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God’s Funeral |
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G od’s Funeral byA.N. Wilson Random House - Ballantine 354 pages, 1999 ISBN 0345439597 Reviewed by Andrea Collare The questions began with the birth of the Judeo-Christian theology. Although the actual verbiage may have changed through generations, the sides were generally polarized into two camps. Was the story of God simply a ruse to comfort the masses and explain the mysteries of life? Or, was belief in God truly the final explanation of our existence? Both sides have been chosen and argued throughout the ages. A third side, agnosticism, was coined by Henry Longueville Mansel of the Church of England. This division is humorously referred to in a lyric, circa 1970’s, by Three Dog Night: I swear there ain’t no heaven and I pray there ain’t no hell. After years of deep contemplation, combined with the age old intellectual struggles associated in religious belief, Thomas Hardy wrote the poem entitled God’s Funeral, mourning the loss of his belief in God. This poem is the dividing line between Hardy’s transformation from a devoutly religious man into a reasoned state of unbelief. His doubt of God was based more upon a thought provoked personal revelation rather than the jumping onto a bandwagon of disbelief. In God’s Funeral, A.N. Wilson explores the belief processes that occurred during the last few centuries through the great thinkers and their struggles in their beliefs of God. Careful not to taint this work with his own explanations of people’s choices, Wilson provides examples of their individual turmoil, mapping out the various reasons of those who struggled to "reconcile the advancements of modern thought with the religious instincts of humankind." While some left God simply because it was en vogue, others intellectualized themselves away. God’s Funeral also explores how the differences between cultures and generations affect the overall belief system. Although many scholars of the 18th and 19th centuries hypothesized that belief in God would be defunct by the 20th Century, Wilson provides supported evidence that God still lives on in many societies. Generally unbiased and able to prevent the flow of his personal beliefs from bleeding into his words, A.N. Wilson articulates an intellectual study into an emotionally driven phenomenon. I was impressed that this much knowledge could be so thoroughly packed among such few pages. God’s Funeral is full of interesting information but not for the faint of heart. Unless one is reading with the goal to be informed, readers may find themselves in a slew of facts and biographies of the movers and shakers of the 19th and 20th centuries. To receive the ultimate gift that this book has to offer, it would help to begin with a thirst for knowledge, a theological curiosity and most of all, an open mind. |
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