if, as one woman here says, women are to remember “what people before me have done to open doors.”
The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith The woman Graham Greene called “the poet of apprehension,” and author of The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers On A Train, Highsmith could evince the underlying menace or just plain creepiness that can crouch under the surface of the familiar better than anyone. This long-awaited collection of short stories is a gift to lovers of quality mysteries.
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn. Playwright Dunn’s first novel concerns residents of an island off the SC coast who, through circumstances too complicated to explain here, face the prospect of an ever-shrinking alphabet. How they deal with this odd problem including movements and subversive counter-movements, as well as amazing word gyrations and manipulations make up the bulk of this inventive book.
John Grooms, Max Childers, Tara Servatius, & Erik Spanberg
Notable New Paperbacks
Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz, 1915-1945 by Richard M. Sudhalter. A real eye-opener, as well as a succinct rejection of racist theories of jazz’s development, this book passionately relates the story of the likes of Bix Beiderbecke, Artie Shaw, Pee Wee Russell and more. What emerges is a picture of a music that grew from a big old dose of cultural “race mixing.”
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. Whaddaya know, an Oprah book that’s not too sappy (and it isn’t The Corrections!). Mistry is the realist among the batch of Indian writers who’ve emerged in the past few years. Here, four strangers’ lives are linked by the repression of Indira Gandhi’s “national emergency” rule. A sweeping view of a fascinating country in which some characters learn how “to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.”
The Last Hot Time by John M. Ford. A funny, violent sci-fi tale of a young Chicago paramedic who stumbles into a gang of “elves” who are actually the planet’s former rulers. Taking place in the present day and featuring otherworldly creatures with very worldly tastes, this is a great change of pace, even for those, like myself, who aren’t normally attracted to sci-fi.
An Unexpected Light: Travels In Afghanistan by Jason Elliot. Traveling all over the country, even into the remotest regions, just preceding the Taliban’s takeover, Elliot found a physically devastated land whose people, although suffering, were gracious and even funny. An insightful book that ultimately raises questions about just how much widely different cultures can really know about one another.
True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey. The astonishing Carey, author of Oscar and Lucinda, won the prestigious Booker Prize (his second) for this novel in which he puts himself in the place of notorious Australian Victorian-era bandit Ned Kelly in order to tell the compelling, chilling and oddly hilarious story of his life as a rogue, freedom fighter and folk hero.
John Grooms
This article appears in Jan 5-11, 2002.
