Friday, December 16, 2011 - Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Location: At Home
Task #1
I guess my purpose for putting this task on my list originally was to simply force myself to give biographies a chance. Generally, those of you who know me know, I can tend to form hard and fast opinions about whether or not I like something, often with very little evidence/support for my reasoning - and would cling to my own rationale with a fierce pride driven stubbornness. Well, I for some reason decided I hated biographies. I refuse to read them, think that the personal lives of JFK or Eleanor Roosevelt for example were no more important, fascinating, or relevant than that of the juvenile delinquents that get dropped off at elmwood park hs at the end of my block. So when I put "read a biographic novel" on my list I assumed my blog entry after completing the task would start of with something like this "I was wrong" or "Biographies, where have you been all my life?" Or even, "Never again."
But instead of reciting the pros and cons of biographies in general (which I will get to) I feel more compelled to talk about the story I read and where it sent my mind a wandering. I chose to read Heaven is for Real on a suggestion. The book sounded touching and inspirational. And the fact that it was about a little boy, instead of alleged important adults I thought it would be a fun read.
The general premise is based on a little boy named Colton, son of a Pastor, in Imperial, Nebraska. Colton, not even 4 yrs old, undergoes emergency appendectomy surgery and claimes to visit Heaven while he is under anesthesia.
I was really looking forward to reading this book, thinking that I would be uttely convinced, that the story would be so compelling, told from a child's perspective, but, instead, I found myself getting angry. I was mostly angry at how STUPID this poor kid's parents are. In the beginning of the book Colton is very sick, and the country bumkin doctors tell them it's the flu, and he gets a little better for a couple of days. But while on a family trip he gets extremely sick again. Friends keep telling Colton's parents to take him to the children's hospital near by in a major city, but they, being the lazy morons that they are, decide to drive three hours back home before rushing him back to the same hospital that originally told them it was the flu. Needless to say they eventually get a correct diagnosis, but still have to take him to the children's hospital they should have been at all along.
I was seething at this point. I get it, the flu was going around, Colton sister was sick (one night and fine the next morning), but virtual strangers could tell there was something severely wrong with this kid and his own parents didn't think he needed to get to a hospital!
I think that tainted me on anything the father said from that point on - he was the author of the book. Not to mention before he even got into his son's story he spent a chapter complaining about a broken leg and some kidney stones. Perhaps God thought he needed some perspective. Ok ok, he had a cyst they thought could have been cancer, but they did a lumpectomy and it wasn't - buck up buddy... Jeez.
Anyway, I already found it a little difficult not to judge the parents after the intitial hospital debacle, and then the father goes on to admit how some of the questions he asked Colton about his visit to Heaven were leading. He said after he realized this, they were strict about not doing so again. But it still seemed, as the story went on, the questions were leading to a certain extent.
Initially, Colton randomly told them about his experience. Not giving much detail, not explaining. But the parents generally were the ones to bring it up. It's been my experience that kids will make up details and facts ( espeically at 4yrs old) when asked pointed questions about something they did or where they went.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there's no way this actually happened. Logic aside, I believe miraculous things can happen. It's just that this story was a bit of a stretch - at least parts of it. Many of the details Colton told his parents could have been what he learned in Sunday school or at home, considering his father was a Pastor. His father claimed, however, the things Colton spoke of were too advanced for Colton to have learned at Sunday school or through the stories they read at home. But the terms in which Colton spoke were simple yet fantastic to a kid, the meaning put behind them came from his father, and the inferred meaning could simply have been coincidence.
There were, however, three anecdotes in the book I will admit were at least somewhat convincing.
1. Someone sent Todd an email of an article from CNN. It was about a girl who never went to church, went to public school (she may have been home schooled, I can't remember), and whose mother was an athiest.
This girl claimed to have a similar experience as Colton, and after he experience she decided to paint what she had seen. Her paintings were amazing, they called her a child prodigy.
One of her paintings was of the face of Jesus. Now Colton's family had a little game going the previous year or so. They would point out pictures of Jesus that they came across and ask Colton if it looked right. Every picture Colton saw he said something was off. Either the hair was too long, the clothes were wrong, something in every single picture he saw since his surgery. When his father saw the photo of this young girl's paiting, he asks Colton, "What's wrong with this one?"
Colton looks at the picture and said, "That one's right" Apparently this girl he'd never met, had gotten it right somehow.
