One of the job hazards associated with working as an editor is that
you sometimes have to read things faster than you would like to in
order to make a quick and dirty assessment of it. Peter Bolt's Living
with the Underworld (Matthias Media, Sydney, 2007) suffered this
treatment recently when, as a matter of conscience, I flicked through
it at a great rate of knots to determine whether or not I could
recommend it to people who asked about it.
In reality, the process of doing this is fairly painless: you skim
past most of the introduction, stories, anecdotes and cute turns of
phrase, and just leap straight to the bits where the Bible is
explained. On the strength of this, it was fairly easy to work out
that this is a worthwhile book, tackling the important issue of how
Christians (and people generally) should think about the underworld of
the occult, demons, evil spiritual forces, and the like. Peter makes
the point that the Bible treats all of these things seriously, while
in no way allowing them to occupy centre stage. That is reserved for
Jesus Christ who by his resurrection, signalled and actually achieved
complete victory over these spiritual forces=97spiritual forces which
are, after all, not so far from home. They are forces which are at
work within the human heart, and which manifest themselves in all
sorts of wicked and sinful behaviour. But Peter Bolt points back to
the gospel itself to show how Jesus' propitiatory death defeats the
power of sin and brings forgiveness. The last pages of the book give
good, practical advice on how Christians should live with the
underworld (hence the book's title). All this and more will be covered
in greater detail when Michael Jensen's review in The Briefing
appears.
At any rate, when I no longer felt the pressure to see quickly what
the book was about, I went back for a slower read and took in more
carefully what I'd skimmed past. Here's a sample, from page 107:
Resurrection isn't natural. A long time ago now, I was a med student,
attending an operation that started way too early in the morning, so
early that the other med student didn't make the beginning of the
procedure and missed the anaesthetic process (=93There's an edge for me
in the exams=94, I thought). Sometimes patients receive general
anaesthetic, but this time the guy was just knocked out from the waist
down and somewhat sedated. My friend arrived and stood near the guy's
head. The operation went on, and on, and after some time, the patient
opened his eyes, turned to my friend and said, =93Are they finished
yet?=94 From the way my friend fell backwards in a dead faint, I guessed
that he wasn't expecting this to happen.
What a great story! Peter goes on to talk about the defeat of death in
the resurrection of Christ. It's not that the book is packed with such
stories, but it illustrates something of Peter's tone=97which is
friendly, humourous, yet able to deal with serious subjects in a way
that holds interest even for those who might not consider these things
to be important.
The value of the second, slower reading was that it made me realize
that the book was not only useful for Christians, it could also
potentially be given away to non-Christian friends. The sort of person
who might benefit is one who would have read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci
Code a year or three ago, and has a general interest in spirituality
and the =91underworld=92 of the book's title. Sure, Dan Brown's book is
yesterday's fad, consigned to the dustbin of silliness by the wig Tom
Hanks wore for the movie adaptation. Yet it leaves in its wake the
vague sense that perhaps there is some worldwide spiritual conspiracy=97
something =91out there=92 that is half-believed. The sort of person who
read Dan Brown might also read and enjoy Living With the Underworld,
and find himself or herself surprised to be confronted with the risen
and living Lord Jesus.
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