INTERVIEWER
You’ve also written that Americans tend to avoid contemplating larger issues. What is it that we’re afraid of?

ROBINSON
People are frightened of themselves. It’s like Freud saying that the best thing is to have no sensation at all, as if we’re supposed to live painlessly and unconsciously in the world. I have a much different view. The ancients are right: the dear old human experience is a singular, difficult, shadowed, brilliant experience that does not resolve into being comfortable in the world. The valley of the shadow is part of that, and you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege.

the jauntily unphilosophical way in which most popular atheistic writing simply ignores the Wittgensteinian dilemmas is disappointing, and explains why its explanations of the sources of religious belief are so jejune. Is there not a kind of insult to language in so comprehensively banning the incomprehensible? Shouldn’t a physicist–a friend of mine–be able to say that, for her, Coltrane’s A Love Supreme “is God,” without atheism busily correcting her lexical lapse into the unprovable?

What Happens To Your Body If You Drink A Coke Right Now?

Gifts That Say San Francisco

All about book paper. And yet, the paperback version of The People of Paper is on crappy paper. Why, Harcourt, Why?

How to pass the Speciality Coffee Association of America’s (SCAA) sensory skills test.

The bishops rejected about 60 of the changes proposed by the International Committee on English in the Liturgy, the panel of bishops from 11 English-speaking countries that prepared the translation. For instance, the committee wanted to change the phrase in the Nicene Creed reading “one in being with the Father” to “consubstantial with the Father.”

The bishops chose to keep the current version. “Consubstantial,” they said, “is a theological expression requiring explanation for many.”

God forbid their be any theological explanation taking place at a church. I guess that would get in the way of…all the other stuff.

Rubbernecking update: Barbara Walters to a (I am guessing Catholic) priest, “Is there sex in heaven?”

The article starts off by putting the The Chronicles of Narnia series in it’s place with Harry Potter and The Lord of the Ring, other popular children’s books that have been made into movies, followed by a note that TLOTR autor JRR Tolkein had been responsible for the conversion of C.S. Lewis to Christianity. This is where we get our first bit (and possibly last) of criticism of Lewis’ book: “Narnia is a strange blend of magic, myth and Christianity, some of it brilliantly fantastical and richly imaginative, some (the clunking allegory) toe-curlingly, cringingly awful.”¹ From here Polly Toynbee goes onto write about Disney’s adapation and where it all fits into the Republican theo-political conglomerate world². Fair and disturbing enough, but I suspect that these are facts that should be told elsewhere, or at least in a longer book review where this section won’t dominate the piece. I’m not convinced this is entirely relevant in a book review – particularly of a book meant for 10-year olds – a hesitation that is compounded by that fact that many of the pseudo-Christian “themes” being criticized appear to be based specifically on the film.

Toynbee should have been clearer to delineate when she was writing about the movie, the book, both or neither. This sequence for example [empahsis mine]: “The godly will reap earthly reward because God is on the side of the strong. This appears to be CS Lewis’s view, too. In the battle at the end of the film, visually a great epic treat, the child crusaders are crowned kings and queens for no particular reason. Intellectually, the poor do not inherit Lewis’s earth.” Given that previously Lewis was adamently against any film adaptation, to presuppose his theological view based on a movie (by Disney no less) is a grave misstep, in my view. And more to the point, what does this have to do with the writing? I remember when I was a child reading this – I did not consider any mystical, theological or politcal implications but was transported magically by the story. Yet this could all still be considered nit-picking on my part, since the move is based on Lewis’ book.

The line that really floored me was “Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. ” Whoa. Don’t like the book? Cool. Think Disney is crap and the movie is likely not worth seeing? Right with ya. But this ipso facto castigation of a core tenet of a religion is: foolish, mean, ignorant, lazy – take your pick. There is a lot wrong with a lot of churches today, specifically Roman Catholicism, but I would consider most of these issues of religion & dogma. Child molestation, female clergy and birth control are some items that come to mind, and deserve more conversation elsewhere. However, one of the great theological appeals of Christianity (for me at least) is the idea of redemptiom. To call it repugnant is itself repugnant and for better or worse, put an end to my interest in Toynbee’s opinions.

Not to say this is an entirely meritless essay – but I would hardly call it a book review. Why not move it to the OpEd section and at least shed any illusion that this is anything besides polemic? It is never clear where she is talking of the book, the movie, or her own “views” on religion. Of course any book review could and should offer some context, but I don’t think the context should be the review, using thet book as a flimsy launchpad for your own rants. I’m just sayin’.