God through Binoculars Review and a Response about Theodicy

 

Daniel James Sharp reviewed God through Binoculars in Aero magazine. You can read Daniel's review here. 

Daniel is a nice guy and he was concerned that critical aspects of his review would upset me. He offered me the chance to respond to him via a new medium called Letter. You can see our exchange here. 

I'm including, below, my first response to Daniel. It's also at the above Letter link. 

Dear Daniel,

 

I am an American Catholic and you are an atheist living in Scotland, and you reviewed my book "God through Binoculars" in Areo Magazine!

 

My response will cover:

 

I. Introduction & Theodicy

 

II. The Sex Abuse Crisis

 

III. Evolution

 

IV. The Catholic Church and Nazism

 

I. INTRODUCTION & THEODICY

 

In October, 2020, I reviewed James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose's book "Cynical Theories." I felt kinship and gratitude. As "God through Binoculars" makes clear, I'm one of Woke's human sacrifices. My encounter left me literally, not metaphorically, handicapped. The full story is in my book.

 

On the other hand, I was astounded and alienated by Lindsay and Pluckrose's bizarre and gratuitous Christophobia. I found Pluckrose's Areo magazine and requested a book review, both for what we agree on – Woke – and what we don't – Christianity.

 

Authors struggle to get eyeballs on our work. Daniel, I hope your review, exactly as you wrote it, stays up forever and a billion people read it. In our brief email exchange, you have charmed me and I genuinely like you.

 

I'm saying all this because I'm about to disagree with you.

 

I'm wary. My country has been torn apart by Trumpismo. People with whom I once thought I could have civil, even affectionate conversations now use my photo to perform Voodoo curses.

 

I hope it doesn't turn out that way between us, Daniel. For me, human beings are primary, and love is my instruction from my lord and savior. I hope at the end of this exchange, neither one of us books a flight to strangle the other. Although it would be nice to see Scotland again.

 

Taking a deep breath and diving in.

 

In your second sentence you say, "Her book contains many unconvincing arguments in favour of her religion." The rest of your review follows that line. That "God through Binoculars" is a failed attempt to sell Catholic faith to atheists. It's not. What is it?

 

As the book's preface says, GTB is a letter I wrote during a religious retreat and sent to friends, who encouraged me to publish it. My friend Karen, who is herself an atheist, pushed the hardest.

 

Years ago, I went through a series of setbacks in the Ivory Tower, I was facing rock bottom poverty and chronic illness, and suicide seemed the only logical path. I retreated to a silent and remote Trappist monastery to give God a chance to talk to me.

 

I'm not a theologian. I'm not a proselytizer. I don't have the training or the desire to be either. GTB is my internal musings, shared with friends, and now with readers. I'm not, as you say, and as your review depicts, "presenting arguments in favor of my religion."

 

I fear that your reader may form the impression that I am some stereotype of a Catholic, a stereotype that supports atheist prejudices. I smell like incense, wear coarse robes, and burn heretics at the stake.

 

In fact a good part of the book is about my doubt, not about my faith. It's about my closest relationship at the time, with a gay, Jewish atheist. I critique the most exalted American Catholic celebrity of the twentieth century, Thomas Merton. My depictions of monks are not flattering. I voice opposition to church policies. I emphasize this because I want those, who, like me, don't fit the cookie cutter, to know that the church has room for them. The church has room for the doubtful, the critical, the resistant, and the outsider. See Luke 7:36-50, John 20:24-29, Luke 7:1-10, John 4.

 

When it comes to the problem of God and suffering, you say, "In the end, she says, it all balances out." In fact the book has no happy ending. I am still poor, still chronically ill, and still alone. My goal was to present to readers just that: there are losers in this world. People who live with pain, confusion, injustice, and despair. People who have no real reason to hope, and yet go on, every day, and yet believe, every day. My tribe are people who do the right thing, and don't give up, even when they are effectively invisible, inaudible, and have every reason to quit, but don't.

 

Daniel, you wrote, "Why, one might ask, would the Creator not have devised a system whereby children didn't have to suffer such pain? Any god who choose to inflict horrific suffering on children is either an idiot, a sadist or non-existent."

 

Whoa, Daniel, whoa. Very bad things happened to me in my childhood. I regard myself and my fellow survivors as so different from others that I call those others "civilians." No one rescued me. People saw; my bruises and ill-kempt hair were highly visible. No one helped. That is reflected in the book. No, I did not include graphic scenes; I find child abuse porn offensive. If I had spelled it all out, though, would you then show some respect for what happened to me, or for my constant questioning, and my faith in the face of all of this?

 

This isn't just about a review. Too often atheists don't see people of faith, because what we really are contradicts atheist stereotypes. Atheists also insist on misrepresenting our faith.

 

Daniel, you say that one must appreciate beautiful gardens without believing that there are fairies in that garden. My faith, to you, the entirety of 2,000 years of Christendom, Michelangelo's Pieta and Sobieski's victory, Jim Zwerg's volunteering to be beaten by white supremacists, the nuns I worked with in Kathmandu washing lice out of homeless people's clothing, and indeed my own decision to keep living in spite of it all are nothing but fairies in a garden. If you must believe that, you will never understand what I'm saying in GTB.

 

One last thing. My friend Nachman wants you to know that he is disappointed that you didn't comment on hyena genitalia.

 

Trzymaj sie, Danusia