Beth Moore, All My Knotted-Up Life (Tyndale House Publishers February 21, 2023)
I love it when a memoir is read by the person who loves it. The emotions are palpable and there’s no misinterpreting the intent.
Moore’s experience with the SBC is more public than most, but it is a common one. No church or denomination is perfect, but the SBC over the last decades has tried to hide its imperfections behind a cloak of secrecy and “thus saith the Lord” when the Lord hath not sayers so. It breaks my heart to see it continue in spite of the developments since 2021.
Jesus is beyond and above all denominations. Moore’s life and testimony illustrate the Lordship of Jesus above all. I am grateful she chose to share her story.
G.K. Chesterton, The Secret of Father Brown (Audible, 2023. Originally published 1927)
Who doesn't love an accidental detective? Jessica Fletcher, Miss Marple, and even Sherlock Holmes solved cases that stymied official investigators. Father Brown, an affable, slightly overweight priest has the observation skills of Sherlock Holmes mixed with the clergyman's understanding of human nature. The stories are short, witty, and often mixed with sadness as Father Brown solves the cases by thinking the way the criminal might, saying, ' "It is true," he resumed, after a momentary pause, "that somebody else had played the part of the murderer before me and done me out of the actual experience. I was a sort of understudy; always in a state of being ready to act the assassin. I always made it my business, at least, to know the part thoroughly. What I mean is that, when I tried to imagine the state of mind in which such a thing would be done, I always realized that I might have done it myself under certain mental conditions, but not under others; and not generally under the obvious ones. And then, of course, I knew who really had done it; and he was not generally the obvious person." '
There's something refreshing about the old mysteries. There's a reliance on human nature that is often missing from modern works. People are complex, harboring potential for both good and evil within them. Chesterton revealed this complexity through his delightfully astute Father Brown.
Matt Walsh, What is a Woman (DW Books, June 2022)
Walsh’s delivery is monotone and staccato, but the research presented is too important to quibble over style. He makes no pretense about his conclusions, opinions, or motives. Still, he presents the evidence about the far left, progressive agenda with compelling detail. His most powerful stories are of people who have lived through the trans-destruction and can assert that fighting biology is largely an impossible task, tilting at the windmills of self-acceptance and satisfaction.
D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover (Kindle)
Without a redemptive character in the book, I got through this story. It was a book club assignment and a classic, but I doubt I will reread it. The book is largely about unhappy people looking for meaning through lust and passion. It ends with uncertainty about how the lovers will live out their lives, but I suspect Tolstoy's book (which I read by mistake, thinking it was actually the book club choice), offers the likely end to the affair.
The "classic" designation likely comes from the critique of classism and the philosophical notes scattered throughout.
“Give me the child of any healthy, normally intelligent man, and I will make a perfectly competent Chatterley of him. It is not who begets us, that matters, but where fate places us. Place any child among the ruling classes, and he will grow up, to his own extent, a ruler. Put kings’ and dukes’ children among the masses, and they’ll be little plebeians, mass products. It is the overwhelming pressure of environment.”
The scandalous reputation is easy to see in both the activities and language surrounding sex.
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (Audible)
Set in pre-revolution Russia, Tolstoy covers both the sexual gratification and classism themes of Lawrence's book. There are far more characters and far more depth in this work, but the familiar themes work themselves out in the same sense: money doesn't make people happy, affairs don't make people satisfied, and ideals don't make people good.
Again, most of the characters are unlikeable; Kitty is an exception. Some of the characters grow into better humans (Levin) while others decline morally, emotionally, and physically (Stiva), and still others are stagnant from beginning to end (Karenin). Vronsky is an idiot, Koznyshev doomed to loneliness, and Dolly is as unhappy at Anna, but without the courage to stand up for herself. There are a half dozen self-righteous people (notably Countess Ivanona and Madame Stahl) and several superficial wealthy one who don't know and don't really care how they got their money. The titicular character, Anna, wants more from life than her position of wealth and status gives her, but she learns that happiness does not come in love affairs, children, or admiration. She becomes increasingly paranoid as the story progresses. Her end is probably the ultimate destiny for Lady Chatterley.
The primary antagonist is life in a highly divided country where the rich and poor have nothing in common. The rich do what they must to maintain their power and wealth; the poor do what they must to survive. Tolstoy's empathy for both the poor (whose meager food is served with a dose of lively conversation, generosity, and humor) and the authentically religious (Kitty serves as the saintly motivation for her husband, Levin) is evident throughout. Tolstoy uses the narrative to explore the roots and likely future of Russian politics and practices. Landowners face off against the modern Enlightenment thinkers, peasants eschew technology and cling to the old ways, and only the wealthy have any power to change the system. The only hope in this novel comes through faith and family. Without these, life is meaningless.
Many of the conversations in the text would be quite at home in the 21st century West, particularly those that seem to build up the peasants without ever knowing them. The rich had no intention of making life better for the poor, but they needed the appearance of compassion to make themselves feel righteous. They were "woke" in the most current iteration of the word, all vapor and no substance. In the end, the Revolution. What’s next for us?