Sharon Prentice. Becoming Starlight. Cardiff CA: Waterside P, 2018. Print.

Over the years I have read a few books about near death experiences. A couple of the more popular ones have been made into film. I also personally know one man who has had one, which I mentioned briefly in one of my reviews. (In his case, he was going to hell and knew it.) I know two other people whose testimonies made it clear to me that they had been taken out of this world to heaven or to God’s presence. In all three of these cases I have known the people for many years. None have boasted about it, and I find no reason why they would lie about it.

Becoming Starlight is called a shared death experience (SDE). Mrs. Prentice’s testimony is similar to those who have briefly gone to heaven, except that it occurred at a time in which someone close to her was dying. As is true of other books about such experiences, her actual experience only takes up a few pages of the book, but reading the whole book gets the reader into the author’s mind. Literally.

While Becoming Starlight is a narrative, it reads more like stream of consciousness. Indeed, it is difficult to tell how much time has lapsed. She begins with an account of how she met the man who would become her husband, their courtship, and their relationship. He was in the American Navy and was transferred from place to place as most career military people are. The best I can figure is that they were married somewhere between eight and eleven years. Details of that kind are vague. What the reader gets is what the author was thinking and feeling.

The shared death experience the author has is with her husband who died of pancreatic cancer, probably brought on by too much exposure to radiation from the nuclear reactors he worked with in the Navy. But before that, Mrs. Prentice had a miscarriage. From that time on she was bitter and angry at God. Basically she felt either that God did not exist or that He was indifferent at best or evil at worst.

Even after they had a healthy baby boy a few years later, she continued to carry that sorrow and rage.

She apparently bore this anger from between six and nine years until her husband was dying. Her anger increased because she was losing him as well. He was only thirty-three years old and she was thirty. God did meet her, though, and answered her. Her life has not been the same since.

While she admits having trouble describing exactly what happened, she calls her experience “becoming starlight.” She said she was lifted among the stars and saw her husband with a calm, loving expression on his face. She knew she could not go with him, but she had a sense that everything was all right.

What is perhaps most striking about her experience is that she was given a sense of eternity. There was no past or future, as she puts it in describing her husband, “He just was.” She also was aware that God was the creator and that He had created her and loved her. She was just what He made her to be. She repeats the concept that God is love.

The Scripture that seemed to speak to her the most was this:

In my father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would not have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. (John 14:2 NKJV)

To her, then, there was a sense that God indeed had a place for her–as well as for her husband and her daughter who had died in the premature childbirth. That truly can bring comfort to anyone who accepts the idea. God has a place for each of us.

In her case, she did not even think of that as a viable idea until she had that SDE. Sometimes she admits being criticized by religious people of all stripes because her experience does not seem especially orthodox. All I can say is that even in her anger, she was looking for God, looking for an answer from Him. It took a long time, apparently five to seven years, but He did answer her, and for that she is grateful.

Truly, the Scripture itself says little about what those “mansions” are like. She does not even know herself whether she was in the heavenly city as described in Revelation or where she was, but it was eternal and she was aware of God as creator and lover. At one point she acknowledges that Christ is God.

She also quotes part of I Corinthians 2:9:

Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared… (cf. Isaiah 64:4)

Her story also confirms another Scripture:

And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:13 KJV)

She may have been hurting and angry, but she was seeking—and as the reader can tell from the way she tells the story, she was doing it with all her heart. She was not casual. It was no “whatever” for her. She would be satisfied with nothing less than the truth.

But she received more than truth: She got a glimpse of eternity.

One piece of this book that adds gravitas to Becoming Starlight if not validity is that the preface is written by Raymond Moody, the medical doctor whose own observations of people near death resulted in books and studies by him. He is the resident expert on the subject. If he takes Mrs. Prentice’s testimony seriously, it probably is worth looking at.

Because of the mental-emotional stream of consciousness approach, even if we do not have physical descriptions or an accurate time line of her story, Becoming Starlight is honest and visceral. Mrs. Prentice tells us that she used to write poetry and participated in poetry readings. The book’s style is more like poetry than prose in that sense.

On an emotional level, her story is not unlike George Herbert’s great poem “The Collar.” In it, the poet pounds his fist on the table and says, “No more!” He is tired of following God, feeling his life is “all wasted.” He does not understand why God is treating him so, and his anger is growing:

I raved and grew more fierce and wild.

Just like Mrs. Prentice.

But God knows and God cares. So Herbert’s poem ends very succinctly, but expressing the same heart that Mrs. Prentice shares:

Methought I heard one calling, Child!
And I replied, My Lord.

Isn’t that the truth?

Charles Oman. The Dark Ages 476-918. 1898; Digital History Books, digitalhistorybooks.com, 2017. E-book.

This is another Kindle reissue of a history classic. From the title it is clear that it is about the early Medieval times in civilized Europe. It really is organized in three periods: before Charlemagne, Charlemagne, and after Charlemagne (shall we say A.I., “in the year of the Emperor”?)

Of course, it is not simply about Charlemagne. We first read about the various Gothic and Germanic tribes which came south into the Balkans, Italy, Gaul, and Spain. We begin to understand some early religious conflicts between the Goths, who were largely followers of Arius, and the more orthodox Catholics.

