J. R. R. Tolkien. The Hobbit. 1937; Del Rey, 2020.

“There are no safe paths in this part of the world.” (138)

Yes, I recently re-read The Hobbit. I believe it is about the fourth or fifth time I have read it. The first was around 1965. The most recent was nearly 10 years ago when I reviewed a copy of The Annotated Hobbit. I also suspect that many of our readers have read this fantasy classic, too. This is, then, not going to be a typical review one might expect from the English Plus Language Blog. This mostly contains a few reactions from re-reading it after a long time.

First of all, The Hobbit is worth re-reading. One thing struck me right away in the first chapter: Tolkien was a really good writer. He has an engaging style. There are echoes of a fairy tale style—appropriate when considering that there are actual fairies in the story. The style is clear and direct, but like fairy tales with some asides and speculations that make it fun.

I also am currently wading through Tolkien’s Silmarillion. That is a very different book because it was not really written to be published. It consists of notes organized by Tolkien’s son Christopher. There is little narrative continuity or style in the book. Therefore, reading The Hobbit reminds this reader that when Tolkien is conscious of his audience, and not merely making notes, he knows how to tell a story.

I had forgotten, too, what a wild story it is. Right from the beginning Bilbo Baggins, the Hobbit protagonist, is more or less invaded or imposed upon by the wizard Gandalf and twelve dwarves.(I have to spell it dwarves, not dwarfs, since that it Tolkien’s way). They raucously eat and drink and joke as they get their quest underway. The story has an epic quality. One cannot help thinking of the beginning of The Odyssey with Penelope’s suitors dining and drinking raucously, though for very different reasons.

The Hobbit has an epic scope, too, because there is a long, historical grievance. As Telemachus in The Odyssey is being dispossessed by the suitors, so the dwarves have been dispossessed of their ancestral home by the dragon Smaug. Like other dragons in Nordic mythology, e.g., in Beowulf, the dragon guards a vast treasure, much of it here created and accumulated by the dwarves over centuries. The quest takes the fourteen adventurers through a variety of perils and alliances “there and back again.” It is truly an Odyssey or Argosy.

From reading The Hobbit, it appears Tolkien already had a few ideas for The Lord of the Rings. We know from his notes that he began thinking about such things as early as 1914, so the mythos of Middle Earth was already fairly well developed by the time The Hobbit came out in 1937. (Perhaps I should say the legendarium of Middle Earth since that is what Tolkien devotees call it.) For example, The Hobbit drops hints about Gollum’s background that an alert reading might pick up.

Yes, our narrator says about Gollum, “I don’t know where he came from, nor who or what he was” (71). But two pages later, we are told that Gollum has some vague childhood memories about sharing riddles.

Riddles were all he could think of. Asking them, and sometimes guessing them, had been the only game he had ever played with other funny creatures sitting in their holes in the long, long ago, before he had lost all his friends and was driven away, alone, and crept down, down, into the dark under the mountain. (73)

Funny creatures sitting in their holes? This reminiscence indeed echoes the novel’s very first sentence, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” (1). Hmm.

Many people note that the creatures called goblins in The Hobbit are called orcs most of the time in The Lord of the Rings. However, there are hints that they are the same thing. The Dwarf King Thorin’s sword was called “Orcrist, Goblin-cleaver” (64). The tale also reminds us how Bilbo’s sword would earn its name of Sting.

One observation about the nature of the goblins suggests something about the nature of evil people everywhere.

They did not hate dwarves especially, no more than they hated everybody and everything, and particularly the orderly and the prosperous…(62)

They envy the orderly and prosperous… The Bible describes such motivation of envy:

“On that day, thoughts will come into your mind, and you will devise an evil scheme and say, ‘I will go up against the land of unwalled villages. I will fall upon the quiet people who dwell securely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having no bars or gates,’ to seize spoil and carry off plunder, to turn your hand against the waste places that are now inhabited, and the people who were gathered from the nations, who have acquired livestock and goods, who dwell at the center of the earth.” (Ezekiel 38:10-12)

Other adventures include hostile elves in Mirkwood, giant spiders, the distinctive Bear-Man Beorn, suspicious humans, greedy humans, and, of course, the dragon. It really is quite an adventure and fun to re-read. And, of course, Bilbo discovers the Ring. We know it is enchanted because it makes Bilbo invisible when he wears it, but we have no idea of its significance until The Fellowship of the Ring. Isn’t that the way some things are?

“…they all felt that the adventure was far more dangerous than they had thought, while all the time, even if they passed all the perils of the road, the dragon was waiting at the end” (133).

