Something Other Than God: How I Passionately Sought Happiness and Accidentally Found It

Something Other Than God: How I Passionately Sought Happiness and Accidentally Found It.  By Jennifer Fulwiler.  Ignatius Press, 2014.

 

“All that we call human history… [is] the long, terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

                                                                                                            –C.S. Lewis

 

Conversion stories often get a bad rap.  In many popular culture venues, conversion stories revolve around an unpleasant person muddling about in sin and iniquity, who suddenly accepts Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior, and then becomes an entirely different person after embracing Christianity.  Often, conversion stories come across as preachy and didactic, and sometimes the emphasis on piety and newfound perfection of character come across as inaccessible to the average person.

 

Jennifer Fulwiler’s book Something Other Than God: How I Passionately Sought Happiness and Accidentally Found Itis a conversion story, but a very fresh and unique one.  This book is a memoir of Fulwiler’s developing religious beliefs, opening with her childhood in a nonreligious family in a highly Christian community.  The story then moves into early adulthood, as she grows up unconcerned and amiably dismissive of religious belief.  Along the way, she falls in love with a terrific guy, gets married, starts a family, wrestles with the struggles of making a living, and deals with serious health problems.  

 

On their own, these points could make for an interesting autobiography, specially for someone with Fulwiler’s unique narrative voice.  However, the driving force of this story is Fulwiler’s growing interest in religion, that leads her to start a blog asking questions about faith, and then to explore Christianity, especially focusing on Catholicism.  Though the story is told from her perspective, the book is also about the spiritual journey of Fulwiler’s husband as well. 

 

Fulwiler seems surprised and thrilled that her life took the directions it did.  Fulwiler opens her book with a scene set at a summer camp with proselytizing evangelical counselors.  In the opening scenes, friends of Fulwiler’s are cornered and asked if they are ready to commit their lives to Jesus Christ.  Fulwiler was under a lot of peer pressure to make a profession of faith, but at that point in her life she simply didn’t believe in anything religious.  She writes:

 

“Before that moment, I’d never defined myself by my views on religion.  I grew up aware of the obvious fact that the physical world around us is all there is, and it never occurred to me that such a normal outlook even needed its own word.  But as I listened to the giggles and yelps of the girls through the closed cabin door, I realized that my beliefs differed so radically and fundamentally from other people’s beliefs that it would impact every area of my life.  For the first time, I assigned to myself a label, a single word that defined me: atheist.  The concept settled within me as perfectly as puzzle pieces snapping into place, and for the first time in days, I broke into a broad, exuberant smile.” (p. 11).

 

Something Other Than God consistently comes across as being uncensored and surprisingly honest.  Frequently, Fulwiler expresses an old opinion or past action that comes across as being precisely the sort of thing that most people would prefer to keep buried decently in the past.  It’s Fulwiler’s strength of prose and personality that makes Something Other Than God so compulsively readable.  She is unafraid to display her personal flaws (or at least, those aspects of herself she feels willing to reveal), and her portraits of herself and her personal life are always engaging.  She continually reiterates the fact that given her upbringing, she seems to be an unlikely person to start a career as a religious blogger and speaker.  She mentions one early anecdote from growing up, describing her mother’s reaction to one of her actions:

 

“But even though she [Fulwiler’s mother] wasn’t religious, and she didn’t seem to have a problem with my dad’s atheism, I would occasionally find out the hard way that she harbored a certain respect for religion.  When our public school invited a Christian group to offer pocket-sized Bibles to students, I grabbed one from the stack to use for arts and crafts projects.  At home, I tore out some pages, cut them into little stars and hearts, and glued them to poster board as part of a collage that now hung on the main wall in my room.

 

When my dad noticed it, he thought it was creative.  When my mom walked in with an overflowing basket to put away my clean clothes, she gasped when she saw my artwork, almost dropping the laundry.  She stared at it as if I’d spray painted swastikas on my wall and told me in no uncertain terms that I was not to cut up any more Bibles.” (p. 12).

 

Inside her family, her father praised skeptical thinking and intellectual independence.  Growing up, Fulwiler’s family’s distrust of organized religion caused her to feel like an outcast in a heavily Christian community:

 

“Other people’s religious hang-ups were the only possible explanation for the fact that I could count my friends on one hand.

