With Christ in the school of prayer, by Andrew Murray, 65

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. The previous post is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color.

But, it may be asked, is it not best to make our wishes known to God, and then to leave it to Him to decide what is best, without seeking to assert our will? By no means. This is the very essence of the prayer of faith, to which Jesus sought to train His disciples, that it does not only make known its desire and then leave the decision to God. That would be the prayer of submission, for cases in which we cannot know God’s will. But the prayer of faith, finding God’s will in some promise of the Word, pleads for that till it come. In Matthew (ix. 28) we read Jesus said to the blind man: ‘Believe ye that I can do this?’ Here, in Mark, He says: ‘What wilt thou that I should do?’ In both cases He said that faith had saved them. And so He said to the Syrophenician woman, too: ‘Great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.’ Faith is nothing but the purpose of the will resting on God’s word, and saying: I must have it. 

To believe truly is to will firmly. But is not such a will at variance with our dependence on God and our submission to Him? By no means; it is much rather the true submission that honours God. It is only when the child has yielded his own will in entire surrender to the Father, that he receives from the Father liberty and power to will what he would have. But, when once the believer has accepted the will of God, as revealed through the Word and Spirit, as his will, too, then it is the will of God that His child should use this renewed will in His service. The will is the highest power in the soul; grace wants above everything to sanctify and restore this will, one of the chief traits of God’s image, to full and free exercise. As a son, who only lives for his father’s interests, who seeks not his own but his father’s will is trusted by the father with his business, so God speaks to His child in all truth, ‘What wilt thou?’ It is often spiritual sloth that, under the appearance of humility, professes to have no will, because it fears the trouble of searching out the will of God, or, when found, the struggle of claiming it in faith. True humility is ever in company with strong faith, which only seeks to know what is according to the will of God, and then boldly claims the fulfilment of the promise: ‘Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’

Sunspots 650

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

The Arts: An unusual high school band's percussion section.

Christianity: A Christianity Today author on getting rid of her own "tribalism," with lessons for all of us.

Relevant reports that the government of Nepal has made evangelism illegal.


Food: (and drink) Tea growing is expanding rapidly in the US, including in my home state. I thank one of my brothers, who sends me links that I include in this column.

Listverse tells us a lot about pumpkins.

FiveThirtyEight on which candy is most popular for Halloween, and why.

Philosophy: He Lives points out that free will is outside of nature, and of scientific explanations.


Politics: (And computing) FiveThirtyEight analyzes the responses (number of likes, retweets, or replies -- not the content of replies) to Twitter posts from President Trump, former President Obama, and other prominent politicians.

Wired reports that the Federal Communications Commission has made it easier for large companies to expand their media share. This means that one kind of political view may be unchallenged in some media markets. See also here.

FiveThirtyEight reports that the Trump Administration's first FBI crime report is much less informative than previous such annual reports.

Science: A dying female chimpanzee recognizes a former human associate. (Less than 3 minute video.)

Scientific American on whether global climate change is making hurricanes more dangerous.

FiveThirtyEight considers what would happen if there were no number 6. (This was based on a 5-year-old's question, and gets pretty deep into interesting questions.)

Listverse on how animals, of many kinds, have had large effects on the environment.

The Seattle Times on how monarch butterflies have been affected by warmer climate.



Image source (public domain)

Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, 58

All Christianity concentrates on the man at the crossroads. The vast and shallow philosophies, the huge syntheses of humbug, all talk about ages and evolution and ultimate developments. The true philosophy is concerned with the instant. Will a man take this road or that?—that is the only thing to think about, if you enjoy thinking. The eons are easy enough to think about, any one can think about them. The instant is really awful: and it is because our religion has intensely felt the instant, that it has in literature dealt much with battle and in theology dealt much with hell. It is full of danger, like a boy’s book: it is at an immortal crisis. There is a great deal of real similarity between popular fiction and the religion of the western people. If you say that popular fiction is vulgar and tawdry, you only say what the dreary and well-informed say also about the images in the Catholic churches. Life (according to the faith) is very like a serial story in a magazine: life ends with the promise (or menace) “to be continued in our next.” Also, with a noble vulgarity, life imitates the serial and leaves off at the exciting moment. For death is distinctly an exciting moment.
But the point is that a story is exciting because it has in it so strong an element of will, of what theology calls free will. You cannot finish a sum how you like. But you can finish a story how you like. When somebody discovered the Differential Calculus there was only one Differential Calculus he could discover. But when Shakespeare killed Romeo he might have married him to Juliet’s old nurse if he had felt inclined. And Christendom has excelled in the narrative romance exactly because it has insisted on the theological free will. It is a large matter and too much to one side of the road to be discussed adequately here; but this is the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating crime as disease, about making a prison merely a hygienic environment like a hospital, of healing sin by slow scientific methods. The fallacy of the whole thing is that evil is a matter of active choice whereas disease is not. If you say that you are going to cure a profligate as you cure an asthmatic, my cheap and obvious answer is, “Produce the people who want to be asthmatics as many people want to be profligates.” A man may lie still and be cured of a malady. But he must not lie still if he wants to be cured of a sin; on the contrary, he must get up and jump about violently. The whole point indeed is perfectly expressed in the very word which we use for a man in hospital; “patient” is in the passive mood; “sinner” is in the active. If a man is to be saved from influenza, he may be a patient. But if he is to be saved from forging, he must be not a patient but an impatient. He must be personally impatient with forgery. All moral reform must start in the active not the passive will.

Orthodoxy, first published in 1908, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here. Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.

Excerpts from Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton, 57

Again, the same is true of that difficult matter of the danger of the soul, which has unsettled so many just minds. To hope for all souls is imperative; and it is quite tenable that their salvation is inevitable. It is tenable, but it is not specially favourable to activity or progress. Our fighting and creative society ought rather to insist on the danger of everybody, on the fact that every man is hanging by a thread or clinging to a precipice. To say that all will be well anyhow is a comprehensible remark: but it cannot be called the blast of a trumpet. Europe ought rather to emphasize possible perdition; and Europe always has emphasized it. Here its highest religion is at one with all its cheapest romances. To the Buddhist or the eastern fatalist existence is a science or a plan, which must end up in a certain way. But to a Christian existence is a story, which may end up in any way. In a thrilling novel (that purely Christian product) the hero is not eaten by cannibals; but it is essential to the existence of the thrill that he might be eaten by cannibals. The hero must (so to speak) be an eatable hero. So in Christian morals, in short, it is wicked to call a man “damned”: but it is strictly religious and philosophic to call him damnable.

Orthodoxy, first published in 1908, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here. Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.

Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by Gilbert K. Chesteron, 11

But it is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called “The Loves of the Triangles”; I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular. This is certainly the case with all artistic creation, which is in some ways the most decisive example of pure will. The artist loves his limitations: they constitute the thing he is doing.

Orthodoxy, first published in 1908, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here.  Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.

Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 10

The creeds and the crusades, the hierarchies and the horrible persecutions were not organized, as is ignorantly said, for the suppression of reason. They were organized for the difficult defence of reason. Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve, the authority of popes to define the authority, even of inquisitors to terrify: these were all only dark defences erected round one central authority, more undemonstrable, more supernatural than all—the authority of a man to think. We know now that this is so; we have no excuse for not knowing it. For we can hear skepticism crashing through the old ring of authorities, and at the same moment we can see reason swaying upon her throne. In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved. And in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long and sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it.
I agree with the pragmatists that apparent objective truth is not the whole matter; that there is an authoritative need to believe the things that are necessary to the human mind. But I say that one of those necessities precisely is a belief in objective truth. The pragmatist tells a man to think what he must think and never mind the Absolute. But precisely one of the things that he must think is the Absolute. This philosophy, indeed, is a kind of verbal paradox. Pragmatism is a matter of human needs; and one of the first of human needs is to be something more than a pragmatist. Extreme pragmatism is just as inhuman as the determinism it so powerfully attacks. The determinist (who, to do him justice, does not pretend to be a human being) makes nonsense of the human sense of actual choice. The pragmatist, who professes to be specially human, makes nonsense of the human sense of actual fact.
Exactly as complete free thought involves the doubting of thought itself, so the acceptation of mere “willing” really paralyzes the will. Mr. Bernard Shaw has not perceived the real difference between the old utilitarian test of pleasure (clumsy, of course, and easily misstated) and that which he propounds. The real difference between the test of happiness and the test of will is simply that the test of happiness is a test and the other isn’t. You can discuss whether a man’s act in jumping over a cliff was directed towards happiness; you cannot discuss whether it was derived from will. Of course it was. You can praise an action by saying that it is calculated to bring pleasure or pain to discover truth or to save the soul. But you cannot praise an action because it shows will; for to say that is merely to say that it is an action. By this praise of will you cannot really choose one course as better than another. And yet choosing one course as better than another is the very definition of the will you are praising.

