|
Main Menu
PaLM Sites
|
PaLM Reviews
Browse reviews by alphabetical listing
Sort by:
Title (  )
Review submitted: ()
Rating ()
Popularity ()
Reviews currently sorted by: Title (A to Z)
Category: Books
|
 Title: A Thousand Splendid Suns  | views:277 |  Review by John L Ng Jul 07
A Thousand Splendid Suns
By Khaled Hosseini Riverhead Books, 2007
The lovely title of Hosseini’s novel is from a poem he recites toward the end of his story. The story is about a long lesson in endurance. No matter what a person is given, to survive and to live, one must find the resolve to endure that which is beyond her power. We are to believe that under any circumstance we still can live under a thousand splendid suns. It is the enduring friendship of two women to whom life has dealt disparaging circumstances. The setting is Afghanistan in the last three decades of war and turmoil.
Mariam is an illegitimate child whose scornful mother hates the world and men. Her relentless and loud scorn almost robs Mariam of her gentle nature, but not. At 15, Mariam is married off to a middle-aged shoemaker with bad teeth and a brutish disposition. Years later, we meet Laila, 14, who is the daughter of a middle class teacher. In an inexplicable moment, a stray rocket destroys much of her extended family. Thinking her boyfriend has been killed and carrying his child, she reluctantly agrees to be the second wife of Mariam’s husband.
While their world rages, these two women learn to cope by nurturing their relationship. They learn to collect strength from the other as they suffer long and frequent in their repressive culture and unhappy and abusive marriages. At first, Mariam is resentful and accuses Laila of stealing her husband. After the much younger Laila gives birth to Aziza, Mariam’s gentle nature prevails and transforms her into a surrogate mother for both. Through some harrowing experiences and with some painful consequences, their friendship endures but not without a sad ending.
Mariam and Laila may well be a modern version of the Biblical patriarch Abraham’s women. Both narrations are a study of human pathology and divine redemption. Whether in today’s Kabul or ancient Canaan, when chronic upheavals brings systemic and personal oppression, women suffer more and more often than men. Hosseini, an American medical doctor born in Afghanistan and a goodwill envoy for the United Nations Refugee Agency, writes unevenly and with mixed success as women’s voices telling the story. Many scenes are weaved together like a soap opera texture. What could have been powerful and deep emotions read glossily and quickly. Nevertheless, the novel is a good read. It celebrates courage and hope, friendship and family, commitment and sacrifice.
This story also serves well for St. Paul’s prose in Romans 5: but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. Suffering, deserved or undeserved, can make someone bitter like Mariam’s mother. And yet, when suffering is endured under the light of a splendid sun, it can make a good person better, like Mariam. Long suffering is a sure sign of divine grace and redemption. |
|
|
| Review submitted: 2010/1/10
|
| |
| |
| Category: Books
|
| Title: Exclusion & Embrace: a theological exploration of identity, otherness and reconciliation | views:168 | Review by John L. Ng May 2009
Exclusion & Embrace: a theological exploration of identity, otherness and reconciliation
By Miroslav Volf, Abingdon Press. 1996
Miroslav Volf, professor in theology at Yale Divinity School, has written a “theological exploration” that illuminates a vision of what it means to live under God in a post-modern world of glaring human pluralism. Perhaps the greatest challenge that ruffles many thoughtful Christians is how to live with the otherness of others whose contempt and hostility toward one another, including the church, are real. His book is an impressive, lucid synthesis of Biblical theology, historical philosophy, post modern thinking, contemporary issues with insightful readings of the Christian’s Scripture and current global conflicts.
All peoples viscerally seek to protect their communal identity by drawing boundaries to exclude others who are different from them. This determined exclusion can easily lead people, individually and collectively, toward hatred and even violence. The natural consequence of exclusion is almost always oppression, injustice and violence. Volf responds to the problem of exclusion by proposing “embrace” as a way to live with one another in God’s grace. The only way to redeem this flawed human diversity is to accept the otherness of others, including our enemies, in forgiveness and reconciliation. Here he wrestles with gender and race, oppression and justice, deception and truth, violence and peace with acute insights and a wide breadth of research. Volf’s brilliant argument for “embrace” is convincing.
A native Croatian, with first hand exposure to the atrocities during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, Volf flirts with a personal application of his proposed “embrace” but does not. The year was 1993. For months the Serbian fighters had been plundering his native country, “herding people into concentration camps, raping women, burning down churches, and destroying cities.” In his theological enlightenment, how would he embrace his enemies, the perpetrators of these unspeakable evils, in real time and space? What would embrace actually look like in his personal life? Where would he find the courage and strength to embrace his enemies? How would embrace impact his sense of jurisprudence? When asked how he would embrace the Serbians, Volf conveniently gives a canned response: No, I cannot – but as a follower of Christ I think I should be able to (page 9). After more than 300 pages of impression theological exploration, he never comes around to tell us how he has applied embrace in his social and political contexts.