We also see the seeds of the schism between the Eastern and Western churches. In some ways, this was simply the two geographical regions of the old Roman Empire going their separate ways, but there was also theological controversy, especially in the East. The Arians were just a small part of that. Later in 866 there was the Synod of Constantinople which declared the Bishop of Rome a heretic.

The author notes that any historian of this time period is challenged by the relative lack of primary sources. Those that have survived are often by people writing a generation to a couple of centuries afterwards. Perhaps they have some perspective, but they also may have some very distinct biases and may be missing a lot detail.

It was really under Charlemagne, with some help from the popes and Eastern emperors, that the concept of Europe as Christendom really developed. One of his precursors, Theodoric, was among the first to recognize that religion and nationality were not necessarily the same, but Charlemagne saw the advantage to have a populace who respected the God of Christianity. Most German tribes south of Scandinavia were converted by the ninth century.

Before Charlemagne, there were numerous kingdoms fighting. The same was more or less true afterwards. There were power plays all over. There were also external threats. The Eastern Roman Empire shrank during this time as various Islamic groups conquered some of its territories. There is a sense that Constantinople would eventually fall, even though it did not happen until the fifteenth century.

The French were able to unite (more or less) under Charlemagne to limit the expansion of the Arabs to the Iberian Peninsula, and even by the end of the ninth century the Moors had been pushed back significantly in Spain. Moors also conquered southern Italy, but only for about fifty years.

Interestingly, one the major developments of this time period which really ended the Dark Ages in Europe was the castellated or walled city. The Arabs from the South and East, the various Asian tribes from the East (Avars, Magyars, and Tartars among them), and the Danes from the North were all rovers. They attacked, pillaged, and then withdrew or resettled the area they had devastated. They were mobile, but when the dukes in Northern France and adjacent territories began building castles and raising local armies or militias, the attackers were stymied. Even if they won a battle, sieges took too long for a mobile army.

“It was the mailed Feudal horseman, and the impregnable walls of the feudal castle, that foiled the attacks of the Dane, the Saracen, and the Hungarian.” (325)

In other words, Feudalism ended the Dark Ages. Once cities were secured, a distinct culture could be developed, and gradually a new identity grew in Europe. The aristocratic system saved Europe. Of course, that would be challenged with the coming of gunpowder and the printing press, but that was centuries later.

Although there is no trace left, in 455 sources tell us that the Emperor Justinian recognized some of the booty brought back after fighting the Vandals in Rome were “the seven-branched candlestick and golden vessels of the temple of Jerusalem, which Titus Caesar had taken to Rome when he conquered Judea four hundred years back.” (54) They were returned to Jerusalem.

Oman notes that it was Justinian who really codified Roman Law in the manner in which it came to be known in later times. Governments gradually were recognizing a need for justice for all. As Theodoric would say, “Even to those who err from the faith.” (17) This is still an issue today, even in the “civil” West.

The Dark Ages presents the origins of Islam fairly sympathetically, but, alas, its beliefs would change.

Then came the fatal moment which turned his teaching from a blessing to Arabia into a curse for the world. When he grew powerful enough, he bade his sectaries to take up the sword, and impose Islam on their neighbors by force of arms. (139, A.D. 624)

The author takes a traditional Western look at the growth of Islam as one of compromise of its original teachings, syncretism with the Arabs’ polytheistic system, and announcing “special mandates of God” which applied only to him.

His conclusion on Mohammed’s sect? “Islam is a good religion to die by, as its fanatics have shown on a thousand battlefields, but not a good religion to live by.” (140)

The book also notes the increasing power of the Bishop of Rome to eventually become the pope, and then under Gregory II and Gregory III to have the popes become a secular ruling power controlling much of central Italy, and whom other governments would be obliged to recognize.

Charlemagne himself took advantage of this. He encouraged not only mission work, but also the establishment of monasteries to teach and write books and promote and keep alive the culture that was developing. Culturally, even today we owe a lot to this Frankish king:

…he had given the Western world a glimpse of new and high ideals such as it had never known under the brutal rule of twelve generations of barbarian kings, nor in those earlier days when it was still held together in the iron grasp of the Caesars of ancient Rome. (245)

Our author is no Gibbon.

Of course, there is a lot more. But this is a good introduction to a piece of history that is often skimmed over, but whose events really established the foundations of much that would persist in both Western culture and the Christian religion.

Michael Crichton. Next. New York: Harper, 2007. Print.

Michael Crichton was not politically correct. He wrote one of my favorite essays: “Aliens Cause Global Warming.” So in Next Crichton takes on both the media and academia. If he had not made such a killing with his earlier works like The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park, his stuff would have been spiked. Taking issue with both the media and academia would be suicidal to most writing careers. Even sitting President Ronald Reagan was spiked when he wrote a pro-life book.

Next is at turns wild, funny, entertaining, and creepy. Next takes a serious look at genetic engineering through the stories of a number of different people and, uh, transgenic creatures.

We know about planting genes for phosphorescence in animals like rats and rabbits. What if we could plant such genes in animals that the public views and use them for advertising?

What might happen if we splice human genes for the voice box in an ape? What if we splice many human genes into an ape egg and it comes to term? What about human genes into a bird egg?

