Shantung Compound - A Review

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One of the biggest problems with political thought is that everyone is trying to argue for a solution to a given problem, but few of those speaking have truly taken time to understand the nature and complexity of the problem. They may have compiled statistics, done interviews, or taken pictures to represent the symptoms of the problem, but rarely have they taken the time to look beyond the symptoms to the source.

In general, those who have the most confidence in their solutions being the panacea for whatever ails society, whether in politics or in economics, have done the least consideration of what it is to be human. Drugs, violent crime, sexual perversions, racial hatred, and systemic inequity are all symptoms. The heart of the problem is humanity and the sin nature we all were born with.

Langdon Gilkey’s book, Shantung Compound: The Story of Men and Women Under Pressure, is both a memoir and a well-considered assessment of humanity. Though Gilkey was a theologian, this book is much more interesting for its discussions of human nature regarding political and economic order.

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The book contains fourteen chapters. There is a rough chronology to it, but its core is presented thematically. Gilkey covers adaptation to deprivation in an internment camp, establishment of political order, the rise and fall of the black market, the significance of the human desire for space, and the search for meaning in the narrowed confines of a prison camp.

Shantung Compound is, in part, an explanation of why Gilkey came to reject the anthropology of his liberal Protestant upbringing and take a much less idealistic view of what is politically possible. Gilkey is neither socialist nor capitalist. In fact, he offers significant questions for rigid adherents to both poles of economic order.

Throughout the book, Gilkey is exceedingly critical (and likely somewhat dishonest toward) religious adherents, particularly the Protestant missionaries that were incarcerated alongside him. However, he also raises significant questions about the way so many of the Protestant missionaries failed to live out their ideals of selflessness and sacrifice when their basic needs were encroached upon. Gilkey is adamantly non-exclusive in his understanding of salvation and morality, but at the same time he affirms the necessity of the existence of a god as the best explanation for the order that exists.

Those interested in accounts of World War II will find this another interesting perspective. It shares with Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning multiple significant traits: it deals with prisoners in an enemy camp, faced with physically trying conditions, and, more significantly, the strong potential for despair. Both the agnostic Frankl and Gilkey arrive at similar conclusions that humans must find meaning outside of themselves if they are to keep from despair and social anarchy when everything is stripped away. Intriguingly, both men argue there must be meaning behind work besides mere survival and economic reward.

Frankl’s classic book provides a deeper look at the individual human condition, because it was written based on his time in a Nazi concentration camp. Gilkey’s experience, though harsh, was much less horrid because he spent the war in a civilian run prison camp. Neither experience was pleasant, but Gilkey’s allowed him to observe the construction of a new, basically independent society within the prison camp.

The international collection of prisoners in the Shantung Compound had autonomy to set up their own councils, manage their own cooking, and distribute those resources provided according to whatever rules they could establish. This self-contained society, who resources were limited and provided by their captors (with the exception of limited black-market goods), had to establish order without recourse to force, encourage each other through entertainments, and maintain satisfaction with relatively equitable distribution of very limited goods. The accounts of how that was accomplished reveal a great deal about political theory.

At the same time, the artificial circumstances limit the applicability of some of its lessons. At the end, Gilkey attempts to argue for greater international aid as a way to establish lasting peace. Setting aside the rafts of evidence that have been published since 1966 by people from both sides of the political spectrum, which shows the dangers of long-term aid, his case is not proved by this account because of the involuntary isolation of this community. In other words, some of the lessons are very helpful, but it is dangerous to draw too many firm conclusions because the same fences and guards that created the experiment also create the artificiality that keeps the lessons of Shantung Compound from being universally applicable. We cannot check our reason on the basic even of a well-considered anecdote.

Gilkey’s Shantung Compound is an important book, I think, for those considering the nature of humanity. It is the record of an experiment that ran for quite long enough to draw some conclusions. There is some helpful reasoning in the volume about ethics, politics, and human nature. It is the sort of book that those thinking about political theory and economics would do well to consider, especially as Western societies wrestle with the excesses of affluence and the cultural rot that has resulted.

Something Needs to Change - A Review

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David Platt wrote Radical in 2010. The subtitle of that book was Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream. That compelling book was a call to resist the materialism and superfluous comforts of the idealized American existence and pursue a missional alternative that included frugal living, generous giving, and the willingness to go to all the nations with the gospel.

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In the years since I’ve met many people who have read the book, who studied it in a small group or as a church, or who have heard its core message summarized. Most of them continue to live a typical American middle-class lifestyle, with a comfy house, fun vacations, and a great hope in retirement. Many of the accounts of studying the book include Christians meeting in the expansive homes of the American suburbs enjoying rich desserts. The irony is often lost on those who recount it.

