Health, Money, and Love: And Why We Don't Enjoy Them

To be sure, this is an unconventional book... but what can you expect from Robert Capon? A rich and odd send-up of all of those self-help books, which ultimately nails one of the points Capon has been making all along: as humans we are hopelessly religious and idolotrous, and if we could just get it through our thick heads that Jesus was decidedly disinterested in that sort of nonsense we'd be able to get on with the party. It's fun, but also more than a little unsettling.

After reading the entire Bible more than once and almost all of Robert Farrar Capon's books (a handful of those more than once), I have come to the conclusion that Jesus and Father Capon have at least one salient personalitiy trait in common - they both love to shock people - jar us out of our complacency.In this book, Capon's opening gambit is to declare religion "no fun" (it's all creed, cult and conduct after all), and that its bailiwick is a false parallel universe, that you can make a religion of anything (especially health, money and love) and that Christianity isn't a religion. It's the end of religion because of free grace and besides, "...there is not a properly religious act in the Christian 'religion'""Our confessions do not earn us forgiveness: we had it all along by Jesus' gift. Our prayers do not con God into being gracious: he conned himself on the cross. Our Eucharists do not cause Jesus to show up in a place from which he was absent: he is already everywhere - in all the fullness of his reconciling work - before the service starts." And our baptisms! Oh man, our baptisms "...do not divide the world into the saved (us, inside) and the lost (them, outside)."But I'll try to just let you turn that corner of this fertile valley yourself and not give away the punchline. You should get it from the Capon's mouth (definitely worth the ride).But I could give you a clue on the infrastructure. Religion, you see, "...operates in a self-originated, parallel world rather than in the world as originated by God" (and as the author always reminds us, there is no ontological evil). Not only that, but the principal device by which original sin works is religion. If you think this is outrageous, read the book and see what an open and shut case it really is. Although the author's style is light, bantering, direct and engaging all at once, he doesn't say anything he says lightly. Lightfully, but not lightly.My favorite little crosshatch is his interpretation of the Book of Job. Like his take on Luke 16, the unjust steward, I think Capon's cake that he bakes on his take is where it's at."But the fact is," says Capon of Job, "...it is God in person who finally confronts Job - and that Job is finally able to fall in love with God rather than with religion - is what makes all the difference."At the beginning, everybody (Job included) is religious. As a result of Job's afflictions, he falls out of love with the system of control. He loses his religion. His so-called friends spend 34 chapters pushing religion. When God shows up, he speaks only to Job, "...because Job alone has finally gotten out of the false, parallel universe and into the real one that God himself has made." And Job is vindicated. And he gets sort of reimbursed "...just for accepting the real God of the real world rather than conjuring with the gods of the parallel universe.""Do you see?" says the author, "Job starts out in rel