What I'm Reading #9: Anna Karenina and A Heart Aflame for God
Two Visions of the Pursuit of Meaning
Books shape us. They give us diverse perspectives. They show us other worlds. They challenge us. Theology brings us deeper into understanding God. Philosophy forces us to think clearly and with precision. The great literary works of the world are sublime aesthetic achievements. And the time to read such books is short. I recently calculated how many books I could possibly read in the rest of my life and the answer was just shy of 3,100. In some ways, that’s a lot of books. In others, it’s not so many. I want to make the most of reading them and that’s why I’m writing these posts. So I can reflect on what challenges me and explore how these disparate types of books overlap in surprising ways—and what Christianity has to say in response.
Without further ado, here is this month’s reading.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
I hesitate to try to put into words what I think about this book because what I say will inevitably be deficient. But if I didn’t make an effort, what are we even doing here? Anna Karenina is a long contrast between two lives, two points of view, two approaches to meaning. One searches for meaning internally. The other looks for meaning outside of oneself. The character that pursues meaning and joy according to her feelings loses everything. Her pursuit is striving after quicksand because her feelings are ever-changing. And the people around her are also changing. People are never static. This is the source of Anna’s self-inflicted discontent. She cannot find stable ground to walk on. But her failings are all too familiar. Tolstoy is prescient in anticipating a feelings-obsessed culture. She longs for happiness, and she tries to find it in her marriage, her child, and then the man she falls in love with. So much modern culture would encourage her toward her affair. But it crushes her. It’s an all-too-human failing.
The other, searching for meaning and truth outside himself, finds relief in getting his eyes off of himself. But that relief is temporary. This reality demonstrates that Tolstoy is neither clumsy nor idealistic. Levin’s conversion to Christianity is paradigmatic of Tolstoy’s clear-eyed approach. His actual conversion is described in a beautiful bit of prose.
“‘Lord, have mercy, forgive us, help us!’ he repeated words that somehow suddenly came to his lips. And he, an unbeliever, repeated these words not just with his lips. Now, in that moment, he knew that neither all his doubts nor the impossibility he knew in himself of believing by means of reason hindered him in the least from addressing God. It all blew off his soul like dust.” —Leo Tolstoy
He captures the complete undoing of one’s old self and the putting on of the new. Yet Tolstoy is quick to remind us that despite conversion to Christianity, the old man stays with us. Shortly after his conversion, Levin thinks:
“With my brother now there won’t be that estrangement there has always been between us; there won’t be any arguments; with Kitty there will be no more quarrels; with the visitor, whoever he is, I’ll be gentle and kind; and with the servants, with Ivan, everything will be different… ‘Kindly do not touch me and do not instruct me!’ said Levin, vexed by this interference from the coachman. …At once he sadly felt how mistaken he had been in supposing that his inner state could instantly change him in his contacts with reality.”
Levin strains along with Paul in Romans 7: why do I continue to do the things I do not wish to do and do the things I wish I didn’t? But he knows he’s forever changed.
There are countless more things to say. It’s simply put, a classic.
A Heart Aflame for God by Matthew C. Bingham
Does the Reformed Protestant tradition have anything to say about spiritual formation? Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism have a deep history of formational practices for Christians to pursue. This stands as an attraction to many Protestants who want a more substantive spiritual life. Bingham wrote this book to those who feel that attraction in order to say to them, “Why don’t you find out what your religious heritage says about these things before you reject it?” Bingham does a good job of explaining the Reformed approach; it does read more apologetically than I expected. He traces the issues at stake in the Protestant Reformation and links them directly to church instruction on formation. The fault lines between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are well known, but unexpectedly, modern Protestants have adopted many Catholic practices on this topic. Bingham laments evangelicals’ willingness to take in practices so shaped by doctrines that we broke from Rome over.
Bingham recognizes that there are parallels between Protestant approaches and Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy. But he dings the latter two institutional churches for having many specific prescriptions for spiritual formation, whereas the Protestant tradition is less inclined to bind consciences on specifics. This is a natural extension of sola scriptura, but interesting in how it plays out in spiritual formation.
So what is unique about Reformed Protestant spiritual formation? How simple it is. Bingham cites Scripture intake, prayer, meditation, being in nature, solitude, and intentional spiritual conversations as valid Protestant approaches. There’s not a uniform 10 steps to formation. Bingham’s subtle critique of modern Protestants is that they search for something beyond the basics—an experience perhaps—but those things are extra biblical and, according to Bingham, potentially harmful. As a convinced Protestant, I agree with the substance. I think Bingham’s concerns about Protestant conversions to Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism are overstated. My sense is that a few high-profile conversions have captured a lot of attention. But the concerns about Protestant spiritual formation taking on practices from the Big 2 are founded, at least in the sense that many of the Protestant books on this topic do exactly that.