 

There had been tension surrounding this issue from the first day we’d moved into the neighborhood, when two families stopped by and asked us where we went to church.  My first day at school, I was asked the same question four more times.  My excuse that we were “still looking for a church home” had been getting less effective since we hadn’t managed to find one in three years.  Now, thanks to the camp debacle, it was all out on the table: We didn’t go to church.  We were never going to church.  We were not a Christian family.  And now, I had no one to hang out with.”  (pp. 13-14). 

 

As Fulwiler progresses on her faith journey, she soon discovers an amazingly supportive and helpful community of believers.  However, while she readily admits that there are lots of very nice religious people out there, for much of the book she is not quite ready to become a part of that community herself.

 

I will not reveal too many more details about the anecdotes and details in this book, because too many revelations would spoil the engrossing character development.  Fulwiler makes herself and her family sympathetic without coming on too strong, and recounts the little annoyances, career problems, and potential budget busters that have the potential to turn her life upside-down.

 

Something Other Than God is filled with perceptive insights into the nature of faith and religion, how overt proselytizing can be less effective than intellectual pursuits and the power of the Holy Spirit, and how important caring parents and spouses can be to surviving in a difficult world.  Fulwiler illustrates the contempt and suspicion with which much of secular society views religion, particularly fervent Christians.  How Fulwiler went from seeing religious people as odd and alien, to understanding them, to becoming one of them, is not just and entertaining story, it is an inspiring one.  

 

 

–Chris Chan

A Voice Undefeated

A Voice Undefeated.  By Collin Raye.  Ignatius Press, 2014.

 

 

Collin Raye is a country singer who converted to Catholicism in his early twenties.  His memoir is about many topics, such as religion, music, and society, but the heart and soul of this book is his deep love for his family.  This autobiography opens with the funeral of Raye’s beloved granddaughter, a young girl who spent nearly all of her too-short life wrestling with debilitating and often unidentified health problems.  As the book begins, Raye recounts how his family said goodbye to their beloved little girl:

 

“The stirring and poetic words that end every Catholic funeral are always so consoling, and I truly needed the prayer of the Church on the day we laid to rest my nine-year-old granddaughter.  The grief I had felt at Haley’s death was indescribable, and now we had arrived at the final good-bye…

 

Britanny and I hovered around the open casket, dismayed by the thought that soon we would be unable to see Haley’s precious body again.  We knew by faith– without the slightest doubt at all– that her soul was with God, but we were still attached to the little boy that represented the baby girl we loved so very much.” (xiii).

 

This is an emotional and heartfelt opening, but readers should be assured that this is not a depressing book.  After this flash-forward, A Voice Undefeated opens with Raye’s childhood and progresses in a linear fashion to the present day.  (Collin Raye is actually a stage name, but he will be referred to by the name he is best known by here.)  The book opens with Raye’s childhood, a turbulent time marked by a difficult family situation and frequent moving.  Reflecting back upon this time, Raye writes:

 

“During the breakdown of my parents’ marriage, I developed, by temperament or necessity, an emotional defense mechanism of detaching myself from the conflict around me.  I began viewing my family members as if I were an outside observer taking notes rather than a participant who was directly affected by them.  There may have been a better coping mechanism, but it was how I dealt with the situation in my childhood.  All that mattered for me was that Mama was there.”(12).

 

Raye seems to shift back and forth between this childhood defensive posture and a more mature way of addressing problems.  At times, Raye recounts terrible events with quiet detachment, and on other occasions, Raye confronts pain and heartbreak head-on, and writes with open emotion and unhidden broken-heartedness. Aside from the illness of his daughter and some other minor tragedies, the hardest episodes in Raye’s life revolve around the breakups of marriages. Three divorces appear to have played a major role in Raye’s life.  The first is his parents’ divorce, the second is his own, and the third is that of his daughter.

