David:     To prepare for this visit, Karen and I decided to do something different.

Karen:     Looking back on the many books we have read, we have each chosen one book that we would put in the category of life altering, at least for us.

David:     Okay, it sounded interesting.

Karen:     And let’s just say up front, we agreed not to pick the Bible. We all could do that, but a book other than the Bible.

Intro:      Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David:     Karen, you know, I found this to be a difficult assignment. I went through a number of books, and I think I probably should have said “Let’s talk about books, but that would take too long.” So, we narrowed it down each to a book, right?

Karen:     It’s true. Life altering books are worth both revisiting and talking about, and so that’s what we’re going to do in this podcast. We’re choosing one of those life altering books.

David:     Okay, I have chosen one and you can see as it’s kind of beaten up in a way.

Karen:     It’s hardly holding together. Its scotch taped. The binding is also sketchy.

David:     I have read this at least three times and I’ve referred to it many, many times. The writer is Roland Bayton. Bayton lived during my lifetime, died in 1984, born in 1894, just under 90 years old when he died.

Karen:     Was he English?

David:     He’s English born, but he basically was an American Protestant Church historian. He taught at Yale Divinity School.

Numbers of books. You can go to the internet, and you see that he wrote many of them. Probably his most famous one was the life of Martin Luther. He called it, “Here I Stand.”

Karen:     You thought highly of that book.

David:     Yeah, that was a very, very fine book, a large book. The one that I’m choosing to talk about is not nearly as big, but I like it because, well, I’ll talk about it and then you’ll see when I give an illustration from the book. It’s called “The Church of Our Fathers” and he dedicated this book to his children.

Karen:     He wrote it for them, I think. I heard you say.

David:     Yeah, he did. He wrote it for them and then as it kept selling, he decided to dedicate it anew to his grandchildren.

Karen:     That’s a lovely story.

David:     So, I’m going to choose just a little bit of a way here to read. You’ll see as I do this that he doesn’t use a lot of big words.

The Crusades as a part of history. So, he’s talking about church from its beginnings all through the generations, one after another and the decades and the centuries. One of the big stories in all of this was the Crusades and you can get books on the Crusades and their…

Karen:     …volumes.

David:     So, I’m just going to read a little section. He’s talking about a wide swath of history. And as he addresses the Crusades, he hits at the very core what’s going on. But he also does it in a way so that he will interest the children as they read this. Okay?

Accomplishments of a high order are to the credit of the church in the Middle Ages. It was the greatest force in the lives of men. To them it gave courage and hope and tried to guide their feet in the way of life. The church was neither perfectly good nor perfectly wise, but no other society tried so hard or did so much.

The church tried to keep the peace. The nobles were constantly fighting each other, wasting each other’s lands, destroying each other’s castles, and carrying off each other’s servants. Such practices were hard to stop. The church tried at least to limit them. The peace of God required that warfare at any time should be kept within certain bounds. There should be no attacks on the buildings of the church nor upon clergymen, pilgrims, merchants, women, and farmers, and cattle and farming tools should be spared.

The plan did not work any too well. The church made another attempt and sought to stop all warfare for part of the time. This plan was called the truce of God.

All fighting should cease from Wednesday evening to Monday morning and at certain seasons of the year, such as Advent, the month before Christmas, and Lent, the 40 days before Easter. Neither did this plan work very well.

Karen:     Why are we not surprised? Oh dear.

David:     The Pope then tried another way. If Christians would fight, let them not fight each other, but let them rather go against the enemies of the faith. Let them attack the Turks, a rough people who had recently adopted the faith of Muhammad and had broken into the Holy Land where Jesus had lived and died. The pilgrims who traveled to see the sacred places were maltreated by the Turks.

