A blogger and Christian scholar investigates how spirituality manifests itself in our physical selves.
Some Christians speak of being prisoners in imperfect, earthly bodies from which they will escape through death, but Anderson’s first book gently chides what he claims to be “Gnostic tendencies” and de-emphasis of the human body’s importance in Christianity. Not written for the masses—the author assumes his audience knows evangelicalism—Anderson utilizes Paul’s teachings to blend mountains of academic, theological and philosophical references with anecdotes. He makes many sound points, such as how the body of Christ—the church—should not turn services into either robotic liturgies or productions with smoke machines and carefully orchestrated schedules. Unfortunately, generalizing Christians leaves a hole in his argument wide enough for a plague of locusts, and it is unclear how Anderson’s assertions about evangelical “Gnosticism” differ from what is being preached in thousands of pulpits each week. He is anti-abortion and anti-euthanasia; he is wary of yoga’s increasing popularity; he urges deep reading of scripture, prayer and genuine fasting; and though he emphasizes love and acceptance of homosexuals, he notes that the lifestyle does not harmonize with scripture. The author also warns that evangelicals too often follow social trends, like tattoos, piercing or fitness crazes. Anderson’s approach is not “hellfire and brimstone” but academic to the point of thumb twiddling. A tighter scope may have strengthened his thesis, but his gospel message rings through.
Pub Date: June 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7642-0856-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Bethany House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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