2. While in Heaven Colton said he met his father's grandpa. When they showed him pictures of him, Colton said that wasn't him, that no one is old in Heaven. So Todd asked his mother to send pictures of her father when he was young.
(Supposedly) Without anyone pointing him out, never seeing the photo or any photo of the young version of his great grandfather, Colton was able to identify him as a young man, saything that was the "Pop" he met in Heaven.
3. Lastly was the story of his second sister. Before Colton was born, his mother miscarried. Colton said he met his unborn sister in Heaven. This shocked his parents since Todd and Sonja( his mother) never learned the sex of the baby. He told them that she looked like his other sister, but with dark hair, and that she didn't have a name because his parents never gave her one.
Todd and Sonja were also shocked because they had decided not to tell Colton about the miscarriage, he was too young to understand still. However, they did tell his older sister. So there is a chance that Colton heard the story without even his parents knowing it.
But if it is true he hadn't heard about it, and that's a big "if", the anecdote is pretty incredible.
The thing about biographies is that you never know what's being left out. You never know how facts and details are skewed and colored to come off a certain way, to make a certain point that is otherwise simply not there.
It takes a lot of faith in the author to believe that the story is factual. And in this case, being that the author is a Pastor, and has a preconceived notion about the subject matter and a stake in whether or not people believe it. He may also have an intrinsic predisposition to believe it himself, because he is a Pastor and because this is his son's story. Therefore, it's difficult not to believe Todd wrote this with an angle of bias, and perhaps even ulterior motives.
Maybe I am too cynical, but in reading this book I discovered the author's motives is part of why I don't like reading biographies. The other part is that I tend to get bored by them, or simply don't have an interest in the subject. This book was not boring per se, but I found myself saying "and...?", questioning the conclusions the author drew, the assumptions he made. And at the end of the book, I thought, "That's it?". It felt like something was missing, like I'd missed the punch line, or as if this was a you-had-to-be-there kind of situation. Perhaps it would have helped if the details of Colton's visit didn't come out over such a long stretch. He never sat down with his parents and said, "This is what happened when I was in surgery" He never gave them a "full story". It was more bits and pieces that he threw out in conversation, or in questions he answered, or sometimes throguh random outbursts. I felt totally misled by the reviews printed on the cover and in the openning pages - "Compelling and convincing" it said... Hmmm, I'm not so sure.
Location: At Home
Task #1
I guess my purpose for putting this task on my list originally was to simply force myself to give biographies a chance. Generally, those of you who know me know, I can tend to form hard and fast opinions about whether or not I like something, often with very little evidence/support for my reasoning - and would cling to my own rationale with a fierce pride driven stubbornness. Well, I for some reason decided I hated biographies. I refuse to read them, think that the personal lives of JFK or Eleanor Roosevelt for example were no more important, fascinating, or relevant than that of the juvenile delinquents that get dropped off at elmwood park hs at the end of my block. So when I put "read a biographic novel" on my list I assumed my blog entry after completing the task would start of with something like this "I was wrong" or "Biographies, where have you been all my life?" Or even, "Never again."
But instead of reciting the pros and cons of biographies in general (which I will get to) I feel more compelled to talk about the story I read and where it sent my mind a wandering. I chose to read Heaven is for Real on a suggestion. The book sounded touching and inspirational. And the fact that it was about a little boy, instead of alleged important adults I thought it would be a fun read.
The general premise is based on a little boy named Colton, son of a Pastor, in Imperial, Nebraska. Colton, not even 4 yrs old, undergoes emergency appendectomy surgery and claimes to visit Heaven while he is under anesthesia.
I was really looking forward to reading this book, thinking that I would be uttely convinced, that the story would be so compelling, told from a child's perspective, but, instead, I found myself getting angry. I was mostly angry at how STUPID this poor kid's parents are. In the beginning of the book Colton is very sick, and the country bumkin doctors tell them it's the flu, and he gets a little better for a couple of days. But while on a family trip he gets extremely sick again. Friends keep telling Colton's parents to take him to the children's hospital near by in a major city, but they, being the lazy morons that they are, decide to drive three hours back home before rushing him back to the same hospital that originally told them it was the flu. Needless to say they eventually get a correct diagnosis, but still have to take him to the children's hospital they should have been at all along.
I was seething at this point. I get it, the flu was going around, Colton sister was sick (one night and fine the next morning), but virtual strangers could tell there was something severely wrong with this kid and his own parents didn't think he needed to get to a hospital!
