Showing posts with label india. Show all posts
Showing posts with label india. Show all posts

Walking from East to West: God in the Shadows Review

Walking from East to West: God in the Shadows
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While the Donald Millers of the world have brought new vitality and honesty to writings on the Christian life, others, such as Philip Yancey and Ravi Zacharias, continue to dig deep into the intellectual side of the modern Christian's struggle. This depth makes their writings less accessible, yet so vital for many who are searching for answers.
In this gracious autobiography, Zacharias gives us doses of his trademark apologetics and wisdom, while providing a chronological view of his journey from suicidal teen to world-renowned evangelist. He offers glimpses into his cultural roots in India, along with helpful understanding of the eastern mindset. He shows restraint in his accounts of his family's issues, but he still manages to be honest with faults. He challenges his readers to move beyond their own search for fulfillment into a greater comprehension of who they are created to be.
As a missionary kid, I spent six months in India, experiencing some of the sights that Zacharias grew up around. I savored his anecdotes. This is a thoughtful, inspiring account of what God can do through those who are willing to "live, because he lives." Be patient, soak in the philosophical and theological musings, and see if you aren't nudged by the content of these pages.


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'Outside were stray animals and people, each about some pursuit. Sometimes it was a beggar at the door, sometimes a leprous hand reaching for a handout with a plea for compassion. Life with all its hurts and pains squinted at you, squatted before you, and stared you down daily. This was the street where I grew up.'Ravi Zacharias has lived an extraordinary life. He has walked with great leaders, slept in the villages and homes of the poor, and crossed continents to bring the good news of the gospel to the world.Already a man of two worlds by the time he was twenty, Ravi never dreamed that God would lead him from his birth home in India to Canada and the United States, and eventually to a platform on the world stage. For thirty-three years he has spoken all over the world. He has addressed writers of the peace accord in South Africa, the president's cabinet and parliament in Peru, and military officers at the Lenin Military Academy and the Center for Geopolitical Strategy in Moscow. He has given the keynote address at the National Day of Prayer in Washington, DC, and has spoken twice at the Annual Prayer Breakfast at the United Nations in New York. Walking from East to West is Ravi's life story, a deeply personal journey into his past. Dr. Zacharias invites you back to the southern India of his early childhood, and into his troubled youth in the sophisticated capital city of Delhi. He recalls the importance of a mother's love and his difficult relationship with his father. He tells about his long search for truth in wrestling with Eastern thought and the newer ideas of Christianity, the cry for help in a dark moment when he tried to take his own life---and the dramatic turning point that led to a life lived for Christ. Zacharias recalls his early days as a new convert, what it was like to find a new life in the Western world, and the eventual birth and growth of a worldwide ministry.This is a story about an amazing man. Yet it is also everyone's story about belief---how it begins, how it grows, and the struggles associated with it. Walking from East to West is a heartfelt personal story of one man's discovery that God is the author of our destinies, no matter how dark the shadows that hide the light.

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Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation Review

Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation
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I really like Stephen Mitchell's work, but it's important to know what you're getting.
What you're ordinarily _not_ getting is a straight-up translation of the source text; you're getting Mitchell's attempt to render the source text into a fine English poem that expresses the spiritual insights he wants it to express. (Examples: his excellent interpretive renderings of the Psalms and the Tao Te Ching. They are excellent interpretive renderings; they are _not_ translations.)
Even when the translation _is_ straightforward, he tends to chop the text to bits and just keep the parts he agrees with. (Examples: his translation of the book of Genesis, which includes the entire text but relegates the "spiritually suspect" parts to an appendix, and his rendering of the book of Job, which includes some terrific translation but omits the speech of Elihu and the poem in praise of wisdom.)
And now he's done the Bhagavad Gita. Has he translated it, or has he interpretively rendered it?
Well, the first point to make is that he _has_ included the entire text and limited himself to offering commentary on the parts he doesn't agree with. (Incidentally, I tend to disagree with the same parts and I understand that there have been Hindu scholars who have at least raised the same questions that Mitchell does.) This point alone means that Mitchell's Gita is a landmark: he hasn't chopped up the text in order to leave out the "spiritually inferior" portions.
So how good is his translation? Well, Mitchell says his own Sanskrit is "rudimentary," but that doesn't mean (as some reviewers seem to think) that he doesn't know any at all. (This is a bit different from his Tao Te Ching, in which he admits that he just doesn't read Chinese.) And this _is_ called a "new translation" rather than a "new interpretation."
But I don't know any Sanskrit at all, so I've just done some short comparisons with other translations. Based on spot-checks against the versions of Barbara Stoller Miller and Juan Mascaro, it looks to me as though Mitchell has stayed pretty close to the source. This is of course not an expert opinion of any kind and I'm prepared to be corrected by anyone who knows better. (And it may not even be much of a test, as Miller's translation in particular was one of the handful Mitchell consulted in preparing his own.)
Either way, what Mitchell is up to here is what he's up to nearly everywhere: he uses the traditional text as a medium to convey his own spiritual insights. And it's pretty clear from the get-go that he regards Lao-Tzu (i.e., _his_ Lao-Tzu) as spiritually superior to the author(s) of the Gita. Some readers may well agree with this evaluation (and I may be one of them; you guess). But all readers should be aware that Mitchell isn't trying to present a reverent discussion of the teachings of the Gita; he's sifting through it to see what parts of it measure up to his own Buddhist-Taoist-Jewish insights.
I am _not_ criticizing this enterprise; far from it. I tend to agree with many of Mitchell's insights, I really really really enjoy his poetic renderings, and on the whole I even admire his chutzpah (although in other books I've seen reason to criticize some of his scholarship). And in the present work he does, for example, raise (and to some extent answer) deep questions about the limits of nonviolence.
But, y'know, caveat emptor and all that. If you buy this book, buy it as Stephen Mitchell's work, not as an introduction to Hinduism through one of its central sacred texts. It's not really fair to describe this as a "boutique" Gita, but on the other hand it _is_ primarily a vehicle for Mitchell himself. I think that, like all of Mitchell's stuff, it's well worth reading and owning, but it depends on what you're looking for.

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Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991 Review

Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991
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For all those who have read and loved a Rushdie novel, Imaginary Homelands provides more of the same biting humor, insightful thoughts, and elegant prose as Rushdie shares with us his thoughts on everything from censorship to Stephen Hawking. A fair amount of time is spent on criticisms of various novels and authors and I, for one, found it fascinating to see what such an acclaimed author thinks of his peers. Given that this volume contains numerous essays, you will definitely want to pick and choose what to read and will probably end up doing so over an extended period of time. But you must at least take the time to read a little. As always, Rushdie's language is beautiful and forthrightness admirable.

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