And, without meaning to make a spoiler, the end of the dragon is not the end of the conflict or the adventure. I had forgotten that there is more. After all Bilbo calls his adventure story There and Back Again. There is, then, a “back again” to tell as well.

N.B. I read this because I just happened to be on Amazon a few weeks ago when they had a one-day-only special on a four-volume boxed set of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I could not pass up such a deal. Will I read the trilogy? Certainly, though probably not right away.

Josiah Vencel. The Pension Plan. Mav Press, 2020.

Usually subtitles are helpful but do not provide much to a book’s effect. The Pension Plan could be different. It is subtitled A Murder Mystery. In other words, this is not a book about retirement planning! This novel distinguishes itself in a number of ways.

Nowadays we speak of legal thrillers, a genre that really did not exist until attorneys Scott Turow and John Grisham started telling intricate and intriguing stories about legal cases. Yes, before that there was Perry Mason, but those were basically whodunits whose main character happened to be a lawyer. Similarly, people usually did not talk about medical thrillers until Michael Crichton appeared on the publishing scene.

So is The Pension Plan a forensic accounting thriller? Well, sort of. The author’s day job has been working with pension plans. In the course of the book we learn a lot about the funding of and politics behind public pension plans. Some of the details may actually get readers to think about their own pension plans or retirement account if they have one.

One example. A worker for a pension investment firm explains to young journalist Owen Daniels, the main character, that people often do not think of the significance of gains and losses in investments. Let’s say, for example, you have $100 dollars invested in an account and it drops 10%. that means it is now worth $90. But what percentage do you need to regain the loss? Actually, you need a little over 11%. If you said 10%, that would only be nine dollars (10% of $90). You would need a higher percentage to get back to where you were. Examine numbers and statistics carefully.

So the murder intrigue revolves around some shady dealings with a pension plan for municipal workers in a small central California city. The murder which we witness takes place about two thirds of the way through the novel, but there are suspicions that there may be others. Owen begins to see a pattern where retired city employees seem to all be coincidentally dying right around the time they turn eighty. Clearly, a pension plan would save money if its pensioners did not live too long, but how could this happen? And why? Or is it just an unusual string of coincidences.

Owen is especially concerned because his grandmother, his one living relative, will be turning eighty in less than a year and she is a retired city employee. He was doing feature stories on city employees, some retired, some still active, when he began to notice the weird coincidences. With the help of Darcie, the obituary writer, he sees that this pattern goes back a number of years. When he enlists the help of an interested police officer, J.R., things get going.

He begins to get warnings. His editor, hardnosed but fair, tells him not to pursue the story. He says he cannot tell him why because it was even above the editor’s pay grade to know the reason the order came down. He gets an anonymous envelope with photos of his place and his grandmother’s to let him know that he is being followed. Danger, Danger. Danger.

The Pension Plan also has some interesting discussions. Owen is politically left-wing. His grandmother, though a former government worker, is not. At one point she tells him:

“Take money from person A and give it to person B. That’s where socialism fails. There must always be enough person A’s to provide for person B’s.” (6)

This reminds me of Margaret Thatcher saying that socialism works until it runs out of other people’s money. We certainly see this from the historical record.

California, we are reminded, has legalized assisted suicide. It seems that some of the eighty year old pensioners have died of exposure to the poison used to kill people who avail themselves of this law—except that there is no record that any of them asked for this. How could this be done?

There is another very revealing quotation. Owen recalls a lecture from one of his journalism professors:

“But a journalist uses words to advance an agenda. Long after the facts in your article are forgotten by readers, the assumptions and emotions you infuse into your writing will stick in their subconscious minds. Do this often enough, and you will grow a populace that thinks like you do.” (18)

This is very interesting. A journalism major in the seventies would remember something very different. Journalism used to emphasize objectivity. Just tell what happened, use the four W’s (who, what, where, when, and maybe why), and let the editorial page give opinions. If what Owen (who was born a little before 2000) recalls is typical of today’s journalism classes, no wonder people complain about fact-checking and fake news!

A key to the mystery in The Pension Plan becomes a key to understanding existence. Though a skeptic, Owen begins to recognize a truth: “Patterns have pattern-makers!” (55)

The Pension Plan is a very intelligent mystery. It does involve a clever plot in a devious cover-up. It also raises other questions, as we have already shown. Even after the mystery is solved, it may keep readers thinking. Patterns have pattern-makers. Think about it.

Heidi Glick. Hold for Release. White Rose Publishing, 2023.

Hold for Release begins with a bloody mess. Carlotta Hartman volunteers at a local animal shelter. She has arrived for the evening shift to discover the director of the animal shelter, Ed, murdered and six dogs with slit throats. She calls the police, but she is reluctant to call her husband, Jake.

Their marriage is on the rocks. She has been undergoing fertility treatments for a few years without any success. This frustrates her. Meanwhile Jake seems consumed with his job as a reporter for the local newspaper. Jake had a one night fling with an attractive young staffer Allison. He was inebriated and remembers little of what happened, but Allison is now threatening to accuse him of sexual harassment.

We really have two or three different plots going in the novel. All three are done realistically and effectively. It looks like Jake will be losing his job. It looks their marriage will be breaking up, especially as Carlotta meets a kind and understanding divorce lawyer. Jake, Carlotta, and the local police for different reasons are all interested in finding out who murdered Ed.

There appear to be a couple of related incidents going on in town as well. As Jake researches news files, he sees a pattern similar to that of serial killer in the area from twenty years ago. And what about some dog walkers complaining about a masked stalker?

In contrast to the Hartmans’ marriage, Carlotta has a sister who was divorced from her husband when he was imprisoned for selling drugs. Now her husband has claimed to have found God and been rehabilitated and wants to get back with her and their son. We see two relationships headed in different directions.

There are a number of potential suspects in the murder. Was it someone who did not like Ed? Everyone seems to have liked him. Was it an animal rights radical? Why then would the dogs be killed? Was it someone after Carlotta or someone else at the shelter?

Carlotta is a librarian, and one patron has been trying to flirt with her, even perhaps to the point of harassment. Did he arrange to have a library elevator stop between floors with just the two of them in it?

Is Jake in his investigations getting too close? Will he lose his job because of Allison’s accusations? Is Carlotta’s sister’s ex-husband for real?

While the list of suspects grows, at a certain point, it becomes fairly clear to the reader who is behind Ed’s murder and some of the other strange goings-on. Dramatic irony takes over, as if to say as the audience of a horror movie might, “Don’t go into that abandoned farmhouse!” Will Jake, Carlotta, and the police see what is going on in time? Things get intense as the drama grows.

With the combination of suspense and family drama, Hold for Release reminded this reader of works by Danielle Steele. Readers who like her should get a kick out of Hold for Release.

Jake Burt. Greetings from Witness Protection. Scholastic, 2017.

We have been reviewing some pretty serious, even heavy, books lately: a few theological works about heady topics like the Book of Job and a couple on the American Civil War. I needed to lighten up a bit. Greetings from Witness Protection did the trick. It is funny but with a page-turning plot. If you like Gordon Korman—our favorite popular young adult (YA) writer—you will like this book.

Nicki Demere is turning thirteen. She is essentially an orphan. Her mother is dead, and her father has been in prison. She writes him, but he does not reply. She lived with her grandmother until she was nine when her grandmother died. Since then she has been in and out of foster homes, otherwise marking time at an orphanage in New York City.

When, once again, she is called to the supervisor’s office to meet a prospective fostering family, she steels herself for disappointment. None of the families have worked out. Why should this be any different?

Well, it is different. It turns out that the man and woman in the office are not a married couple looking to foster or adopt. They are Federal Marshals. They are looking for a child around her age that physically resembles a family they are placing in the Witness Protection Program. The idea is that even if a criminal or criminal organization is looking for the family, they would be less likely to suspect a family with a different number of children in it.

She is shown a picture of a woman. Nicki realizes the woman looks a lot like her. The lady could pass as her older sister. That is why the marshals have picked Nicki. If Nicki is interested, it means a completely new start with a completely new identity. She will no longer be Nicolette Demere from New York, but she will be someone else from somewhere else.

She and her whole new family will have to do things to not stand out. Nicki, for example, will be in seventh grade. Even though she loves to read and gets good grades in most of her classes, she must earn a B-minus in all her subjects. She is to participate in one sport, but not stand out in it. She must have one other extracurricular activity, but not one that has any kind of interscholastic competitions or special awards. She and her family are to blend in. And no photographs or social media postings.

After a week of training in Georgia, she meets her family. She does not know their real story or why they are in witness protection. She understands that one of them must have testified in a serious criminal trial. Their made-up backstory is that they have recently moved from Cincinnati to Durham, North Carolina. This is where a lot of the humor comes in. The principal of her new school, for example, attended Xavier, so when he starts talking about Ohio, she has to fake it on her feet.

