The Hands of the King

There's a great moment towards the middle of The Return of the King (the book, not the movie) where Aragorn has finally returned to his throne at Gondor. He's just finished defending his city in The Battle of Pelennor Fields and though he's escaped unharmed, there are countless others who have not.

After the battle, he comes to the houses of healing where the wounded are. He doesn't come just to visit or boost morale but to heal them. Aragorn may primarily be a leader and warrior but as Tolkien explains in one of the most memorable lines from the trilogy, "The hands of a king are the hands of a healer."

The same is true in our lives. You don't get through this life unwounded. It's a 100% guarantee that you will be hurt and that the pain will often be deep enough to leave permanent wounds. Even Jesus experienced this. All through the Gospels He is constantly being missed and misunderstood by those who should have loved Him the most. Isaiah calls the Messiah "a man of sorrows."

The difference is that Jesus understood who His Father was. He understood that the hands of His King were the hands of a healer. And so well we constantly see Jesus hurt and wounded we also see Him constantly turning to His Father for healing.

Healing like this can only be found in intimacy with God, be letting Him speak into our lives and guide us through our wounds. It's something we've largely lost and forgotten as a church but it's something God always intended to be a normal and available part of the Christian walk.

Most of our problems with sin come because we don't understand this about God. If you don't turn to Him for healing you will turn to something else. And so healing becomes another way for God to rescue us from our sin and restore us to who we were always meant to be.

Rescue and restoration. That's what God is wanting to do in each of our lives. But we won't be able to receive the fullness of all He has for us until we begin to understand what J.R.R. Tolkien knew: the hands of a king, of our King, are the hands of a healer.

Warning: Very Nerdy Post Ahead

This past week The Guardian published a list of the best scifi/fantasy novels of all time. I love these sorts of lists and my inner nerd compels me to comment. There's a bunch of stuff on the list I've never heard of so I'm only going to comment on the ones I've actually read and then rant about some of the HUGE omissions from the list.

Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy - This is an amusing enough book but way, way overrated. Still, it has a big enough following that it's place here is probably deserved.

Isaac Asimov: Foundation - The first volume of the series is pretty good but the rest get a little tedious. Definitely a classic very much worth reading.

Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio - An OK book but one of the best ever? No way.

Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass - if you've only ever seen the Disney cartoon you have no idea how weird these books are. Great reads.

Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Cut 500 or so pages off this book and it would be great. But at it's actual length of nearly 1,000 pages it's long, boring and way overrated. It also has no business being on this list.

Philip K. Dick: Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep and The Man in the High Castle - High Castle's place here is well deserved but Electric Sheep is only here because it was the source material for Blade Runner, one of the few movies to be way, way better than the book.

Neil Gaiman: American Gods - I would have chosen Neverwhere instead but I'm glad Gaiman has a book on the list. American Gods is a great read but it gets a little slow in the middle and has too much sex.

Joe Haldeman: The Forever War - I have a strange relationship with this book. I hate and completely disagree with it's ultra left wing politics and stance on war but I still love the novel. It's extremely well written and deeply moving (even though I disagree with where it wants me to move towards!)

Robert A. Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land - The first half is great. The second is weird and disgusting. Starship Troopers is not only better science fiction but a better novel.

Frank Herbert: Dune - A great, great book. If you haven't read it you should.

Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House - The best and scariest haunted house novel ever. Every page of this novel is unbelievably good.

Stepehn King: The Shining - Probably King's best work. I love how the tension slowly builds and then completely explodes in the final act. If you've only seen the movie you need to read the book.

Stanislaw Lem: Solaris - This is a great book and one of the first to show that science fiction can be deeply emotional, passionate and human.

Richard Matheson: I Am Legend - I don't care what Skip says, this book rocks!

China Mieville: The Scar - This one's pretty good. I don't know if it deserves a place on this sort of list but it's entertaining enough. Unfortunately, Mieville followed it up with the putrid Iron Council, which reads like The Communist Manifesto with monsters (even though that sounds kind of cool, it's really not)

Walter M. Miller: A Canticle for Leibowitz - Yawn. I have no idea what people see in this one.

Larry Niven: Ringworld - Overrated. Niven has written much better.

Chuch Palahniuk: Fight Club - I don't and never would support banning books but if I did this would be at the top of my list. A disgusting, despicable, filthy and worthless novel. If you watched The Dark Knight and found yourself agreeing with everything the Joker said and did, then this is the book for you. For the rest of us who aren't nihilistic anarchists: keep as far away from this one as possible.

Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space - I'm so happy this book made the list. I'm a huge Alastair Reynolds fan and Revelation Space is my favorite.

J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - I love Harry Potter as much as the next guy but this is not one of the best fantasy novels of all time. The series as a whole, maybe. But not any of the individual volumes and especially not the first couple.

Mary Shelley: Frankenstein - A great monster story even 200 years later.

Dan Simmons: Hyperion - Dan Simmons is my favorite living fiction writer and Hyperion is one of his best. A great, great book.

Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Not nearly as good as you'd think.

