An American priest crosses the ocean on the trail of a man
known as “B”, with a singular mission: to hear the message that B is carrying
and to see if he is what the Lutheran church has always feared – the
Antichrist.
What JF discovers is that B’s message might be far greater
than anything the church could have ever thought – the message on how to save
the world.
 |
| From Amazon |
**
I should write the backs of books. Seriously. That took me
like, 5 minutes and it’s been almost 3 months since I read the book.
The Story of B is a sort-of sequel to Ishmael – a sequel in
that it is set more recently than Ishmael, and they mention Ishmael in the
story. But other than that, it is essentially a book onto itself, though the
backbone is the same: To save the world from its utter destruction, we must
change the way we see humans in nature.
But, where Ishmael took more of a straight historical view,
mixing in religion and biology where suitable, Story of B sort of does the
opposite: It takes the religious and biological views, and mixes in history
just to keep things clean.
**
Personally, I liked and disliked this approach. I definitely
liked Ishmael more, but then I still need to read Story of B at least two more
times before I will pretend I actually understand it past the “big picture”.
But, as someone who lives both in the scientific and religious world, it’s hard
for me to sympathize with media that puts the two at odds – although I know
that there is a history of it and in fanatical and extreme cases there still
is.
Maybe it’s the moderate in me, but I always find it
difficult when people blame religion for anything – even if it’s not my
religion.
But what I did like about this book was all the biology in
it! Ishmael had it, of course. You can’t talk about nature without talking
about biology, it’s one of the other. But it was a lot more pronounced in Story
of B, using terms and concepts straight out of my second year ecology class to
explain how messed up we are in this world.
Now, I read a PDF version off of my laptop, as I am
travelling and books are difficult to carry around (although how come every
time I travel, determined not to bring books with me, I always come home with
at least two?), and the way the PDF was set up was they put all the “lecture
material” (AKA the nitty gritty details) at the very end, so you could get the
overall premise and all the action from the book, then if your brain wasn’t
complete mush, you could try to get through about 100 pages (actual pages,
because it was a PDF) of all the details that make his argument valid.
I was so overwhelmed by the end of the actually book that I
got through about half of the lecture material. I was also travelling, which
made it difficult to find time to read on my laptop. So I sort of wish they had
split it up in the book. But maybe they do in the print version. I don’t know.
If someone does know, leave a comment!
So, in summary, Story of B is a great book that really makes
you think, but I personally preferred Ishmael. All my atheist readers (you know
who you are, even if I don’t), maybe you’ll like it more than I did, but I
think anyone who reads it will get something awesome out of it.
I think I’ll end with a quote from the book, because it’s
sort of the central principle, and it makes total and complete sense – and if
it doesn’t, it means you need to read the book.
“If the world is saved, it will be saved by people with
changed minds, people with a new vision. It will not be saved by people with
old minds and new programs.”
Speak Loud!
Buy the book at Amazon
And at Chapters
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