She, her new parents, and new sixth-grade brother have all come from the North. Some of the slang terms and practices in the South are new to them. The neighbors have a “pig-picking” picnic for them a few days after they move in so that they can meet everyone in the neighborhood. At one point a neighbor says her brother is “showing his butt” online. As a Yankee, I could guess what pig picking was, but I had no idea what it meant to show one’s butt.

Nicki, now called Charlotte, makes friends with Britney. “Brit” did fine until sixth grade when she suddenly became a social outcast. Welcome to middle school! She is convinced no one can like her. At the same time she has become a whiz at an online role-playing game. In other words, she is a nerd. To Brit’s mother, online gaming is a community activity, a modern quilting bee.

To give an idea of how “ordinary” her family is supposed to look, at first the marshals tell them not to put up any Christmas decorations when Christmas season arrives. Except that they are the only family with no decorations—which makes them stand out. So the marshals look at satellite photos of the neighborhood from previous years. They figure out the average number of lights, decorations, and yard displays the houses have. They are to have so many strings of lights, so many decorations, one wreath on the door, not too religious, not too garish; in other words, a B-minus in Christmas decorations. Anything not to stand out.

Now Nicki/Charlotte has one particular skill. Her grandmother also had had a criminal career in her day. She had taught Nicki how to pick pockets. Her grandmother would praise her when she came back from a mall visit with money and jewelry she had purloined. When Nicki flew to Georgia, for example, she had never been in an airport. What a place for picking pockets! She saw all kinds of potential.

That skill provides humor as she outwits people in a number of situations. When she first meets the marshals, she starts rattling off facts about Eric, the male marshal—where he lived, that he has a son, and a few other details. How did she know those things? She had lifted his wallet and read his drivers’ license and marshal ID, and she saw a family picture.

Later when she and Brit encounter the class “mean girls” in the nearby shopping mall, she has fun with their purses and ultimately keeps them girls from teasing Brit. While in neither of those cases does she actually steal anything, she does have some difficulty with kleptomania. She steals things not because she needs them or sells them, but just because she can and she likes to. Her skill at theft was one thing she used to be complimented about.

While nearly all the book is written from Nicki/Charlotte’s point of view, there are some pages, usually a single page, between chapters that document other things that are going on. We begin to see the reason her new family is in witness protection. One of them testified against a major New York crime family. When Nicki hears the name, she realizes how serious their situation is.

Of course, in our day and age it is almost impossible to stay hidden. Sooner or later their past will catch up with them. Yes, there is a lot of humor, but like of some Korman’s books, the main plot is deadly serious.

I had a friend who was an admissions officer at an Ivy League college. He said that as soon as the admissions letters were sent out in April, the head of the admissions department would take a week’s vacation. He told no one where he was going. A week later when he returned to the school, a lot of the people who were upset about the decisions had cooled down and had taken steps to move on.

One year, a leader of an organized criminal network was trying to get his son admitted to the school. Like the vast majority of applicants, the son was turned down. The father tried calling the admissions office only to be told that the admissions director was out of town, and no, they did not know where he was. Anyway, at an airport over 800 miles from the school where the director of admissions was changing planes, a representative of the criminal family accosted him to ask why his boss’s son had been turned down. Such enterprises can be well connected.

To say much more would amount to spoiling things. I will drop one hint, though. Readers may have heard of the term Chekhov’s Gun, or Chekhov’s Rifle. The great Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov once wrote, “One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off.” There is a very clever use of Chekhov’s Gun in the story. I say no more. Greetings from Witness Protection is Jake Burt’s first book, If he can keep this up, we may have another Gordon Korman waiting in the wings. Enjoy!

Andrew Murray. Divine Healing. 1900; Edited by Katie Stewart, What Saith the Scripture, 2009.

Andrew Murray was a profound Christian thinker and expositor. Many of his sermons were turned into books. We have reviewed one of his other books recently. Divine Healing has some of the same themes as Abide in Christ. If we abide in Christ, we will experience His healing.

I confess being a little surprised at Murray’s approach. He generally is acknowledged as teaching from a Reformed perspective, but Divine Healing could have been written by someone in the so-called Faith movement such as Oral Roberts or Kenneth Hagin.

First of all, Murray emphasizes that the Bible teaches physical healing as a gift to believers from God Himself through Jesus by the Holy Spirit. He says that there is no indication in Scripture that the gift was only limited to certain time periods. He gives a few testimonies of people he knew who were healed from serious illnesses by divine intervention. It is easy summarize his argument.

