The GirlAlive Blog

Book Review: The Throne, The Lamb and The Dragon

My computer died. Completely. I blame Windows Vista 100%. It is crap. So I’m working from my tiny netbook for the forseeable future.

A few weeks ago I offered to write whatever anyone wants me to write (and the offer still stands – leave suggestions in the comments). My sister-in-law Jaime requested that I review the book “The Throne, The Lamb & The Dragon” by Paul Spilsbury. Since she even offered to buy the book and have it sent to me, how could I refuse? Free book.

So she sent me the book and I read it. And then I put off writing the review for a long time because it’s tricky. So here I go.

The sub-title of the book is “A Reader’s Guide to the Book of Revelation”. Therein lies the trickiness. The book of Revelation is the Marmite of the Bible. Most Christians either love it or hate it. They either are obsessed with interpreting every word and phrase and trying to apply the prophecies to everything around them, or they pretty much read it when they have to at church and otherwise ignore it, finding it incomprensible. I’m much more the latter group.

I’ve always had problems “getting into” Revelation because I was raised in Baptist churches that had some very definite ideas about what it all meant, and I was always a little skeptical of their interpretations. I never believed that whatever Democrat is popular this week must be the Anti-Christ. I never believed that credit cards were the number of the beast. I just wasn’t buying the paranoid theories. I mean, this book is 2000 years old, and it only started making sense now? I don’t think so.

I get the feeling that the Paul Spilsbury was plagued by the same doubts, but unlike me, he decided to go digging deeper to find out what it all meant. He analyses Revelation in light of the type of literary form used, and in light of similar documents of the time and what he comes up with is quite interesting. If I had to sum up his findings in one sentence, I’d say, “Don’t be so darned literal.”

One of the points that he makes that is likely causing the most havoc among churches is that he doesn’t necessarily believe in the Rapture. The Rapture is the belief among (mostly American) evangelicals that at some point Jesus will return and steal away all of his followers to heaven so that they don’t have to go through some really nasty hard times on earth known as The Tribulation. The way Spilsbury interprets things, there is no Great Tribulation coming because we are already living in it. And he kind of makes sense here. The Tribulation in Revelation is the period of time between the opening of the First Seal and the triumphant return of Christ. The opening of the First Seal in earth time would have been when Jesus ascended to heaven, so that makes the Tribulation now and for the last two thousand years.

I’m not going to try to make any claims about whether Spilsbury is completely right or wrong. But for me, he has made Revelation a lot more useful. It isn’t as much a puzzle about how to survive the end of the world as it is a guide to living in the world now, not much different from the other letters in the New Testament.

I think that this book is worth reading, if only for making you think. The one part that stood out to me was the section on the Mark of the Beast. That’s the whole thing where you’ll be marked with a number and without it you won’t be able to participate in any commerce. What if we stop viewing it as a literal number and a literal mark and look at it as an attitude? The true Mark of the Beast is an attitude of acceptance of evil. In order to participate in commerce in the world today, you have to be okay with accepting a certain amount of cruelty, corruption and greed. And that is far more insidious than credit cards or social security numbers. Who made your shoes? Who grew your sugar? Were they paid for their work? How much does that Wal-Mart price cut cost your soul? Who do you work for? What is their agenda? Are they really making people’s lives better or just making their wallets lighter?

I have to agree with Paul Spilsbury that a less literal interpretation of Revelation is necessary to really understand why it was written and for whom. I haven’t decided if I agree with every interpretation he makes, but I certainly didn’t see anything in this book that conflicts with what I know about who God is.

The Bible in a Hurry

The Bible In a Hurry

In honor of Easter, I have decided to write my view of the main points of the Bible. Why am I doing this? I’m a Christian, and the Bible is an important part of my life. But I think that a lot of Christians, even great theologians, can tend to take the Bible by soundbites and fragments, never looking at it as a whole congruent piece of literature.

Let’s start in the obvious place: Genesis. God created everything. But why did He create everything? I can’t entirely answer that. But the rest of the Bible gives some measure of an answer. The Bible says that God is love. But what is love when you are alone? Love is a verb, and verbs are no good without an object. So God created people as the object to His verb. He created this strange hybrid known as human. A mortal body with an immortal soul. God wanted to love and be loved. However, there is a catch to this whole big love-fest. For true love to exist, there needs to be the option to not love. Love without choice is merely slavery. God wanted to give us a choice to reject Him. So He allowed evil in the world. And humans embraced the evil and rejected God.

