Christianity or Bust

“For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” - 1 Corinthians 13:9 - 13

I finished reading another book ages ago.

Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly is set in the near future where 20% of the USA is addicted to a drug called Substance D (aka Slow Death aka Death).

The protagonist of the novel, Bob Arctor, is a narc who poses as a small-time dealer of Substance D. On a regular basis, he puts on a special suit that disguises his identity and as “Officer Fred”, he is required to review scanner recordings of his drug-addict friends and himself.

Besides its highly addictive nature, the drug breaks the connection between the two hemispheres of a user’s brains’ hemispheres overtime. The split causing the user to have split personalities. Towards the middle of the book, “Officer Fred” ceases to remember that he is Bob Arctor and becomes zealous in trying to bring Actor down.

The title of the novel is inspired by 1 Corinthians. “Officer Fred” ponders “What does a scanner see? I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner see into me into us clearly or darkly? I hope it does see clearly, because I can’t any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone’s sake, the scanners do better. Because if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we’ll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too.” There’s also a moment when Arctor contemplates whether only through death will he see things clarly.

As usual, the novel is better than the movie. The movie mainly seems like a collection of unrelated stories about drug addicts. The novel places those stories in there for a reason. For example, there is a scene where one of the characters purchase a 10-speed bicycle (2 forward gears and 5 rear gears) but are convinced it is a 7 speed bicyle and discuss it. Officials from the police department see that this is an early sign of Fred’s brain damage.

The novel is also regarded as being semi-autobiographical.

I’ll leave it to you to read the book and decide if the ending is really depressing or depressing with a glimmer of hope.

Go to my other blog here.

Ubik was the second novel by Philip K Dick that I read in a fortnight, I think.

It was an enjoyable read. There were some really interesting concepts in it such as “half life” (a state where people whose bodies have died but brains are still partially alive are still able to communicate with the living) and all those jargonic words such as “precogs”.

I can’t really be bothered commenting much on this book. There’s a sensation of knowing what is going on but knowing that Dick is screwing with your mind about what the main characters perceive as reality.

It’s been awhile since I’ve read any Philip K. Dick books. Yet, I’ve always known he is a great science fiction writer.

The Man In The High Castle isn’t really science fiction. The book is set in an alternative reality with its own alternative history in present day (1962 at the time the book was written) where the Germans and Japanese won World War II. To a small extent, the novel discusses the difference in how Axis won, the horror of Nazi conquest and how the two major Axis powers are in a state of Cold War and have divided up control of the USA. (The west coast of the USA is controlled by the Japanese who are largely tollerant of the people, the east coast of the USA is controlled by the Nazis who are still determined to kill every last Jew and the middle of the USA, the Rocky Mountain states is neutral territory because both superpowers see little value in it).

The bulk of the book is focused upon people living in San Fransisco. There’s a subplot involving counterfeiting American antiques to sell to the Japanese occupation forces (the Japanese love American antiquities) - this ties in well with Dick’s fascination with the question “What is real?”.

Another key part of the book is how many characters use I, Ching as a working Oracle and read a book called “The Grasshopper Lies Heavy” (the title is inspired by Ecclesiastes 12:5: “Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:”.

. The book “The Grasshopper Lies Heavy” is a novel-within-a-novel where the Allies won World War II but not in the same way as our reality.

I found it interesting how Dick lapses between of first and third-person mode a lot. This is particularly notable in characters that are racist.

I really loved this book and almost read it in one weekend. The ending is mind-blowing.

Follow this link to my other blog’s posting.

There have been many times in my life where I’ve disagreed with the vast majority of people. For some of the things I love such as Bruce Campbell movies, independent and alternative music and movies, there are vocally-strong supporters.

Other times, I feel like I’m the only person who hates:

• Momento (a movie that relies completely upon a gimmick and tediously forces you to remember too much when an intelligent person would have suspected that Teddy wasn’t the killer)
• Downfall (a movie about a sinking ship of rats in Nazi uniforms)
• Weezer (a band that relied upon gimmicky videos)
• Pamela Anderson (someone who I think has an ugly face and only superficial things to attrack men)

At times I feel arrogant and like the voice of reason. At all times, I feel I can justify myself.

