Ambrose Bierce, A Public Domain Book, 144 pages

Humorist Ambrose Bierce began writing this book of satire at the end of the 19^th century. Douglas Wilson is a modern theologian who makes heavy use of satire and argues that Jesus used it often. Satire helps us to take ourselves less seriously.

Flannery O’Conner said: “Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.” Satire also is one of the ways Christians can attack false teaching—or at least blind spots of the guy in the pew next to us.

Keep this in mind as I list a few of my favorite definitions.

1. Christian, one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.
2. Exhort, in religious affairs, to put the conscience of another upon the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort.
3. Hospitality, the virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.
4. Logic, the basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion—thus: Major Premise: sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man. Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds; therefore—Conclusion: sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
5. Mouth, in a man, the gateway to the soul; in a woman, the outlet of the heart.
6. Non-combatant, a dead Quaker
7. Overwork, a dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing.
8. Plagiarize, to take the thought or style of another writer whom one has never, never read.
9. Politeness, the most acceptable hypocrisy.
10. Positive, mistaken at the top of one’s voice.
11. Saint, a dead sinner revised and edited.

Roger Scruton, Encounter Books, 2007, 117 pages

This book is a good exercise of “pulling myself up to understanding,” as Mortimer Adler has defined reading, since much of what Scruton says is difficult to understand. I took fifteen minutes to finish some pages. It felt like mental chin ups.

Scruton defines culture as the accumulation of a civilization’s elements that have stood the test of time, though these reach different heights. Civilization, therefore, must constantly choose what it thinks is best, including customs and traditions. If we agree with him here, then we are set up for the politically incorrect conclusion that has been hiding around the corner: all cultures are not equally good.

If a society consistently chooses, for example, that the best way to appease the gods is by sacrificing children to Molech, then that culture is inferior (at least in that particular matter) to other cultures that, say, preserve their children at all costs. And if that same society continues to add checkmarks in the “evil” column, then we should not feel bad at all about saying that culture A is superior to culture B. No one is arguing that inferior cultures have only checkmarks in the wickedness column and that superior cultures only have checkmarks in the virtuous column, just that the when everything is added up, we shouldn’t expect a tie. Scruton gives the reader seven chapters of tools to judge the virtues of culture.

The chapter that struck me most was the fourth: “The Uses of Criticism.” Scruton jumps right into an insightful philosophical analysis of humor. “Comedy is a fundamental ingredient in every serious culture” (45). Humor has value because it unites people and philosophies, for aren’t our closest friends the ones with whom we can laugh about the same things? To agree in our laughter is to agree in our judgments.

My colleague Seth and I laugh about the kiosks in our villages, the materialism of America, the administration of the Zimbabwean government, and the missionaries from Wheaton that double as Abercrombie models because in laughing together we are concluding together.

But laugher should be inward too, meaning we should chuckle at our own American accents. “When you and I laugh together, we reveal to each other that we see the world in the same light, that we understand its shortcomings and find them bearable. We are jointly ‘making light of’ our burdens by vicariously sharing them.”

I doubt you have ever heard a Muslim laugh at his own civilization? Scruton says this is dangerous because the one who cannot laugh at himself lacks “the principal way in which people come to terms with their own imperfection” (48).

Short book, long read, but worth it.

Neal Bascomb, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009, 390 pages

There will be a day when one of my sons will test the veracity of Numbers 32:23. “Be sure your sin will find you out.” I’ll tell him the story of Hunting Eichmann, a book full of spies and Nazi hunters and kidnappings and justice.

Who’s to blame for the holocaust, for the sixty-four pound bodies, and the 60,000 living skeletons? Whose deeds made General Omar Bradley speechless and caused George Patton to vomit against the wall? Whose atrocities drove Goebbels, his wife and six children to commit suicide? Who plundered Jewish property through terror and torture? Who denied enslaved Jews their rights as human beings? Who promised these same Jewish prisoners that they had nothing to worry about?

Among others, it was Adolf Eichmann. What set him apart was that when most of the notorious Nazis fell into Allied hands within the first weeks of occupation, Eichmann managed to escape. As the head of the Jewish branch of the Gestapo hired to rid Europe of Jews by extermination, he eluded justice for nearly two decades. World War II Germany had fancy titles for wicked deeds just like America does today. We call the organization that helps slaughter millions of innocent children ‘Planned Parenthood.’ They called the concept of annihilating the Jewish race the ‘Final Solution.’ Adolph Eichmann was the German version of Margaret Sanger and Cecile Richards.

Eichmann fled to Argentina and had a family but he was never happy–always looking over his shoulder as he worked a dead-end job. The book centers around the exploits of the Mossad, Israel’s young intelligence agency. They were to capture Eichmann, smuggle him back into Israel, and place him on trial. This they did and the trial was covered around the world. It ended with the first—and to this day only—sentence of death by an Israeli court.

At the commencement of the trial, attorney general Gideon Hausner spoke these poetic lines:

When I stand before you here, Judges of Israel, to lead the Prosecution of Adolf Eichmann, I am not standing alone. With me are six million accusers. But they cannot rise to their feet and point an accusing finger towards him who sits in the dock and cry: ‘I accuse.’ For their ashes are piled up on the hills of Auschwitz and the fields of Treblinka and are strewn in the forests of Poland. Their graces are scattered throughout the length and breadth of Europe. Their blood cries out, but their voice is not heard. Therefore I will be their spokesman. (337)

This book was much like Unbroken in that—despite the author—the sheer grandeur of the story kept the pages turning. Bascomb does not write with exceptional wit or insight. He was only quotable when quoting someone else. But the story yields several lessons.

1. Your sin will find you out. For Eichmann, his sin was found by the Jews over fifteen years later. For my daughter, it may be by his mother the next day. For you, it may not be until the last day. “[Jesus] will bring to light those things now hidden in darkness” (1 Cor. 4:5).
2. Appearance can be deceptive. The man who looked like a postal clerk, someone so average in temperament and appearance, was responsible for the extermination of six million Jews. The personification of evil worked 8-5 and had a family.
3. Guilt over sin plays tricks. If we allow sin to fester unconfessed, it will play us for a fool. Just captured and head shrouded with a bag, Eichmann confessed in somewhat relief to the secret agents: “I am already resigned to my fate.” Then, “no man can remain vigilant for fifteen years.” But this was not true remorse, for only Jesus can change the heart. Till the very end, Eichmann remained defiant. Claiming innocence, he said: “I have no regrets.”