But God doesn’t give up so easily. As it says elsewhere in the Bible, “Love is patient.” So God set about a plan to make the people pure and whole again. God could not stand sin. But all the humans were doing it. All of them were lying and hurting each other. So God could not have a realtionship with them, as he wanted to. God is holy. “Holy” is a word humans don’t understand very well. It means that He is perfect and without flaw. It also means that He can’t be in the presence of things that are not perfect and without flaw. He would like to be in their presence, but it would destroy them. If God was in the presence of the average human, all the sin would burn out of the human, and destroy the human in the process. It’s just how it works.

God had a plan around this. He was going to send someone to take on all the sin, and have it burned out, saving the humans. We’ll get to Him later. But first God needed to build a nation of people that could produce this messiah. So, starting with Abraham, He produced the nation of Israel, commonly known as the Jews. To this nation, He gave instructions and laws of how they had to live in order to be able to be in God’s presence in the temple or the tabernacle (depending on the time period and whether the temple had been built yet). They built a room called the Holy of Holies, where God could connect with one human at a time to give messages to the others. This room was secret and guarded because anyone who went in without being ritually pure would die immediately. The ritual purity involved was long and complicated, requiring absolute purity and cleanliness and animal sacrifices. The animal sacrifices were because God needed the blood of a sinless creature to temporarily cancel out the sin of the human. It doesn’t make much sense to us, now in the 21st century. But blood represents life, and God needed a pure and sinless life to cover for the sinful humans. But animals couldn’t do the job permanently and completely because they had no souls.

Everyone has the idea that the Bible is nothing but a big rulebook. The truth is, there are a few large sections of rules, but for the most part they are rules that the Jews needed to follow in order to purify themselves to be God’s people. The main laws that everyone is expected to follow were the 10 commandments. Here’s the paradox: God needs us to follow the 10 commandments in order to be pure in his sight, but no human can ever follow all of them all the time. So we’re all doomed. But God is a patient and kind God. Despite our faults and rebellion, he still wants the humans.

Centuries pass, and God sends prophets. The prophets tell about the messiah who is going to come and rescue them. Most of them think that the messiah is going to free the Jews from their political problems with the Babylonians or the Romans. But God was thinking far broader than that. He wanted to save them from themselves. God needed a pure life to erase all the sins of the people. But He knew no normal human could do it. So He became a human himself. He came to earth in the form of the promised messiah. He was Jesus.

Jesus came to earth to teach and then to die. He made His life an example of what a sinless human looks like. He had to come to earth and live among us. He had to be tempted to sin as much as the humans were, and resist it. He had to be the same kind of mortal animal with an immortal soul that He was trying to save. He had to feel hunger, thirst, pain and everything else that a human feels. And after 33 years, God’s plan came to fruition when Jesus was killed. At the moment He died, the Holy of Holies in the temple opened up, allowing anyone access, not just the purified priests. Jesus was the only human who was pure enough to ever be in God’s presence, so He was the only one who could erase the evil that the humans did. When He died, we were all forgiven. We no longer needed to be purified and follow all laws to the letter to be in God’s presence. And when He rose from the dead, He gave us all the opportunity to conquer death.

God’s plan is that earth is simply a prelude to the life that follows. All of our mortal bodies will die, but God wanted to show that through Jesus, all of our souls can be immortal, and pure enough to spend eternity in the presence of God. Those who God has forgiven, can have confidence that death has no meaning for them.

So if Jesus forgave the sins of everyone, why do Christians say that non-Christians are going to hell? The thing is, this eternal life and forgiveness from sins is not automatic. It’s like a gift certificate, to make a grotesque analogy. God has given us this opportunity for eternal life as a gift. But we have to use it. A gift certificate is meaningless if you never go to the store and spend it. Likewise, if you never acknowledge the gift that God has given you, if you never “cash it in” so to speak, it is worthless and you have nothing.

If God is so eager to give us eternal life, why does He let people go to hell? Well, imagine this for a moment: You have a son (or a daughter) and they have a kidney problem. They will die without a transplant. So you go into the hospital and get yourself tested and find that you are a perfect match for them. Your kidney can save their life. So you get the surgery, without anesthesia, and you’re screaming in pain and bleeding and hurting, but you’re thinking that it’s worth it because you love your child and want to save them. When your surgery is done, your child refuses to accept the transplant. They say, “I don’t believe in transplants, and I don’t think I need it. Maybe that kind of thing is okay for you, but I don’t want that kidney.” How do you feel about that child? You still love them, but after doing all that you could and suffering to try to save them, if they reject all help in that way, there’s nothing you can do. Your child will die in spite of your best efforts. That is how it is with God. He has offered us this way out of death. All you have to do is admit that you are a sinner, separated from God, and accept God’s gift of forgiveness and you can have eternal life. But if you refuse to believe – if you refuse the heart transplant God is offering – He has no choice but to let you continue on the path you have chosen. If He automatically forgave us, without our consent and our acceptance of His forgiveness, that would remove our free will as much as if He had created a world without the option of sin in the first place.