 

In all of these cases, Raye creates the impression that families are all-important, ad the dissolution of a family is a traumatic event that leaves everyone involved injured, especially the children.  Sometimes, despite the best efforts of one party, the other half of a marriage is determined to break up the union.  A Voice Undefeated is full of instances where a horrible situation occurs, and people suffer through no fault of their own.  In all of these instances, Raye argues that it is imperative to always follow one’s own conscience, even if it is immeasurably simpler to do what is easy rather than what is right.  Raye discusses this as he mentions one of his formative influences:

 

“To me, the most inspirational character in modern American literature is Atticus Finch, the upright small-town Southern lawyer in To Kill a Mockingbird– my favorite novel of all time.  Author Harper Lee won a Pulitzer Prize for her effort, and I still find it hard to believe that it was the only novel she ever wrote.  Her story of one man’s struggle against society in the face of the severe moral challenges of his times has helped to form my character and my view of the world from the age of twelve, when I first discovered the book, until today.  It is a quintessentially American story about the power of enduring values over human weakness and wickedness.

 

At the core of Atticus’ appeal is the way he models the struggle for manly integrity.  He lived and practiced law in a society marred by poverty, prejudice, and hatred, largely like the one in which I was raised, and brought to it the nobility of a man willing to act according to his ideals in the face of public opposition.  Atticus was protector, teacher, and moral compass for his two children; he was their steadfast Rock of Gibraltar when it came to the deep questions of life.  His moral discipline and unusual habits seemed a regular source of embarrassment to his children until they discovered, in his defense of a black man falsely accused of a crime, that there was much more to their daddy than met the eye.

 

In the example of Atticus, I have come to see that integrity is not an abstract conceptl it’s a way of life.  The wholeness that results when we say and do what we know is true and right requires the constant struggle to be honest about ourselves and the world.  It requires overcoming the common human tendencies to view our circumstances as things that happen to us, rather than– far more accurately– as the sum of our own decisions, and to gloss over our personal responsibility for the pain we have caused ourselves or others.” (1-2).

 

Throughout the book, Raye emphasizes the importance of the role between a parent and a child.  This is a book about what it means to love and be loved in a difficult world where virtue is not always rewarded and life can throw curveballs at any moment.  His relationship with his mother was one of the great steadying influences of his life, and it’s clear that he would never have become the man he was today if he didn’t have a mother who loved him deeply.

 

“I can’t think of anyone who has had a greater impact on my life than my Mama.  I credit her for my parenting skills because she was the best of moms and the best of teachers in all areas of parenting.  She had the innate skills for the role of motherhood, but she never took her kids or her maternal role for granted.  When she married Daddy, she was not even twenty, and I remember that she always tried to be the perfect wife and the perfect mother.”  (6)

 

Raye is the first to admit that he hasn’t always been a perfect parent, and his memoir is full of instances where he confesses his own imperfections and reflects on how he could have done better, and how he resolves to do better in the future.  There are numerous instances to how Raye’s life hasn’t turned out the way he wanted, particularly a revealing passage where he reveals how his music career was derailed by his inability to play the political games of Nashville.  There is some frustration, but if Raye feels lasting anger over his career being sidetracked, he seems to have worked his way through it.  Other issues, such as the failed relationships he and loved ones endured, are recounted with frankness but no discernable bitterness.  

 

This book is not just meant for fans of Raye.  I personally had never heard of Raye before this memoir, but I enjoyed this introduction to this thoughtful man who cares so much for his loved ones and who is trying to make the world a better place through his music and looking out for the ill and disabled.  Raye seems to be trying to mirror his literary hero Atticus Finch, by being a good man in a naughty world.  Sometimes it’s not necessary to change the world so much as to stand up to it.  Raye and his family have been through a great loss and a terrible trial, but his faith appears to have been strengthened rather than diminished or strained.  This book should be read by anybody who wants to see an example of how life can be hard, but faith and family can be the tools necessary to keep going and come out stronger.

 

 

–Chris Chan

The Seven Big Myths About Marriage: Wisdom From Faith, Philosophy, and Science about Happiness and Love

The Seven Big Myths About Marriage: Wisdom From Faith, Philosophy, and Science about Happiness and Love.  By Christopher Kaczor and Jennifer Kaczor.  Ignatius Press, 2014.