Orthodoxy, first published in 1908, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here.  Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.

Sunspots 420

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Christianity: Todd Wood, a Young-Earth Creationist, but one who respects and is willing to listen to other views, examines the results of a poll of pastors, which indicates that over three-quarters of them are not convinced that their own view, whatever it is, is correct.

Computing: I am by no means a expert on Twitter, but Twitonomy seems to be a great tool for those who are, and it comes with a non-biased recommendation. Check it out!

Philosophy: He Lives quotes from rabid atheist Jerry Coyne, who admits that, in his own world view, there is no such thing as free choice.

Politics: An article, with photos, on the first integrated prom in a small Georgia town, in 2013. Not all proms are integrated yet.

Science: A site showing you how a dog's vision differs from that of most humans.

National Public Radio shows, and tells, about "pinkhouses," a high-tech way of growing plants efficiently indoors.



Image source (public domain)    

Bible passages indicating that humans can choose salvation (or not)

I am aware that there are those, and they may be right, who believe that we can't really choose whether ot not to accept Christ's resurrected sacrifice for our sins, and His lordship. However, there are some Bible passages that indicated that we do have a choice in the matter. I will give them below, without presenting the Biblical evidence to the contrary -- and there is such evidence. See the Wikipedia article on predestination.

All quotations are from the World English Bible, which is public domain.

Some of these passages don't seem to say anything directly about free choice, but I have also included passages that indicate that salvation is for all people.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

Acts 2:21 It will be that whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Romans 5:17 For if by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one; so much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ. 18 So then as through one trespass, all men were condemned; even so through one act of righteousness, all men were justified to life.

Romans 10:13 For, “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (This quotes Leviticus 18:5, as does Acts 2:21.)

1 Timothy 2:5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all; the testimony in its own times;

1 Timothy 4:10 For to this end we both labor and suffer reproach, because we have set our trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe.

1 John 2:2 And he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.

Revelation 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, then I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with me.

Revelation 22:17 The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” He who hears, let him say, “Come!” He who is thirsty, let him come. He who desires, let him take the water of life freely.

Thanks for reading!

* * * * *
Added November 29, 2012: I have now posted a graphic attempt to explain predestination, foreknowledge and choice, with some explanation.

Scripture that indicates that humans can choose salvation

This is a thorny topic, and one that I'm not expecting to settle. There are intelligent, Bible-believing people who disagree with the title of this post. See the Wikipedia articles on Free Will, Free will in theology, and Predestination for good treatment of this subject, including views opposed to mine. Now to what the title says, below. Some of these verses don't say anything directly about free choice, but these were chosen because they indicate that anyone may accept Christ's sacrifice for sin, thus implying that they may choose it:

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. (All scripture quotations from the World English Bible, which is public domain.)

Acts 2:20 The sun will be turned into darkness,
and the moon into blood,
before the great and glorious day of the Lord comes.
21 It will be that whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ (quoting Joel 2)

Romans 5:17 For if by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one; so much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ. 18 So then as through one trespass, all men were condemned; even so through one act of righteousness, all men were justified to life.

Romans 10:12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich to all who call on him. 13 For, “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (quoting Joel 2)

1 Corinthians 15:22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.

1 Timothy 2:5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6a who gave himself as a ransom for all; 

1 Timothy 4:10 For to this end we both labor and suffer reproach, because we have set our trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe.