So we are no longer bound by the rules of the Old Testament. What about the “rules” in the New Testament, after Jesus? They’re there for a reason. After Jesus left the earth, His followers started making stuff up about what God wanted from them. When they were freed from the laws of the Old Testament, they started living in ways that were, well, lawless. As forgiving as God is, He would still prefer that we behave in ways that He doesn’t have to forgive. And in gratitude for the sacrifice that Jesus made, the people wanted to live their lives in ways that would please God. But they had to know what would please God. That’s what the New Testament after the book of Acts was all about. It was about explaining how to live in a forgiven state.

So the Bible is really about God’s love for us. It is about how badly He wants to be near us and how badly He wants us to love Him. And it is about the lengths He will go to to allow us to get far more than we deserve. The first thing humans did after God created them, was rejecting God. But He still loved us enough to die painfully so that we could live, and live in His presence.

Here is a quick summary of what it is to be a Christian: I know that I am not worthy to stand in the presence of the creator of the universe. But I believe that He cares about me because He sent Jesus to earth to die horribly just so I could be with Him in eternity. Because of this, I try to live my life in a way that will make God happy because I owe Him my life here and after death. I do not try to be good enough to get into heaven. I never will be. I only try to be good as a small way of thanking God for giving me a way to get into heaven without being good enough.

Trainspotting – book review

Trainspotting
by Irvine Welsh
Published 1993

There are a lot of books that are made into movies. Most of the time everyone says, “The book is better.” I’m not entirely sure in the case of “Trainspotting”. I won’t say that the movie is better than the book or that the book is better than the movie. They are just very different.

One of the key differences in the book is that the characters aren’t nearly as likable as in the movie. In the movie, when Renton screws over his friends and acts like a horrible person, it is somehow forgivable because he’s wearing the wide smile of Ewan McGregor. When Renton does reprehensible things in the printed word, it’s a lot harder to sympathize. But I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing. Perhaps we weren’t meant to sympathize with these characters. When Renton walked away from his friends with an armful of cash in the movie, I believed he would really clean up his act and become an upstanding tax-paying citizen. In the book, I was pretty sure he’d waste it all on junk and be right back where he started.

Irvine Welsh has a great talent for writing in the voices of many varied characters. The style of the book is one where the point of view shifts to many characters throughout. It is confusing at first, but by the end, you become so attuned to the nuances of the thinking patterns of each character that it really starts to flow.

If you loved the movie, give the book a shot, but don’t expect it to be exactly the same. If you hated the movie, don’t bother with the book. You’ll hate that too.

Mind Over Matters

Mind Over Matters
by Michael J. Nelson
Published 2002

I quite simply love this book. I have read it several times, and laugh out loud every time. “Mind Over Matters” is a collection of essays about life and stuff, written by Mike Nelson, former writer and host of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I don’t always agree with every opinion he writes, but the way this man can turn a phrase is so hilarious that he could make the history of Amish footwear engaging and entertaining. (Not that he talks about anything as dull as Amish footwear in this book. It was just an example of something I imagine would be fairly dull. Not that I’ve ever actually read anything about Amish footwear. Maybe their footwear is a non-stop thrill ride. Maybe it was a bad example. You don’t have to get so weird about it. Oh, never mind.)

The book is arranged into some topical sections, but it really could be read in any order and still be great. In fact, I could probably open to a random page right now and find something worth at least a small chuckle. Here are some of the things I learned about Mike Nelson by reading this book:

* He is afraid of Radio Shack clerks.
* He does not like to see ancient, shriveled scrotums.
* He thinks Howdy Doody is pure nightmare fuel.
* He is against parking lawn tractors on wasp nests.
* He’s a little bit socially awkward.

Basically, as this list shows, Mike Nelson is Everyman. His journey through life is everyone’s journey. Or maybe it’s just the journey of everyone in Minnesota. But I saw myself in his descriptions of the horrors of telephone jobs and not-very-good midwestern colleges. He is a voice of my generation of Minnesotans. Granted, the entire population of Minnesota is only about 4 million people, and my generation would probably only account for a small fraction of that total, when you consider the high elderly population and the massive numbers of “baby-boomers”. Nonetheless, I will personally henceforth vow to purchase everything that Mike Nelson writes. Even ducks on icy sidewalks don’t make me laugh as hard as he does. (And if you’ve ever seen a duck on an icy sidewalk, you know how funny that is.)

