Matters of faith

Spending some time getting to know Killing the Buddha...

Revising Night: Elie Wiesel and the Hazards of Holocaust Theology:

In fact, God's role in Un di velt [hot geshvign] is not entirely unlike that in Night. In both God is wholly and substantially absent. In the Yiddish, though, this is a different sort of absence. It is the immediate, obvious absence faced by the victim rather than the reflective, philosophical absence later experienced by the survivor. It is the difference between an absence felt by a man under duress and one who is trying to rebuild his life.

The Temptation of Belief:

Why, they asked me, would a Buddhist spend all this time researching and writing about Christianity? And why that type of Christianity, specifically? It's a good question, one that I am trying to answer as I do the work, which I have become nearly obsessed with. I keep putting off things like turning our guest room into a nursery to read C.S. Lewis or transcribe an interview with a fundamentalist. People are beginning to wonder. I wonder. But there's one thing I know: Jealousy is a powerful force, and I am terribly jealous of the born again.

(Via wood s lot)