How to Live on 24 Hours a Day - A Review

in

Self-help books get published at a seemingly ever-increasing rate. They all promise to help people use their time more efficiently, overhaul their lives, change their mindset, become more satisfied with some aspect of life. Some are helpful. Few are earth shattering. Some are downright deceptive.

Arnold Bennett’s book, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, is one that I have seen referenced multiple times in multiple places as a classic book on improving time management. Despite this, it can be a challenge to find a copy, since it was published in 1910.

Bennett himself was a very productive author and playwright. He published thirty-four novels, multiple plays, and a number of self-help books. His works were popular successes in his day, particularly because Bennett worked to make them accessible to non-literary readers. That same popularity contributed to his relative obscurity as the critics of his day panned his work so that after his death much of it dropped out of print. Similarly, that Bennett would stoop to write a self-help book for the masses was perceived as a sign of artistic weakness.

How to Live on 24 Hours a Day is a somewhat dated book. Radio as a medium of mass entertainment did not become popular until the late 1920s, so Bennett’s advice does not grapple with some of the most dangerous time vampires of the last century. However, the advice Bennett does give is sound in principle.

Bennett cautions against losing valuable chunks of time each day. For instance, he cites the time that many men (yes, he focuses on men) lose on their daily commute. He warns against the transient quality of newspapers. Though he does not oppose the reading of such media, he recognizes the inherent weakness in media that is designed to excite and is most valued because of its ability to entertain.

The book does not set out an entirely high brow vision for cultural appreciation. Bennett does value literature and good music, but he doesn’t insist that his readers do the same. This is not a book about becoming more aristocratic, but about wise use of time. Bennett does recommend poetry to his readers, arguing that the work is well-rewarded by the value in mind and spirit that results. However, the Bennett’s greatest emphasis is on using time wisely and not wasting it away. Wisely, in this case, requires that one spend time according to one’s values.

Each day—either before or after work—Bennett recommends spending ninety minutes or so in study of some sort. It could be exploration of literature, or deeper research into some topic of interest. He commends specialization and following some sort of plan of study, however loose. The time during one’s commute to work can then be recaptured by thinking through what was learned the day before and trying to piece things together. The commute home was to be investing in thinking through the day to consider what went well and what could be improved. Routine and focused improvement is the name of the game

Bennett is careful to point out some of the pitfalls to self-improvement. First, too rigorous a schedule is not a positive thing. If a person becomes a slave to his routine to the detrimental of social responsibilities and opportunities, then that is a bad thing. Second, an overzealous beginning at self-improvement will lead to failure. Better to start slow and improve over time than to do a complete reset and burnout after a short spurt of improvement. Bennett recognizes that improvement is best implemented incrementally and over time.

In some ways How to Live on 24 Hours a Day is out of date. There are obvious technological differences. Cultural changes also remain unaddressed, like the prevalence of youth sports. This is no less than one would expect from a volume over a century old.

At the same time, the message the Bennett offers is magnified by the differences. The concerns are the same. Time is lost in transit. Attention is wasted on the ephemeral. Instead of smart phones or professional sports, the distractions are newspapers and pointless dissipation. The solutions are to have goals and to work toward them incrementally. One strength of Bennett’s approach is the significant focus on introspection and improvement. Many of the contemporary volumes assume the ultimate value of productivity on its own and fail to point one toward valuing what is really important.

It is unlikely that Bennett’s book will regain its earlier popularity. However, there it is a good book. It is wonderfully concise and remote enough from our own time to be what C. S. Lewis calls an old book. As such, it helps illuminate that many things we view a novel are universal and other things that we may assume are consistent throughout human history are actually particular to our time.

Dangerous Calling - A Review

in

As my congregation works through a revision of the constitution to enable a shift to a plurality of elders, I have been looking for resources for potential leaders to work through.

Paul Tripp’s book, Dangerous Calling, is one that popped up on the list of volumes to consider. This 2012 volume from Crossway reflects on the challenges that are particular to the role of pastors.

This volume consists of three parts. Part One considers the aspects of the pastoral role that may contribute to burnout, overburden, and the crumbling of marriages. Tripp admits to his own struggles, especially with anger, and reflects on the cultural factors that contribute to that decline. In particular, when the pastor becomes separate from the congregations—special saints who aren’t also being ministered to, they are at risk of failure. Similarly, when they focus their study only on preparation and not on inculcating a strong spiritual life, they can fall into traps of pride, spiritual starvation, and sin.

Part Two deals with the condition when a pastor loses sight of the amazing character of God. This may lead to spiritual poverty, or to slipping into patterns of dissipation, which may simply include excessive internet usage or mindless entertainment. Similarly, forgetting the wonder of God may lead failure to prepare well and accepting mediocrity in ministry.

