2022/08/26

'Sheep Among Wolves': Documentary looks at fast-growing Christian movement in Iran, led by women | Entertainment News

'Sheep Among Wolves': Documentary looks at fast-growing Christian movement in Iran, led by women

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor

A documentary film released Friday examines the recent growth of Christianity in Iran, especially among women.

“Sheep Among Wolves: Volume II” will premiere as a two-hour livestream on Facebook and YouTube Friday that will include a question-and-answer segment featuring people involved in the production of the documentary.

The film by FAI Studios is a follow-up to an earlier documentary about Christian evangelism in the Islamic world, “Sheep Among Wolves: Volume I,” which was released in 2015 and centered on underground churches.

FAI Studios is part of Frontier Alliance International, a missionary organization that seeks to advance Christianity in parts of the world lacking a Christian presence. They draw inspiration from Romans 15:20, in which Paul of Tarsus wrote that he sought to “lay foundations for the Gospel where there are none.”

In an extended trailer posted to YouTube in July, FAI said their newest film features “stories from the fastest growing and largest church in the world, from one of the worst places in the world to be a Christian.”

“Muslim-background Iranians are leading a quiet but mass exodus out of Islam and bowing their knees to the Jewish Messiah—with kindled affection toward the Jewish people,” FAI says in the video.

“The Iranian awakening is a rapidly-reproducing discipleship movement that owns no property, no buildings, has no budget, no 501c3 status or any identifier that the church in the west says you must have, and is predominantly led by women.”

According to a website setup for the film, the makers of the documentary will not receive any money for their efforts. Rather, all donations will go to Christians in Iran.

In recent years, many have noted the growth of Christianity in Iran, despite at times extreme persecution on the part of the Islamic Republic.

Mike Ansari, president of Heart4Iran Ministries, told The Christian Post in an interview last October that “Iranian converts to Christianity have been systematically arrested and persecuted as heretics.”

Ansari identified the “historic and organic growth of Christianity inside Iran” as being “one of the fastest growing underground church movements in the world.”

“However, with church growth comes persecution. Iranian Muslims who become Christian face arbitrary arrest and detention,” Ansari said.

“Most of the arrested individuals are coerced to divulge information about their house-church activities and those of their friends, under the threat of criminal persecution, or arrest of family members.”

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Sheep Among Wolves - Friends Journal

Sheep Among Wolves - Friends Journal

Sheep Among Wolves

March 1, 2022

By Jade Rockwell

Spiritual Dynamics that Enable Abuse

Several years back, the yearly meeting I was then a member of was sued.
The lawsuit came as a surprise, and revealed that a youth pastor, who had been beloved and celebrated for many years, had sexually abused a teen in his ministry. This teen—now a grown man—was holding the yearly meeting responsible for the damages he continued to suffer years later as a result of the abuse.

The yearly meeting embarked on a discipline process with the pastor. The pastor cooperated with what was termed a “restoration” process, which required—among other actions—full disclosure about any incidents of abuse that he was responsible for. He claimed there had only been one victim. In exchange for what he agreed was the full truth, and with other boundaries placed on him, his recording as a minister was restored.

Then, other victims came forward. It turned out the pastor had not been honest. The restoration of his recording was subsequently reversed.

My yearly meeting did something which went against what overwhelming research and expertise on abuse would recommend, but something which I have since learned is commonplace among Friends—we based our actions on a known abuser’s own testimony and our feelings toward that person instead of on our commitment to the safety of vulnerable people.

Like many meetings, we were reactive. It was only with these devastating disclosures and the subsequent legal counsel that our yearly meeting began to take seriously our legal and moral responsibility to ensure that no child or vulnerable adult was abused while under the care of our ministries.

Last fall I began working on a committee tasked with developing an abuse prevention policy for my current yearly meeting, a newly formed one which is in the early stages of formalizing processes and commitments. Because of the gravity of the issues, we decided to work with an organization that consults with faith communities on abuse prevention policies. Additionally, over the past few months, I began interviewing Quakers who already have created such policies. In the unprogrammed, evangelical, and pastoral Friends interviewed, I found similar patterns: most Friends meetings are unprepared to prevent or respond to abuse until they have their first disclosure. Even after, many meetings fail to take appropriate action.

I’ve spoken with a number of Friends who are social workers, prevention specialists, or had professional expertise as researchers and educators on sexual abuse. Many of these Friends feel that their input is unwelcome in their meetings’ process and are afraid to speak up. Meetings often opted not to avail themselves of information, research, or professional advice. Where this information or expertise came up, it was often regarded as suspicious, secular, unspiritual, or biased. In a number of stories that were shared with me, Friends undermined the development of policies—or even covered up or overlooked past incidents of abuse.

