Book Review: "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck (pt. 1 of 2)

I have been "reading" East of Eden on my commute to and from work lately.  I am not even halfway through (on disc 10 of 25), but I thought I would take the time to post on a few quotes from the book that have stood out to me thus far.

“When a child first catches adults out—when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just—his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone….And the child’s world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.”

&

“It doesn’t matter that Cathy was what I have called a monster. Perhaps we can’t understand Cathy, but on the other hand we are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins. And who in his mind has not probed the black water?

Maybe we all have in us a secret pond where evil and ugly things germinate and growstrong. But this culture is fenced, and the swimming brood climbs up only to fall back. Might it not be that in the dark pools of some men the evil grows strong enough to wriggle over the fenceand swim free? Would not such a man be our monster, and are we not related to him in ourhidden water? It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.”

It is interesting how controversial the doctrine of total depravity can be among believers debating the extent to which we are capable or incapable of pleasing God and what ultimately lies at and in the heart of man.  It is also interesting how a man like Steinbeck could put his finger on the situation and almost mirror the words of Oswald Chambers when he states in My Utmost for His Highest the following: 

"If the Spirit of God has given you a vision of what you are apart from the grace of God (and He only does it when His Spirit is at work), you know there is no criminal who is half so bad in actuality as you know yourself to be in possibility."

Steinbeck echoes Chambers' words in pointing us to who we are in possibility, who we are in our cores: the hidden, secret self whose desires go unfulfilled and un-actualized whether from fear of man, inability, or fear of God.  They are as much a part of us spiritually as our hearts are physically. 

There is a moment, as Steinbeck points out, in a child's life where he or she realizes the fallen nature of those to whom admiration and on whom what could be hinted to as worship has been given.  There is an outward realization that people, even those closest and held most dear to you, are capable of evil.  It is first realized in our observation of others and, if the Spirit allows by grace, recognized inwardly as observed even in ourselves.

It is a dreadful and despairing realization.  We have dark wells of deep evil within us and so do others.  Without God's hand of grace, imagine how wicked we all could become.  How far could it go?  How far east of Eden could be move?

It is a grace of God for a man to realize this about himself and others.  It is a mercy of God to give that same man the humility and desire to reach out in faith to Christ to be for him his perfection and forgiveness; to overcome the monstrosities of mans’ design and decisions. 

Thoughts from "Sex, Marriage, and Fairytales"

Today is my 5 year wedding anniversary to my wonderful wife!!!!

Marriage is not a fairytale.  It is better than that.  Fairytales may be full of "happily-ever-afters" and "once-upon-a-times," but they are merely a shadow of the real thing.  Happy endings are the product of repentance and humility now. Real marriages have real sin and real forgiveness and a real Savior.  Anything short of that is a glorified contractual arrangement.  We get to love and glorify Jesus the more because our marriage so desperately needs Him.

In honor of marriage, I provide for your viewing pleasure this video by Jefferson Bethke (infamous for his "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus" video that set the social media universe on fire for a spell some months back)

"People do not fall out of love, they fall out of repentance."

What an awesome line packed full of power and truth.  Love feels good and is easy to pursue when you feel its reciprocation. But do you love when you do not feel loved in return? Do you love when the object of your love is unlovely? What about when that cute wit turns against you and cuts you down? Can you forgive? Can you seek forgiveness?

Marriage is not primarily about happiness, it is about holiness with some happiness to boot.  Please note: marriages should not be void of happiness.  It is not in saying that holiness is the aim of marriage to say that happines is not a part of it.  It is merely saying that "marriage is not," like my wife has said, "a permanent slumber party."

Ephesians 5 states that marriage is like the Gospel.  A man and a woman become like Christ and His church. Marriage is more than two people having fun and cooperating to buy more expensive stuff than they could do on their own.

Jefferson mentions Romans 1:25 in this spoken word presentation.  So many turn a spouse into an idol and get frustrated when their "god" does not come through for them.  People cannot be gods to one another.  At least not very good ones.  You will never find yourself more frustrated with someone or something than when you expect it to be like god and it fails you. 

People make bad gods. 

***I realized after writing this that it could be taken two ways and both of them are true

(1) If you make a person your god, you will be disappointed in how ungodlike they often are. In other words, people do not uphold the office of god very well.  When asked, we do not fill-in for God in convincing fashion.

(2) By our creative hands we make for ourselves gods (who turn out to be bad).   In other words, we cannot make a god who is good.  We only create/make bad gods. A god made by us cannot be more than what we have to offer. 

Only God is worthy of praise and faithful to fulfill that which He has promised.  If you are dissatisified or disilluisioned by marriage, perhaps it is because you are asking of it that which it could never produce. Marriage cannot be god anymore than your spouse can be.  Worshipping the creative work of the Creator's hands never works out well for you or the creation.

Marriage is made of sinners united by a sinless Savior.  People make promises they do not keep.  We all have done it: believed ourselves better than we found out later. Marriage is hard work because dying to yourself is hard work and individuality is harder to relinquish the more time you invested into crafting it when "finding yourself" as a single person. 