I hated C.S.Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. Many people regard him as one of the greatest Christian writers since St Paul.

For those who haven’t heard of this book, it is a ficticious set of letters from one senior demon Screwtape to a junior demon, Wormwood, advising him on how to get a human damned.

The first thing that struck me about this book is the writing style. It’s completely aggrevating. The author chose to only write one side of the story. Wormwood’s side of the correspondence is painfully absent. So is the “patient”’s and “the Enemy”’s. While reading each letter, you can guess, to some extent, what has happened to the human target. Other times, it feels like Lewis has just rambled on with a series of run-on sentences about some topic deliberately. Subsequently, it feels like Screwtape just loves the sound of his own voice.

Lewis make some excellent points during Screwtape’s ramblings but I just get the feeling that it may have been better suited to a non-fiction book. At times, particularly early on, I felt that the bulk of the mental stimulation this book provided, was from forcing the reading to decypher the jargon and euphenisms made by Screwtape - and that’s just really a lazy way to get a reader to think.

I get a feeling that the Christians who have read this book and loved it found the idea of getting some sort of insight to their daily enemy exciting. Obviously, this book is the closest thing many people will have.

I’m really surprised that for an evil demon, Screwtape doesn’t really seem to enjoy his job a lot. In this day and age, Satan is usually portrayed as being charismatic and joyful at the damage he does. Screwtape lacks those characteristics. So does this book.

Reading this book was a joyless experience. Thankfully, it only took me a few days to read this book.

I’m kind of relieved that I found someone else who did not like this book.

I bought The Adventures of Don Quixote about 7 years ago and have been reading it on and off throughout that period.

I enjoyed this book very much. Yet, early on, I found it to be quite a challenging read. It’s pretty dense reading at 940 pages and was a slow but steady page turner. The printing seems to have many lines per page and paragraphs are much longer than most modern writers.

Cervantes at times falls into a style that we just never see in modern novels: breaking off from the main story completely for a character to recall a sub-story for a solid 50 page section. This only occurs in book one.

Throughout the book, I thoroughly enjoyed the reparte between Don Quixote and Sancho. In particular in book two, Quixote’s chastisement of Sancho’s sprouting off of proverbs is as amusing as the Sanchoisms themselve.

There is a strong undercurrent of the characters living in a Christian society but not actually living it out. This is more prevalent amongst the characters Don Quixote assist: many of them are former maidens who have been seduced after a promise of marriage then finding the man unwilling to fulfil their promise. There is strong acknowledgement that the magic the two protagonists encounter are unholy.

The two protagonists are wonderful, especially when they succeed inspite of Don Quixote’s insanity. The dialog between them is particularly enjoyable.

In book two, I was particularly amused by the way Cervantes addresses issues that had arisen after book one was released. These include commenting about his errors regarding Sancho’s donkey disappearing and appearing and slagging off an unauthorised Don Quixote sequel and its author.

My favourite adventure is in book two when Sancho’s dream comes true and things go surprisingly well… but I won’t spoil it for you.

Part of me wanted to become a knight errant after reading this book… even though Cervantes wrote this book to mock it. There is something in me that longs to live a chivalrous life and to fight for the girl.

In January, I played Civilisation 4 on my laptop… a lot. It ran really slowly and often took half an hour between turns of the game! This has given me a great opportunity to read. I finished reading three books within the last week of that. I probably should write about each of them. However, that might take a while to write them.

A few months ago, I went to a Christian house party with my best friend. At one point, one of the regular congregation of that particular church gave his opinion about how to attract the members of the opposite sex. Afterwards, I didn’t know what to think of the guy’s opinion. “C” wisely advised me that the guy had some good points, such as how it helps a Christian to know what God’s plans for him are. However, thought the rest was rubbish.

