100 Things - Book #3
100 Books By Women, Courtesy of Gutenberg.org
1. Jerusalem by Selma Lagerlof
I don't talk a lot about my faith on LJ. Mostly because LJ is my place for fannish things, and I neither want to alienate nor preach at people. But this is a book that spoke to me, and I'm finding it impossible to talk about it without talking about faith.
I was raised in a devout Christian home, accepted Jesus as my Savior at the age of five. My stepdad is a pastor, my mother is the most holy, spirit-filled person I know.
About three years ago, I stopped going to church. I haven't lost my faith in Jesus, in the Bible. I have just lost my trust in Christians. The church, the fellowship of other believers, is supposed to be a place of safety, of love, of mutual edification, making each other stronger in the Lord, a light on a hill to witness to the world around it.
Instead, today's American church is full of the most self-righteous, hypocritical, gossiping, loveless, vicious human beings you could ever come across. If I sound bitter, I am. But it's not one experience that has got me there. At age 29, I've already lived through three church splits. I've seen how people who consider themselves so good and holy latch onto the wounded and tear them apart like carrion birds. I have come to understand why Jesus spent so much of his ministry warning against the religious establishment of his day. The Church is supposed to be a living embodiment of God's love for the world; instead, it's a rotting tomb.
This book, Jerusalem, spoke to my heart. I actually cried several times, and I'm not one who cries a lot. Ever. But it reached out to that place of bitterness in my heart, and it said, this, this is what we're supposed to be out. It's a book about the transformative power of acts of kindness. A call for unity among believers.
I love that it doesn't say whether the Hellgumists are right or wrong in their beliefs. That's not the point. They love the Lord; they believe this is what God is telling them to do, and they do it. It's interesting that when they first appeared, I thought, cult, but the more they were in the story, the more I realized they were just a Christian sect.
And here I come back to my life, and how I've seen Christians destroy each other on a regular basis. The Baptists hate the Pentecostals, because they're just too “out there.” The Pentecostals say you're not saved, if you can't speak in tongues. The Protestants say the Catholic church is full of idolatry, and the Catholics say anyone who isn't one of them is burning in hell anyway. NONE of that is what Jesus came here to do. And given that all the groups I just mentioned and dozens more claim to follow the same God, read the same Bible, the fact that they are tearing each other down when they should be supporting one another in love, shows how far we have fallen.
One of my favorite quotes in Lord of the Rings is when Haldir, after a fight over letting Gimli into Lothlorien, says, Indeed in nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement of all those who still oppose him.
I understood that the first time I read it. I understand it even better now.
Jerusalem is a book about that estrangement. I tend to agree with a lot of the Hellgumists teachings; I think they're very similar to the way the early church lived, but with one drastic difference. The early church did not shut out the world. They didn't shun those who didn't believe what they did. They never could have turned the world upside down, if they had. You can't spend your time speaking of Unity, Unity, while you're disowning all your relatives and friends who don't agree with you.
But that's human nature, that's the power of Satan, we get an idea in our heads, we're sure we're right, and woe to any who disagree with us.
My mom likes to say that in crafting our world view, there are dots and there are lines. The dots are the things the Bible says, the things we know to be true; the lines are the things we draw in between them, to make the statements line up in a way that makes sense to us. Only the dots are the things worth fighting for. But mostly, Christians seem to fight about the lines.
I realize that I have given no clear linear structure of what this book is about. I kind of can't help myself, because it's less about the plot and more about the way it makes you think. But briefly, it's the story of several generations in a small Swedish village, and the ways they live out their faith. It's about love and forgiveness and generosity, and whether the book is inspiring or tragic depends entirely on your own way of looking at it. I adored this book, would recommend it in a heartbeat, and could talk about it for hours. But I'll spare you all my ramblings.