1 John 2:2 And he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.

Revelation 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, then I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with me.

Revelation 22:17 The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” He who hears, let him say, “Come!” He who is thirsty, let him come. He who desires, let him take the water of life freely.
 
Thanks for reading, whether you did it by a free choice, or not!

Job, Harry Potter and misery

If there is a God, and He is even close to all-powerful, why is there suffering? (If there is a god who isn't even close to being all-powerful, he, she, or it is not God.)

That's a very good question, and theologians and philosophers have been asking it, and trying to answer, for a long time. But it's pretty clear that none of the answers are fully satisfactory to everybody. This attempt won't be, either. (I have dealt with the topic before, here, and here, among other places.)

C. S. Lewis had two good answers. One of them was in his non-fictional book, The Problem of Pain. Here it is in one sentence: "Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you will find that you have excluded life itself." The other, simpler, better answer is in his splendid novel, Till We Have Faces. The four-sentence answer there is "I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?" To me, a belief in an after-life is also an answer, but I won't say more about that here. I doubt if it's a full answer for almost anyone.

I'm sure that not everyone is satisfied with either of the answers given by Lewis. The question remains, for many.

One of the books of the Bible, Job, is about suffering. God, although sovereign, allowed Satan, the adversary, to take Job's possessions, his children, and his good health. (Satan said that, if he was allowed to do so, Job would lose his faith in God.) Job didn't like all this loss, and complained about what he didn't like for a few chapters. Other people, well-meaning, tried to tell Job that all this was his fault -- he must have done something bad. His wife told him to stop believing in God. Job refused to believe that his troubles were his fault, and he refused to stop believing in the goodness of God. But he still had a question. Why did this happen to me? In the end, God appeared to Job, and, basically, said, "Who are you to question me?" Job said, basically, "I'm sorry, you are right. Forgive me. I'll shut up." Then God restored his possessions, and he had more children. God told those who had questioned Job's righteousness to ask Job to pray for them. Satan doesn't make an appearance, after the very first part, but presumably he was seriously disappointed by Job's reaction. In many ways, the answer given Job is the same as the answer given in The Problem of Pain.

I don't know, for sure, if Job was a real character. He probably was, but I suppose that the book could be a long parable. I don't think it matters, for our purposes. The question remains -- why is there suffering, if there is a powerful and loving God?

I presume that you know enough about the Harry Potter books, by J. K. Rowling, that what I am about to say makes sense. If not, you  should read them, or at least the Wikipedia summary. (Here's one place where I have written about the books previously.)

Is J. K. Rowling a terrible person? After all, she wrote about a character, Harry Potter, who had to undergo a great deal of suffering. His parents died while he was still very small, he had to live with relatives, the Dursley's, who took advantage of him, and restricted him terribly. He went through all sorts of ordeals. Some of his best friends died. He felt that he and his two closest friends had to leave his wizard training at Hogwarts, and wander in the woods for an extended period of time, during which the three of them suffered the misery of disagreeing with one another, and doubting each other's motives. Harry's mentor, Dumbledore, died. Harry himself offered to die to save the good wizards.

Would people read these seven books, and watch the movies based on them, if Harry hadn't had to suffer? I don't think so. A life without conflict, without occasional misery, seems dull and uninteresting. (How much good news do you see on TV, or read in the newspaper, compared to scandals, natural disasters, wars, crimes, stupidity by various politicians, and other awful things? Not very much. The news organizations couldn't sell good news. We wouldn't buy it, or watch or read it.)

Rowling, to write a novel which speaks to us (or at least to some of us) included suffering, of various kinds. True, it wasn't all about suffering. In the end, Harry marries his sweetheart, and has children. He is at least on nodding terms with Draco Malfoy, who was once his bitter enemy. Voldemort and his followers are defeated. But I submit that Rowling, who had almost absolute power over the content of her books, including the plot, was not a bad person because she put many of her characters through terrible suffering. And she didn't put in characters, like Voldemort, who had, except possibly before the books start, no good characteristics, because she was not in control of what she wrote. She was.