The Bible promises in James 5:15 that “the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up.” What is needed? Faith. What is often lacking? Faith. Much of Divine Healing presents Scriptures and discussions to encourage and increase faith in the reader. In other words, it is like the faith teaching of the twentieth century.

What else is needed? A right relationship with God. Sin is a hindrance to the answering of any prayer. So the second half of that verse from James declares, “And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.” Or as Isaiah 59:1-2 puts it:

Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save,
or his ear dull, that it cannot hear;
but your iniquities have made a separation
between you and your God,
and your sins have hidden his face from you
so that he does not hear.

Sometimes we do need to confess sin. We may have to ask the Lord to help us with that as the Psalmist prays in Psalm 139:23-24:

Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!

Murray explains, “God’s pardon brings with it a divine life which acts powerfully on him who receives it.” (854)

But Murray spends most of his time really persuading the readers to increase their faith. Divine Healing quotes numerous verses describing God’s promises to His people. It tells how the readers can understand and apply those promises.

Interestingly, it comes back to the main theme of the other book by Murray reviewed on these pages: abiding. One of the greatest promises in the Bible is this: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7). Jesus compares the process of abiding to branches connected to a vine.

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:5)

Think of this relationship, what it means.

The branch has nothing: It just depends on the vine for everything. (1619)

The sap does not flow for a time, and then stop, and then flow again, but from moment to moment the sap flows from the vine to branches. (1627)

If there was anything in the grapes not good, the owner never blamed the branch; the blame was always on the vine. (1640)

No one who learns to rest on the living Christ can become slothful, for the closer your contact with Christ the more of the Spirit of His zeal and love will be borne in upon you. (1642)

“He is my Vine, and I am His branch; I want nothing more—now I have the everlasting Vine…It is enough, my soul is satisfied.” (1727)

Ah, Let it be. And let Murray’s witness speak to you and persuade you and heal you.

This particular edition is a free download from the publisher. The editor has made a few annotations—as if the reader could not distinguish the context when the book was speaking of sin as a specific sin or the sin nature or between belief meaning “trust” and belief meaning “historical knowledge.” However, these are few and are easily accounted for. The editor also includes the full text of any verses cited in the text. That is very helpful and even more faith-building! After all, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17).

N.B.: Parenthetical references are Kindle locations, not page numbers.

Matthew Donnelly. Capturing Heaven. Word and Spirit Publishing, 2023.

Capturing Heaven is subtitled Why You Don’t Have to Suffer. The subtitle sounds hopeful but perhaps unrealistic. The author makes it clear that he is talking about healing and sickness, not suffering at the hands of people. Ironically, the book is based on the Book of Job, a book about someone who clearly did suffer painfully. There are some great books out there about Job, I have read a few including Why Bad Things Happen to God’s People, The Remarkable Record of Job, and Moby-Dick.

The first has been reviewed on these pages. The second emphasizes the marvels of God’s creation as described in the closing chapters of Job. The third tells a fictional story of a sea captain who is an anti-Job, who suffers, curses God, and tries to get even with Him. Capturing Heaven is different. Its basic thesis is simple: What happened to Job ought not to happen under the New Covenant.

Donnelly presents a close reading of the dynamics of the book of Job. His emphasis is that things have changed since then. He gives us some perspectives such as Job lived at the time of Abraham.¹ His trial lasted no longer than six months, probably less. Also, perhaps most important, “Job had no mediator.” This is the complaint in Job 9:33. At least Abraham had the priest Melchizidek. Job, living in Uz, had no one.

That last observation obviously brings in the Gospel. Jesus is the high priest of the world. He is the mediator for anyone who calls on Him. Now, God calls Job his servant, but Donnelly says that under the New Covenant, believers in Jesus are meant to be more than servants. Jesus called his disciples His friends (John 15:15). Speaking of the Book of Job, we are told, “The entire book was written to show man’s plight without God as his Father” (151).

Capturing Heaven expresses one theme in some detail: “The apostles did not view Job’s tragedies as a blueprint for God’s will concerning sickness and loss” (151). The only mention of Job in the New Testament is where he is commended for his patience in James 5:10-18.

If we look at the whole context, James commends Job for enduring through suffering, suffering which the Bible tells us came from the devil. Job is named as a prophet who suffered, and most prophets suffered at the hands of people—no doubt many of their persecutors were tempted by the devil. “James relates Job’s experience as something more related to persecution than to God’s will for our bodies and our health” (163).

In fact, in the same context James speaks what to Donnelly are contrasting ideas. If suffering, pray; if sick, call for prayers so that “The prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will restore him to health…” (James 5:15). For the “prayer of faith,” James uses Elijah as his example, not Job (James 5:17-18). Donnelly does remind us, too, that Job was restored to health after he prayed for his friends (Job 42:10).