Great marriages are made of people who are great at forgiving one another because of that which they have been forgiven by a great God through a great Christ.  Depend on Him and believe in Him.  Devote yourself first and foremost to Him with all your hearts, mind, and strength.  He will NEVER fail you. Marriage will. But that said, I love being married to my wife.  I love my family.  Thank you God for these wonderful gifts.

Scents: Incense & Nonsense

Ecclesiastes 1:8b

...the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.

"Nor the nose filled with smelling." (Ok, I added that last part to help the pun in the subject line go even further, but the principle holds true).  But the point is this:

When is enough enough?

We can get tired of looking at something beautiful, sick of eating something tasty, annoyed at hearing a song we like, set on edge by being a touch we at first enjoyed, and irritated by a smell in which we originally delighted.  This proverb in particular, however, is not communicating that people grow weary of things they like, the rest of the book will communicate that clearly enough.

This is saying that our ear is never full of sweet sounds.  It never fills up per se. We will never tire of someone else singing our praises. We welcome either new songs of praise or new members to the choir as long as they are singing the sweet sounds of myself.

Pornography is an addiction because a man's eyes never fill up with images enough that more images are not required.  Porn addicts rarely watch "a" pornographic film and survive on the memories of it alone.

Women who love beautiful things, decorating, antiquing, and the like peruse websites and obtain subscriptions to magazines that routinely show them the best of what is the most beautiful at the moment, yet rarely does a woman read one magazine over and over and find satisfaction in saturating themselves with only that issue.

The eyes are never satisfied with having seen beauty once and the ears are never full of sound so that they could not hear anymore.  There is no end to seeing or hearing.  They botth could be done forever and are endless in their potential.

There is, by contrast, only so much water you can fit into a cup and only so much food you can physically fit into a stomach ( have you noticed the "all you CAN eat" signs have now been changed to "all you care to eat"?).  There are limitations to these things.  But our souls are expansive.  They are robust.

You could try to fill your eyes with images daily and never have so much as to eclipse your ability to view more.  You may get tired of looking at something for a season just as you may get tired of eating cheesecake, but there is always room for more beauty in our eyes and only limited room available for cheesecake (although admittedly a lot of room can be forcibly be made for cheesecake by sheer will power).

Pursuing the delights of your eyes and the sweetness of sounds are fine for what they are, but they will never fill up because they were not created to do so.

This is not another "God-shaped hole in your heart" argument.  You are not a puzzle missing one piece.  You are not one sandwich short of a picnic.  You are a vacuum and only God's expansive bounty can fill the cravings of your soul.   We like to look at stuff and listen to other stuff, but oh the vanity of chasing yet another beautiful thing, another sweet sound, another tasty sensation, another pleasurable touch for its sake alone. 

It NEVER ends.  NEVER.  It is never satisfied.  It cannot be.

Ecclesiastes points us past these endeavors for which we usually settle: 

Ecclesiastes (and other Bible studies that either make or break a new relationship)

I absolutely adore this book. Ask my wife (ask your mom kids). When we were first dating, I decided (the good Christian guy that I was in my first dating experience as a follower of Jesus) we should do a Bible study together. So we went through Ecclesiastes!

Chipper, eh? 

Better than going through Song of Songs I suppose.  For all the difficulties in dealing with the depression of Ecclesiastes, they pale in comparison, I imagine, to starting a new relationship with a beautiful girl by studying the pleasures of martial intimacies (probably not in wisdom's best interest and I believe Paul would back me on this).

I love the paradox of this book: A God-inspired vision of a world without God.  It should be dire.  What else would expect God to say?  "Life without Me isn't so bad.  I guess. *sigh*"

Only God can really pull back the curtain to reveal what it all would mean if the Meaning was absent.

"Vanity of vanities. All is vanity!"

This is echoed throughout the book and is it's general theme.

I read a fantastic book that covered this called: "Three Philosophies of Life: Ecclesiastes--Life as Vanity, Job--Life as Suffering, Song of Songs--Life as Love" by Peter Kreeft.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Bible and philosophy. I hope to make this part of our home school curriculum for my kids someday (or at the very least a book they read with their dad to entertain his him while they go about their other business of education).

Buy it HERE.

Inheritance Tact

2 Corinthians 12:14b

...for children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but parents for their children.

Children grow up to leave the home, cleave to another, and have children of their own.  Children are tomorrow's parents.  Much of what my children pass on to their children will be inherited from me: possessions, wisdom, folly, virtue, vice, habit, tradition, etc...

It is not my chldren's duty to shape my life.  By God's grace, our children do contribute and shape us greatly as to our understanding of parenthood and love and sacrifice and santification.  However, this is as a result of us fulfilling our duties to them.  When we provide for, lay down our lives for, sacrifice for, and give what we have for them, we fufill our Biblical responsibility.  There is great joy and satisfaction in so doing as well as great difficulty and expense. 

