Zealots Need Not Apply:Reading Reza Aslan

I read this over Christmas. I thought, “Since we are celebrating the man’s birth, we should have a look at his life.  I really enjoyed Aslan’s portrait of Jesus, and it made me think deeper about faith and religion and life. 

Aslan shows that the New Testament was a constructed document, and he looks at the historical context of the life of Jesus.  We learn that Jesus wasn’t the only prophet and miracle-man plying his wares on the Mediterranean shores, but he tries to understand why Jesus endured when his contemporaries did not. 

The simplistic answer is that he was the one true son of God, but there are other figures that are part of Jesus’s narrative who get subsumed into the greater structure of the story, particularly here John the Baptist.  He had competing followers after the crucifixion with the followers of Jesus.  In the familiar telling, he was a harbinger of the Christ, and not a Burger King of messiahs.

When this book came out, it was highly controversial, and in fact that was the main reason I picked it up.  I really don’t see why it was if you can be open-minded about the history of the man so many in this world follow and revere.  I can see that it comes down heavily on Paul, and the New Testament as we have it is pretty Paul-centric. If anything it should challenge you to think deeper about your faith, and see Jesus for the man he was.

Reading "Thank You for Your Service"

This book is an incredible portrait of people trying to keep going after experiencing the trauma of war that scared them in ways that are not easily seen.  The heroes of this book are not the ones you can see that they sacrificed limb or life for.  They have more subtle disabilities that you can’t see, but that doesn’t make them any less real.

Earlier wars called it shell shock or battle fatigue, but we have better understandings of what is happening to soldier’s brains, even if the treatments are not easy to bring to all who need them.  We haven’t gotten to everyone, and that is one of the great tragedies of the book, which hints at the shifting focus of leadership in the military.  We may never treat all who need it, in part to the continuing stigma of mental issues.  I have to admit, while I was reading the book I had one of those macho fantasies where I was thinking to myself that I wouldn’t have an issue with my brain.  I was too tough. Reading about the men who faced war for multiple tours and the horrors that have to be impossible to convey a tiny fraction of reality through print media made me realize I wasn’t too tough.  Saying “Thank you for your service” is both a genuine sentiment – I am glad it wasn’t me, but also hollow because we can never understand what we are thanking them for.

Hold on for the Ride: Reading "Going Postal"

Moist Von Lipwig is a con man.  He has just been hanged under the name of Spangler.  Spangler is dead, but Von Lipwig has talents, so Lord Veternari, the Tyrant if Ankh-Morpork, gives Von Lipwig another chance.

The mails have been dying.  New technology has made the postal service useless.  It exists as a black hole of old messages and old dreams.  Two men  and decades of letters live at the post office.  If you listen long enough, you can hear the letters speaking to you.  Four previous post masters have let the letters lead them to death.

Will Moist overcome the obstacles, and history?  Will he become the new hero of Ankh-Morpork?

What do you think?  This is a Terry Pratchett book.  Of course there’s going to be an manic hero.

Just hold on for the ride, as you….Go Postal.

If you have not read any of Pratchett’s books, this is as good a place to start as any.  I suppose the beginning may be better, but it is not wholly necessary.  I started in medias res and everything ended up just fine.