Perhaps the most significant point made in this book is about the confrontations in the beginning between God and the devil. Many translations make it sound like God is tempting the devil, but Donnelly tell us:

Job 1:8 in Young’s Literal Translation brings out the full flavor of what was really said about Job, from God to Satan:

And Jehovah saith unto the Adversary, “Hast thou set thy heart against my servant Job because there is none like him in the land, a man perfect and upright, fearing God, and turning aside from evil?”
—Job 1:8 emphasis mine [i.e., Donnelly’s]

God did not sic the devil against Job, but rather he called out the plan that had already formed in Satan’s heart. God was pointing out the irony of the devil’s crazy scheme. It was as if God was saying, “Of all the people in the world, you want Job? He is the most righteous man on the planet. Why him?” (547)

Donnelly spends a long time explaining how Adam, when he sinned, gave authority to the devil and how the devil used that to accuse Job. Job’s biggest problem was simply that there was no New Covenant yet.

So Donnelly then presents one of the most detailed analyses of the Gospel message. First, “Man started it, so man had to fix it” (646). So Jesus would “stoop so low” to become a human. And die. After all, “Death was the prescribed payment for Adam’s sin” (663). And,

The “Son of God” clause is in effect. Adam was a son of God [see Luke 3:38], and that gave him the right to rule creation like God intended…A son of God gave it all away, and it would have to be the Son of God who restored it.

For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body has thou prepared for me.
—Hebrews 10:4-5 KJV (669-673, emphasis Donnelly’s)

The author, of course, notes that the sacrifice had to be “spotless.” Jesus had to be without sin. He was. But there is a warning. The Law tells us how to behave but also shows us when we fail and do sin. However, the Law also can produce self-righteousness. It is still sometimes a mystery to me how people could hate Jesus and want him crucified when all he did was heal people and teach what the Hebrew Scriptures taught.

The opposite of righteousness is not sin; it is self-righteousness. Sinners loved Jesus because Jesus was “made” for them. In other words, Jesus is a Savior to sinners. He was born to do that very thing. Sinners were drawn to the Master, and they followed Him because He had what they needed; He was the thing they needed…But self-righteousness is, at its core, anti-righteousness. It stands against everything God loves while also striving to serve God and imitate His holy nature. It is the original fruit that hung from the tree that killed Adam and Eve. (791-794)

Man, disconnected from God, willing himself to be good, stimulates certain self-righteous elements in his nature that drive him to kill anything truly like God. (812)

Paul sums it up:

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. (Galatians 2:20-21)

Eve and Adam’s sin was that they thought they could be like God apart from God. It has been that way with self-righteousness ever since. Interestingly, Derek Prince noted the same thing about Adam and Eve and self-righteous people when he wrote about Job in When Bad Things Happen to God’s People.

So was Job self-righteous? No, because God declared him righteous. He complained. He was looking for a sin that could accuse him, but found none.

Donnelly does claim, then, that while Job’s exact situation no longer applies, we can learn from it. If we understand the Gospel—if we understand God’s righteousness through Jesus, then there is no longer any accusation that can stand against us.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. (Romans 8:1-3)

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. (Romans 8:32-34)

“All things” mean all things. Creation is the “all things” that is being spoken about here. The universe is the “all things” that is now starting to work for our good instead of the hijacked version that was constantly against us. (1216, italics in the original)

When Job repented near the end of the story in the Book of Job, “Job was not repenting of some broken commandment, but from living out of his own self-generated knowledge” (1284). “Satan was silenced when Job met God.” (1345)

Not only is the New Covenant of Christ a better covenant than any that preceded it, but the person declared righteous because of faith in the Son of God and His blood has authority in the kingdom of God. Such a person does not have to endure sickness the way Job did. He or she can have faith, and “the prayer of faith will raise him up” as James says. Very hopeful. Very positive. Lord, let it be true for your people (including me…)!

Notes
¹ The Bible is not clear which Uz Job’s homeland was named for, but they all were around the time of Abraham. One was a grandson of Shem (Genesis 10:23), one a son of Abraham’s brother Nahor (Genesis 22:20-21), and one was the grandson of Seir, namesake of the land where Esau settled (Genesis 36:28 cf. Genesis 36:8). All, anyhow, would have been either a contemporary of Abraham or alive not too long after he lived. Presumably, Job would have been not too long after whichever Uz his country was named for.