A failure of this book can be said of many others of the same genre. There is a serious disconnect between the clear confidence of cognitive theology and the ambivalence of soot smudged human reality. Perhaps my difficulty in plowing through his reasoning is that it lacks a sense of ground truth (a military term referring to the reality check of a theory in actual combat). Struggling to follow his argument, I agitatedly ask, so what – does embrace really work for him? I desperately want him to show me the power of embrace. If he has practiced embrace with his enemies, Volf does not tell us. The reader seriously doubts if he has found it within himself to accept, forgive and reconcile with those who have killed and raped his people. The book is deep with brilliant insights in abstract theology but shallow in applied theology. When all has been written and done, infinitely more is written than done.
|
|
|
| Review submitted: 2009/6/1
|
| |
| |
| Category: Books
|
| Title: Film Review : The Informant! | views:79 | Review by John L Ng Oct 09
The title itself is strangely funny – what’s with the exclamation point and what does it mean! Mark Whitacre, played by Matt Damon with demotic delight, lives and works in the land of Lincoln – the movie is set in Decatur, Illinois. We are reminded of where we are by a Lincoln bust in almost every early scene. Maybe it is Lincoln’s iconic image of wholesome honesty that we should be thinking about. At first, everything about Whitacre seems to have a mid-west wholesomeness, and yet not. His boyish overweight physique, ill-fitted suits and colorful neckties, bad toupee, dorky mustache and bumbling babbles are as promiscuously tasteless as his house cluttered with eclectic collectables. Something is off about him. But we are not quite sure what just yet.
The Informant! by director Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s 11, 12, 13 movies) is based on a book of the same title, without the exclamation and published in 2000, by former New York Times writer Kurt Eichenwald. The book is an expose of the corruption and downfall of ADM, an agribusiness giant that produced corn and other food additives. The movie begins with Whitacre dribbling philosophically to his son about the virtue of corn. Indeed, corn has made him a wealthy man. He is a biochemist and the youngest divisional head at ADM. He soon becomes a whistle blower to the FBI when his company is about to be outed for a price-fixing scheme.
Sometimes clueless, the FBI agents are at once sincere, gullible and inept. Unbeknown to them and the agency, Whitacre’s hands are as stained with the grime of greed as the other executives in his company. Soon, we realize that he is a congenital liar. As his mendacity piles on high and deep, Whitacre irreversibly descends in a detour of depraved disconnects. While his voice-over concerns with where to buy fancy neckties and how to pronounce porche, Whitacre’s life unravels into a self destructive and self deceived fray. His delusional existence is so pathetic that Soderbergh cynically makes fun of it.
The movie is a fun study of human pathology. But our pathos is not funny; it is lugubriously serious. That is why the church calls the seven deadly sins deadly. We laugh at Whitacre for his apparent banal and bumbling greed. Corporate corruption is so common and pervasive in America that we are tricked again and again into believing that it is mundane. White collar crimes, with its expensive neckties (another strangely funny thing in the movie – an overt obsession with neckties), do not ruffle our sense of jurisprudence like other societal crimes, like rape and murder. Everybody does it and nobody is the victim. Or rather, the victims are faceless.
The movie is fun to watch and I feel guilty for it. No conscientious God-fearing person would find any form of human pathology funny. But calmly, like Whitacre, I can deceive myself into self justification. As I type away on my laptop for this review, I can write that my enjoyment is a fitting testimony of how banally evil human pathology can be. In light of recent corporate corruption (the likes of Enron, Madoff Investment Securities, AIG, Lehman Brothers) in greed and other deadly sins that contributed to our global economic downturn, can we do anything but laugh. While the seven deadly sins are being perpetrated by and around us, we grin as if we are watching a fun movie. If human pathology is funny, then the joke is on us when we gaze into a mirror and realize that the victims, and perpetrators, are not faceless after all.
|
|
|
| Review submitted: 2009/10/22
|
| |
| |
| Category: Books
|
| Title: Foundations of Spiritual Formation: a community approach to becoming like Christ | views:111 | Review by John L Ng July 09
Foundations of Spiritual Formation: a community approach to becoming like Christ
By Paul Pettit, ed., Kregel Publications, 2008
That phrase, Spiritual Formation, made common more than thirty years ago, in its inflated usage has devalued its essential meaning. In fact, it has generated a minor cottage industry from the “The Purpose Driven Life” books to “Walk Thru The Bible” seminars. Obviously, there is a spiritual void in enough Christians to feed this apparent movement, especially within evangelical churches. Foundations of Spiritual Formation is a collection of essays by contributors from varied theological traditions that include Dallas Theological Seminary, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Moody Bible Institute.