Many of us have heard of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the story of a cell line taken from a long-dead woman. Cells from her body have been replicated in the laboratory and used in many experiments, some of which have led to the development of new medicines and medical procedures.

Who owns such a cell line? Her heirs? The laboratory that obtained the cells? What can be done with them? Who has access to them? If her heirs have some of her DNA, are they liable to the same contract with the laboratory that obtained her cells?

These are all fascinating questions. Next asks them, but in the midst of a stirring tale. The answers are not easy and the problems multiply.

We have a biogenic engineering company that may have discovered a gene that increases mental stability in mice. Would a similar gene work for people? Are there side effects? What if they get into the wrong hands? Ah, you can see where this is going.

What if the main financial backer of this laboratory has a ne’er-do-well nephew whom he wants to give gainful employment to? And this nephew messes up big time? Was he set up? And what if this nephew is supposed to be in charge of the lab’s security, but because he is a slacker, the cell lines which have so much promise are contaminated?

Next tells us of scrupulous and unscrupulous lawyers. Of the terminally ill looking for a genetic repair. Of creatures that are part ape and part human. And one very funny or annoying parrot that also has human genes.

If I give blood or have an organ removed, can someone start a cell line with that? If I turn my cell line over to a laboratory (usually a hospital or university) can they re-sell it? Does that mean that since I still have my own cells in my own body, do those cells also belong to that lab?

Without going into a whole lot of detail, a potentially valuable cell line has been contaminated. The lab that now owns the line wants to obtain more cells from the donor. The donor has for several reasons gone into hiding. Is he absconding with stolen property since someone “owns” his cells? Crichton points out that in spite of the Thirteenth Amendment, the law is fuzzy.

When I was in middle school (we called it junior high back then), I went into an H.G. Wells kick for a bit: The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, A Short History of the World, and The Island of Dr. Moreau. Wells embraced evolutionary theory (as does Crichton) but imagined mad scientist Dr. Moreau creating transgenic species that becomes a sci-fi horror story.

While Next clearly has a science fiction elements, it is set in the present day (2006, the year the book was written) and makes a case that such things it describes are possible. It may raise a few technical questions, but it raises more legal and ethical questions.

Besides financiers trying to make a buck, there is also a self-promoting college professor who spends most of his time speaking in conferences and making television appearances. Imagine a bio-geneticist Carl Sagan.

Interspersed are news articles, some bogus but most genuine, which truly illustrate the cynicism and sensationalism of even the supposedly staid and steady news sources. These are sometimes funny (will blondes be extinct by A.D. 2200?), but often just simply stupid. One of Crichton’s underlying themes is that no one, even with the scholarly journals, does fact-checking any more. Journalists and professors are just as gullible as anyone else.

One favorite observation in the book is from a private detective who says to himself that his most formidable opponent is a lawyer who owns a gun because he or she not only knows how to use the weapon but knows the laws governing its use.

As he has done in some of his other books, Crichton has a short essay at the end. In this case, it really a call to action with five points:

1. Stop patenting genes, it is comparable to patenting other body parts. For example, if noses were patented, then cooks and perfumers would owe royalties to whomever owned the patent. Are naturally occurring genes any different? This has been a problem with research into some diseases. For example, a lab owned a patent to the SARS virus, so few people could even study the disease, let alone find ways to fight it.

2. Establish guidelines for human genetic material. The book makes a clear case for this.

3. Make gene data public. People may need help. Now often only the rich can afford to pay for the data to help them fight a disease, be it an infection or an inheritance.

4. Avoid bans on research. Part of the novel seem to contradict this idea, but his point is if there are no bans, then the research will be publicized, and then people will be able to discern what is true or useful and also will not be tempted to go to extremes.

5. He also recommends the repeal of a 1980 law that gave universities the right to hold all patents and research from people who work for them and then sell the information as they see fit. In most cases, this has resulted not in a free exchange of ideas, but secrecy and obfuscation and using the research as a means to add to the school’s endowment.

There is also a fascinating annotated bibliography. Crichton speaks very highly G. K. Chesterton. Imagine a George Gilder who also wrote fiction. Anyone who speaks highly of Chesterton cannot be all bad.

Lest this review make it come across as academic, Next is not written that way. It is a page turner. It engrosses and grosses out at the same time.

Jim O’Shea. The Reluctant Disciple. Greenville SC: Ambassador Int’l, 2015. Print.

There is a tendency, even a trap, for many Bible-believing novelists in the English-speaking world to say that the end times have to follow a certain pattern. The Reluctant Disciple takes many prophetic images from the Bible, especially Daniel, Revelation, and the Olivet Discourse, but it tells a story without being dogmatic. It is even refreshing in that sense. Readers familiar with the “Left Behind” genre may find this novel among the best—except for Lewis’s The Last Battle, which is still the one to top. The Reluctant Disciple‘s only flaws are a few misspellings and a couple of geographical anomalies (Connecticut does not border the Atlantic Ocean).

Ryan Kates hosts a television talk show that features “the fourth dimension”—the paranormal, UFOs, ESP, ghosts, etc. His TV network, Philidor News Network, has promoted him to give an exclusive interview with Esa Sayed, a representative of Arab nations who has just brokered a peace treaty with Israel that includes all its Near Eastern neighbors including Palestine and Iran. The Temple in Jerusalem has been rebuilt to accommodate the Dome of the Rock.