 

Marriage is many things, but it is almost never easy.  Christopher and Jennifer Kaczor have written a book, The Seven Big Myths About Marriage: Wisdom From Faith, Philosophy, and Science about Happiness and Love, which discusses certain false assumptions and outright lies that can poison marriages.  People can go into marriage with completely misguided expectations, and in today’s divorce-saturated culture, marriages have never been more vulnerable.  The Kaczors are not using their marriage as a model for all of their readers to follow, but they are making it clear that they have experienced many of the trials and tribulations that most married couples have, and they have written this book to help people realize just what to expect from the “duel to the death which no man of honour should decline,” as G.K. Chesterton phrased it in his novel Manalive.

 

Flawed approaches to married life can cripple happiness, and the Kaczors have identified seven myths about marriage that need to be confronted.

 

The seven myths the Kaczors address are:

1.  “Love is Simple.”

2. “Marriage Is a Fifty-Fifty Contract.”

3. “Love Alone Makes a Marriage.”

4. “Cohabitation Is Just Like Marriage.”

5. “Premarital Sex Is No Big Deal.”

6. “Children Are Irrelevant to Marriage.”

7. “All Reproductive Choices Are Equal.”

 

Each chapter in this book takes on one of these myths.  For example, the second myth is counteracted with a rebuttal: “Marriage is one hundred percent, divorce is fifty-fifty.”  The first and third myths are not meant to denigrate or belittle the role of love in marriage, but they do point out that love is complicated, because it is always mixed with other emotions and continually fluctuating situations.  Love is integral to a marriage, but so are friendship, respect, and partnership skills.  Some of these assertions are controversial, but the Kaczors provide strong evidence to support their positions based on logical critiques and personal experience.  Even if certain people aren’t convinced by some of the Kaczors’ opinions, the Kaczors’ presentations of how certain situations are either different from marriage or potentially detrimental to a happy marriage can help people to look at certain perspectives in a radically different way.

 

Throughout the book, the Kaczors dig into the very heart of what it means to be married.  People enter marriages for widely different reasons.  Some want comfort, some want stability, and others simply can’t stand to be alone anymore, to list just a handful of reasons for getting married.  One universal motive for marriage is happiness.  Whether it is by finding true love, having children, achieving financial comfort, having a home, or any combination of these reasons, people enter marriages with hopes of being happy.  The Kaczors address such searches for happiness by explaining that the search for happiness is not always a good thing:

 

“Different kinds of people seek happiness in different ways.  Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., in his book Healing the Culture, distinguishes four different kinds of activities that people do in seeking happiness.  The hedonist seeks happiness in bodily pleasure obtained by food, drink, drugs, or sex.  The hedonist seeks what Spitzer calls level one happiness.  The egoist seeks happiness in competitive advantage over other people in terms of money, fame, power, popularity, or other material goods.  This Spitzer calls level two happiness.  At level three, the altruist seeks happiness through loving and serving other people.  And at level four, the altruist of faith, or the spiritual altruist, seeks happiness in loving and serving God and the image of God found in every human person.

            

We can group the hedonist and the egoist together.  They are two varieties of fundamentally selfish persons.  We can also group the altruist and the altruist of faith together.  They are two kinds of generous, loving persons.  Indeed, the altruist or altruist of faith is not just a good person but an excellent person.” (pp. 13-14).

 

The Kaczors argue that improper motives for getting married or misguided hopes for marriage are bound to lead to unhappiness in the long run.  Too often, getting married is believed to lead to “happily ever after.”  In reality, marriage is only the first step in an ideally lifelong process of hard work and sacrifice that can produce significant dividends in the long run if both partners are prepared to put all of the necessary effort into the marriage.

 

“Yet, although marriage does not guarantee happiness, it does provide a concrete and realistic path to happiness.  If someone says, “I’m going to get into shape this year” and leaves it at that, it is unlikely that the person will get in shape.  By contrast, if someone says, “I’m going to walk for fifty minutes each day at 8:30 A.M.,” that is more likely to happen.  The resolution is concrete, specific, and actionable.  In like manner, the married person does not say simply, “I’ll love and serve somebody sometime.”  The married person has a very concrete and specific person to love.  Spouses vow to love one another “in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, in good times and in bad.”  What exactly is this love that spouses promise?  It turns out that the answer to this question is more complicated and interesting than I had ever imagined.” (p. 35).