Similarly, God is not a bad person, nor impotent, because there is misery in the world.

I know. The Harry Potter books are fiction. My life (I think) is real. So is yours. No analogy is perfect, and this one certainly isn't. But I think it helped me to write this post. Besides, I'm not so sure that the life of characters in a novel, in relationship to the author, doesn't resemble the relationship between our lives and the Creator.

Thanks for reading.

Movie: The Adjustment Bureau

The Adjustment Bureau, starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, was released in our area a few days ago. (Wikipedia article here.) After reading the Christianity Today review, I decided to take my wife to see it, as it was the closest thing to a "date movie" that was on. (I advise looking at this review before spending money on the film, because the review indicates aspects of the movie that might be troubling for some.) The movie is based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, which story is available here. Dick's daughter was involved in the film's production.

I'll try to avoid giving away much of the plot, but the title comes from a mysterious group, apparently all male, and all wearing hats, that is tasked with making sure that each person follows a Plan. There is a Chairman, who directs all this, but he is only referred to, not seen or heard.


Christianity Today also interviewed the writer and director of the movie.

When a Bureau person refers to The Chairman, he makes gestures upward, or looks upward. The Matt Damon character directly asks the member of the Bureau assigned to him if the Bureau are angels. The answer is ambiguous, but not a denial. So is The Chairman supposed to be God? Are the Bureau men angels? I don't know, and the answer seems to be deliberately indefinite. It is clear that Bureau members don't know everything, that they make mistakes, and that they don't have anything like full knowledge of The Plan. Does The Chairman? That isn't clear. Do real angels have complete knowledge of what God wants? I doubt it. Do they sometimes make mistakes? I have no idea.

CNN, I find, has a Belief Blog. This entity devoted a posting to an interview, by Fredericka Whitfield, of the writer/director, and the actor who plays the Damon character's Bureau assignee, Anthony Mackie. Parts of the film are shown. The emphasis of the CNN piece was on free will vs. fate.

I understand that the question of free will vs. fate (or determinism) is an important and difficult one. (See, for example, the Wikipedia article on Free Will.) It is not reasonable to expect a popular film to provide definitive answers to such questions. But the movie deserves good marks for bringing it up, in dramatic fashion.

Do I really have choices? I think so. John 3:16, the Bible verse most often quoted, indicates that I do have a real choice as to whether I take Christ as Lord and Saviour. It's not the only such verse. Is my behavior partly determined by my experience and heredity? I'm sure that it is. Does God know what I am going to choose, in advance? I believe so. But I also believe that I have real choices. I could have chosen differently. It's a complex subject.

Thanks for choosing to read this.

Bujold's The Curse of Chalion: The Story

Some weeks ago, having read all the fantastic literature that I really wanted to, and not having any books that I really wanted to re-read, I looked for guidance as to something new to read. Going over the winners of various yearly prizes in fantastic literature, I found, rather to my amazement, the following in the Wikipedia: "This is not only a novel about self-sacrifice and redemption, but also a piece of speculative theological fiction which closely examines the relationship between free will, fate and divine intervention."

The article was on The Curse of Chalion, (New York: HarperCollins, 2001) by Lois McMaster Bujold. I decided that I would read that novel, and I am glad that I did. I have already quoted the novel in two posts, one on the effects of war.

I plan to consider the question of whether the book is a Christian novel in a future post. First, I need to summarize the plot.

Cazaril is the main character. When we first meet him, he is clearly poor, and in bad physical shape. Two events begin to change his fortune, and, eventually, his health. First, a soldier mistakenly gives him a valuable coin, enabling him to go to Vallenda, the nearest city, and pay for new clothes and a haircut, so that he may present himself to the castle of the local royalty. Secondly, he finds a man who has died, and is able to honorably obtain his clothes (the body is burned). He also finds out that the man has died as a result of what is called death magic.