By the way, Esa is Arabic for Jesus.

Sayed will be speaking from the United Nations backed by representatives of ten nations or nation groups: The nations include China and Israel, the groups include the Arab League and the European Union.

Kates investigates a haunted apartment as he re-connects with an old girlfriend who is now a widow. But the biggest mystery is that people have been disappearing.

This is a secret rapture, but unlike Left Behind it happens gradually; there are no plane crashes and that sort of thing. There have also been many sightings of mysterious triangle-shaped UFOs. Even Kates sees one. Are these alien abductions? Sayed’s speech will surprise everyone—except for the Bible believers.

The tale does focus on Sayed and his U.N. speech. The “false prophet” promoting him (See Revelation 13:11-14) is the head of Philidor, a kind of Rupert Murdoch or Ted Turner media magnate who knows he is lying, but it is OK because it is for the good of mankind, right?

As some Bible prophecies came from dreams (think of Joseph or Daniel), so a recurring dream plays a role in this story. I was reminded of the dream in Molière’s Athalie or even Calpurnia’s dream in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

Bible prophecy uses symbols (think of Joseph’s fourteen cows or Daniel’s four beasts); similarly, The Reluctant Disciple uses a clever symbol. The Philidor Defense is a famous chess gambit using pawns. So is Kates a pawn in the devil’s game? Are we?

Disclosure of Material: We received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through the BookCrash book review program, which requires an honest, though not necessarily positive, review.

Neal Stephenson. The Diamond Age. 1995; New York: Random, 2003. E-book.

Neal Stephenson is one of the most imaginative writers today. He comes up with clever and original scenarios in so many of his stories. Occasionally, the setting and conflict are so clever that there does not appear to be much of a resolution. The Diamond Age is not like that. It is a cyberpunk gem from beginning to end, with a delightful, if hard-fought, ending.

We follow three main characters, and, I confess, at times it was a little hard to keep them all straight. There is Hackworth, a computer programming genius who has developed a cyberbook that echoes the reader’s life experiences in a fictional format.

There is Nell who through a set of coincidences gets the original copy of the Primer, Hackworth’s book.

There is Miranda, an actress at an interactive (“ractive”) theater. Not unlike the Primer, she puts on scenarios requested by the audience partly by acting and partly by computer generated projections. She often acts in interactive books like the Primer and becomes involved in Nell’s life through the Primer.

Other characters who appear frequently are Charles Hollywood, Miranda’s agent; the Constable, sometime guardian of Nell; Harv, Nell’s older brother who looks after her until he doesn’t any more; Tequila, Nell’s drug-addled, oversexed mother; and the mysterious Doctor X, a kind of éminence grise who may or may not be a super-menace like the bad guys in a superhero comic. There are indeed echoes of Ming the Merciless or Lex Luthor in Dr. X’s persona—or even maybe Ernst Blofeld or Dr. No. After all, James Bond stories do include a certain amount of science fiction, too.

The future earth is reminiscent of that of Neuromancer, but perhaps a bit more civilized and bit more like the world today. The nation-states, “phyles,” are quite different but rooted in the countries that exist today. A major difference is that people in some phyles can choose to join them voluntarily if they agree to go along with the country’s culture. Indeed, just as some of the Star Trek stories raise the question about what it means to be human, so The Diamond Age would have us take a look at what it means to be part of a culture.

…while people were not genetically different, they were culturally different as they could possibly be, and that some cultures were simply better than others. This was not a subjective value judgment, merely an observation that some cultures thrived and expanded while others failed. It was a view implicitly shared by nearly everyone but, in those days, never voiced. (20)

Ah yes, political correctness was still in the universities in that future time. But in other places it was changing:

“Now there was a time when we believed that what a human could accomplish was determined by genetic factors. Piffle, of course, but it looked convincing for many years, because distinctions between tribes were so evident. Now we understand that it’s all cultural. That, after all, is what a culture is—a group of people who share in common certain acquired traits.” (321)

Much of the story takes place in the Far East where Nippon and Chosun correspond to Japan and Korea. China has been balkanized somewhat, but there is a radical Red Guard type movement called the Fists of Righteous Harmony that is trying to forcibly unite the country and expel foreign influences from the Han areas. Stephenson rightly points out that the Western influences include Marxism, so while the Fists act like Red Guards, they are not promoting socialism or communism.

This is where Nell grows up, in the Leased Territories (Least Territories?) of the Orient. Her mother Tequila is a prostitute who takes in a series of abusive boyfriends. Nell and Harv are often subject to the abuse. The Primer becomes at first a kind of escape for Nell, but she begins to see that it is teaching her. She learns from the Primer how to cope in her family situation, how to fight back against the abuse, and eventually how to escape. She flees to a country of Victorians (“Vickys”) who pattern their society after Victorian England.

There she attends school and continues her adventures in the Primer. In the Primer she goes on a quest to obtain twelve keys that will give her authority in the Kingdom of the Coyote King. This could be the precursor to Ready Player One’s Easter eggs. These adventures take years and parallel what is going on in her “real world.”

Miranda is being paid anonymously to interact with Nell through her Primer whenever she is available. Miranda becomes her guardian, though physically absent, through what she sees and encounters in the Primer. Nell begins to understand that there is a woman keeping an eye on her through the Primer and thinks of her as her real mother.