 

Love ought to be at the heart of a marriage, but married love is not simple because it is a way of life rather than an uncomplicated state of being.  Marriage should not be viewed as a guarantee of happiness, but it should be viewed as a means of achieving happiness.  The Kaczors note that love can purify, but only if used properly.

 

“In a shallow sense, everyone already knows what love is.  We hear people say, “I love my best friend,” “I love my fiancé,” and “I love my daughter.”  Yet love for a best friend, love for a fiancé, and love for a daughter are obviously not in all respects the same.  So love is a multifaceted concept.

 

Still, every kind of love is alike in three elements: willing what is good for the beloved, an appreciation for the beloved, and a desire for unity with the beloved.  The form that these three elements takes, however, varies according to the kind of love involved.” (p. 37).

 

Furthermore, love is more than just affection between two people.  The authors assert that love is also an indicator of people’s relationships with God. 

 

“For the Christian, love of neighbor is an obligation, an obligation that when fulfilled leads to deeper happiness.  The two great commandments given by Jesus make this clear: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind… You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt 22:37, 39).  If we truly love God, we will also love people, for they are made in his image and likeness.  We cannot truly love God without also loving our neighbor.  In the words of Dorothy Day, “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.”  Indeed, the teachings of Jesus point us toward higher levels of happiness by guiding us toward this love: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (Jn 13:34).  As portrayed in the Gospels, the love of Jesus is universal, extending even to those who are generally hated and ostracized in society– the tax collector, the leper, the adulterer, and the their.  Christians are called to love in a similar way– universally, unconditionally, and sacrificially.  This love is always dynamic because it responds to changes in the beloved as well as changes in the relationship.” (p. 30).

 

The Kaczor’s depiction of married life may challenge some readers.  Marriage for the Kaczors is more than just the relationship between two people, it is a means for the creations of new lives and the development of a family.  The Kaczors argue that sex is more than a means of attaining physical pleasure, and that marriage means full devotion, rather than just taking what one can get in order to find personal happiness.  This book is an important read for those considering entering marriage and couples who are already married.

 

 

–Chris Chan

The Global War on Christians: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Anti-Christian Persecution

The Global War on Christians: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Anti-Christian Persecution.  By John L. Allen, Jr.  Image Books, 2013.

 

Recently the kidnapping of hundreds of young Nigerian schoolgirls by the radical Islamist group Boko Haram has captured the attention of a horrified world.  Politicians and celebrities around the world have expressed their outrage over this atrocity, although solutions to this horrific situation have largely been limited to attempt to defeat the kidnappers through the mighty power of Twitter. 

This terrible situation is still ongoing as of this writing, but this mass kidnapping is only one incident out of many.  Although the news coverage gives the impression that the case is an isolated one, cases of persecution against Christians is occurring around the world, and has for over a century.  John L. Allen’s book The Global War on Christians is a book covering topics similar to Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians (see the archived July 2013 review) here.  Allen discusses the many atrocities that have been waged against Christians around the world.

Early in the book, Allen writes that,

“This book is about the most dramatic religion story of the early twenty-first century, yet one that most people in the West have little idea is even happening: the global war on Christians.  We’re not talking about a metaphorical “war on religion” in Europe and the United States, fought on symbolic terrain such as whether it’s okay to erect a nativity scene on the courthouse steps, but a rising tide of legal oppression, social harassment, and direct physical violence, with Christians as its leading victims.  However counterintuitive it may seem in light of popular stereotypes of Christianity as a powerful and sometimes oppressive social force, Christians today indisputably are the most persecuted religious body on the planet, and too often their new martyrs suffer in silence.” (1).

Allen provides snapshots of instances of Christian persecution around the world, though it is important to remember that this only provides a cursory overview of the problems that Christians face around the world.  Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe are all profiled, as victims of various forms of persecution are identified and the reasons why they were targeted are explained.  One of the most famous cases mentioned here is that of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman who was accused of blasphemy in the predominately Muslim country and sentenced to death.  Many human rights activists have struggled to clear her name and get her released.  