N.B.: Parenthetical references are Kindle locations, not page numbers.

Charles Colson and Harold Fickett. The Faith. Zondervan, 2008.

Chuck Colson (1931-2012) was one of the most effective and courageous Christian leaders in the United States of his generation. Best known for founding the very effective prison ministry Prison Fellowship, he understood Western culture and American politics as few have. The Faith, co-authored with the experienced Christian author Harold Fickett, appears as Colson’s Summa for this generation.

The authors divide The Faith into two parts. The first part, as many readers could guess from the title, describes the basics of the Christian faith. In some ways it could be compared to a catechism or an apologetics work like Lewis’s Mere Christianity. However, it written for our times.

The chapter titles of the first part give a hint of the book’s direction and logic: “Everywhere, Always, by All,” “God Is,” “He Has Spoken,” “Truth,” “What Went Right, What Went Wrong,” “The Invasion,” and “God Above, God Beside, God Within.”

The first chapter title reminds us of the passage in Romans 1:19-20:

For what can be known about God is plain to them [all people], because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

Colson presents the idea that nature itself suggests or reveals a creator. So the second chapter gets into God’s eternal nature; the third, on the inspiration of Scripture; and the fourth, the idea that truth exists. His discussion on truth is very effective since it seems so many today in the West deny the existence of truth or, at best, believe it is subjective.

The last three chapters of the first part deal with the problem of sin—like truth, another word that seems to have little meaning to many today—the coming of Jesus, and the coming of the Holy Spirit. Anyone familiar with the doctrine of the Trinity can understand the gist of the last chapter’s title. These topics are all presented in a clear and careful way that make sense.

So the first part of The Faith deals with what the faith is, what Christians believe about God, life, and the world. The second part, then, tells the reader how the faith is lived out, or perhaps more precisely, how it is meant to be lived out. The first part is written for a general audience, the second part is written for the believer or for one thinking about becoming a believer.

No part of the book is mere dry doctrine or theology. Colson shares many personal observations and experiences, some from his life in politics, many from testimonies of prisoners and observations from his prison ministry.

It does sometimes make nonbelievers sound foolish. For example, a program that Prison Fellowship began in some American prisons has had a recidivism rate of 8%. That compares favorably to rehab or re-entry programs’ general rate of 24% and an overall recidivism rate (most of whom did not participate or finish any re-entry program) of 67%. Instead of being excited or grateful for such a program, the courts canceled it because it was “religious.” Ironically, the word penitentiary was coined and that type of prison promoted precisely because of instead of merely executing criminals of all types, such prison terms gave the perpetrators a chance to be penitent and regain a place in society.

Christians often hear today about the need for people who talk about Jesus to others to be winsome. Colson and Fickett understand that. The second part does make the Christian walk sound appealing—not easy, not simplistic, but honest and appealing. God is good. His plan for mankind through Jesus is good. Much of what we consider scientific and technological came from a Christian culture. The book winsomely takes on the two main challenges to Christianity in our culture: the Enlightenment and Islam.

The problem with the Enlightenment thinking which pervades much of Western worldview is that it took the scientific method, which was “discovered” and established by Christian believers, and separated it from morality and behavior. Islam, like Christianity, is monotheistic and has its roots in the Near East, but it all willful. There is no room for freedom and little for the creative variety among people that is manifested in God’s own creation.

A very moving story illustrates the problems of both. A popular Dutch filmmaker named Van Gogh (a distant cousin of the painter) typified the amoral but logic-based worldview of the Enlightenment and much of our postmodern culture. He was assassinated by a Muslim radical. As he was dying, he asked, “Can we talk?” He wanted to find out why he was being stabbed to death and if it were not possible to discuss their issues. The terrorist then cut off his head. No discussion. Neither logic alone not will alone are enough to give us hope. Only Jesus, as proven by His resurrection, can redeem both our reasoning and our wills. The Faith illustrates how in a most appealing and winsome way.

Jeff Shaara. Gods and Generals. Ballantine, 1996.

I obtained a copy of Gods and Generals a few years ago, but never got around to reading it until now when I rediscovered it on a bookshelf. I have enjoyed the film based on the novel, but I can honestly say that reading the novel was a different experience—neither better nor worse, just different.

The film mostly focuses on two Civil War battles, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. The film centers around Stonewall Jackson, though sharing some of the background of two of the other key characters in the story, Lee and Chamberlain. In the film, we see those three only at the beginning of the war with Jackson teaching at the Virginia Military Institute, Lee being recruited by both sides, and Chamberlain deciding to leave his teaching job and his family to join the army.