Manalive

Manalive
by G.K. Chesterton
First Published 1912

I hesitate to write a review of “Manalive” because it is one of those books that can’t properly be described in a review without somewhat peeling away the charm of the book. It is the story of Innocent Smith. He is a somewhat odd man. The story takes place in a bording house where Innocent Smith has blown in and convinced one of the ladies in residence, Mary Gray, to marry him. The rest of the people think that the young lady has lost her mind because she only met Mr. Smith earlier that day.

In their attempts to dissuade Miss Gray from marrying Innocent Smith, they uncover disturbing things about his past. Though he seems charming and childlike, he has been accused in the past of attempted murder, burglary, and polygamy. They stage a trial within the boarding house to determine his guilt in these matters, to convince Mary Gray to refuse him.

If I told you the results of the trial, that would give away far too much. This is a book where you will start reading it and think, “This is all very nice, but what is the point?” I say this as a warning not to give up too quickly. It is delightfully written and the beginning parts that seem odd should be fun enough to read to keep you going until the real action at the end. And all that stuff at the beginning really does have a purpose that isn’t obvious until later.

I don’t exactly know how to describe the feeling of the book, as that is the main reason for reading it. It is a book that leaves you feeling oddly exuberant. It is similar to the feeling of the movie “Amelie” in that it is quirky, slightly weird, and absolutely charming. “Manalive” can be purchased for a few dollars at most book stores, and it is also available online at Project Gutenberg for free. It is under 200 pages. There is really no good reason for you to not go and read it. I promise that it is worth the time. It is a very underrated classic, like most of the works of G.K. Chesterton.

Death Rat!

Death Rat!
by Michael J. Nelson
Published 2003

If you recall my review of “Mind Over Matters”, you’ll remember that I made a solemn vow to buy everything that Mike Nelson writes. Now, that obviously does not include things like grocery lists or letters to his uncle. That would cross the line from fan to stalker, I am told by my lawyers. So I have to amend that vow and limit it only to published works. Anyway, true to my word, I have recently purchased Mr. Nelson’s newest book, “Mike Nelson’s Death Rat!”.

“Death Rat!” is Mike Nelson’s first novel. It is the story of Pontius Feeb, an aging writer of obscure history books, who writes a cheesy novel about a six-foot rat. He is unable to get it published because he doesn’t have the right “look” for an adventure writer. So he hires a ruggedly handsome actor, Jack Ryback, to pretend to have written the book. But Jack unintentionally tells the publisher that it is non-fiction. So to cover their tracks, Jack and Ponty go to Holey, MN and convince all 38 residents to cover for them and pretend that the rat thing really happened. Then there is some stuff with a rival author and a disturbing funk star and a new rat-based religion. But you’ll have to buy it for details of all that stuff.

“Death Rat!” made me laugh out loud just as much as Mike’s previous two books. It is a well-crafted story with engaging characters. And I’ve never read so much use of the word “moist” in a non-sexual context in any other book in my life. It was a fast and completely enjoyable read. It will especially appeal to people from Minnesota, but I think that the humor is accesible to anyone. In case you are not yet convinced to buy this masterpiece, here is a sample of some dialogue from pages 270 and 271. (It of course was written by Mike Nelson and he owns all the rights to it and all.)

They had found their cabin, unloaded their belongings, and
staked claim on their separate rooms when Stig appeared in
Bromstad’s door naked save for the towel he was holding. Since
this was really covering only a portion of the four fingers on his
right hand, he was in practice naked.
Bromstad shrieked, calmed himself, and then summed the
situation up accurately.
“You are as naked as a newborn.”
“Yes.”
“Will this be happening frequently during our stay together?
If so, I’ll need to make some plans to blind myself.”
“I’m going to the sauna.”
“There’s a sauna?”
“Yes. It’s fifty yards on toward the lake.”
“And you’re going there naked?”
“Yes.”
“I see you have a towel. Might you not want to use that to
cover things?”
“No.”
“I strongly advise it.
“The Danish way is to sauna naked.”
“And to actually go to the sauna naked as well?”
“When one has one’s aquavit stowed in one’s towel, yes. Are
you ashamed of the male body, Mr. Bromsted?”
“Yes. Deeply. It is a travesty of engineering.”

This book is strange and funny and wonderful, like Mike Nelson himself. I’d recommend it to anyone who has the ability to read. (And if you don’t, how are you reading this?)