Instances of persecution are more than just one woman being targeted.  Often, entire communities are in danger of being wiped out.  Present-day Iraq has long been the home of some of the oldest Christian communities in the world.  In recently, especially since the Iraq War, many of the Christians in Iraq have been either murdered or have fled the country.  Often, Christians live as second-class citizens on a permanent basis.  And unfortunately, most people around the world are completely unaware of what life is like for many Christians.

“Back in 1997, American author Paul Marshall said that anti-Christian persecution had been “all but totally ignored by the world at large.”  To be sure, the situation has changed in the sixteen years since Marshall’s classic work Their Blood Cries Out.  A cluster of advocacy groups and relief organizations has emerged, and from time to time anti-Christian persecution has drawn coverage in major news outlets such as the Economist, Newsweek, and Commentary.  On the whole, however, the war on Christians remains the world’s best-kept secret.  As recently as 2011, Italian journalist Francesca Paci– who writes for the Italian media market, which probably pays more attention to Christian topics than almost any other culture on earth, given the massive footprint of the Vatican– said about the fate of persecuted Christians in places such as Iraq, Algeria, and India: “We ignore too many things, and even more indefensibly, we pretend not to see too many things.”  (15).

Allen states that the persecution of Christians is very much an open secret, but these stories do not generally make it into the evening news.  Allen’s work is not perfect.  He mentions the infamous remarks made by Pope Benedict XVI multiple times that led to outrage around the world, but fails to note that these remarks were largely distorted by an unscrupulous media.  The final passages seem anticlimactic– they mainly consist of acknowledgements that Christians are capable of doing bad things as well, whereas a more helpful final chapter would have consisted of more instances of how attempts to help have been successful. The late chapter “What’s to be Done” is just not long or detailed enough after this wrenching book.  After all, after reading all of these despair-inducing anecdotes, it seems almost cruel to offer warning admonitions rather than means of assistance.

After all, the moral imperative of the book is powerful:

“Two of the world’s leading demographers of religion, David B. Barrett and  Todd Johnson, have performed an exhaustive statistical analysis of Christian martyrdom, reaching the conclusion that there have been seventy million martyrs since the time of Christ.  Of that total, fully half, or forty-five million, went to their deaths in the twentieth century, most of them falling victim to either Communism or National Socialism.  More Christians were killed because of their faith in the twentieth century than in all previous centuries combined.

This boom in religious violence is still very much a growth industry.  Christians today are, by some order of magnitude, the most persecuted religious body on the planet, suffering not just martyrdom but all the forms of intimidation and oppression mentioned above in record numbers.  That’s not a hunch, or a theory, or an anecdotal impression, but an undisputed empirical fact of life.  Confirmation comes from multiple sources, all respected observers of either the human rights scene or the global religious landscape.” (32-33).

A recurring theme in this book is that in the popular mindset, Christians are viewed as the persecutors, and it is absolutely vital to convince people that today, the opposite is the case.  Allen wisely dismantles other myths, each of which gets its own chapter.  The myth that Christians are only at risk when they are a minority, the myth that no one sees these persecutions coming, the myth that Islam is the main reason why Christians get persecuted, the myth that it’s only persecution if the motives are religious, and the myth that anti-Christian persecution is a political issue are all addressed in this book.  No matter what happens, persecution will continue, but at the very least, people can try to minimize the bloodshed.

“Tertullian, one of the great fathers of early Christianity, famously said that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”  It’s a rare case of a theological formula for which there’s empirical proof.  Historically, waves of persecution have fueled major advances for Christianity.  Crackdowns during the Roman Empire earned Christianity admiration across the ancient world, and were perhaps the single most important ingredient in its success.  The sacrifice of missionaries during the Era of Exploration helped bring the Gospel to the New World.  Today, it’s no accident that zones where persecution of Christians is the most intense, such as China and parts of India, are also the places where Christianity is growing the most dramatically.” (262).  

This is a very good overview of the problems Christians face around the world, although Allen freely admits that it is not a complete overview of the situation.  These are just brief profiles of what is happening around the world, and a thorough analysis of these situations would take up at least ten times the paper used to print this book.  This book ought to serve as an introduction to the problems Christians face around the world.  Hopefully, The Global War on Christianswill serve to bring more people to find out more about these atrocities and find ways to fix them.