For Platt, who spent four years at the helm of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board, the irony still seems to be too much. He has recently published a volume, Something Needs to Change: A Call to Make Your Life Count in a World of Urgent Need, that reissues the call of Radical and seeks to make it more personal.

Something Needs to Change is a memoir or sorts that recounts a seven-day trip Platt took through the Himalayas just before he accepted the call to the International Mission Board. He outlines the devastating poverty he encountered, the horrific lostness, and the depths of human depravity that were evidenced in the communities Platt encountered.

This book is nuanced. It is not merely a 200-page guilt trip. It is an extended meditation about real needs by someone who does not have all of the answers. Platt seeks to uncover the desperate needs of the world, while still wrestling with our call to live in the place God has given us. By the end of the book, it should be clear to the reader that Platt is not proposing a one-size-fits-all solution, but rather calling for an unfettered reconsideration of our priorities and actions.

Platt is likely to face criticism from both political poles about this volume. He recognizes the deep humanitarian needs of those living in abject poverty and sees that as humans we cannot ignore them. At the same time, he cannot fail to note the even deeper need to meet to alleviate the spiritual poverty of those living apart from Christ. His proposal is to develop a both-and solution, but by all means to do something.

To often good theory dies on the pages of the book and never makes it to the hands of the reader. In Western culture we talk about the needs of the poor, but try to pay off the government to deal with their problems while hoping to keep their hands (and lives) free of the concerns of the dirty poor. In the same way, some groups claim earnest concern for the environment, but continue to drive excessively large vehicles excessively long distances while consuming excessively large quantities of beverages shipped and excessively long distance and presented in excessively wasteful packaging.

As Platt notes, something has to change. His book is a call for people to consider what that change will look like in their lives. For the business person, it may be to expand their company into a lesser served area of the world to provide jobs and resources to those who need it. For some, it may be to take marketable skills they have acquired and apply them to humanitarian solutions for areas reached neither by the gospel nor the material abundance of Western culture. There are no firm prescriptions because for each of us the task is different and our ability to contribute is uniquely shaped by God’s gifts to us.

Above all, however, we need to stop doing nothing and do something.

Platt’s book in another reminder that many of us live lives of self-satisfaction, oblivious to the great needs of the world. We will be accountable for how we have used our time and resources one day when we stand before a holy God. On that day some of our accounts of purchased comforts and wasted days will be a source of sorrow. Something Needs to Change is a reminder that day is coming. We should live like we expect it.

Note: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction - A Review

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Why do you read?

I am something of an addict myself, so sometimes I’m not sure whether I am reading because it is an activity that I love, a duty that I own, or a habit that I need to break.

In particular, as someone who reviews books (I typically write 50-75 book reviews a year now), I find myself always with a book in my hand. This is, of course, something of a security blanket when people become too intrusive. For an introvert, a book can become an impermeable fortress that miraculously blocks out all noise and unwanted social interactions. (Except for that really annoying, fearful woman on a flight a few years ago who insisted on peppering me with questions as we crossed the country.)

And yet, despite my relative enjoyment of reading as an exercise, I find myself plodding through books that I do not really enjoy. Part of this is that I have committed to always read the entire volume (at least once) before I write a review. Amazingly, this is not something that all reviewers do, and it often is apparent from their reviews. However, there are other times that I end up holding a volume in my hands that has been deemed a classic (or at least notable in its field) pushing through even though I am gaining little pleasure and often even less value from it.

Books that I have acquired out of a sense of duty are intermingled on my shelves with the books I have read and enjoyed or at least profited from (I did not enjoyed Cormac McCarthy’s book, The Road, but I did profit from reading it.). Despite having been assigned The Brothers Karamazov as a sophomore in college (and doing well in that class), I still have not read it. Two copies of that auspicious volume sit on my shelves, staring at me like the roving eyes in the portrait of long deceased ancestor, but each time I pick up the book I find myself soon drifting to other interests. I have often been left disappointed in myself as a failure for not latching on to one of the great works of human culture.

Alan Jacobs provides an alibi for many of us in his book, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction. This volume, written to bibliophiles who read voraciously, is a stark reminder that there is much more to reading than checking off a big to-do list, the completion of which authorized one to be deemed culturally astute, wise, or whatever.

As a professor of English and one deeply engaged in discussions of thinking and culture, Jacobs does not swear off reading from the canons of volumes curated by previous generations. He does, however, recognize that in our present age of constant distractions and competing demands for our attention we are likely to lose a great deal more by attempting to force our way through the works presently uninteresting than by reading according to our whim.

