BOOKS: In the Image by Dara Horn

In the Image by Dara Horn

My rating: 3 of 5 stars





This was an intriguing book. The history and the emotional details were absorbing. I liked her theme of some people being tourists in their own lives and that we can stop being tourists by getting involved in relationships with other people. There is a really cool comment on the back flap of the book: "....people are not helplessly defined by their experiences, but ultimately shaped by how they react to them."



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INSIGHT: Life, Pain, and the Accident

The other day I was whining to myself about the pain from my left side. Then I realized something: IT'S BETTER THAN THE ALTERNATIVE! A few years ago, I was hit by a car while walking across a crosswalk. I was lucky. I could have easily died. Maybe I can't use my left side as well as I used to. Maybe the pain from my hip and shoulder is rather excruciating at times. But it's still better than being dead.

You know, just before that car struck me, I heard the engine rev up. In that brief second I was sure I was going to die. That experience changed me. I started to value Life. I had to reevaluate so many different things that I had taken for granted. I also started to value the little moments of time that can be wasted so easily. It's funny. This terrible accident that could have killed me actually made more alive. And while I certainly wish the accident had never happened, it really doesn't do any good to dwell on something that can't be changed. Anyway, in a really weird way, the constant pain is a constant reminder of the preciousness of life.

BOOKS: As A Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg

As a Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg

My rating: 1 of 5 stars




It was hard to write an adequate review.  I was even torn on how many stars to rate it.  On on hand, it was engrossing and hard to put down. The whole struggle to find a solid personal philosophical/spiritual foundation in the middle of conflicting cultures and beliefs was fascinating. However, the book's ending was profoundly disappointing to me. Elisha (the main character) and many of his friends and family all suffer tragically from his decision to explore Greek and Roman philosophy.

Were his explorations wrong? It's hard for me to think that. I read this book a few years ago and have been wrestling with this question ever since. Is it wrong to be driven to search out truth? And yet [New Thought!], maybe it could be. Maybe it is wrong if one is so focused on finding truth that he is blinded to the injustice and oppression going on around him.

Maybe that's the key to the book. Elisha originally turned away from Judaism because he witnessed an act of injustice. Then, after a lifetime of exploring pagan philosophies, he realized that many of the attractive things associated with those philosophies were worthless because they ignored key concepts of justice and mercy. The ideas and truths were more important and more beautiful to those cultures than people were. Maybe it isn't wrong to search out religious truths, but it is wrong to be so focused on the quest for ideas and truths that we ignore the social injustices going on around us.

That reminds me of something else. I read somewhere that we shouldn't search out unanswerable questions about God. Maybe that's because it uses up our precious, limited time that we could be using to study things that we can find answers to. Things that help us to "do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before our God".



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