 

–Chris Chan

Voyage to Alpha Centauri

Voyage to Alpha Centauri.  By Michael D. O’Brien, Ignatius Press, 2013.

 

Voyage to Alpha Centauri is a science fiction novel set in the not-too-distant future.  The people of Earth are about to send a gigantic spaceship filled with scientists, V.I.P.’s, and other assorted crewmembers to Alpha Centauri, the star system closest to our planet.

 

As befitting a round-trip journey that would take approximately a decade and a half to complete, Voyage to Alpha Centauri is a particularly long book, measuring approximately seven hundred pages.  Given the subject matter, the breadth of the themes, and the character development, the novel justifies most of its length.  The opening of this book proclaims it to be titled “The Voyage: Being the true, candid, and unadulterated account of yet another great leap for mankind, mixed with the personal memories, irritations, and ramblings of Neil Ruiz de Hoyos– by Himself (for his future edification and entertainment).”

 

Neil Ruiz de Hoyos, the central character (and, for most of the book, the narrator), is a brilliant scientist and the recipient of two Nobel Prizes. Raised in a Catholic family, Neil is now essentially a skeptic with no real faith but plenty of respect for those who do believe.

 

The story is told as a series of Neil’s journal entries, set in a dystopian future where the earth is ruled by an all-controlling government that limits families to a single child and imposes draconian punishments on anybody who breaks a rule.  Like many totalitarian regimes, the earth’s government presents itself as a helpful and protective force for the good of everybody, all the while terrorizing communities that disagree with official policies, repressing religion, and sterilizing citizens.  

 

The opening passages set the stage, providing a thoughtful and likable narrator with an deep introspective side and a simple way of maintaining his humanity in a deceptively inhumane world:

 

“5 October 2097

 

A week from now I leave this sanctuary– my home, my solitude, my consolation.  I have almost completed packing, though I remain haunted by a sense of the unreality of what is about to happen.  Even so, without warning, my heart begins thumping with the thrill of it.  At other times, I am full of fears, regrets, fragmentary thoughts.  I am a little at a loss for what to do with myself. 

 

This morning I puttered about the cabin and greenhouse, toughing beloved objects, standing still for long moments, pondering the turquoise cube on my desk, the budding cacti, and the riot of cosmos flowers blooming in the yard I have never mowed…

 

Sitting on the steps, I gazed out over the crowns of piñon trees to the blue haze of the valley below.  I grew drowsy, despite the mug of strong illegal coffee I sipped.  I closed my eyes, and from across the void of more than sixty years came the memory of a time when I was eight years old…”

 

This novel is as much about Neil’s past as it is about humanity’s future.  When Neil prepares to journey across the galaxy, part of his reason for leaving is because there is nothing left for him on Earth.  Neil starts his journey without religious faith but with no antipathy towards those who do believe.  He has an excellent scientific brain, but the banalities of his life have dulled his urge to investigate.  

 

Early in his life, Neil was seriously wounded by an accident in the desert.  Perhaps there is a parallel to the Garden of Eden, perhaps it is just a common occurrence in the desert.  In any case, the following incident left Neil crippled physically and forced to immerse himself in his studies and science.

 

“A few minutes later, I rounded a bend in the arroyo and, without noticing it, stepped on a diamondback rattler that lay coiled on a flat rock.  It leaped and bit me just above the ankle.  I stumbled sideways and fell onto the stones, the gun clattering away.  I reached for it, and fired wildly in the direction of the snake, but it was already disappearing into a crevasse in the rocks.

 

Inspecting my leg, I saw that the swelling around the fang marks was spreading quickly.  I unbuttoned my trail knife from the kit at my waist, clenched my teeth, and cut two slices into the flesh.  There was no way I could suck out the poison, so I used both hands to compress the area around the wound and squeeze out as much as possible.  The blood dripped, but the fangs must have hit deep, because the swelling was worse now, and it felt as if someone was putting a blowtorch to my leg.  Using my belt, I made a tourniquet below my knee, and stifling a cry, I cut deeper.  As the blood began to flow, I tried to stand up, intending to hobble home as fast as I could, praying for time.

 

But it was no good.  I felt dizzy, and now there was a corona of light around everything.  I took a few steps, then collapsed.  My head ached, and I could not keep my eyes open because the sunlight was another kind of fire.”