Paul Pettit, DTS’s spiritual formation program director and the book’s complier, defines spiritual formation as a continual process through which a “dynamic, holistic, maturing relationship between the individual and God, between the individual and others (believers and non-believers)” is being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. The book is in two parts. Part 1 sets the theological foundation and approach that includes a study of the Old and New Testaments’ notion of the faith community as context for forming true spirituality. Part 2 offers seven practical elements of spiritual formation: the work of the heart, character development, training in love, leadership and identity, life calling, story telling and preaching. Because they are by different writers, the chapters are uneven in text and texture. Some are didactic and academic; others are narrative and practical. More critically, several hardly adhere to the premise that spiritual formation is primarily communal.
Part 1 argues for community as the context for spirituality. But I am not sure it is convincing to me because I happen to agree with it or because its rationale is well argued. The American brand of evangelicalism has evolved into an individual endeavor, apart from and at times in resistance to community. Once upon a time, the most basic unit of human living was a village in which each villager is responsible to one another. Then it downgraded to the extended family and then to the immediate family. Today, most Christians live their faith as a single individual apart from community. The book calls its readers back to the Biblical notion of faith community as the essential place for spiritual formation. The depth of our spirituality is intrinsically related to the depth of our participation in a faith community.
Part 2 presents what seems like a random selection of practical elements in spiritual formation. I wonder what theological rationale is used to justify these topics. Taken as a whole, however, the book provides a competent introduction of a communal approach to spiritual formation. It can be summarized by four broad assertions: one, who we are in Christ is the prerequisite of an open and seeking heart for spiritual formation; two, where our defining place in a faith community impacts our spiritual formation; three, true spirituality has outward communal implications as well as inward personal realities; four, true spirituality is living the presence of God in practical holiness with others in community. In spite its flaws, Foundations of Spiritual Formation provides exactly that.
|
|
|
| Review submitted: 2009/7/30
|
| |
| |
| Category: Books
|
| Title: Head and Heart – American Christianities | views:11 | Review by John L Ng Jul 10
Head and Heart – American Christianities
By Garry Wills The Penguin Press, 2007
Irrespective of the rancor in American politics concerning the separation between church and state, no reasonable person can ignore the influence religion, particularly Christianity, has in the founding and history of the United States. The meaning of separation is at the heart of this bitter debate. Some have sought to blacken the line of separation by defining it as the autonomous functions of church and state that must exist apart from the other. Another way to define separation is that the state should function independently but inseparable from the church.
The framers, both deists and theists alike, of the constitution never intended that religion, particularly Christianity, play no role in politics. As witnesses of European state churches, they feared governmental infringement on the establishment of religion and were desirous a constitutional guarantee of religious freedom in American life. Indeed it is the freedom of religion that has flourished Christianity in the new world. As Garry Wills notes in “Head and Heart,” government cannot legislate religious activities, like having faith in Jesus. But one would hope and expect that one’s faith in Jesus should influence every facet of that person’s life, including his political participation.
“Head and Heart” is a good read. Garry Wills, one of few American writers I enjoy reading, is a devoted Catholic and a learned historian. In his introduction to his class on the history of the constitution, Wills asked his students three questions: Do you believe in the separation of church and state? Do you believe in the separation of religion and politics? Do you believe in the separation of morality and politics? Almost all students responded yes to the first and second questions. But none responded positively to the third. Wills admits willingly that the answers to the second and third questions are inconsistent. A shared rationale recognizes that most people’s morality is affected by their religion. In fact, I would agree that answers to all three questions must be consistent. Since morality is affected by religion and much of religion is formulated by an instituted church, it would be reasonable to expect the church to play a role in politics.
The book examines the dynamic and uneven relationship between church and state. Their interplay has transformed the political and the religious landscape in American. Wills divides the history of church and state into five epochs: The pre-enlightenment period of the 17th century that witnessed the early Puritans, the conflicting colonies and the first Great Awakening; The enlightenment of the 18th century that included the rise of the Unitarians, the Quakers and the founding of a new nation; The Romantic Era of 19th century ushered in the slavery conflict, the Civil War and the second Great Awakening; The Cultural Wars years of the 20th century that included the two great world wars, the rights movements and Evangelical politics; The Religious Nation period of the latter 20th and early 21st centuries that gave rise to faith based politics, advanced social services, education and wars.
Whether one is initiated or not in the debate of church and state politics, this read provides an informed background for conversations. Every good Christian ought to be a good citizen; every good citizen ought to be informed of the political issues. Many of these issues are at once hostile and friendly to our faith and practice.
|
|
|
| Review submitted: 2010/8/6
|
| |
| |
|
1 2 3 4 Next >
|
|
Home Page 
Love it! 
Recommend it! 
