What I'm Reading #6: Matthew McCullough, Tim Keller, and William Shakespeare (again).
A useful curated list. Maybe.
Books shape us. They give us diverse perspectives, they show us other worlds, and the best books challenge us. We’re hardwired for story and written words. For that reason, I write about the books I’m reading and what I loved, hated, and was challenged by. My interests lie in theology, Christian living, philosophy, history, and literature.
Remember Heaven by Matthew McCullough
Matthew McCullough is an author I’ve been meaning to read for some time. Providence saw fit to provide me with a copy of Remember Heaven at a conference and I relished it. I love the interplay between Scripture and philosophy and I love literature that grapples with finding meaning in a temporary world. McCullough also values those things and it shows.
I wouldn’t put it in the classics section of my theological library, but I would put it in a great modern book on Christian living. The book is in relationship with his work on Remembering Death, so there’s a mirror image of the themes (I surmise) he explores there. But in this book, the limitations of life point the Christian to ponder the bright hope waiting beyond the veil. This confidence in our eternal inheritance should free us. We can be free from fear because we lean on the Rock of Ages.
I had the fortuitous experience of reading this book while reading the introductory essay to The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. And the philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach appeared there and in Remember Heaven. Feuerbach contended that human beings made god in their own image, and this is the genesis of Christianity and every religion. His work was mightily influential on Eliot. She even translated his book, The Essence of Christianity. McCullough takes up the interplay between Feuerbach and Christianity, and adroitly makes the Christian case against such ideas.
“How we spend our moments is how we spend our lives. Do you want your life measured by how many fantasy football titles you won? Or how many limited-time deals you grabbed? Or how many likes you got on that family photo? Or how many days in a you nailed the Wordle challenge?” –Matthew McCullough
Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I? by Tim Keller
Keller produces a work that weaves theology, philosophy, modern thinking, and the Scriptures very well. There are moments when this book soars, bringing me to realize how I don’t extend forgiveness as I ought or I trade minimizing wrongs done for true forgiveness. It challenged me. I also found weaknesses.
The introduction is very much a product of the specific year in which it was written and it felt dated. It was released in 2022, Black Lives Matter had just happened, COVID had just happened, political tensions were high, and those things haven’t entirely disappeared, but Keller uses the Black Lives Matter protests as an example of the struggle between the impulse to forgive and the desire for justice, which felt flat three years later.
I also felt, viscerally, Keller struggling to reconcile demands for justice with demands for forgiveness and reconciliation. He gets there, but it’s not as buttoned up as I would have hoped. In short, Christians are responsible for internal forgiveness i.e. forgiving wrong doers in our hearts, but not always external forgiveness and reconciliation, which requires repentance. To give an illustration, I should forgive my fellow Christian for stealing money from me, and be restored to fellowship with him, but I may not hire him to be my money manager in the future. This is forgiveness, without full reconciliation of everything that happened before the break. Likewise, without repentance from the offender, reconciliation is simply not possible, yet forgiveness is.
Despite its unevenness, I strongly recommend this book. Christian forgiveness is tricky, Keller mostly navigates it well.
“Our society cannot live without forgiveness. When it is absent, the results are horrifying. Uncountable numbers of shooting deaths in our urban areas are revenge attacks between gangs or even family members.
The majority of the so-named mass shootings are attacks by gunmen who have nursed grudges. A man who had a falling-out with the members of his carpool methodically shot and killed six of them. As he died from his wounds inflicted by the police, he calmly explained why he had a grudge against each of them and expressed regret that he hadn’t murdered the last one.” –Tim Keller
King Lear by William Shakespeare
This is the first Shakespeare I’ve read that I felt the keen lack of watching the play on the stage. It’s a tragedy, and it’s got Ecclesiastes fingerprints all over it. King Lear craves the public show of affection from his daughters. Two daughters fake it in order to gain power, the third, Cordelia, is honest with him and tells him that she won’t make a show of her love, that she’s loved him her entire life. Lear sends her to France to marry the king without a dowry, to show how little worth she has for Lear now. The rest of the play unwinds the consequences of this action.
Lear’s pride, power, and vanity leads to his end and the end of those who actually loved him. This is a classic tragedy. But there are theological themes here. Why do the gods allow these evil people to prosper? Why is Cordelia not vindicated? Why does Edgar suffer and Edmund rise? If this world is all there is, where’s justice? This is the Ecclesiastes of it all. Life under the sun is meaningless, vanity of vanities, even in the place of justice, injustice reigns. Lear personifies all of that. His power, trust in his family, his pride, none of it spares him or the people around him.
At least Edmund gets it, that guy is the worst.
OLD MAN You cannot see your way.
GLOUCESTER I have no way and therefore want no eyes: I stumbled when I saw. Full oft ’tis seen Our means secure us, and our mere defects] Prove our commodities. O dear son Edgar, The food of thy abusèd father’s wrath! Might I but live to see thee in my touch, I’d say I had eyes again!
Shakespeare, William. William Shakespeare Complete Works Second Edition (p. 2028). Kindle Edition.