I think that tainted me on anything the father said from that point on - he was the author of the book. Not to mention before he even got into his son's story he spent a chapter complaining about a broken leg and some kidney stones. Perhaps God thought he needed some perspective. Ok ok, he had a cyst they thought could have been cancer, but they did a lumpectomy and it wasn't - buck up buddy... Jeez.
Anyway, I already found it a little difficult not to judge the parents after the intitial hospital debacle, and then the father goes on to admit how some of the questions he asked Colton about his visit to Heaven were leading. He said after he realized this, they were strict about not doing so again. But it still seemed, as the story went on, the questions were leading to a certain extent.
Initially, Colton randomly told them about his experience. Not giving much detail, not explaining. But the parents generally were the ones to bring it up. It's been my experience that kids will make up details and facts ( espeically at 4yrs old) when asked pointed questions about something they did or where they went.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there's no way this actually happened. Logic aside, I believe miraculous things can happen. It's just that this story was a bit of a stretch - at least parts of it. Many of the details Colton told his parents could have been what he learned in Sunday school or at home, considering his father was a Pastor. His father claimed, however, the things Colton spoke of were too advanced for Colton to have learned at Sunday school or through the stories they read at home. But the terms in which Colton spoke were simple yet fantastic to a kid, the meaning put behind them came from his father, and the inferred meaning could simply have been coincidence.
There were, however, three anecdotes in the book I will admit were at least somewhat convincing.
1. Someone sent Todd an email of an article from CNN. It was about a girl who never went to church, went to public school (she may have been home schooled, I can't remember), and whose mother was an athiest.
This girl claimed to have a similar experience as Colton, and after he experience she decided to paint what she had seen. Her paintings were amazing, they called her a child prodigy.
One of her paintings was of the face of Jesus. Now Colton's family had a little game going the previous year or so. They would point out pictures of Jesus that they came across and ask Colton if it looked right. Every picture Colton saw he said something was off. Either the hair was too long, the clothes were wrong, something in every single picture he saw since his surgery. When his father saw the photo of this young girl's paiting, he asks Colton, "What's wrong with this one?"
Colton looks at the picture and said, "That one's right" Apparently this girl he'd never met, had gotten it right somehow.
2. While in Heaven Colton said he met his father's grandpa. When they showed him pictures of him, Colton said that wasn't him, that no one is old in Heaven. So Todd asked his mother to send pictures of her father when he was young.
(Supposedly) Without anyone pointing him out, never seeing the photo or any photo of the young version of his great grandfather, Colton was able to identify him as a young man, saything that was the "Pop" he met in Heaven.
3. Lastly was the story of his second sister. Before Colton was born, his mother miscarried. Colton said he met his unborn sister in Heaven. This shocked his parents since Todd and Sonja( his mother) never learned the sex of the baby. He told them that she looked like his other sister, but with dark hair, and that she didn't have a name because his parents never gave her one.
Todd and Sonja were also shocked because they had decided not to tell Colton about the miscarriage, he was too young to understand still. However, they did tell his older sister. So there is a chance that Colton heard the story without even his parents knowing it.
But if it is true he hadn't heard about it, and that's a big "if", the anecdote is pretty incredible.
The thing about biographies is that you never know what's being left out. You never know how facts and details are skewed and colored to come off a certain way, to make a certain point that is otherwise simply not there.
It takes a lot of faith in the author to believe that the story is factual. And in this case, being that the author is a Pastor, and has a preconceived notion about the subject matter and a stake in whether or not people believe it. He may also have an intrinsic predisposition to believe it himself, because he is a Pastor and because this is his son's story. Therefore, it's difficult not to believe Todd wrote this with an angle of bias, and perhaps even ulterior motives.
Maybe I am too cynical, but in reading this book I discovered the author's motives is part of why I don't like reading biographies. The other part is that I tend to get bored by them, or simply don't have an interest in the subject. This book was not boring per se, but I found myself saying "and...?", questioning the conclusions the author drew, the assumptions he made. And at the end of the book, I thought, "That's it?". It felt like something was missing, like I'd missed the punch line, or as if this was a you-had-to-be-there kind of situation. Perhaps it would have helped if the details of Colton's visit didn't come out over such a long stretch. He never sat down with his parents and said, "This is what happened when I was in surgery" He never gave them a "full story". It was more bits and pieces that he threw out in conversation, or in questions he answered, or sometimes throguh random outbursts. I felt totally misled by the reviews printed on the cover and in the openning pages - "Compelling and convincing" it said... Hmmm, I'm not so sure.