Pope Urban, himself a Frenchman, went to the town of Clermont in France and there called the nobles before him. In his stirring words he painted for them the terror of the Turks. “A cursed race”, he said, “has invaded the lands of the east. Christians are enslaved, tortured, killed. The swordsmen practice on them to see whether a neck can be cut in two with one blow. Churches are used as stables or wrecked or turned into Mohammedan mosques. The Church of the Blessed Savior Mary is in their hands. Who can take vengeance if not you who have won glory in arms, but you’re swollen with pride and cut each other to pieces. Come now to the defense of Christ. Forget feuds. Fight infidels. Before you is the standard bearer leading you to his war, the unseen standard bearer, even Christ.” And all the host shouted, “God wills it. God wills it.” The crusade had begun.

The word crusade comes from a word meaning cross, because the crusaders sewed upon their sleeves a cross in colored cloth. That winter the preparations were made. Under the blows of the blacksmith’s hammers, the hot iron clang and took shape as shields and swords, stirrups, and armor.

The host gathered from different parts and by different roads and seas crossed to the east. In the year 1099, Jerusalem was taken. The infidels were slaughtered, and the crusaders rejoiced in the church of the Holy Sepulcher where Christ was supposed to have been buried. But the Holy Land was easier to take than to hold. The Turks made fresh inroads. New crusades were sent against them. One of the best known is that of Richard the Lion-hearted, but no crusade was long successful. When three had failed, a boy in France named Stephen believed that Christ appeared to him and promised that what the grown-ups had been unable to do, the children should accomplish.

Let them trust not in their swords and their strong right arms, but in the Lord of Hosts, who would work miracles for them and cause the sea to roll back that they might pass on dry earth like Moses and the children of Israel when they walked through the Red Sea, dry shod on their way to the Promised Land. Stephen took his stand at the spot where pilgrims thronged and called to the children of France to join the new crusade. They came. By thousands they came. Their mothers and fathers could not hold them back. The news reached Germany and another boy named Nicholas issued the same call and to him also the children came. By thousands they came. A great host, mostly a boy, is about 12. Some girls.

The German children started first, marching up the Rhine and singing as they journeyed through the pleasant lands. Such songs as “Fair are the meadows, fairer still the woodlands, robed in the blooming garb of spring. Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer, who makes the woeful heart to sing.”

The way at first was not hard. The valley of the Rhine had towns and villages where food could be obtained, but when the children left the river to march through the forest of Switzerland, the country was not so well settled. Food was then hard to get. Robbers and wild beasts lurked in the woods and fell upon any who strayed from the host in search of nourishment.

At the length, the crest of the Alps loomed ahead. At the side of the craggy cliffs, some turned back. Others pressed forward only to leave their bones upon the alpine snows. Some thousands, however, made the climb in safety and came down upon the plains in northern Italy, over which they marched to the sea, but the sea did not roll back for them.

Broken-hearted, a number stopped right there and grew up to be Italians. The rest trudged on to Rome for the blessing of the Holy Father, who indeed blessed them, but told them to go home until they were older to fulfill their crusader vows. The children under Stephen marched through France to the coast, and for them also the sea did not open, but a way that seemed even better offered itself. Some kindly merchants placed their ships at the service of the children.

Here’s a picture of small crusading vessels. Seven ships the merchants had, and each would hold seven hundred men. Hence, there must have been about five thousand children. They boarded the ships and were not heard of again for eighteen years.

When a survivor released by the Sultan at Cairo was able to come home and tell what had happened, two vessels were driven by a storm upon the rocks and all on board perished. The kindly merchants turned out to be slave dealers, who sold all the children on the other five ships to the Mohammedans. But reported the survivor in all these years, I have not known one who was willing to lighten his lot as a slave by accepting the faith of Mohammed and denying Christ. They never saw the Holy Land, but they kept the faith.

Karen:     What a story!

David:     What Bayton does, he takes these huge events and then he puts them into language that even the children can hear. I don’t know how much this influenced us, Karen, but I’m thinking of all the books we have written. The ones that probably are going to survive are the children’s stories.