 

Neil is a man of great achievements and great intelligence, but late in his life, his existence is notable from what is empty in him.  What he needs in order to find purpose and happiness is an adventure.  He is all too aware of the petty tyrannies of his old planet and the hopelessness of achieving freedom.  Early in the book, it becomes clear that the only way to heal the long-broken aspects of his being is to seek out a new world.

 

“For more than a year, I had been marveling over the photographs of the Kosmos and reading a constant stream of reports, the standard medium-security documents sent to all scientific personnel, just to keep us informed.  During the past six months, there had been, as well, the regional meetings mandatory for anyone who hoped to take part in the expedition as essential staff or as a token presence.  I was a token.  It had not been forgotten that my theoretical work was at the foundations of the project, but neither was it overestimated.  An army of space technologists, engineers, propulsion experts, astronomers, designers, and so forth had taken the mathematical formulas and turned them into the living dream.  I had fulfilled my purpose, and it was only the government’s sociopolitical agenda– that is, public relations and the self-image of the member states cooperating in the venture– that ensured my involvement at this late stage.”

 

I have purposely refrained from providing too many details about O’Brien’s dystopian world and the growing dangers aboard the spaceship, since to reveal a little would come close to destroying all.  A few brief glimpses of the world that O’Brien has created are necessary, however:

 

“The hand-out sheets we received at one briefing tell us that the warm bodies are divided into the following categories: 

 

Ships flight crew (total 60): captain and subsidiary ranks, navigation people, communications, liaison staff for the following categories.

 

Service staff (total 200): food, cleaning, laundry, mundane troubleshooting, all of which is grouped under the title “Maintenance” (our basic needs).

 

Scientific staff for voyage (total 171): subcategories as follows: botanists (8); physicians (12); nurses and paramedics (18); pharmacists (8); astronomers of various kinds (10); atmosphere controllers and recyclers (16); atomic fusion engineers (12); technicians assisting the aforementioned (6); anti-matter gurus/overseers (8); computer fail-safe watchmen (8); odd and sundry experts in extremely obscure fields (17).  Add to the above categories the following social sciences: psychologists/counselors (16); psychiatrists (4); sociologists (8); community facilitators, a.k.a. social engineers (20).

 

Scientific staff for destination planet (total 238): There is some overlap with voyage scientists, because certain people will be working during the voyage and also working on the planet.  I’ve subtracted these duplicates to arrive at the following figures for those who will work exclusively at on-ground exploration: botanists (20); zoologists (20); biologists (22); chemists (13); geologists (26); land transport staff (18); pilots for the four ship-to-ground shuttles (8); physicians (4); data analysts (12); astronomers (4); anthropologists (7); archaeologists (16); linguistic geniuses (10); assistants to the aforementioned (10); military support technologists, a.k.a. security and protection from aliens (48).

 

Tagalong (total 8): Nobel prize scientists (5); aging trillionaires who contributed money to the project (2); nephew of the current Federation president (1).  Stowaways (uncertain)

 

And there we have it.  The Kosmos will bear a known 677 people from our home planet to planet Alpha Centauri A-7. Our closest neighbor in the galaxy, just next door, a mere 4.37 light-years away.  (See attached list, names, and positions of all personnel.)”

 

This list represents the segments of society that make up the crew of the Kosmos.  Scientists, staff, and a few prominent figures who the all-controlling government figure are worthy to explore a new world.  Of the 677 people on the spaceship, only a couple of dozen of them factor greatly in the plot.  Over the course of several years, Neil forges relationships with a handful of like-minded souls, developing a fuller understanding of how the government’s policies are crushing people’s souls and gaining a fuller understanding of religion and how a full understanding of science does not preclude an acceptance of the presence of God.

 

Voyage to Alpha Centauri is a religious story, but it not preachy.  I have been hampered from providing too many details about the plot, because any details beyond the first few dozen pages would provide too many spoilers.  There are two journeys at work in this book.  The first is a journey across the cosmos, the second is an exploration of an intangible spiritual world.  The journey of the discovery of the capacity of the human soul can be as thrilling as an odyssey across the galaxy.  

 

 

­–Chris Chan