A heartfelt but unconvincing look at organized religion.
A debut book seeks to examine faith through reason.
Former pastor and educator Sago notes that a student once requested, “Tell me how to be a godly person—and please leave out all the religious hodgepodge.” This entreaty acts as an inspiration throughout the author’s work, as he attempts to describe what is worth believing while discarding what he sees as the accumulated errors of organized Christianity. Raised in an evangelical, perhaps fundamentalist, church, Sago went on to lead congregations and Christian universities using what he had learned as the backbone of his belief system. But his views have dramatically changed. “I have a great respect for Christ,” he notes. “However, logic and reason, based on cause and consequence, does not support the redemption theory.” Indeed, he sees Jesus as a historical figure, but in no way divine. Similarly, he disputes nearly every other aspect of what might be considered orthodox Christian doctrine, from biblical Creation to original sin. Eventually, Sago labels himself a deist: “I am a Deist because I believe solely in God. That belief requires no doctrinal governance or precise definitions.” Sago does not, in this work, attempt to convert others to the same type of deism, nor even to disprove the Christianity he has abandoned. Instead, he urges his reader to think critically about organized religion. The problem that seems immediately evident in the book is an absence of doctrine. Sago has gone from one extreme to another in shedding a strict, rule-bound spirituality for a faith in only the most nebulous concept of a supreme being. The reader is forced to ask, did he consult theology before forsaking Christianity? For instance, he sees the concept of original sin as a childish and vengeful human construct. But many theologians across the spectrum have offered more nuanced views of sin, salvation, redemption, etc., than Sago was raised with, but which he simply discounts. In leaving his belief system behind, the vast body of Christian thought cries out for his engagement. Instead, he ignores it wholesale.
A heartfelt but unconvincing look at organized religion.Pub Date: March 17, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4502-9753-0
Page Count: 116
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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