Yesterday I finished reading “The Unguide to Dating: A He Said/She Said on Relationships”. The book was written by Camerin Courtney and Todd Hertz: two editors/columnists for various Christian periodicals (one male and one female) and the book does feel like a collection of columns from each of them that also address each other’s views and at various times, specific criticisms of the opposite gender.

Each chapter deals with aspects of dating. Areas covered include:

• dating droughts,
• being ostracized for being single,
• the high female to male ratio within the church,
• people who expect God to dump their soulmate on their doorstep,
• dating non-believers,
• Internet dating,
• seeing and commenting upon reality TV dating shows,
• intergender friendships,
• ody image,
• breaking up
• and probably every other topic you can think of.

Part of me feels that this book had very little personal relevance. Half-way through reading this book, I felt unkindly judgmental upon both these authors. They seem to be pathetic eternally-serial sexually-pure monogamous daters. It’s like Sex & the City without the sex and like “Sex & the City”, there are columnists involved. (Especially since one of the authors seems to have an barely controlled visual lust problem by constantly assessing the dating potential of whatever men are around and just seems to break up for no reason.)

In summary, they seem more fraked up than almost any Christians I know. Really! They’ve had so many year-long relationships and never hit a winner. It’s one thing to never get asked out by the opposite gender or to be to be too shy to ask someone out but to constantly get a start and never cement things is messed up. The majority of my Christian friends who are married or getting married didn’t spend their lives getting around the block.

Getting back to the opening paragraph, I did get something out of this book. I think I need to make my intentions clear, show leadership and ask that special person out.

PS: Before this book went out of print, Koorong had its price down to $3.95

I finished reading Every Young Man’s Battle about two weeks ago.

I decided to read this after a friend then his girlfriend recommended that I read Every Man’s Battle. Every Young Man’s Battle is apparently targetted to young single men.

This is one of those life-changing books and it deals with problems that most men deal with: sexual purity.

One thing that I most appreciate about this book is that it changes the reader not by making them feel guilty and absolutely horrible about their problems. However, it doesn’t back away from stressing the importance of it.

A major theme of the book is that actions have consequences and that our lives don’t naturally bifurcate. For example, one of the authors talks about his own descent deeper into attitude problems towards women: from respecting his girlfriend when she asks that he wait for marriage, to sleeping with women he was in love with, sleeping with those he could love… to anyone. The authors note how each mistake they made led to another. Regarding bifurcation, the authors discuss how our people’s live don’t naturally change to (Godly) purity. There are some pretty tragic stories such as a man who married an attractive women, has an excellent sex life for a few years until her career leaves her with less time and energy for his sex drive. She eventually denies him sex as a form of power abuse over him.

The authors’ solution is for men to learn to control their sex drive. That’s a pretty daunting task. It’s also where the bifurcation comes from. Surprisingly and thankfully, they don’t merely cite Jesus as a role model but use scripture to describe how Job was an example of sexual purity even though he’s a mere human. They discuss techniques they have used successfully to control their sex drives such as avoiding eye contact with lustful imagery and female body parts and to avoid areas where they will be exposed to such things. They also recommend going cold turkey from masturbation or if the reader can’t, to practice extending the number of days between each time they do it until they stop. Yes, there’s a chapter on masturbation.

The book has a chapter about how your life will improve when you genuinely seek sexual purity.

The authors also write about proper attitudes towards women. This includes treating your girlfriend with respect because she might become your future wife or someone else’s future wife. There’s also some pretty sad stories about girls and women and their need for acceptance doing regrettable self-depreciating things.

Surprisingly, there’s even half a chapter, near the end, specifically written for homosexual men.

I don’t think this review really does this book justice. However, the friend who recommended Every Man’s Battle said that every single guy, he knows to have that read that book, found a girlfriend afterwards. I also can’t believe at least one of the authors, Fred, was a jock and now we’re learning something form him. God works in mysterious ways!