Meanwhile, Hackworth’s employers, led by Lord Finkle-McGraw, want him to locate the Primer that has disappeared. Aristocracy is granted to industrial leaders. Finkle-McGraw’s firms are Imperial Tectonics and Machine-Phase Systems. Hackworth is also recruited by Dr. X. The goal of Dr. X, and maybe others, is to find the Alchemist, a technician so skilled he can convert matter into any other substance by creating the Seed.

This is where things get really sci-fi and cybernetic. In Stephenson’s future world, there are not only computer viruses but microscopic drones and computerized viruses that can be placed inside people. Originally these were made to fight infections and keep people healthy (see first comment below), but some are also used to understand better what the hosts are thinking (not exactly mind-reading but not far off), report their location and activities to authorities, and to influence their behavior. Some could explode and kill their hosts.

These immunocules or artificial mites can be picked up sometimes by breathing them in, by being shot or injected with them, by eating food or drinking liquids that contained them, or by exchanging body fluids with others who are already hosts.

The world also has matter compilers, M.C.’s, that can create many objects by working matter at the atomic level. Most people, for example, now eat food generated by matter compilers. This is not unlike the “Computer, make me a drink” we see in the more futuristic Star Trek shows like Voyager. The next step is to make the Seed, a device that inherently grows whatever it has been programmed to reproduce.

Hackworth is led to an underwater phyle he calls the Drummers. They live in tunnels under the seas and appear to be some kind of cult. Hackworth spends ten years with them, but hardly remembers a thing. He vaguely recalls an evil initiation rite (which gets explained a bit at the end) but he believes he is sent there by Dr. X to prepare him to engage with the Alchemist. [N.B.: Because of some of the details of this rite, the book might not be appropriate for younger readers. It is evil.]

As the Israelites escaped the evil of the Pharaoh who killed their babies by a miracle of passing through the water, so something very similar happens to help some captives escape the Drummers. The final image of the story says it all.

There is much more. There are parallel quests going on. Yes, Nell is looking for the twelve keys in her Primer fantasy, but she is also looking for a place where she belongs and where she can be safe. Stephenson does raise the question about what happens when cultures believe in nothing, cultures which see the world as a mere random accidental collection of molecules.

“It is upon moral qualities that a society is ultimately founded. All the prosperity and technological sophistication in the world is of no use without that foundation—we learned this in the late twentieth century when it became unfashionable to teach these things.” (322)

Alas, two decades into the twenty-first century it is even more unfashionable. Let’s pray Stephenson’s timing is merely a little off and not missing the mark entirely.

“You know, when I was a young man, hypocrisy was deemed the worst of vices,” Finkle-McGraw said. “It was all because of moral relativism. You see, in that sort of climate, you are not allowed to criticise others—after all, if there is no absolute right and wrong, then what grounds is there for criticism?…In this case, you are not making any judgment whatsoever as to the correctness of his views or the morality of his behaviour—you are merely pointing out that he has said one thing and done another.” (190)

“That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code,” Major Napier said, working it through, “does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code…The internal, and eternal [italics in original], struggle between our base impulses and the rigorous demands of our own moral system is quintessentially human. It is how we conduct ourselves in that struggle that determines how we may in time be judged by a higher power.” (190-191)

Why do so few people write such things any more?

…the Trickster may be deemed a universal, but he appears in different guises, each appropriate to a particular culture’s environment. The Indians of the American Southwest called him Coyote, those of the Pacific Coast called him Raven. Europeans called him Reynard the Fox. African-Americans called him Br’er Rabbit. In twentieth-century literature he appears first as Bugs Bunny and then as the Hacker. (106)

Do we have to be tricksters these days to espouse morality?

“Which path do you intend to take, Nell?” said the Constable, sounding very interested. “Conformity or rebellion?”

“Neither one. Both are simple-minded—they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.” (356)

From my experience of many years as a high school and college English teacher, intelligent students who dislike ambiguity end up going into computer programming. The rules are rigid. But that field also attracts the hacker because rebellion is attractive, too.

We also get a little philosophy from Dr. X who claims to be Confucian speaking for the Chinese, but he sounds Aristotelian, or even Thomist:

“Yong is the outer manifestation of something. Ti is the underlying essence. Technology is a yong associated with a particular ti that is…Western, and completely alien to us. For centuries, since the time of the Opium Wars, we have struggled to absorb the yong of technology without importing the Western ti, But it has been impossible…” (457)

Substans and accidens?

Lest, it appear that The Diamond Age is a philosophical tome or a literary work, it is not. Not really. It is a story. It is cyberpunk. But it does resonate. Neal Stephenson is clever, but he is also a smart hacker who digs ambiguity.

Ray Bentley. The Holy Land Key. Colorado Springs CO: Water Brook P,2014. E-book.

Yes, I confess. I make an attempt to keep track of what is going on the Middle East because there may be a connection to Bible prophecy. So The Holy Land Key sounded like it might scratch that itch. It does.

Bentley does not break much new ground when speaking of the formation of the state of Israel or the recognition of Jerusalem as its capital. What makes The Holy Land Key stand out are the stories of a few men and women connected with Israel. Particularly inspiring is the story of a man who helped build a city in the desert from scratch. He had a remarkable vision.

