April Reading Report

It is May 8 already, and I haven't yet reported on my April reading. You may or may not recall that I set a goal of sorts to read 1 fiction and 1 non-fiction per month. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

My April non-fiction choice was Beyond Belief: A Preacher's Deconversion by Bob Ripley.

Ripley was a well-known pastor of a large Canadian congregation. He lived in a city not far from us and wrote a weekly newspaper column. I had read his column back in the day, and I am interested in the religious journeys of others, so it seemed like a good choice.

I didn't take copious notes, so I may not be totally on point in this short synopsis, but here is the bit that I recall and as I recall it. I finished the book quite a few weeks ago, so I do my best.

While preparing a sermon one day, or maybe it was actually preaching it, Bob was struck by what an unsavoury character the Old Testament God was. The incident that jarred him was that a man who was picking up sticks on the Sabbath was to be out to death.

Ripley must have come across this and other harsh Biblical stories many a time without batting an eye, but it really struck him this time. He began to ponder and search, his thoughts then turning to the observation that there are many nasty incidents in the Not So Good Book, which was the title of the next chapter. The annihilation of the flood and the concomitant killing of innocent people and animals was one example. Neither was he impressed with Lot giving his daughters for raping in the Sodom and Gomorah story. And so on and so forth went his examination which later moved on to the miserable and violent history of the church as well as the inefficacy of prayer.

There could be more reading of this nature in my future, for I was a deeply committed Christian for a very long time. I know why I moved on, but it is interesting to read of others' journeys. I also remain interested in how the Christian world got to believing what it does and what might be the underlying truth.

In passing, I note that I chose to listen to my fiction book of April: Lynda La Plante's third Jane Tennison, Prime Suspect, novel. I find it a pleasant way to read on occasion, especially if it is well narrated as this was. Then we watched the concomitant television adaptation, which was extremely close to the book. That makes sense because La Plante both wrote the book and produced the series (for the first three years of the series), which, starring Helen Mirren, was extremely well done. Even though getting a little dated, Prime Suspect is well worth viewing if you haven't already done so and, perhaps, even if you have watched it but not recently.

As for this little project of mine, I may draw it to a close. It's not, quite obviously, that I will stop reading either type of book but that I don't necessarily want to continue to be rigid about it. In other words, I want to read what I want to read when I want to read it and not follow a timetable. In particular, it's already the 8th of May and with the surgery I am quite behind already this month. Mind you, I did begin a mystery yesterday. So . . .