The book adds a fourth main character, Winfield Scott Hancock. The book also begins with the Mexican War, showing how Lee, Jackson, and Hancock served on the same side in that war. We then get some biography of each of the four between 1846 and 1861. We are reminded in the book that in 1859, while a colonel in the U.S. Army, led the troops that rescued the armory at Harper’s Ferry from John Brown and arrested Brown and his cohorts.

Shaara spends quite a bit of time in California, where Hancock was stationed when the war broke out. We see a contrast where Dvaid Twiggs, the officer in charge of all the troops in Texas, surrendered to the Confederacy and would join their army, turning over many important supplies. The officer in charge of the troops in California Albert Sidney Johnston, who also would join the Confederacy, let all his men make their own choices. Personal politics was involved as Twiggs hated Winfield Scott, the Commanding General of the Army at the beginning of the war.

There is a very moving scene, based on historical memoirs, of a farewell party in California where a number of the officers who had served together in Mexico and in the West are going their separate ways. The somewhat impromptu soiree is hosted by Hancock and his wife Almira and includes Johnston and Hancock’s best friend, Louis Armistead. Armistead, a Virginia native, would join the Confederacy, and the Pennsylvanian Hancock would join the Union army.

Hancock’s observation at the time secession begins perhaps sums up not only the problem in 1860 and 1861, but the problem whenever wars begin:

“There’s been too much loud talk, I think. Too many loud voices. If someone disagrees with you, you shout back a little louder, and so he does the same. The words get nastier, the threats grow…and that’s how wars start.” (88, cf. James 4:1-2 KJV)

Shaara presents Lee’s observation about the causes of war in a similar vein as he walks unrecognized through an elite hotel in Richmond where he was to meet the governor to offer his services after turning down Winfield Scott:

Lee walked slowly through the hurried clatter of the lobby, saw groups of men, some huddled in intense conversation, others waving big cigars, broad-chested men with loud voices, proclaiming their opinions with the mindless flourish of those who share no responsibility for the consequences of their grand ideas. Lee stopped briefly, listened to one such speech, felt uncomfortable and began to wonder what reckless policies and self-indulgent planning was going on elsewhere. (112-113)

While most men in the U. S. Army prior to 1861 would join the army of their home state, not all did. We meet, for example, George “Pap” Thomas a Virginia native who would stay with the United States. Gods and Generals does not tell much of his story in the war since he was in the Western theater in Kentucky and Tennessee for much of the time, and Gods and Generals tells about the Eastern theater, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia versus the Army of the Potomac. Of course, the leadership of that Union group changed a number of times. In God’s and Generals we read about McClellan, Hooker, and Burnside. Interestingly, we mostly see them from Hancock’s frustrated perspective, so we see the inability of all three to truly grasp their army’s situation.

We are well over a hundred pages before the fighting—other than Fort Sumter—begins. Since novels can cover a lot more material than movies, we get details of all the major battles in the East from 1862 to spring of 1863. We read then of First Bull Run (briefly), Williamsburg, Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, with some descriptions of actions around Harper’s Ferry and Winchester, Virginia.

We note that all of these except for Williamsburg and Antietam were Confederate victories. The two that were not are probably best considered draws. As a result, some critics have claimed that Gods and Generals was pro-Confederacy and even promoting the “Lost Cause.” However, if one reads the book, that is hardly the case, it is simply that until Gettysburg in July 1863, the Confederate army in the East had the upper hand in the fighting. Its purpose is to get the reader to see the fighting and have a sense of what it was like to be a soldier in that war.

Especially as we see Hancock’s perspective, we see the tragedy of any civil war, sundering friendships and families. But we also see that the Army of the Potomac, at least until Meade took over, was cautious and hesitant, and missed some significant opportunities. It seemed that no commanding general of the Union army there understood the importance of ground, i.e., taking an advantageous and defensible position. In contrast, that was the strength of Lee and Jackson. In the case of Antietam, which did a lot of damage to the rebel troops, McClellan did take advantage of the fact that he had obtained a copy of Lee’s orders for deployment.

Gods and Generals does have a few fictional characters, but it is largely based on history. Even a lot of the dialogue is based on written accounts. (Heros von Borcke appears on three or four pages, for example.) There are some helpful maps, and the story really shares much of the strategy or lack thereof of the battles, focusing on the men involved. We are reminded that a civil war is the worst kind of war there is. I read The Killer Angels and The Last Full Measure many years ago, but reading this has perhaps tempted me to take another look at those. Shaara understands both people and war.