He also cites Palestinian man from Nazareth who has done remarkable work in a very volatile setting.

Another man, a native of Zimbabwe and not a Jew, gave a prophetic word to Benjamin Netanyahu in the nineties. It came to pass and Netanyahu was voted out of office. He is back in now, Bentley suggesting that the Prime Minister learned his lesson and has taken the man’s counsel more seriously.

This is no trivial matter because of what is called the Jerusalem Syndrome. It seems that many visitors to Israel—Jew, Christian, and Muslim alike—often seem to get suddenly inspired to tell people a message that they claim to have come from God. An early example is told in the novel Jerusalem by Nobel winner Selma Lagerlöf.

Bentley does speak of the lunar eclipses or blood moons that some folks got excited about a few years ago. He does not make any prediction, but notes that sometimes such phenomena accompanied significant events in history.

Probably the weakest section is his interpretation of zodiac signs. He basically summarizes E. W. Bullinger and D. James Kennedy from their books. He does actually quote from Isaiah 47:13-14 which warns about using astrological signs, so he understands the controversy, but he says that God intended the signs to be a simple message and mankind twisted their message into idolatry.

Bentley relies on a number of interesting historical sources for some of his observations, and his bibliography and endnotes are definitely worth a look. It is a reminder that the God of the Bible is the God of history. We may not always understand what God is doing until after He has done it. Indeed, Bentley’s favorite quotation is from a former pastor of his, Chuck Smith, who said, “Prophecy is best understood after it has come to pass.” (114, 193)

Smith also counsels, “Watch to see where God is working and join Him.” (207) For some people, that means the Middle East. And Bentley shares a few personal vignettes of what some of those people have been doing.

N.B. I would re-read this short book about a year and a half later. I reviewed it both times, but the reviews emphasized different things. For the second review see https://langblog.englishplus.com/?p=4389.

James Goll. The Lost Art of Intercession. Shippensburg PA: Destiny Image, 2016. E-book.

I am familiar with the author because the leader of a men’s fellowship I have attended for about 20 years used to have us listen to tapes or read articles by Mr. Goll on occasion. When Amazon offered the e-book at a reduced price, I thought it would be worth reading. Goll wrote The Lost Art of Intercession in the 1990s and updated it about two years ago.

The reason he calls intercession a lost art is simply that he believes it has become a lost art at least in the Western church. Much of the book reviews the missionary and intercessory success of the Moravians who in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had a core of 24-hour intercessors who together prayed continuously around the clock for over 100 years.

Goll notes some current groups that are attempting something similar, and, of course, bases his teaching on the Bible. He notes that prayer goes two ways. Not only did the Moravians intercede, but they let God change them. They were not necessarily in agreement over every doctrinal detail, but they agreed to pray.

They also had a motto that “No one works unless someone prays.” (25, 181) That is, no one does any kind of ministry without prayer backing. Goll does not mention it, but I recall that Charles Finney, the famous nineteenth-century evangelist, did not preach anywhere without people going ahead of him to pray.

Goll also encourages people not to be afraid. This applies not only to the spiritual warfare that prayer encounters, but even not to be afraid of what God might do. As one speaker put it, “…we are so afraid of wildfire that we have no fire.” (31) We must let the Lord do what He needs to do in us so He can use us. “The only way to spread fire is to catch fire!” (207)

Isaiah 43:26 (Goll quotes several translations) reminds us that God is not afraid of hard questions and that He is willing to listen to us even when we question what is going on. That in itself indicates that we still have confidence in Him.

As with many other teachers, Goll encourages people to pray the Word. The Scriptures tell us God’s promises and God’s will generally. Many times we can apply what the Bible says to specific instances. Of course, praying with others increases the effects of prayer as well.

Quoting many others, including highly esteemed leaders who have now gone ahead like Bill Bright and Billy Graham, The Lost Art of Intercession anticipates revivals and movements of God yet to come. The book notes places in the world where such things are happening. The common thread is a willingness to intercede. With an emphasis on the history of the Moravians, this can be a truly encouraging book to read. Maybe it needs to start with me—and you, too.

Marc Cameron. Tom Clancy: Oath of Office. New York: Putnam, 2018. Print.

Oath of Office is the latest of the continuing saga begun by Tom Clancy of still-sitting President Jack Ryan. Clancy authored thirteen of these novels and co-authored five. This is the tenth posthumous novel continuing the series by other writers, the second authored by Cameron: Twenty-eight and counting! Pretty soon the numbers will be taking readers into the Hardy Boys or Tarzan strata.

Oath of Office reads well with what has become typical Clancy plotting. This novel, unlike some of the recent stories, actually features Jack Ryan, Sr., as much as spy Jack Ryan, Jr.

President Ryan has his hands full in this one. As is often the case, it seems the author had some foresight about what certain governments would be doing. So Russia is planning some naval exercises to weaken the Ukrainian Navy. (Sound familiar?)

Russians also appear to be taking both the side of the governing theocracy and the side of young rebels in Iran and making it appear that America is bombing the country to add to the unrest. They also may or may not be behind an attempted coup in Cameroon in which dissident army officers have surrounded the American embassy. Oh, and a radical U. S. Senator (reminiscent of certain congresswomen?) is vowing to impeach President Ryan.

