A Book Can Be Dangerous
There are stories—some treacly pious, some heart-movingly simple—of people who picked up the Bible and had their lives changed forever. The most famous one (for about one thousand six hundred years now) concerns Saint Augustine. When he was about 30, he had become persuaded that Christianity was true; but he was unable to leave his sinful life and submit to baptism. It was, as a preacher recently said at our cathedral, not a difficult thing but a hard thing. Augustine understood Christianity. He knew it was true. But it was too hard for him: to follow Jesus he would have to leave behind things he thought he could not live without.
Then one day, in a garden, in great anguish over this, he picked up a volume of Paul’s letters. He opened it and read the first thing his eyes fell upon: “Not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” And by God’s grace, he did just that, and his life was permanently changed.
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More recently I saw a report about a thief in Italy. He was in the midst of robbing a man’s home when he noticed a book. Thirty-eight years old, he had gotten into the building from a balcony “but became distracted after seeing a book on a bedside table . . . the owner of the property, a 71-year-old man, woke up and confronted the burglar who was reportedly sitting on a bed absorbed in the book.” As the burglar tried to escape, he was stopped by the police (who had been summoned by the owner) and arrested.
What was the book? Giovanni Nucci’s Gli Dei alle sei. L'Iliade all'ora dell'aperitivo (I’ve never heard of it either). This book is said to examine Homer’s Iliad “from the point of view of the gods while highlighting the interpretative power of the epic work to understand current events.” Well, here was a current event in which a book about an ancient book having lasting interpretive power itself had power to interrupt a crime. Micah Mattix, who tells this story in his Substack “Prufrock,” asks: “Can someone translate this book into English? I need to read a work of literary criticism so good it worth risking jail to finish.”
Were the gods at work in stopping this crime? No. The gods don’t exist. But was God at work? Maybe. He was at work in the garden with Augustine.
We should never underestimate the power of the Word.
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Out & About: We will resume our book seminars, Good Books & Good Talk, on the first Sunday of fall, September 22, to discuss Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. If you have never attended, this is what you can expect: about 20 or 25 people who will try to listen to one another as they probe questions implicit in the novel. I will ask an opening question to get us started; my questions generally arise from what it means to live as real human beings in light of Christianity’s claims. Our location is still at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, but we will move to a new room in Garrett Hall, a different building than before. We start at 5 p.m. and wrap up at 6:30. Anyone who reads the book is welcome to attend and participate.
I will be speaking at “The Human Pilgrimage,” a conference for clergy and lay people sponsored by The Living Church at All Souls’ in Oklahoma City, Sept. 26-28. My topic is friendship through life, how friendship helps us through good and bad, how it can persist even when all else changes. There are four other speakers, all brilliant and interesting—it should be a very good time. Here is the info page online: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-human-pilgrimage-tickets-825402530187
It’s not too early to sign up for Christian Ethics at the Stanton Institute, a five-session course I will teach in 2025. We meet monthly on Saturdays from January through May, starting Jan. 18, at St. Matthew’s in Dallas. I teach the course around basic human questions, such as “What’s Christian about Christian ethics?” (Would you take a course in “Christian Physics”? What’s the difference?) For more info or to register contact Erica Lasenyik: