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Listening, A Practical Approach, by James J. Floyd
The art of communicating well consists far more in being a good listener than in being a good speaker. Few people want someone to talk to them; many people want someone to listen, and then share a something afterwards. A short and valuable read.
Love is Stronger Than Death, by Peter Kreeft
This book looks at love first as a stranger, then as an enemy, then as a friend, then as a mother, then as a lover: each mask worn must be looked into and embraced until it dissolves and shows the next mask. The last mask to come off reveals the face of God. This is an excellent companion to Heaven: The Heart's Deepest Longing; we live in a pain-killing culture that is terrified of facing death, and this book provides a mature and thoughtful invitation to come, and see what death is. I found it to be very moving.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
A classic.
Never Alone: A Personal Way to God, by Joseph Girzone
This is a gentle book, that may introduces spirituality to people who cannot see God because of pain caused by perversions of religion.
This is an on-line equivalent to Darwin on Trial, Darwin's Black Box, and Reason in the Balance; it contains a number of good articles, some by Johnson and Behe, and is a good resource. It's run by the same people as Leadership University.
An Orthodox Prayer Book
I wish I could put the print version of a prayer book like this. Alas, this book is hard to find in print.
The Orthodox Way, by Kallistos Ware
This describes the Christian faith with fingerprints on it. It has the kind of beauty of a very personal touch, not only because of the mystical author, but much more because the author brings in the fingerprints of his tradition.
Orthodoxy: The Romance of Faith, by G.K. Chesterton
After Chesterton wrote Heretics, someone asked him, "If that is what we shouldn't believe, what should we believe?"
After a moment, he said, "I am going to write a book about that." So he wrote Orthodoxy
Out of the Silent Planet, by C.S. Lewis
This is an enjoyable read about a fantastic journey to another world.
Participant Observation: Step by Step, by James P. Spradley
This is an anthropology text, but some of its concepts have broader application.
Pensées, by Blaise Pascal
Qu'est-ce donc que nous crie cette avidite et cette impuissance, sinon qu'il y a eu autrefois en l'homme un veritable bonheur dont il ne lui reste maintenant que la marque et la trace toute vide, qu'il essaye inutilement de remplir de tout ce qui l'environne, en cherchant dans les choses absentes le secoures qu'il n'obtient pas des presentes, et que les unes et les autres sont incapables de lui donner, parce que ce gouffre infini ne peut etre rempli que par un objet infini et immuable?
What then does this avidity and powerlessness cry out to us, if not that there was once in man a true happiness of which nothing remains save the quite empty mark and trace, which he futilely tries to fill with everything around him, looking in what he does not have for what he does not find in those he does have, and which either one is incapable of giving him, because this infinite void can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object?
Pascal knew a haunting romance as well. Food for thought.
Perelandra, by C.S. Lewis
The sequel to Out of the Silent Planet, this describes the main character brought to a sinless world to be his representative as the sinless Eve was being tempted.
Phantastes, by George MacDonald
This is a faerie romance for adults. It was my favorite book for a time, and reading it let me know that I could write A Dream of Light.
The Pilgrim's Regress, by C.S. Lewis
This allegorical defense of Christianity, Reason, and Romanticism was Lewis's first writing after his conversion: a little rough around the edges, but a good writing. Lewis knew romance's haunting as well.
Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence, by David Kiersey
I have read both Please Understand Me and Please Understand Me II on the suggestion of a reader, and thought considerably about whether one of these texts should be included. The case for inclusion is that they offer an invaluable enrichment to interpersonal understanding, and for reasons I explain below, one beyond the benefit offered by standard descriptions of the sixteen Meyers-Briggs personality types. The case against it is that it is woven through and through with a very destructive philosophical error, one that appears humane and reasonable on the surface and at the core is a far worse poison than racism. If I knew an alternative, a book that would offer the same insight without mingling it with poison, I would include that; not knowing of any such alternative, I think I will reccommend it with a warning.
The idea of the sixteen personality types based on four personality dimensions is one of the best things to come out of Jungian psychology -- the only one, for that matter, that I have encountered which is separable from Jung's Gnosticism -- and Meyers and Briggs created a tool that allowed most people to get a good quick-and-dirty result that would help them to understand themselves better. The good thing about a book about the sixteen personality types is that it allows people to read about their own types, and quite probably come to understand themselves better. The bad thing about such a book is that it provides too much information to be assimilated or navigated by the casual, nonspecialist reader. The reader's type, read with interest, is quite probably the one personality type that will be remembered. Maybe one more for spouse, if the reader is married -- but not sixteen. Sixteen are too many to keep track of.
Enter Please Understand Me. This book provides a road map, connecting Meyers-Briggs personality types with the four classical temperaments. Each temperament is a cluster of four similar personality types, and the four temperaments provide a much more manageable learning feat. I at least walked away from both books with a clear understanding of all four temperaments, not just my own. The books do treat all sixteen personality types, but within the context of a coherent and manageable framework. The reader is likely to walk away from either book with a far better picture of human variation than from any straight description of the sixteen personality types.
That's the good news. What's the bad news?
Errors often come in diametrically opposed pairs -- such as legalism and libertinism. C.S. Lewis said that the Devil always sends us errors in pairs -- he wants our extra hate for one to pull us into the other. The pair of errors I am concerned with here is as follows:
|
There are no legitimate personal variations. Every difference is a matter of right or wrong. Everybody should strive to adhere to every standard I want to adhere to. |
There are no matters of right or wrong. Every difference is a legitimate personal variation. No person should apply any of his standards to anybody else. |
I am not going to tell you which of these errors is worse; I am not going to say which is the real error to be aware of. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, that's exactly what the Devil wants. He wants us to be so focused on how bad one of those errors is that our extra hate for it will suck us into the opposite -- like the pickpocket duo where one member urgently warns you about a spilling cup of coffee so that you won't notice that the other has stolen your wallet. Like extreme heat and extreme cold, they are quite different from each other, but both extremes produce the same undesirable result: they make you quite thoroughly dead.
