Book Review: The Crucified Is My Love

Title: The Crucified Is My Love 

Author: Johann Ernst von Holst

Translator: Kathleen Hasenberg

Date: 2017

Publisher: Plough

ISBN: 978-0874861020

Length: 326 pages

Quote: "In the original German, each devotion begins with a hymn, followed by the scripture text, the interpretation, a prayer, and a final hymn. In this English edition the hymns and prayers have been omitted."

Readers still get a devotional reading for each morning and evening of the six weeks of Lent. This is a substantial book.

I had some questions, though, about how to review it...logistically. Plough offered e-copies free for the downloading during Lent. I read my copy during Lent. Would Plough consider it inappropriate to post the review after Easter?

The publisher answered my question. Plough holds copyrights to a lot of Christian literature, regularly buys more for the quarterly magazine, and shares much of this literature with subscribers to their free e-mail, the Daily Dig. A selection from this book turned up in the Daily Dig during the week after Easter. So although it's designed for use by those who observe Lent, the material is not considered too season-specific to discuss today. You can still buy a printed copy of the book, of course, from the publisher. They have their own online bookstore. 

Protestant churches in the United States generally accept all Christmas traditions, even the ones imported directly from Pagan cults, and accept most Easter traditions, likewise. Lent has been less favored. It's not about treats for the children. While fasting, or even giving up specific foods, in early spring used to have practical social value, today many Americans just don't fast. As for Lent, there's no evidence that the apostles observed it. 

Other Semitic tribes had an early spring fast called "weeping for Tammuz." Tammuz was the favorite of, depending on the tribe, either the moon or the evening star, both of whom were worshipped as goddesses. Tammuz was regarded as a lesser male god too, but he had to earn that status. According to the story he started out as a human. Death, a more powerful goddess said to be the moon's and stars' older sister, wanted him for herself, although what Death wanted to do with him was not as much fun for him as the love of the star or moon might be. She seized Tammuz and carried him down to the underworld. The goddess who wanted to enjoy his company in the land of the living went into mourning and held back the spring weather. For the sake of humankind, some sort of lesser nature spirit or spirits told the goddess where Tammuz was. She went down to the underworld. Death's palace guards each demanded a separate payment, taking all of her powers. The weather went out of control, and the whole world fasted and prayed that whatever was wrong with their goddess and her work could be put right. When the goddess was completely helpless and only just barely alive, Big Sister Death finally negotiated to restore Tammuz to her. Now he had the power and duty to bring springtime every year, which the goddess had abdicated. Fasting, praying, and weeping in commemoration of these gods' misbehavior was thought to encourage spring to come in due time. The Israelite calendar still included a month for Tammuz, and the Bible says some people observed it, but the prophets told them to stop.

Lent is pretty obviously a custom derived from "weeping for Tammuz," and some Protestants say we shouldn't observe it. It can be hard to tell a difference between the ones who are zealous about doctrinal purity and the ones who just don't want to commit to observing any traditional disciplines they don't feel like observing, though.

Meh. It can also be hard to tell a difference between people who want to do a fast as we are taught to do by the prophet Isaiah, saving the cost of a day's food to give to the hungry, and people who just want to lose a few pounds in order to look good in swimsuits.

I think many Americans don't grok fasting because we're just too prosperous. Few of us know anybody who actually lacks food, and if we did, in order to feed our neighbor for a day most of us might have to do things like bringing a sandwich from home instead of going to a posh restaurant for lunch, maybe walking instead of riding the bus, or reading a library book instead of going to the movies, but we wouldn't have to do without food. As a result even Catholic observance of Lent is optional, and those who observe Lent get to choose what they'll give up--something they want to give up just as a mental discipline, like television, or something they want to give up in order to donate its cost to charity. 

Nevertheless, perhaps for that reason, many Americans do choose to observe Lent.

This book explains what those people are choosing to do, and why. Though Jesus suffered torture for only parts of two days and the night between them, Lent is when some people choose to meditate both on Christ's suffering and on suffering generally for forty days. It's a time when the more melancholy members of the church observe that humans are not built for "celebration, celebration, celebration all the time," that feasts naturally need to be balanced by fasts.       

Those who reject Lent can read these devotionals at any time of year, just as those who reject Christmas can read reflections on the birth of Christ at any time of year. Holst's focus is on Christ, not the church calendar. 

As explained in a foreword, Holst lived and wrote before a small group of radical Christians in Germany organized the original Bruderhof the Nazis expelled; his book happened to be a favorite of the Bruderhof's founders, so it became both a family heirloom and a foundational document of what's now a North American Protestant denomination. So Holst never lived in one of the Bruderhof group houses dedicated to some sort of self-supporting work radical Christians do, whether a furniture factory, a medical or urban mission, a care home for people with disabilities, a publishing house, or whatever else the Bruderhofs may turn their hands to. He wrote, however, as a radical, practical Christian. 

"If a stranger should ask us on our pilgrim way, “Where are you going?” then our whole life and being should answer, “We are going up to Jerusalem.”"

"[F]ollowing Christ’s example, we must not hold back sharp-edged truth and serious admonition, for our aim is to set the other’s better self free from the yoke of sin. Gold is purified only by the heat of the fire. It would be truly uncompassionate to let our neighbor go to spiritual ruin through consideration for the flesh. But we can do such a work of love in the right spirit only if we lay the erring brother upon the Savior’s heart in prayer, only if we constantly think of his true happiness and in humble love give him a good example ourselves."

"[W]e have been placed in this world of sin, temptation, and need not in order to flee from it but to overcome it. And in our calling, however insignificant, we must work as though placed there by the Lord."

Amen.