Modern Times
by Paul Johnson
Reviewed by R.C. Sproul Jr.

I have some sympathy for those that argue that the President's private failure does not make for public failure. Not much to be sure, and partly because he is also a public failure. But I recently read the sad news that Paul Johnson, the historian I so deeply admire, confessed to a long standing adulterous relationship. His job approval rating did not slip with me, though I was terribly disappointed. I considered Dr. Johnson to be, while not my brother in Christ (he is a Roman Catholic), at least an ally in the culture war. It's not good for the forces of decency to be acting indecently. I knew him for his books Intellectuals and The Birth of the Modern. But my favorite remains Modern Times.

It is perhaps a sign that we are in a post modern age that we aren't so interested in a doddering old world view like modernism. Even among Christian scholars there seems to be a boom market in finger wagging at the bastard stepchild of modernity, post-modernism. In fact it seems that second to a Ph.D., the most important thing one can do to attain intellectual respectability in Reformed circles is to use the phrase "post-modernism" in everything you write. (I should know, I hide it as a skip sequence code in everything I write.) And though the untamed child may stick its tongue out at the grand old man, the family resemblance is striking. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, no matter how rotten.

Modern Times lays the background for our age by establishing how modernism came to dominate the western cultural landscape. Johnson doesn't moan and groan through the telling, nor does he stop every so often as Schaeffer in How Should We Then Live? to decimate the errors of our enemies. But you can tell that Johnson (at least Johnson the writer, if not the husband) is rooting for the good guys. Johnson takes us from the advent of the 1920's up to the 1990's. Along the way he takes us to Red China, the Soviet Union, the Reich of Hitler, and ties together the threads of modernism that drove the assorted regimes. Johnson is the best kind of historian, not boring us with troop counts and election strategies, but getting to the ideas of which history is the consequence. His survey will show the first fruit of modernism cropping up around the globe, the birth of the intrusive state. He reminds us that communism, fascism and the welfare state all operate under the assumption that the state is God, and has a right to the fruit of our labor. The differences are minimal. He then explores how large states create small men, dependent upon the state for both physical and moral sustenance. And he wisely concludes that the cupboard is as bare as the emperor in his new clothes. Modern Times is published by Harper Perennial, and is available at your local modernistic mega chain bookstore.

The Razor's Edge
by William Somerset Maugham
Reviewed by Laurence Windham

My favorite novel of all time is The Razor's Edge by William Somerset Maugham. The story is set in the early 1900's when America's growth was at its post-Enlightenment height. The pursuit of money and prestige was dominant in the thinking of ever, man. Europe, where most of the story is set, is on its prewar decline. The reason this book is my favorite is because the author brilliantly portrays how important the accumulation of wealth, popularity and social standing is to his main characters.

On one end of the continuum is Elliot Templeton a man whose sole desire in life is to always be at the right party, recognized by the glitterati, and achieve and retain proper social standing. The antithesis of Elliot is Larry Darrell, a young man who was expected by everyone to excel in life but instead chooses a life of asceticism. Caught hopelessly in the middle is Isabel Bradley whose aspirations for the "good life" are foiled by ordinary circumstances.

Isabel was originally Larry's fiance, but because of her desire for an acceptable lifestyle as dictated by society, she marries Larry's best friend, Gray Maturin, who is going to live a "normal" life by working as a broker in his father's firm. Before she and Gray are married Larry offers his own type of proposal, not unlike my own to my wife Angela. It is one of my favorite dialogues of the whole book.

'I wish I could make you see how much fuller the life I offer you is than anything you have a conception of. I wish I could make you see how exciting the life of the spirit is and how rich in experience. It's illimitable. It's such a happy life. There's only one thing like it. When you're up in a plane by yourself, high, high, and only infinity surrounds you, you're intoxicated by the boundless space. You feel such an exhilaration that you wouldn't exchange it for all the power and glory of the world." Isabel declines Larry's invitation to a life that appears so alien to one so submerged in cultural priorities. Isabel continues her trivial pursuits while Larry pursues his quest for truth. Unfortunately he is looking in all the wrong places but you still admire his.uncompromising stance, a lesson for us all.

In keeping with our topic of time, you can see in this story how the gravity of societal norms has a pull on all of us. How the world wishes to be the judge of time well spent, what the acceptable way of living is, and what constitutes real success.

I personally want none of it. But still, I would like a Range Rover, you know, for purely spiritual reasons.