Book One
These are abnormal book reviews. And Thomas a Kempis was an
abnormal religious person.
In his 600-year-old best-seller, The Imitation of Christ, a Kempis seeks to show people how they can
follow Christ completely and constantly. Anything less, for any amount of time,
he explains, is not only wrong, but it also should be out of the question. Jesus
lovingly and willingly gave His all for us, and He asks the same in return.
This is certainly not a normal human philosophy.
Highlighting books is a two-edged sword. When I highlight, I
feel guilty for reading slowly. But when I do not highlight, I feel guilty for
not recalling the book better. Life is hard!
Anyway, without regret I underlined a lot in The Imitation. In fact, my only regret,
or confession, about this book is that I turned down a chance to give it to an
imprisoned Christian brother in the Middle East. I wanted to keep my underlining
for my own future reference. He had not asked for it, and I did give him
several other good books. But I should have given him this one, too.
But since I did not, I need to share it with everybody else!
Of course, a Kempis is not on par with the Bible, but here are some lines I
really appreciated:
“A humble peasant who serves God is
better than the proud astronomer who knows how to chart the heavens’ stars but
lacks all knowledge of himself.”
“Be willing to suffer a little for Christ…there
are many who suffer far worse things to achieve worldly advancement.”
“I am unable to offer You the praise
and gratitude I ought, even for the least of Your benefits.”
Book Two
My most recent reading adventure ended with my second bout
with the Russian novel Crime and
Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I first read it in high school and hoped
to reread it someday. At 505 pages, it is the shortest of three great Russian
novels I have read, including Dostoevsky’s The
Brothers Karamazov and Leo Tolstoy’s enormous War and Peace.
I am a slow reader, but worse, I can be lazy. I aged eleven
months during Crime and Punishment.
The exciting part is that I began it on a short trip to Oman with a
friend—reading much in the hot hotel room where I could only sleep for one or
two hours the second night—and I ended it in my new home in Montana, just miles
from where I grew up in the gorgeous Crazy Mountains.
Perhaps my reading journey mimics that of the book’s
protagonist: Raskolnikov. After his crime early in the tale, Raskolnikov starts
seeing cracks in his worldview which had led him to murder. Someone whose own
wrecked life God was redeeming, Sonia, patiently guided him toward truth and
repentance.
In a remarkable passage, Sonia concludes reading part of
John’s Gospel to Raskolnikov:
“‘That is all about the raising of
Lazarus,’ she whispered severely and abruptly, and turning away she stood
motionless, not daring to raise her eyes to him. She still trembled feverishly.
The candle-end was flickering out in the battered candlestick, dimly lighting
up in the poverty-stricken room the murderer and the harlot who had so
strangely been reading together the eternal book.”
Book Three
My eight days in Rwanda were wonderful and terrible. It was
a gorgeous country, to be sure! But I visited nine years after the 1994
genocide—which killed 1 million Rwandans in 100 days.
The sight and smell of death do not die as easily or as
quickly or as human beings. I visited mass graves and killing sites, including
churches. In the worst case, hundreds of butchered corpses lay on tables in
room after room for all to see. They were preserved with lime powder.
Much of this could have been prevented had Rwandans resolved
their own problems years before the outbreak of war and genocide in April 1994.
But the international community also had a fatal hand in the catastrophe.
Germany and Belgium exacerbated ethnic divides decades earlier. China and
France armed those who carried out the decimation. And America refused to call
it genocide (and thus respond forcefully) until it was all over.
In particular, the United Nations had troops on the ground
when the killing began. But they were largely forbidden from stopping the
violence. Canadian Lt. General Romeo Dallaire commanded this ill-fated U.N.
force, and he shares his vivid story in Shake
Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.
Book Four
You know a great book when it sways your thinking in
specific situations five years after having read it. Charlotte Bronte has led
me into, I hope, better living through her classic juxtaposition of honor,
heroism, and humanity in Jane Eyre.
The first half of Jane’s life is anything but easy. She suffered
abuse as an orphan, lost her groom-to-be under chaotic circumstances, and thereafter
lost her job as well. But she overcomes, thanks to her philosophy that morals
are worth maintaining—always:
“I will keep the law given by God,
sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was
sane, and was not mad, as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times
when there is no temptation. They are for such moments as this, when body and
soul rise in mutiny against their rigor. Stringent are they, inviolate they
shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be
their worth? They have a worth, so I have always believed. And if I cannot
believe it now, it is because I am insane, quite insane. Physically, I felt at
the moment powerless as stubble, exposed to the draft and glow of a furnace. Mentally,
I still possessed my soul, and with it, the certainty of ultimate safety.”
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