Instead, Jacobs pleads: “For heaven’s sake, don’t turn reading into the intellectual equivalent of eating organic greens, or (shifting the metaphor slightly) some fearfully disciplined appointment with an elliptical trainer of the mind in which your count words or pages the way some people fix their attention on the ‘calories burned’ readout. . . . This kind of thing is not reading at all, but what C. S. Lewis once called ‘social and ethical hygiene.’”

Whim, is, therefore the pursuit of one’s current intellectual interests. The pursuit of a sort of pleasure that may be more like the “runner’s high” that comes after breaking through “the wall” during a long run than the sugar-induced coma after consuming half of a cheesecake. That is, whim and pleasure ought not to be taken as a license to avoid hard works in favor of breezy novels, but rather to allow a mixture that fuels rather than smothers the engagement of the mind.

I think of my own habit or re-reading The Lord of the Rings approximately annually. (A habit I share with Peter Kreeft, so I have never felt too badly about it.) On one hand I do this because, although it is the forebear of a genre of fantasy for which I have little taste, each time I encounter the book I am deepened in my understanding of the true, good, and beautiful. Having read the story more than forty times has increased rather than diminished my pleasure in reading it. According to the reading list measure of intellectual greatness, which is often supported through works like Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book, I am losing time and missing opportunities to progress intellectually. However, my repeated re-reading of Tolkien’s masterpiece is an attempt to let the book master me rather than me mastering a canon of literature.

By re-reading works that I delight in and which ground me in humanity (I think of much of C. S. Lewis’s corpus), I am pointed toward and encouraged to delve more deeply into other books. I have yet to conquer Dostoevsky’s Brothers (though in my defense, I have read Demons), but someday I might. Alan Jacob’s book, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction offers a comforting salve to my aching conscience reminding me that the purpose of my reading is to enjoy it, to be shaped by it, and not merely to eat my veggies.

Those who delight in reading will also take pleasure in Jacobs’ book on the subject. It is a sort of Inception for the bookish crowd, since it is a book about reading books. Above all, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, is a well-considered, well-written treatise on a subject that many of us hold very dear.

Adorning the Dark - A Review

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The world can be a very dark place. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the evil that surrounds us. It invades every corner of our existence. Sin is ever with us and peace can be elusive. The news, our social media, the way people treat each other in our presence are a constant reminder that on this side of Genesis 3, things are not the way they are supposed to be.

And yet, there is beauty. Common grace exists. We see wonder that remains in the created order around us. There is order to be observed and delight to be found in God’s goodness, resounding like echoes in a quiet canyon.

Amid the darkness of this world, we have the responsibility to adorn the dark with grace-filled art. We have a duty to bear the flame and adorn the dark.

Andrew Peterson’s recent book from B&H is, as the title implies, about Adorning the Dark.

Summary

This is much less a how-to book and much more a memoir of how the Rabbit Room, Hutchmoot, Behold the Lamb of God, and the multiple other projects that Andrew Peterson has played a part in have come to pass. For those who enjoy Peterson’s music and the network of musicians and artists that he celebrates, this is an engaging account of how one man and his friends are working to make the world a more beautiful place.

For those who are seeking a collection of thoughts on how to replicate Andrew Peterson’s vision or reproduce exactly what he has done in his several decade career, this book will not meet that desire. However, those who have been blessed by what Peterson has done will find this an engaging and encouraging read.

There is some theory in this volume, but there is much more story. Readers will get a sense of the importance of place, the need for story, the vital need that we have for friendship and cooperation. All of this is carried along in Adorning the Dark. There is a real sense of love for God and his creation that is apparent on every page.

Critique

This is a thoroughly enjoyable book, but it is not a highly theoretical book. That is likely to make some people very happy while frustrating others. Peterson is a gifted artist and storyteller. He is not a scholar or theoretician. This is a book that digests and recasts the intellectual work of others, but it does not till new ground. At the same time, Peterson shows how the theories of others can be worked out in our time and culture.

The degree to which one appreciates Adorning the Dark will depend significantly on what the reader is looking for. Fans of Andrew Peterson will find this encouraging and enlightening. There will be a significant number of creative people who will find this inspiring and instructional. The practical and appreciative will gain the most pleasure and benefit from this short volume. Those seeking an advancement of the philosophy of art or beauty will do better to look to the sources Peterson lists in the back of the book.

The most important thing this book teaches readers is that our pathway to adorning the dark will be different than the authors. Our goal may be the same, but we are not all called or gifted to be independent musicians who write children’s fantasy novels. The Rabbit Room is a ministry specific to Peterson’s time, place, and community. Our task is not to reproduce what Andrew Peterson has done, but to make the world beautiful in our own way.

NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.