Jack Johnson

I am so old that the coolest I can be now in the music world is what they call "retro."

I did not want my retro-ness to stand in the way of www.donmcintyre.com being useful to *all* of its visitors, so I went to my two personal experts on the current state of popular music, who also happen to be my sons, and I said, "If you could recommend one musical performer to the world, who would it be?"

They both gave me the same answer: Jack Johnson. So I listened for myself.

My first reaction, you understand, was hostile rage. I mean, all through the seventies, as I hitchhiked all over the United States, writing songs and singing songs, and doing all kinds of things to get myself in front of music publishers and agents and the like, I kept hearing the same thing over and over again:

"You are talented and you write good material. But you're just one guy with a guitar - shheeesh! This isn't the sixties, for crying outloud. You need a *band* - drums, bass, keyboard, maybe even some violins and horns. Go put all that together and make a demo. Then we'll talk."

Now, 30 years later, as I make my "retro" music CD's (!), this Jack Johnson dude comes around with his one guitar and sells his stuff to my own kids - who, by the way, I supported by working in a cubicle, for the most part.

But, okay, Jack Johnson really is good. And I'm too old to appeal to his audience. Maybe if I live long enough, someday 70 year old retro guys will be in. But with my luck, they'll have to play the tuba.

In the meantime, go back to www.donmcintyre.com and buy one of Jack's releases.

Renovation of the Heart, by Dallas Willard

This is the most recent of Dallas Willard's four main works on taking Jesus Christ seriously (my definition of the word "faith" - the opposite of faith being, not atheism, but religion). There are a growing number of pastors, teachers and authors (not to mention so-called "laypersons" - the ones on whom all human history truly depends) that are unabashed in their acknowledgment of Dallas Willard's life-changing influence.

Not that Dallas invites anything that would even remotely resemble a so-called cult following. The contrary is so true that anyone who knows the man chuckles at the thought. It is not even primarily any belief system that leads to the life change. More radically, Dallas Willard reintroduces - in a remarkably profound way - what the serious hard follower after spiritual Truth has known for at least 4,000 years: to be remarkably connected to the radical, unconventional Spirit of the one One Jesus called "Father" is a matter of many very minor decisions on a regular basis over a long period of time - decisions that can be made by anyone with even a slightly honest soul, decisions that change the very way our muscles twitch and our nerve synapses fire.

Christian "faith" as a mere rhetorical covering for some political agenda? ...as a bumper sticker-like excuse to be willfully disobedient but still "forgiven" and "bound for heaven"? ...as a way for preachers to manipulate willingly naive followers who just want to give their money and be done with it? ...as a righteous standard of behavior that turns to mere joyless and hypocritical legalism?

Escape from it all - through the shared journey of one who took the New Testament seriously. I can recommend *nothing* more eagerly.

The Way of All Flesh, by Samuel Butler

It is baffling that this great work does not appear on many lists of "the greatest novels of all time." For any reader interested in Victorian fiction, it certainly rates along with anything by James, Dickens or the Brontes.

Though the novel goes to some length to prepare us for its main character by providing two thoroughly interesting generations of family history, the meat of the story begins with the introduction of Ernest Pontifex, whose lifelong character could not be better described than by his own first name. He is earnest to a fault in all that he endeavors; indeed, in all that he thinks, feels, regrets and dreams.

He is thus a perfect sort of movie screen on which the author may project his themes. Primary among these is a thorough and passionate exploration of virtually any entity in his time that might have gone under the label of "Christianity."

Herein is every denomination, movement, belief or direction that was available to the "eanest" Christian of Victorian England. The story itself, however, remains primary; and before that story has completed, we have come to know with some intimacy virtually every Victorian type as each can embody that major strain.

Earnest's parents represent wickedness covered over with religious hypocrisy. Their actions and motivations often leave the reader in a condition of palpable tenseness and subtle horror. They are drawn a little heavy-handedly, but certainly far less so than Dickens' villains.

Earnest's parents are generally contrasted by the novel's narrator, who is also Earnest's godfather, who observes and works diligently in the background in ways that provide Earnest with a "salvation" that, though quite unlike that of explicit Christian faith, seems to combine practical humanity and divine inspiration that is not unlike the very idea of incarnation.

In our own time, the novel - indeed all fiction - must compete with more immediate visual media, and therefore must always be pressing the story forward. It is the rule of the day that ideas are to be expressed only by action. This was not the case in 19th Century England, and Butler very often takes a break from the action to allow his narrator to comment and philosophize. To this reviewer, the practice, though now considered old-fashioned, only adds to the quality of this work. One who disagreed with the comments thus offered would likely take a different view.

It seems that, for Samuel Butler, "The Way of All Flesh" means that all people - at various times, in various ways, and with varying degrees of destructiveness - use the ideas of religion and righteousness as a cloak for mere manipulation and the forcing of one's will. It is an unpleasant idea, and would be almost unbearable if the novel itself did not hold out the possibility for hard-won growth toward genuineness - and perhaps even toward genuine Christian faith.

Reprinted from - www.classicreader.com, 12/4/04, and www.abacci.com, 12/4/04
Copyright © 2004 Donald L. McIntyre All Rights Reserved, except as stated below