The Cameroon crisis and the impeachment threat are based on doctored YouTube videos of the President saying things about Cameroon and bragging how he is hoarding flu vaccine for his staff and his friends.

Still, the story does begin with Jack, Jr., and a few of his co-workers tracking a French arms dealer in Portugal after a clever theft of a couple of Russian nuclear missiles. The arms dealer is assassinated right in front of the eyes of his bodyguards who are unable to do anything about it—also very clever.

International incidents, Russian “wet workers,” Iranian prison interrogators, Russian Navy operations, Afghan opium smugglers, criminal assassins…it is a wild ride. If nothing else, Oath of Office does make the reader appreciate the great burdens, challenges, and thanklessness that come with being President regardless of who is in office—even someone as upbeat and patriotic as Jack Ryan, Sr.

David James Duncan. The Brothers K. New York: Random, 2005. E-book.

The real 1960s began on the afternoon of November 22, 1963. It came to seem that Kennedy’s murder opened some malign trap door in American culture, and the wild bats flapped out.
                Lance Morrow

We love the game. We’re having fun. We’re serious. We’re seriously having fun. You can take a professional team that is having fun and is serious about it, that’s another level.
                Mike Timlin, Pitcher, Boston Red Sox 2004

The umpire doesn’t say “Work ball!”
                Willie Stargell, Hall of Famer, Pittsburgh Pirates

Yes, The Brothers K is vaguely an hommage to Dostoevsky’s famous novel, but the four brothers’ last names do not even begin with K. They are the Chance brothers: Everett, Irwin, Peter, and Kincaid, the narrator. Perhaps that is just as an appropriate name. At one point in the novel, though, we are given thirteen definitions of K, one of them being the symbol for a strikeout in baseball.

The Brothers K is a novel about baseball and how we Americans are still trying to figure out what happened to us in the sixties. The baseball portrayed is the difficult minor league ball, similar in approach to the fiction of Frank O’Rourke. The father of the four sons and younger twin daughters Bet and Freddy is a minor league player and coach. (Freddy’s real name is Winifred, but they already called Irwin “Winnie” when she was born.)

We start off with the boys watching baseball in the late fifties and early sixties, dropping the names of some of the players. Their father is an excellent commentator because he was an up and coming minor league pitcher. The observations about Roger Maris are especially thought-provoking.

Kincaid got his name from the city in Oklahoma where he was born while his father was playing ball there. They now reside in Washington State near Portland, Oregon. Mr. Chance no longer pitches because he crushed his left thumb (his pitching hand) in a machine at the lumber mill where he works.

Most of the story, though, take place between 1968 and 1973 when the brothers are in high school and college and the army. None of them handle the social changes particularly well. Kincaid (“Cade”) does OK, I guess, because he learns from his older brothers.

Everett becomes the campus radical. His column in the Washington State student newspaper is called Give Chance a Peace. He totes the bullhorn at demonstrations. He debates his history professor on revolutions. He also falls for Natasha, a Goldwater supporter who challenges his thinking. He will avoid the draft by going to British Columbia, Canada. He eventually has to make some serious decisions concerning his family, his country, and his girlfriend.

Everett is also the one who gets his father to try an experimental operation to replace his missing thumb with his big toe. He later contacts a baseball scout who talks Mr. Chance into becoming a relief pitcher and coach for the Portland minor league affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates. (Readers may recognize this time period when the Pirates were in a couple of World Series.) Mr. Chance succeeds as a coach because he still plays once in a while, and he shows the younger players how to have fun.

Everett helps his family but questions authority. He grouses about a ninth grade English teacher and gets into a debate with one of his college professors. He openly defies Elder Babcock, the pastor of the church his mother attends with all of her children. Eventually, all the boys except for Irwin drop out of church when their father allows it. (There is a lot behind that: there is a section of the book called “The Psalm Wars” when the religious incompatibility comes to a head.)

For much of the book, Mrs. Chance comes across as a one-dimensional religious fanatic, but near the end we see and understand her much more richly. Her faith may bring some division (see Matthew 10:34-36) but it also provides a foundation for her during nearly impossible times. As the story concludes we learn more about her and understand her love for God and her loyalty to the strict Seventh-Day Adventist group to which she belongs.

Peter is the intellectual. He is always reading. He questions his mother’s faith, goes to Harvard, begins practicing Buddhism and starts down a scholarly road which will take him to India, where he learns things he could never learn in the sheltered West.

Irwin is the peacemaker. He loves church and earns awards for attendance and Bible memorization. He also is the most attractive brother and as a teen the girls fall for him. (Not that any of the boys have too much difficulty in that department. Each responds to the sexual revolution in his own way.)

Alas, when he is drafted, he thinks he can be the same way in the Army. He ends up being falsely diagnosed with mental illness and is practically killed in a military insane asylum. As many tortured Christians have done through the ages, he recites Bible verses and sings religious songs, which only increases the torture. After all, didn’t Freud teach that religious belief was a neurosis?