Part Three emphasizes the problem with pride that may come from faulty culture and a lack of awe.  Pride, of course, is a grave danger to any Christian, but perhaps especially to someone in a leadership position, with a responsibility to stand before a congregation and preach. This can lead to an overemphasis on preparation so that the sermon becomes a performance to the further detriment of the pastor’s character and quality of service. Again, the issue of pride can lead to increased separation, with a sort of feedback that only makes the root problems worse.

The book is very practical. Each distinct section of the volume emphasizes the real problems that pastors can face with some potential solutions. The baseline solution is very simple: pastors should not allow themselves to be isolated from the congregation or from a support network that will hold them accountable; conversely, congregations should make sure they do not allow that to happen to their pastors. Like many spiritual disciplines, the answer is simple, yet difficult.

In large part, the book seems best suited for those who earn their living from their ministry roles—whatever the title may be. There is a lot of good material in the text about pastors needing friends and the damage that pastoral isolation can bring for his family and his congregation.

One of the most obvious solutions for pastoral isolation is conspicuously absent from this volume: the institution of a plurality of elders who are all responsible for the ministry of the church and with lay elders that are commissioned to encourage any vocational staff, help bear the load, and ensure any staff elders are not singled out.

The book is an easy read. It is generally helpful. There is a great deal of repetition in the volume, however. The examples are repetitive and the solution so simple that the text could have been a third or more shorter and still accomplished every purpose that it sought to achieve. This is a worthy topic and Tripp brings good advice, but it could have been executed in a much more succinct manner.

Strange New World - A Review

in ,

Sometimes when you wake from an incredibly heavy sleep with extremely vivid dreams it can be disorienting. You look around at your room and wonder how you got there, as if you have just arrived on an alien planet.

Western culture feels like that in recent years. The loudest voices of our world expect us to  affirm statements that would have been viewed as non-sensical a few years ago. Someone, “I am a man trapped in a woman’s body,” has gone from a psychosis to a source of pride.

Ideas do have consequences, but what are some of the ideas and who are some of the thinkers that helped pave the way for us to get to this point.

Carl Trueman’s earlier book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, is an excellent example of thorough research and clear presentation. (I had a review written of it, but my computer ate it and I couldn’t bring myself to rewrite it yet.) The primary weakness of that volume was that it showed the jumps in concepts of the self that paved the way for the sexual revolution, but it failed to show how the ideas of Marx,  Reich, and Freud were genetically connected to those cultural shifts. There seemed to be a trajectory, but Trueman didn’t connect all the dots. The second weakness of that volume was that it was so dense and academic that its audience was limited to those who had done a great deal of background reading already. Honestly, that limitation isn’t as much a weakness as simply a description of the type of work Trueman produced on that occasion. There is a place for that sort of book, but it left many of its readers (including me) wishing I could really share that with my friends and fellow church members.

Trueman’s more recent book, Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution, fills the gap for a more popular level work that expresses many of the same ideas. Strange New World also takes on the feedback of some of the reviews of Rise and Triumph and makes a bit tighter argument. In this case, Trueman makes it clear that he isn’t arguing there is a clear connection between the different thinkers or that the average ideological activist has actually read enough of Marx or whomever to actually be an expert. However, Trueman shows how each of these progressive thinkers broke new ground and prepare the way for the corrosive effects of the sexual revolution.

There is explanatory power in this book. It has a similar flavor to it as C. S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man or Richard Weaver’s Ideas have Consequences. Both of those men wrote those books eight decades ago. Trueman has much more information that points to the fact that they largely got things right, and it is destroying Western culture and the humans that reside within it.

Trueman notes, “To put it bluntly, the modern cultural imagination sees the world as raw material to be shaped by the human will.” (95) And, prior to that, he observes, “We might say that the death of God is also the death of human nature, or at least the end of any cogent argument that there is such a thing as human nature. If there is no God, then men and women cannot be made in his image and are not therefore required to act in accordance with that image.” (62)

This is modernity. It is the sort of liquid modernity that Zygmunt Bauman discusses. It is the sort of caustic thought-world that Alan Noble writes about in Disruptive Witness and to which he provides a helpful solution for in You are Not Your Own. Trueman shows how the changes in sexual norms in culture have come about through the trajectory of modern, Western thought. Strange New World is one of a chorus of helpful voices that help to explain what’s wrong with the world we inhabit.

This is a book that could be used for an upper-level student in High School, especially as a source for an advanced book review or paper. It has a place in a study of worldview or sexual ethics in an undergraduate or graduate course. This is also a book that thoughtful pastors and laypeople who are reasonably well read can work through and benefit from tremendously. Strange New World should be read widely and often as we try to navigate an increasingly anti-human and disorienting world.

Readers may also benefit from watching a series of lectures Trueman put together for Grove City College, which summarize some of the main points of his book.