Book Review!

A couple of weeks ago, I read a few articles by Lauren Winner, an author I'd never heard of before. She is funny and witty and sharp and smart. So, of course, I had to read more. I ordered a couple of her books off Amazon, and I just finished her memoir, Girl Meets God. I have to say that it's one of the best books I've read in awhile.

I should come out and say that the book is the story of her conversion to Christianity from Orthodox Judaism. I'm usually not too big on conversion stories, really. I grew up Baptist, and I've heard enough "testimonies" to last a lifetime. I hate that genre of storytelling, and I often wonder if hearing those stories does more harm than good. If you will allow me a brief respite from the review, I'd like to speak to the genre of testimony.

For those not familiar with the testimony, it usually goes something like this. The person giving the testimony will tell of his life in darkness (that'd be sin), and then he will say that at the darkest moment there came some sort of Saul on the Road to Damascus moment when he "saw the light." After "seeing the light" he turned to a life in Christ and walked the straight and narrow. Awesome. If you're at some mega-church, I'm guessing there could be a swelling of music at important parts. And, to be fair, I meant nothing by the gendered pronoun use; we women are equally capable of sin or even more capable if you ask some men.

I hate the testimony for a lot of reasons, none of them kind. I'll give you two reasons though. First, I always feel like there's a sort of weird voyeuristic element at work. A bunch of "good people" sit around listening to a formerly "bad person" recounting all sorts of sin. The "good people" get a fix of what it's like in the evil world outside of the safety of the church.

But, I guess what bothers me about the voyeuristic aspect of the testimony is that it's sort of like watching Springer. If you're at all familiar with the tour de force that is Springer, you know that it's basically the same thing over and over. The same topics come up again and again, but, in just watching Springer, we don't stop to ask why those things keep happening. We accept that really unattractive men without jobs always have large women fighting over them. That's just how it is. We don't stop to ask why or step in to try and change things. We get immune to those stories, to the fact that they shouldn't happen all the time.

Same with testimonies. We forget to ask why someone ended up addicted to drugs or alcohol for years, why someone had to finally hit rock bottom to realize that his life was a complete mess. I guess I just wonder where the "good people" are while all those people are hitting rock bottom.

My second problem with the testimony is that they're not all about hitting rock bottom. In fact, there's a lot of interesting stuff going on before the bad stuff hits. Hearing enough testimonies assures a young person that there's a whole lot of fun to be had before walking the straight and narrow. I mean, how fun is it to have the testimony that simply says, "Well, I went to church all my life, was a dedicated Christian, followed all the rules, and then got married and had a nice life. By the way, I also have exactly two children, a boy and a girl. And we have a family dog named Spot." I almost fell asleep just writing that. No, that's not fun at all. You want maybe some hookers in there and definitely some cocaine. And then the Saul on the Road to Damascus story because we know how this story ends. So, my second problem is that it makes the time before the conversion experience seem a bit too exciting, a bit too illicit and fun.

I'm not sure why I just wrote all of that, probably just to assure you that I'm not the kind of schmuck who normally falls for conversion stories. I'm actually pretty hardened to them by now, but I thought Lauren Winner's book sounded promising, and I was right. In fact, I knew I was right when this book started with Winner attending an academic conference, post-conversion and then proceeding to get drunk off a bottle of Maker's Mark--all within the first six pages. The thing is, for me she's human. She's someone to whom I can actually relate, and I think she's someone who's pretty relatable to many people who are normally put off by conversion stories. And, it's especially relatable because she lets us know that, despite having converted to Orthodox Judaism in college, she had trouble following all the rules of Orthodox Judaism. And, she also lets us know that her subsequent conversion to Christianity didn't prove a cure-all for these difficulties either, that neither Orthodox Judaism or Christianity had the power to make her more than human, more than fallible.

The thing about this book is that you do learn about struggles she has with her conversion to Christianity but that, within Christianity, she finds grace. You learn that she's not good at following the rules but that she really tries and that she really believes in them, in the value they offer to a community and to an individual. I guess what I have been accustomed to is a story that has a neat ending, a story that finishes with the former sinner leading a life in which we almost expect a halo to be permanently hovering over his head. Winner works hard to seek forgiveness and redemption for her sins, but she's not perfect. She's a real person, coming to a new religion as an adult and learning how to live within it as someone who has much life experience aready.

The other things I like about this conversion story is that it's theologically grounded while still speaking to the very personal experience of conversion and learning about what it means to have a relationship with Christ. The grounding in theology is largely owing to her study of Judaism, and she provides a good link between Old and New Testaments which is often lacking in Christian writing, a fact she notes herself, reminding us that the Bible doesn't start at Matthew. But even more than providing a good grounding in theology, I like the way she speaks to how understanding Christianity changed the way she lived her life, how it made her think about how she spent money or how she treated people. But, more importantly, she speaks to the immense love that this gives her, this feeling of being loved and of being able to love.

Also important to note is that Winner does a good job of explaining the difference between fundamentalist and evangelical Christians, referring to herself as evangelical. Winner points out that evangelicalism need not be associated with political affiliation and actually sees this link as a dangerous one. I think her way of explaining evangelical Christianity allows us to question the link between politics and faith in a way that opens us to a concept that political affiliation may not be a reliable indicator of religious faith and vice versa.

So, despite my distaste for testimonies, I have to say that this one is different. It doesn't end neatly, and it doesn't make me want to go out and have as much fun as possible before becoming one of those "good people" who listens to testimonies. What it does is give a very real way of looking at faith, at what happens when people are living out their faith and sometimes struggling to do so. So, if you are interested in something fun, witty, and challenging, I highly recommend this book!