While Irwin’s story is harrowing, it is based on real events. Around the same time Irwin’s tale takes place, a classmate of mine at Harvard was given similar psychiatric treatments there. Although I did not know him personally at the school, everyone knew who he was. He was an angry campus radical. I knew him about six to ten years later, and he was a shell of his former self, in and out of the local mental hospital. I am sure that illicit drugs contributed, but so did the prescribed drugs and the shock treatments he received from the university.

Just this week there was an article in the local newspaper about a former Yale student suing that school for giving him shock treatments and other psychological “care.” Sadly, things have not changed much. The sixties made people crazy and some of those in authority still are.

Historically, men from Irwin’s church have been conscientious objectors in American wars. They either get a deferment or get drafted as medics. If anyone has seen Hacksaw Ridge, the medic Desmond Doss was an Adventist. Irwin does what he thinks is right and what is God’s will and gets into an intolerable situation. But the novel is not merely an antiwar screed. The debate between Everett and the professor is presented in an evenhanded way. We see that the real issue with many of the protestors was not the war but bringing a radical revolution to America.

The novel notes that the Vietnam war was foolish not only because of the domino theory but because the soldiers were “ordered not to win.” It really is a parallel to the minor league teams in the story. If a minor league team starts winning, it usually gets broken up—its best players are promoted or traded, or both.

Kade does not tell too much about himself. He is the recorder who goes with the flow. He lets Everett do the talking, Peter the exploring, and Irwin the loving (at least till he cannot love any more).

The Brothers K in places is a work of striking genius. There are chapters that make the reading completely worthwhile. Like the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov, the dream of the germs in Crime and Punishment, Stepan’s confession in The Possessed, or even the painting of the known world in Jones’ The Known World, certain parts of The Brothers K sing. Everett’s “avant garde” play Hats is a pointed commentary on the sixties—instead of germs, they are East-West party hats. Oh, and there’s T-Bar’s rant about how hippies will turn into yuppies. (T-Bar is a San Francisco cowboy Peter meets in India.)

Kade accurately notes that “the sixties” decade really lasted from 1963 to 1973. Like the Morrow quotation above, he starts the decade with Kennedy’s assassination. Yet as the book 1963: The Year of Revolution suggests, it was already going on before November 22. Indeed, I would argue that the killing of Kennedy was the first major evil effect, at least in America, that began back in May when a benighted Supreme Court rewrote the First Amendment to mean what Article 124 of Stalin’s Constitution of the Soviet Union says. Our nation has been struggling with that misinterpretation ever since.

The discussion between Everett and his professor about revolutions (the professor sounds like he knows Crane Brinton and Wolfgang Leonhard) is like a twentieth-century update of The Possessed. Everett’s letter to Kade about his dream eloquently echoes Raskolnikov’s dream—no germs!—and is perhaps a sign that even radical Everett is ready for a heart change that is more significant than a political revolution.

I had to laugh at Kade’s name for the SDS, the sixties student radical group: Suckers for a Dumb Slogan. Now they call themselves progressives, which is the same term Leonhard’s Communist bosses used in the forties.

The Brothers K is not a knee-jerk reaction or encapsulation of the sixties. Each of three brothers (narrator Kade stays in the background) acts on what he believes in, but each seems to discover that his beliefs only carry him so far. Maybe the Beatles and the Beatniks found inner peace when they went to India, for example, but Peter Chance discovers something else.

Like The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov (and Robinson Crusoe, for that matter), The Brothers K asks about evil, “Why doesn’t God ever try to stop it?” Yet the default God for much of the story is represented by the legalistic elder Babcock who leads Mrs. Chance’s Seventh Day Adventist congregation.

Some of the church people like the elder are caricatures. Perhaps the author chose the SDAs because they are stricter than most Christian groups about following Old Testament laws; for example, they meet on Saturdays, avoid any sports on Saturdays, and observe most of the Jewish dietary laws. It seems that their view of salvation includes a lot of dos and don’ts. As one friend characterized it to me, “The way to God’s heart is through my stomach?” Yet, we meet some other SDA leaders later in the story and begin to realize they are not all such pulpit-pounding judges.

The father and three of the brothers each in his own way oppose this God, but let us just say, there is redemption. Perhaps, as is often the case in the real world, the most loyal Christian becomes the most persecuted. Maybe God “doesn’t stop it,” but He has a way of redeeming it.

I have two minor quibbles with the book. It mentions a submarine named Liberty. There may be something symbolic in that name, but most submarines are named for fish; many of the newer ones are named after famous Americans (George Washington to Kamehameha) or cities (such as Los Angeles).

In presenting the SDA strictness, elder Babcock’s congregation is frequently warned about hell. Yet the Seventh-Day Adventist doctrine of hell is not the usual Christian hell that we see in most Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox theologies. SDAs are annihilationists, that is, hell is not a place of eternal punishment, but a place where souls are destroyed. Only the saved live eternally; the lost cease to exist. Burning up in a fire is no doubt unpleasant, but it sounds like it would be of a short duration. I wonder if the recurring references to hell is simply part of the “fundamentalist” caricature.

The Brothers K is a fascinating book on different levels. It has a lot about baseball, a lot about family cohesion and conflict, and ultimately a gentle appreciation for the life lived well with the possibility always of redemption. It is wacky and really pretty wonderful. (Centrifuging Red-Shafted Flickers?) As Shakespeare would say, it has scope.