Karen:     The Tales of the Kingdom, three books. You’re right, I think that’s really true. Books don’t last, and these have been in the marketplace over celebrating the 40th year since they’re printed. So those books were written for children of all ages, I make that point. Every adult has a child with them. But I think you’re right to take the meaning of Christ and his kingdom and put it into story forms so that even a child could understand that there was something remarkable in the story. And older children kind of get that there’s meaning beneath the story. Adults and older high schoolers or college kids catch the symbolism and can name it. So yeah, right.

David:    I don’t know how much I was influenced by Bayton. But him regularly coming back saying, “What are the big ideas in terms of the century?” I’m always asking myself, “Am I getting across the big idea?” In fact, I think the big idea for this time is life-altering books are worth their revisiting and talking about. And I’m hoping that as people hear us and now it’s your turn, they’re going to say, you know, I’d like to go back and think what books really influenced my life and should I reread that?

Karen:     Yeah, I think we do need to reread them. Okay, well the book that I’ve chosen is one I happened to be reading. I think I suggested this topic to you because I was reading this book. So, I am not a mathematician as you know by any means. My skills at math are very rudimentary and are helped much by a calculator.

David:     I’m not laughing and I’m not saying anything.

Karen:     Wise man. But I am an ideal person and so I love to be challenged by ideas that are a little bit beyond my ordinary thought process. And so, we have a grandson who is in particle physics. He actually has a grant from Intel to get a master’s degree. And before this even started, Nathaniel, that’s his name, because he was obviously bent in this direction, I would start picking his brain. And I realized his interest in astrophysics and I thought, well at least I can read up in a rudimentary kind of way so I can ask the right questions and he can educate me.

So, I picked up John Polkinghorne, P-O-L-K-I-N-G-H-O-R-N-E. John Polkinghorne’s book, Quantum Physics and Theology and Unexpected Kinship. And I’ve read it four times.

David:     I’m trying to get his name again. What is the name?

Karen:     Polkinghorne, P-O-L-K-I-N-G-H-O-R-N-E. He is fellow and retired president, Queens College, Cambridge University. He was founding president of the International Society for Science and Religion. And in 2002, was awarded the Templeton Prize. And most of his writing that I can tell is on the kinship and that’s the subtitle, the Unexpected Kinship of Quantum Physics or Science and Theology. And one of the points that he makes that I think is remarkable is that the pursuit of both of those fields of learning or experience are the same. It is to find truth.

What is the meaning of truth? Now isn’t that an interesting premise in which to begin? Let me read a little bit off the back about Polkinghorn in his book.

Despite the differences of their subject matter, science and theology have a cousinly relationship. John Polkinghorne contends in his latest thought-provoking book. From his unique perspective as both theoretical physicist and Anglican priest, Polkinghorne considers aspects of quantum physics and theology and demonstrates that the two true seeking enterprises are engaged in an analogous rational technique of inquiry.

His exploration of the deep connections between science and theology shows with new clarity of a common kinship in the search for truth.

And as I was reading in this, I thought, of course, who created all the things that science studies? Who created it? It was the creator God? And who did that creator manifest himself as when he came in the human form? Jesus Christ, both son of God and man and God himself.

Those are impossible realities to reconcile. But we, as Christians, accepted it because it’s part of theology that we believe in and have grown up with. The Bible teaches us we learn it from cradle to grave and yet think of the implausibility of that. How do you explain what Jesus was? God and man.

David:     Yeah. It’s impossible.

Karen:     It’s impossible, but it’s a seemingly contradictory truth that we accept.

David:     Which is the truth of the universe.

Karen:     Yes. Same thing with the truth of the universe. I’m learning about it. So, there’s a theory that again, the light was wave, light was also a particle. And lots of back and forth on which is it. The truth is it’s both. So, we have in science, that’s a very rudimentary example of it because I’m just learning about all of this. But things that we have learned to accept just because they’re there and we’ve lived with them so long.