I am not going to tell you which of these errors is worse, but Kiersey is. He succumbs to the temptation. Kiersey bewails one error and uses its awfulness to lure the reader into the other. From a theologian's perspective -- or from a demon's, for that matter -- it doesn't particularly matter which is which. In this case Kiersey bewails the error on the left, luring the reader to embrace the error on the right. He makes no distinction between preferences in matters keeping to a schedule vs. open-ended playing by ear, or keeping a neat vs. creatively disorganized house, and choices in matters such as embracing faith vs. delving into the occult, or chastity vs. lust.
The treatment of sexual practices in Please Understand Me II deserves particular note. I was going to say that the text makes no distinction between sexual purity and promiscuity -- but then I realized that that is not quite correct. It is certainly true that one temperament's tendency towards sexual promiscuity is described in respectful, nonjudgmental terms -- and that two other temperaments' tendency to do what they choose whether or not contemporary society approves (that is, whether or not it violates the concensus of the Natural Law shared by innumerable times and places -- save that the choice of loaded language leads the reader to regard these standards as arbitrary and parochial). When, however, one temperament at least tries to be abstinent before the wedding and faithful after, it is described in language that appears to be neutral, nonjudgmental and "just the facts, Ma'am" -- and somehow manages to describe this purity in what I consider to be the most degrading language in the text. It calls to mind the maxim, "Where orthodoxy is optional, it will sooner or later be proscribed." Chastity isn't exactly proscribed, but it is a mark of talent to be able to appear to be impartially and nonjudgmentally reporting the facts and still paint a picture that's that unflattering. There is no hint in the text -- in the chapter on mating or anywhere else -- of the freedom and joy of sexual union between a husband and wife who offer each other their virginities on their wedding night and choose to be faithful thereafter.
I would like to elaborate a little more about what I said about this being a worse poison than racism. I wasn't just making a poetic exaggeration, like someone who comes in during the summer and says, "It's hotter than Hell out there!" I was making a literal statement. I am a white male -- and if racism is not defined as "the prejudice of whites against blacks and other minorities", then my tenure as an American in a non-Western nation at a time when anti-American sentiment was running strong, my experience of (for example) having a careful and respectful question met with an angry rant, and other experiences of getting only the dregs left after those in power had considered how to meet the needs of those types whom they considered worth caring for, gives me at least a limited basis to know, by experience, that racism is nasty. Even after this, I do not believe that racism is the one unpardonable sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost, that it is presently made out to be. It is as if a person may be dishonest, may be coldhearted, may be arrogant and lazy, and he is like everyone else an imperfect person -- but establish that he is really, genuinely, and truly racist, and then he embraces the unacceptable. You think I exaggerate? For the next week, as you go about your life, count the number of times you encounter a communication from some group working "against racism," and the number of times you encounter a communication from some group working "against coldheartedness." I will be surprised if the 'working against coldheartedness' tally totals to a tenth as many as the 'working against racism' tally. For that matter, I will be surprised if the 'working against coldheartedness' tally is not zero.
It makes sense to say that a person is a smoker and is relatively healthy. Cigarettes do damage to any person's lungs, but it is possible to regard a person as being overall healthy despite the very real damage caused by smoking. In the same sense, it makes sense to say that a society is openly racist and relatively healthy. Not by any means that the racism is harmless -- it causes real and significant harm. But that harm can coexist with other areas of health. A society can be openly racist, can nurse grudges against other ethnicities, be they minorities or the denizens of other nations -- and live on for centuries, alive and kicking. It is poison, but not all poison, not even all strong poison, is lethal. The same cannot be said for poison found in Please Understand Me. As a member of the host of ideas Lewis analyzes in The Abolition of Man, no society can long embrace such ideas without destroying itself. Societies have taken such "progressive" views before -- and then fallen apart. In addition, this idea appears a reasonable and enlightened idea, one that a person should be respected for holding -- to say that you are for racism, on the other hand, is to instantly forfeit all claim to be taken seriously. Poison that appears to be food will harm far more people than poison in a bottle clearly labelled, "Poison". For these reasons, I mean quite literally that one of the fundamental ideas woven throughout the text is worse than racism.
Having made this critique, I wish to say that Please Understand Me is a book worth reading, even with such a massive flaw -- and I believe that the danger is lessened to a reader who has been forewarned. That I would list anything I believe to justify such a warning is meant as a reccommendation.
There are two editions of the book: Please Understand Me, published in the 1970s, and Please Understand Me II, published in the 1990s. The second book is about twice as long, and talks about differences in kind of intelligence found in temperaments and personality types; the first book gives a very good feel for what people are like -- experience of the world and actions. I am not exactly going to reccommend one book over the other, so much as provide a helpful question: "Do you specifically want to know about mental competencies enough to read twice the length of material, or would you prefer a shorter piece that gives the same insight into most aspects of personhood but does not significantly treat intelligence?"
(Side note: I would not endorse Please Understand Me II as a resource for understanding multiple intelligence theory. It does not ask the question of "What are the basic kinds of human intelligence?" so much as "What are the temperaments and personality types, and what kind of intelligence may be associated with each of them?" It's kind of like a book on academic departments asking, "What are the academic departments in a university, and what kinds of intelligence may be associated with each of them?" That would be a good resource on academic departments, but it's the wrong place to look if your goal is to understand multiple intelligence theory.)
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