I pray my children grow up to love me and desire earnestly to honor me as their dad.  But I pray I would always have the opportunity to provide for them and save up for them and that the order and direction of provision would always come from me and go to them.

Much of what I have has been given to me by my two dads.  My earthly father has given me much by way of provision.  My Heavenly Father has given me everything by way of grace through in Christ.

As much as God desires me to love Him in return and seek and desire ways to show love back to Him, the direction of provision is always top down.  He gives and I give back.  It always is initiated by Him.  He initiates; we respond.

It is mirrored in earthly parents and children.  My wife and I will make sure to pass on as much as we can to our children and hope that they find grace through faith in Christ to inherit everything.  My greatest joy would be to see my own children adopted out of my family and into God's through Jesus.

May it be always that we love because He first loved us, give because He first gave to us, share because He first shared with us, and provide because He first provided for us. 

It begins with the one who has and is given to another in need for whom that one takes responsibility.

My wife and I brought our chidren into this world and as such it begins with us and is aimed at them.  God has brought us as adopted children into His family by faith in Christ.  He sent His Son, sent His Spirit and now provides us with everything we need.  God neither gains nor receives from me anything that was not first His. 

Top-down.

I will inherit nothing from my children.
I will give everything as an inheritance to my children

God will inherit nothing from me.
God, in Christ, has given everything to us.

Inheritance works one way.

Thoughts from "Team Hoyt"

At Men's BASIC at my church on Thursday morning we watched a video about Team Hoyt.

Please view HERE.

Listen to the father's words.  They are absurd.  They are irrational and counter-intuitive and they are full of gracious love and imputed accomplishment.

The father speaks of his son "competing" in these events.

The son speaks of how intensely he desires to give back to his father and serve him (if he was able).

The father does all of the work: runs, swims, bikes.  He does it ALL and yet he speaks of his wages as though the child were the one earning them.  He acts as though the medals should be placed around the son's neck and the garland upon his head. 

The father speaks graciously and extravagently of his son's accomplishments, but the son does nothing but enjoy the ride and adore his father all the while.

When did this synopsis transition from being solely about a father and son to a description of our Heavenly Father and His children by adoption through Jesus Christ?

The Gospel is the Good News that the Father has accomplished everything and that it cost Him dearly to do so.  And that in His great, lavish labor He has counted our frailty blessed and credited our meekness as deserving of a Kingdom. 

It is scandalous.  It is beyond reason.  It is beyond merit. It is imputed righteousness.

We all know that the child is merely a passenger in the boat, on the bike,and in the wheelchair.  To give him credit for completing a race is absurd.  And the father does so without blushing.

This is the Good News of God in Jesus Christ!

It is utter foolishness to those seeking wisdom and a stumbling block to those seeking to impress the Father by finishing the race on the vanity of their own merit.  Would that my soul be humbled to simply rest in the finished work of Christ and to place my sole confidence by grace through faith in the race He won.

A preview of her that day in those gates

Proverbs 31:28-31

28 Her children rise up and call her blessed;
her husband also, and he praises her:
29 “Many women have done excellently,
but you surpass them all.”
30 Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.
31 Give her of the fruit of her hands,
and let her works praise her in the gates.

My wife, Paige, is amazing.  I love her so much and am so thankful to God for her.  She is such a great helper to me.  She encourages me in my pursuit of God.  She runs an efficient, beautiful, and fun home.  She is a great mom, wife, and friend.  She is very funny  She can laugh at the days to come, but particularly the days already passed by.

Charm and beauty are not the most determining factors for marrying someone, but they are certainly appreciated.  I would count myself blessed to have a wife like Paige if only in her character, wisdom, intelligence, prudence, humor, organization, and friendship.  But on top of that she is charming and beautiful.  She does not use either of those for her own purposes and often times is completely unaware of how cute she is.  I love that about her among everything else I mentioned previously. 

A good wife is hard to find not because women are bad, but because people are.  Jesus is good, however, and He is a firm foundation upon which to build a friendship, marriage, family, and home.  I have experienced this first hand.  The Bible's advice in finding a mate with whom you are yoked well and equally (not just in both being Christian, but in both holding similar Christian conscience convictions for example) actually produces a more pleasant and purposeful marriage.  Marriage will be difficult at times if only because two idiot sinners are involved, but there is no reason to compound the difficulty by yoking yourself to someone with whom you disagree on the most important things.

I love God and I love my wife.  Our chord of three strands is not easily broken. So remember that the next time you think about cracking wise at Team Van Voorst.

A week from today my wife and I will celebrate 5 years of marriage.  If marriage only gets sweeter with time, we are off to an amazing start.  Can it really get better than this?  We become better friends daily and I trust that God will give us grace to fulfill our covenant vows to each other and to Him in protecting and preserving us until the day we meet Him and our marriage's mysterious metaphor becomes a glorious reality.

May God grant my wife everlasting life and heavenly treasure when she approaches His gates.  May she utter the confession, "Jesus died my soul to save. Jesus paid it all.  All to Him I owe," and find herself receiving His rewards.