Rating: 
Summary: Hickey's pipedreams
Review: Reverend Frederick Buechner (b1926) has been blessed with a successful career. In 1947, he earned a Bachelar of Arts from Princeton; in 1950, he wrote his first successful book "A long day's dying"; in 1956, he and Ms Judith Frederick Merke, a long time friend of the family, were wed; in 1958, he earned a Bachelar of Divinty from Union Theological Seminary where he was educated by such theological luminaries as Mrrs Paul Tillich and Rheinhold Niebuhr. Finally, in 1969, after authoring dozens of books, he culled from his Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale this book, "Telling the Truth". "Telling the Truth" is not so much a book about the Gospel as it is a book on how to preach the Gospel. Which is what preachers came to the Lectures at Yale hoping to learn. Rev Buechner has an engagingly humourous style, and this makes the book an enjoyable read. He calls us to preach the Gospel by telling the truth. Which he describes as "telling the truth; telling the truth in love; telling it with concern for the truth; and telling it with concern for the listener." The Gospel, Rev Buechner posits, is composed of three types of truths, tragic, comic and fairy tale. By tragic, he means, "the world where GOD is absent is dark and empty; by comic, "it is in the depths of GOD's absence that GOD makes himself present" and by fairy tale, he asserts that the "tale that is too good not to be true because to dismiss it as untrue is to dismiss along with it that catch of the breath, that beat and lifting of the heart near to or even accompanied by tears, which I believe is the deepest intuition of truth that we have." Whether this is TRUTH or not, I don't know, even so, the book is entertaining. The problem I have is that Rev. Buechner appears to contradict himself from one lecture to another, and even within the same lecture. For example, he writes derisively that "as Christians in general we are particularly given to sentimentalizing our faith." Yet in his characterizations of Pontius Pilate as a 3-pack a day smoker, in a loveless marriage who is apathetic as a bureaucrat, isn't Rev. Buechner, himself, looking "only at the emotion in it and at the emotion it stirs in us rather than at the reality of it." Of the Prodigal Son, he writes, "he is a caricature of all that is joyless and petty and self-serving about all of us. The joke of it is that of course his father loves him even so, and has always loved him and will always love him, only the elder brother never noticed it because it was never love he was bucking for but only his due." Does this mean that the lecture about the Gospel as Tragedy which focuses on drama which speaks of the absence of GOD, is "joyless and petty and self-serving"? In summary, I think this is an entertaining book which doesn't strike a spiritual resonance with me. Others may find it spiritually enhancing, and for them I am genuinely glad that Rev. Buechner wrote this book.
Rating:
Summary: Hickey's pipedreams
Review: Reverend Frederick Buechner (b1926) has been blessed with a successful career. In 1947, he earned a Bachelar of Arts from Princeton; in 1950, he wrote his first successful book "A long day's dying"; in 1956, he and Ms Judith Frederick Merke, a long time friend of the family, were wed; in 1958, he earned a Bachelar of Divinty from Union Theological Seminary where he was educated by such theological luminaries as Mrrs Paul Tillich and Rheinhold Niebuhr. Finally, in 1969, after authoring dozens of books, he culled from his Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale this book, "Telling the Truth". "Telling the Truth" is not so much a book about the Gospel as it is a book on how to preach the Gospel. Which is what preachers came to the Lectures at Yale hoping to learn. Rev Buechner has an engagingly humourous style, and this makes the book an enjoyable read. He calls us to preach the Gospel by telling the truth. Which he describes as "telling the truth; telling the truth in love; telling it with concern for the truth; and telling it with concern for the listener." The Gospel, Rev Buechner posits, is composed of three types of truths, tragic, comic and fairy tale. By tragic, he means, "the world where GOD is absent is dark and empty; by comic, "it is in the depths of GOD's absence that GOD makes himself present" and by fairy tale, he asserts that the "tale that is too good not to be true because to dismiss it as untrue is to dismiss along with it that catch of the breath, that beat and lifting of the heart near to or even accompanied by tears, which I believe is the deepest intuition of truth that we have." Whether this is TRUTH or not, I don't know, even so, the book is entertaining. The problem I have is that Rev. Buechner appears to contradict himself from one lecture to another, and even within the same lecture. For example, he writes derisively that "as Christians in general we are particularly given to sentimentalizing our faith." Yet in his characterizations of Pontius Pilate as a 3-pack a day smoker, in a loveless marriage who is apathetic as a bureaucrat, isn't Rev. Buechner, himself, looking "only at the emotion in it and at the emotion it stirs in us rather than at the reality of it." Of the Prodigal Son, he writes, "he is a caricature of all that is joyless and petty and self-serving about all of us. The joke of it is that of course his father loves him even so, and has always loved him and will always love him, only the elder brother never noticed it because it was never love he was bucking for but only his due." Does this mean that the lecture about the Gospel as Tragedy which focuses on drama which speaks of the absence of GOD, is "joyless and petty and self-serving"? In summary, I think this is an entertaining book which doesn't strike a spiritual resonance with me. Others may find it spiritually enhancing, and for them I am genuinely glad that Rev. Buechner wrote this book.