Bram Stoker: Dracula - You've probably seen some sort of adaptation of this at some point. Do yourself a favor and read the original. It's well worth it.

H.G. Wells: The Time Machine and War of the Worlds - These are not really that wonderful. Influential: yes. Well written: nope.

T.H. White: The Sword in the Stone - This is the best volume of The Once and Future King. The rest are a little tedious but this one is definitely worth a read.

Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun - I never have finished this one. I found it good but something didn't quite click when I tried to read it. I'll have to give it another try sometime.




Omissions

Lord of the Rings? Narnia? What possible excuse is there for leaving those off this list? None whatsoever. It's too bad, because this is actually a really great list overall. Unfortunately, leaving off Tolkien and Lewis effectively turns it into a big joke. Completely inexcusable.

Roger Zelazny should have had an entry on here. Lord of Light is one of my favorite novels ever. It's not just good scifi, it's a great and very deep literary work.

I also think it's pretty outrageous that Lord of Light, Ender's Game, Fahrenheit 451, A Wrinkle in Time, 1984 and Earthsea were left off. Those aren't as big of omissions as LOTR, Lord of Light and Narnia but each has been extremely influential not to mention they're all great novels.

I also think it would have been nice to see something from Vernor Vinge, Tad Williams, George R.R. Martin, Robert Jordan, Terry Pratchett and Peter Straub. It's memory has been tainted by the horrible movie made out of it but Battlefield Earth is a actually a pretty good book that I would have included.


Overall, I like the list a lot. I can't imagine what possessed them to leave off Tolkien and Lewis. But putting that aside, there a lot of great reads here.

36 Years Later

Yesterday marked the 36th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. I've been spending some time this week thinking about the pro life movement. In some ways it's a depressing time. Less than a week into the Obama administration we're already feeling the affects of his extreme pro-choice views. One of his first acts has been to issue an executive order overturning a ban on federal funding for international abortion groups.

The evil freedom of choice act also is looming on the horizon and if it passes virtually every pro life gain that's been made, including the partial birth abortion ban, will be overturned. (side note: please, please, please visit fightfoca.com and do what you can to help stop this legislation.)

But I also think this can be an exciting time. Let's face it, with a Democratic president and congress we're not going to get a lot done in Washington over the next couple years. That will force pro lifers to look beyond the political arena and that is a very good thing. Don't get me wrong, I think the political side of the life battle is extremely important. I'm terrified of FOCA passing and I believe President Obama's view on abortion is depressing and tragic. But we need to remember that abortion existed long before Roe vs. Wade and it will be around when that decision is eventually overturned.

The pro life movement didn't begin in politics and even if we win every political battle we cannot let it end there. For as much as I wish we had pro life leaders in Washington, the current situation will force us to look beyond politics and focus on saving lives in our own communities. It will remind us that our primary focus isn't politics but saving babies and caring for hurting mothers who feel trapped.

Finally, we need to pray. Pray for a culture of life to come over our nation. Pray for comfort for scared mothers and life for their unborn children. Pray against FOCA and pray that God will open the eyes of our President on this issue. Pray works. It changes things. And it's a far more powerful weapon than any political victory.

Gran Torino

Yesterday afternoon Annie and I went to see Clint Eastwood's new movie Gran Torino. We both agreed it was the best movie we've seen in a long, long time. In case you haven't heard of it, Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a retired autoworker and widower who spends his days sitting on the front porch with his dog drinking beer and glaring at the Hmong family that just moved in next door. Walt isn't too big on his new neighbors, mostly because of their race, but through several occurrences he gets drawn into their lives and becomes their protector against the inner city gangs that roam the neighborhood.

There's a lot to like about the movies. Most of it's described in other reviews so I won't bother echoing them here. But one part I haven't seen discussed much, the part that struck me the most is the film's brilliant portrayal of masculine initiation.

The Hmong family has a teenage boy named Thao. At the beginning of the movie he walks around with no self confidence, scared of his own shadow. The only chance he sees at actually becoming a man is to join the local Hmong gang. Walt very reluctantly begins to let Thao into his life and their relationship becomes the center of the movie.

Thao is in what John Eldredge describes in The Way of the Wild Heart as the Cowboy/Ranger stage. A stage in life where a boy moves towards manhood through hard work, adventure and testing. Walt teaches him exactly what a boy needs to learn at that stage. He learns about tools, how to work, how to act responsibly. In the midst of his grumpy, crass demeanor Walt answers for Thao the central question every boy and man is asking (do I have what it takes?) with a resounding "yes!"

Thao is initiated into the Cowboy stage but it doesn't stop there. Walt teaches him how to talk to women showing him the beginning of the Lover stage. I won't spoil the ending but the film ends with Walt initiating Thao as a warrior in a way that is both subtle and brilliant. In the closing scenes the scared boy is gone, replaced by a man prepared for life.

Every man needs initiation and it is exactly what God is offering to us. The source of a man's initiation might be obvious or God might use someone as unlikely as Walt Kowalski. But what is portrayed in the movie is available to every man if only we'll let God begin to work in our lives.