David:     You’ve almost chosen the exact opposite of what I was doing.

Karen:     Something simple for children.

David:     All of a sudden, you’re into a mind boggling. Does he make it so that when you read it, you can understand what he’s saying?

Karen:     This is my fourth read through of this book. One title is comparative heuristics. But as you will see, if you look at my book, the first reading my underlines were straight ruler lines. And then the next reading was wavy lines. I went to a yellow form. Oh, my goodness. But what it has done is it has expanded my thinking in a way I would never have thought without him.

David:     You’re coming into the world of mystery.

Karen:     Yeah. Oh, thank you so much. Yes. I’m entering into the world of mystery. And that, of course, is a huge theological resting place. I think you and I were raised in backgrounds of a theology that felt like it could get all the answers and codify them, and that people then would all understand all the answers. And there is a lot of that, I mean, in faith. But there are also these extraordinary mysteries. How could we possibly think we would really know the mind of God as he’s created the world and the universe, which I understand is still expanding. The James Webb photo system now is catching glimpses of the universe way out there in the universe still expanding. It’s amazing.

How do we think that we could really understand it in its totality? Because that would be human, wouldn’t it? But we need the answers. And so, we come up with answers that comfort us and satisfy us without also holding on to the understanding this is a much bigger thing than we could possibly know. And that’s where the mystery enters in.

David:     Now, I read a section that people could pretty easily follow about the Crusades. I would like for you to just read a little and see if I can follow what you’re reading from his actual book.

Karen:     People sometimes think that it is odd or even just ingenuous for a person to be both a physicist and a priest. It induces in them the same sort of quizzical surprise that would greet the claim for someone to be a vegetarian butcher. Yet just someone like myself who is both a scientist and a Christian, it seems to be a natural and harmonious combination.

The basic reason is simply that science and theology are both concerned with the search for truth. In consequence, they complement each other rather than contrast each one another. That’s interesting, isn’t it?

Of course, the two disciplines focus on different dimensions of truth, but they share a common conviction that there is truth to be sought. There is a truth. Although in both kinds of inquiry, this truth will never be grasped totally and exhaustively. It can be approximated to an intellectually satisfying manner that deserves the adjective for similitude in us, even if it does not qualify to be described in an absolute sense as complete. Like there, we’ve got it figured out. Now we know what it is. And yeah, lovely.

David:     Okay, well, good enough.

Karen:     Nice that we had polar extremes here.

David:     Well, if I could understand at least the first couple paragraphs.

Karen:     Yeah.

David:     And now I’m assuming that he continues to be on that level as he likes. Otherwise, he’s lost the vast majority of your readers. But you never explore it to the degree where you say, “I’m really on top of that.” You just kind of get a little bit.

Karen:     Still learning. Okay, I got a little bit more of it this time. And I’m, you know, but then I, like I said, my conversations with Nathaniel, who is in this field, and he’ll say to me, “You’re the only one in the family who talks to me about these things.” It makes me feel so good that I can at least ask him questions and say, do I not explain to me what this means? And we’ve developed a really sweet relationship because of that.

I think that when we choose books, we do need to choose books that challenge us. My learning was cut off because I got married to this wonderful man, my college learning, but I’m a lifelong learner. I just love to study and to observe and to read and things that challenge me or take me deeper into the human experience.

I try to stay open minded and listen to all sides because I found that when I do that, there are things I haven’t thought about that I agree with on the other side. And so, my learning continues that way.

David:     Life altering books are worth both revisiting and talking about. And I’m hoping that we have kind of wetted the appetite of people to go back and say, “What were some of those books that meant a whole lot to me? And why was that? And should I revisit it again?”

Karen:     Maybe I should reread them.

David:     Okay, I found it helpful. I hope they do as well.

Outro:     You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all-lower-case letters, hosts@beforewego.show.

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