Rating: 
Summary: You don't have to be a minister to read this book...
Review: The author uses illustrations from King Lear, The Wizard of Oz and other fictional works to illustrate Biblical principals about the gospel and aspects about preaching it. This is a good book that offers encouragement for those who want to share the gospel. Good insights.
Rating:
Summary: You don't have to be a minister to read this book...
Review: The author uses illustrations from King Lear, The Wizard of Oz and other fictional works to illustrate Biblical principals about the gospel and aspects about preaching it. This is a good book that offers encouragement for those who want to share the gospel. Good insights.
Rating: 
Summary: New Horizons and Old Wars
Review: This is a superbly written view of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Buechner uses parables of various contempory situations to bring new life and relevance to the scriptures. If you are looking for fresh creative insight into the Bible, this is definitely one to check out.
Rating:
Summary: New Horizons and Old Wars
Review: This is a superbly written view of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Buechner uses parables of various contempory situations to bring new life and relevance to the scriptures. If you are looking for fresh creative insight into the Bible, this is definitely one to check out.
Rating:
Summary: Keep this book next to your reading place
Review: This is one of the most wonderful meditations on the Gospels that you will ever find. It provides insight that you will find in no other author's work. I've only read it once. This week, I'm going to read it yet again.
Rating:
Summary: Keep this book next to your reading place
Review: This is one of the most wonderful meditations on the Gospels that you will ever find. It provides insight that you will find in no other author's work. I've only read it once. This week, I'm going to read it yet again.
Rating:
Summary: THE LITTLE OLD MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN
Review: When I took a class in "Christian Mythopoeic authors" I had to give a presentation on an author not discussed in the class. I presented on Frederick Buechner. My focus was on his novel, On the Road with the Archangel. While preparing for this, I found myself reading seven of his other books. Once I picked him up, it was hard to put him down. One of the books that I read was Telling the Truth. I have recently had the pleasure of re-reading it. Buechner is a shameless recycler of themes and material (King Lear references are found almost everywhere in his writings). Most of his books don't even break one hundred pages. Still, I'd rather sort through Buechner's recyclables than the seven course meals of a lot of other writers. Telling the Truth is the printed form of lectures Buechner gave on what it means to preach the gospel. He argues that the gospel must be presented in terms of tragedy, comedy, and fairy tale. The gospel is tragedy because life can be exceedingly dark. We spend so much time trying to pretend, and sometimes believing that everything is fine and dandy. Yet sin is real and it causes death. We all live under the horror of a death sentence that will not be commuted. We live in the valley of the shadow of death. To try and deny this is not to preach but to play games. Too many Christ-followers try to skip over this integral part of life. The picture Buechner paints of Jesus' silence before Pilate is jarring. It makes me uncomfortable. It must have freaked Pilate out too. This silence and the silence before the preacher speaks are the personification of what the tragedy of the Gospel is. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The wage of this "missing of the mark" is death. The Gospel is comedy because God's provision for those who are his enemies is beyond the pale. It is in this hour of death--in the hour of our just execution--that God comes and gives us a life beyond all of our dreams and expectations. The picture of Sarah's laughter at God's promise is the picture of our reaction when we first truly encounter the Gospel. A woman giving birth as she enters her second century of life looks easy compared to a God that we have slandered, rebelled against, ignored and even crucified loving us and redeeming us. It is the hyper-reality of this comedy that makes the Gospel a fairy tale. We live in the drudgery of our everyday "real" lives. Yet the Gospel is more real than any of the fleeting, fading images that pass for our reality. Buechner uses the picture of the Great Oz to convey the fairy-tale aspect of the Gospel. Just as Oz turns out to be a little old man behind a curtain, so the preacher's proclaiming of the wonder of the Kingdom looks insignificant, a lot of the time ridiculous, compared to the truth they bear. The fairy tale of the Gospel is that all us, though seemingly frail and cowering behind the curtain of our lives, turn out to have power through Christ. The things we say and do while carrying the Gospel do indeed have eternal impact. The Gospel must not be neutered by the understatement or ignoring of any of its elements. Sin has made our situation dire. God's provision has given us joy. The entire story offers us wonder. I appreciate Buechner's Telling the Truth because he is creative in the making of his points. He paints vivid pictures. He does not soft-sell any element of his argument. This is a great book. I give it my full recommendation.
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