Reading Journal - Entry #4
That Hideous Strength, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, and Ploductivity
Welcome back to Notes from the Fray! I hope you enjoyed March’s post, published on Monday. If you haven’t read it yet, I encourage you to check it out.
This week, I’ll be focusing on the sections I completed of the books I mentioned last week.
That Hideous Strength
As I mentioned last week, I’m working my way through C.S. Lewis’s, That Hideous Strength. I haven’t made as much progress as I’d have liked but I’ve made some. As Lewis continues to reveal who the main characters are, I’m struck by his foresight. The N.I.C.E. is surprisingly similar to my impression of the secular scientific community today. Their desire seems to be to play god through scientific advancement, disregarding morality (an idea discussed in Trueman’s book, as well). Also, the continual jockeying to gain the approval of someone higher up in the food chain reminds me of much of the virtue-signaling that goes on among institutions and individuals in public office.
I’m constantly re-amazed at Lewis’s storytelling ability. Nothing is wasted; every detail means something to the story. Not only that but it’s beautifully written and described. His descriptions of the college and its professors make me wish I could’ve seen some of the old English colleges in the times of Chesterton, Lewis, and Tolkien. I’m looking forward to getting further into the story.
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self
I’ve not made as much progress in this book as I’d planned, either, but that’s for a reason I’ll explain below. In the past week, the section of this book to which I listened was focused on Phillip Rieff’s explanation of first-, second-, and third-world cultures. I don’t want to get into all of the details here but it is a helpful framework for understanding why there seems to be such a disconnect in discourse between the worldview of modern, secular Americans and faithful Christians. Second-world cultures, according to Trueman’s understanding of Rieff, are ones in which there is some sort of divine standard to which people expect society to conform; Christianity fits into this category. Third-world cultures are cultures in which society is viewed as restraining on the individual and the goal is to free oneself from the constraints of society and be authentic.
Trueman’s connection between this third-world idea and the philosophies of the Enlightenment (also manifesting itself in the art of the Romantics) was helpful to me. I’ve considered before the large influence Romanticism has on modern culture and thinking but hadn’t linked it to philosophers like Rousseau. It was unsettling to realize how many ways Enlightenment and Romantic assumptions had crept into my thought processes and it made me realize I was stuck deeper than I knew in those ruts of thought.
Ploductivity
Starting Tuesday, I took a break from my regular listening of podcasts and Trueman’s book to listen to Doug Wilson’s, Ploductivity. I’m about halfway through the book as of this writing and am thoroughly enjoying it.
I confess that I can sometimes be the type of person he disparages near the beginning: the productivity junky. This book, along with another by Tim Challies I will probably write on soon, is a breath of fresh air among productivity books. It has sharpened some of the fuzzy edges in my thinking on productivity, work, and wealth, which was much-needed.
In particular, I needed the reminder that doing little bits of something often makes for a lot of progress over a long period of time. In conjunction with this, I needed a reminder that wealth is not bad but, biblically speaking, it is gained through sustained, diligent work; not the newest productivity hack or a 10-step system to reaching your goals. Perseverance and being faithful to do what you can when you can is the way forward and, as I said, that was a timely reminder.
Wilson’s view of technology was also different than most of the views I see throughout my normal reading and it provided some good perspective. Like many conservatives, I tend to be skeptical of new technologies and there have been many times when mankind’s capabilities have outpaced our sensibilities. In general, though, technology is a gift from God that can be used for the advance of His kingdom and the gospel, and I need to view it as such.
That’s all I have for this week on my reading! I do have one final note: Wednesday, Substack launched their mobile app for iPhone. At this point, it serves as a reader and separate inbox for your newsletters so that they don't clutter your email inboxes. I used it myself throughout the day on Wednesday and found it helpful. I’ll probably continue using it for now because the reading experience on a mobile device is a lot smoother, at least on my older phone.
With the app, you’ll have a dedicated Inbox for my Substack and any others to which you subscribe. New posts will never get lost in your email filters, or stuck in spam, and longer posts will never be cut-off by your email app. Overall, it’s a big upgrade to the mobile reading experience. All of that to say, you can now read Notes from the Fray in the new Substack app for iPhone.
The downside is that the Substack app is currently only available for iOS. If you don’t have an Apple device, you can join Substack’s Android waitlist here.1
As always, please feel free to continue the conversation in the comments!
In Him and for His Glory
This paragraph and the preceding one are edited versions of Substack’s stock insert for announcing the app to readers. I edited them to make them fit the narrative of this post but much of the writing is not original to me.