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" Freddy, thanks for playing Peter's advocate. His name, you'll remember, was Simon, until Jesus redubbed him The Rock (Cephas, Petrus) and said that it...more
Freddy, thanks for playing Peter's advocate. His name, you'll remember, was Simon, until Jesus redubbed him The Rock (Cephas, Petrus) and said that it was upon this Rock that he would build his church, and forthwith he gave to Peter the keys to the gates of heaven and hell, that whatever he bound on earth would be bound in heaven, and whatever he loosed on earth would be loosed in heaven. This is precisely what I am lamenting in my blog post—this notion that, because I have strayed from certain doctrines of the church, the church can no longer receive me.
But here's the thing: Calling Peter "The Rock" was a joke. Jesus was teasing him. The man first distinguished himself by declaring Jesus the Messiah, which Jesus credited to God speaking through Peter. Not two verses later Peter is telling Jesus that they cannot allow him to suffer and be crucified, which Jesus credited to Satan. At every turn Peter is a waffler, prone in equal parts to error and ardor. He loves Jesus more than the others do, but he is wrong over and over again. He steps out of the boat into the lake and stands for but a moment before sinking and crying out for help. He denies Jesus three times, even after being warned in advance that he would do so. When the resurrected Jesus gives him three chances to affirm his love, he does so, and each time Jesus says, "Feed/tend my sheep," but even after that, even after the sheet descended from heaven and a voice declared, "Call nothing unclean which I have made clean," he still, out of fear, sided with the circumcision faction, and Paul, who never even met Jesus in the flesh, had to confront him publicly to convince him that Gentiles didn't need to become Jews before being baptized as Christians.
This, to me, is the picture of your "pillar and foundation of truth." Jesus said only a fool builds a house on sand, where it will be washed away in the flood, but the wise build their homes upon rock to withstand every storm. And yet, what I see when I look back over the past two thousand years is evidence that Jesus chose to build his house (his church) on the shifting sands of people who (like Peter, like me) get things wrong with distressing regularity.
And yet there remains this beautiful, fragile thing called the church, found wherever two or three are gathered together in his name, whose very weakness presents the clearest picture we have of the glory of our heavenly father.
So will I accept the help you offer? No, though I sincerely appreciate your offering it. It is to the holy spirit of God that I look for help in weaving, through prayer and hard experience, the tangled, tattered story of the Bible back together.(less)
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It’s a strange thing to finish reading a book, skim through the Acknowledgments, and see the part where the author signed off in the current month of the current year, especially with a book like Inheritance, which evokes such an aching sense of loss...more
It’s a strange thing to finish reading a book, skim through the Acknowledgments, and see the part where the author signed off in the current month of the current year, especially with a book like Inheritance, which evokes such an aching sense of loss (much like Battlestar Galactica did). It seemed less strange when I encountered the same phenomenon at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but I suppose the main difference is that with Deathly Hallows I was standing in line when the book was released. I stumbled across the release of Inheritance more or less by accident and bought the ebook online.
Another difference between the two series is that I have never felt any desire to reread the Inheritance series, not even in preparation for reading the next book. With Harry Potter I would sometimes reread the whole series “just because,” let alone whenever a new book was released. None of that should be taken to mean that I in any way regret reading any of the Inheritance books once, only that they are four-star books, not five-.
The series has been written by an exceedingly young author of prodigious gifts and talent but one who lacks, here and there, the maturity of a bona fide maestro. Paolini impressed me with his depth at times and with his immaturity at others. The depths win out in the end, but there are a couple of examples in the beginning of shout-outs to Tolkien that I could have done without. Not because I’m not a huge fan of Tolkien, or even because I am, but because they just seemed tacky. It’s something I could have seen myself doing at a younger age (I’m 44 as I write this), which may explain why my reaction against them was so strong. In the first instance, a character cries out “The werecats are coming! The werecats are coming!” In the second, Saphira, watching Eragon bite into a slab of roast pork belly, asks, Is it good? Is it scrumptious? Gag me. If I’m not mistaken (and it’s always possible I am) it would be impossible for even a casual fan of Tolkien not to hear the tinny echoes.
But such false notes are the exception, not the rule. Paolini has constructed a true world with a vast history and place names that sound right. He’s also created a cast of characters who ring true. The reveals are appropriately surprising and emotionally resonant, and I didn’t have too much trouble following the plot despite my failure to reread the series, even though there were plenty of call-backs I couldn’t recall. He also has done a masterful job of alluding to scientific concepts that his characters couldn’t hope to understand. In all I can’t help but offer my kudos to Paolini for a ripping good story well told.
In the Acknowledgments he promises to revisit Alagaësia at some unspecified point in the future, and for that I am grateful. The ending didn’t have the finality I would otherwise have preferred. If and when he fulfills his promise, I will, God willing, be there to journey with him further into his world.(less)
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