As the book progresses, we learn that Cazaril used to be a page in Vallenda, that he rose to a responsible position in the army of Chalion, the country, and that Dondo dy Jironal, a man evil in almost every possible way, saw to it, with his brother, Martou dy Jironal, that Cazaril was turned over to Chalion's enemies as a galley slave, which accounts for his poverty and his physical condition. At one point, he was beaten nearly to death, because he defended a young galley slave from the slavemasters. His back carries the scars of that beating.

We also learn that death magic isn't exactly magic. It is possible, in this sub-creation, to pray to one of the five gods of Chalion that someone else die, and, as part of the answer to that prayer, you will die, too. Cazaril learns more about this from a notebook left in the dead man's clothes -- the dead man died after praying that an evil man would die. Not just anyone can be killed by this sort of prayer. Only evil people may be.

For more on the religion of Bujold's fictional universe, see this article.

Cazaril presents himself at court, and is given the position of tutor and secretary to Iselle, a teenaged girl who is half-sister to the current Roya, or king, by Iselle's grandmother, who is the ruler of Vallenda. Betriz, Iselle's companion, also becomes his pupil.

After a time, Cazaril and his charges are called to the capital city, where Cazaril is responsible for them. Iselle's younger brother is also required to go, but he is not Cazaril's charge. The court is tainted by evil. The Roya is under a curse, and has ceded almost all authority to Martou dy Jironal, his chancellor. Cazaril conducts himself wisely. There is no decision he makes, in the entire book, to advance himself at the expense of others, or to choose evil over good. He does everything he can to promote Iselle's well-being. Iselle and Betriz learn from him, and they, too, are wise and good, which is difficult, under the circumstances of living in an evil court. Betriz queries Cazaril about what is wrong, and he tells her that a royal court needs a moral center.

The chancellor persuades the king to have Iselle marry his brother Dondo. In addition to being a drunkard, cruel, a womanizer, and evil in other ways, he is also over twice Iselle's age. She does not want to marry him. Finally, in desperation, Cazaril decides that the only thing that he can do to stop the wedding is to pray that Dondo will die, and that he, Cazaril, will die simultaneously. In other words, he prays for death magic. Dondo does die, but, Cazaril does not, an unprecedented event. However, Dondo's soul, and the demon that took his life, are encapsulated in a tumor in Cazaril's abdomen. Somehow, this event gives Cazaril spiritual discernment found only in a few, and he sees that not only is the Roya cursed, but Iselle and other members of her family are, too.

Iselle decides, correctly, that she must take action to forestall any other evil marriages arranged by the chancellor. Her younger brother dies, as a result of an evil action suggested to him by Dondo, before Dondo's death. Iselle takes the body to Vallenda for burial, and sends Cazaril to Ibran, a nearby kingdom, to try to arrange a marriage with the heir of that kingdom. Cazaril succeeds in persuading the young man's father that this would be a good marriage, in part because it turns out that the prospective groom was the young slave that Cazaril tried to protect. Cazaril didn't know of the young man's position -- he was incognito at the time.

Cazaril is told that the only way that the curse can be lifted is if someone is willing to die three times to lift it.

Martou dy Jironal, seeing Iselle escaping from his influence, is enraged, and tries to kill Cazaril. When his sword enters his body, Cazaril has a vision of one of the gods of Chalion. But the sword thrust releases Dondo's soul, and the demon, and the demon kills chancellor Martou dy Jironal.

Cazaril has died three times, and been brought back to life by a supernatural intervention each time -- once as a galley slave, once when he prayed that Dondo would die, and once when Martou stabbed him. The curse is lifted, Iselle and her new husband begin what appears to be a just and good reign (her brother's action has led to the Roya's death) and Betriz insists that she wants to marry Cazaril (who has wanted to do this). A storybook ending.

A question that occurs, to Cazaril, or to his friends, at various points in the story, is the question of his free will. Has he been chosen to lift the curse, and start Iselle's reign, or did he do this on his own initiative? Did he have any choice in the matter? The question is not completely resolved, but it is clear that serving the gods has its costs, as well as its rewards.

The book is well written, with interesting characters and situations. I found it especially interesting because of its religious nature. In other words, I found the quotation from the Wikipedia article on the book, given above, to be accurate.

Thanks for reading.