Marginalia

A few thoughts about a few books I've read. Not necessarily endorsements and hardly reviews.

Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass

There is a temptation to speak of slavery as an institution and forget the individual souls of those in bondage. Two things struck me. First, the way in which owning a slave hardened the heart of the slave-owner, it destroyed them.  Isn’t that the way of sin? Sin destroys the person who is embodied in it. This is why any sin will send you to Hell, but not all sins are the same. There is a difference in telling a lie, being a liar, and then being Bob, the Liar. One is a sin (which is awful). The second is being captive by that sin. The third is being captive by the sin and then finding your identity IN that sin. The slave holder was the slave holder. That was his identity and that destroyed him.

The second thing was the way the slave holders described in the book deliberately and maliciously terrorized the minds and broke the will of the slaves. They took their dignity and with their dignity, their will to think.

 A lot to learn from this book, especially the appendix talking about the churchmen who enslaved him. These churches would take up a collection to send Bibles to the heathens overseas, while denying the Bible to the heathens on their farms. We can still fall into this trap. It is always easier to send money to someone else to go somewhere else and preach to someone else than to those among us...but I digress.

Unbroken by Laura

Wow. Buy this book and read it, if you haven't and thank me later.  At one point I wondered if it could possibly get any worse for Louie. I was only half way through and it did get worse, much. But the bitter only made the sweet that much better This book illustrates the importance of identity and dignity to the human soul and how loosing that or having it taken from you destroys the person.

Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang

A really disturbing book. I had to set it down for a while and go back to it again because of the darkness and depravity. It was a chilling reminder of the depth of depravity found in the unregenerate human heart.  I've been on a WWII kick for a while but my interests have been focused in the Pacific theater. It is astounding how bad the Japanese were and how quickly their image was repaired and the atrocities all but forgotten, while the Nazi's continue to be the symbol of evil of the war. The Nazi’s certainly deserve the ire we heap upon them, but I think we do a disservice to forget what happened in the Pacific.