It is my opinion that the root of these problems is, largely, theological and spiritual. Lacking robust theology, communities center on a vulnerable, vague, and underdeveloped theology surrounding forgiveness and redemption. This lack combined with great ambivalence about the role of oversight in meetings has created a perfect storm: unsafe conditions where abuse can and does occur under the cover of the Religious Society of Friends.

Some of the issues that came up are common to the general public. For example, it is common for people to have a poor understanding of sex-offending behaviors and dynamics—particularly the “grooming” of community members—or to have misunderstandings about the root causes of abuse.

But additionally, I found vulnerabilities that are specific to Friends: our ambivalence about oversight, resistance to formalization of policies, and overreliance on personal relationships in lieu of systems and clear expectations. Believing that there is that of God in everyone is a difficult thing to square with the very disturbing actions of abuse, which are often far more calculated and sadistic than many people can imagine.

In researching existing policies, I was surprised to find that a great many meetings lack so much as a minimal background check policy, let alone the kinds of best practices ubiquitous among churches in this age of abuse scandals. Perhaps we think it can’t happen in our small communities where we know and trust one another. But the fact is that it does; we often never find out about it.

Many of the meeting policies that were developed after disclosure of abuse are not based on expert recommendations. I learned that the development and implementation of these policies was sometimes undermined by bitter conflicts and committee standstills, at times spanning years. Where new policies were implemented, they were often explosive: causing deep pain, destruction of trust, and sometimes splits of meetings. However, having adopted a written policy did not mean that the policy was implemented; in several communities, implementation was inconsistent or unenforced.

The issue was most divisive in communities that had welcomed a known sexual abuser, or discovered the presence of one in the community. Conflict centered on how to rightly balance the commitment to the spiritual needs of the individual who had committed the abuse with commitment to children and other vulnerable members, including adult survivors. The attempt by meetings to simultaneously minister to the distinct needs of these groups, combined with Friends’ reticence to implement boundaries and oversight, contributed to dangerous conditions in meetings.

Ambivalence about Oversight

In a November 2021 post, Quaker blogger Lynn Fitz-Hugh wrote on her blog, A Friendly Seeker:

For over 300 years Friends have had Ministry and Oversight committees or just Oversight or just Pastoral Care, or Care and Concerns. Recently Friends have begun to shed the term “oversight” for its cultural insensitivity. Really the purpose of the committee, however named, is to do pastoral care.

The term “oversight” is being done away with in some meetings because the word—a job title also used on plantations—is tainted by its association with the horrors of slavery. The way Lynn Fitz-Hugh describes it, however, doing away with the word is mostly an afterthought. Oversight is not really what the committee does, as she understands it; rather the committee’s job is to offer pastoral care.

I asked Quaker historian Steve Angell to talk about this change among Friends:

I think the key part of the word “oversight” is the prefix “over.” It suggests a spiritual hierarchy that many Friends these days are not comfortable with, and the cultural aspects may be just one facet of that.

Earlier Friends had both ministers and elders: Friends who were named as leaders, recognized for their wisdom and insight. Friends believed that the meeting would benefit from these leaders “looking over” it, giving helpful counsel and gentle correction as needed. In some meetings, a committee is still recognized in this capacity. In pastoral meetings, pastors may have some duties of oversight in their role. In almost any meeting, however, there exists at least some tension between the equality testimony and the duty of eldering. Friends have been aware of potential abuses of power since our earliest days; hence, oversight has always been a tricky thing.

While Angell views the dissolution of oversight among liberal Friends as a positive step, he concedes that it may assume an unrealistic equality. “I doubt that, within the Quaker meeting context, there is anything like absolute equality in spiritual wisdom.”

Meetings that reject oversight—a dynamic that I saw come up in all branches of Friends—have the most uncomfortable time confronting the dynamics of abuse, especially when they desire to welcome abusers into their midst. The meeting is at risk when vulnerable people and abusers coexist, and when it is assumed that authority and trust are distributed equally without regard for a person’s history, experience, or wisdom.

Judy*, a Friend and longtime social worker, explains:

The personality . . . issues that lead to sex offenses are such that lifelong recovery efforts are in order. It is not [the kind of problem that gets] “fixed” at some point, and that person gets a clean slate. My training and experience . . . [indicates] that a person with sex offender history needs behavioral monitoring, not only for the appropriate interactions with their target victim population, but also for eliminating any opportunities to exercise power and control of persons, places, or things.

While Judy’s perspective was largely rejected by her meeting, it is consistent with statistics about long-term recidivism rates among those who have sexually abused. In the years when an offender is most likely to be registered and monitored, recidivism rates are relatively low. However, after people who have offended are no longer under monitoring and treatment, the rates are astonishingly high. This suggests that when monitoring ends, most abusers will re-offend, even 20 years after a crime.

Friends’ discomfort with oversight is reflected both in our theological language and focus and also in our actions (or inaction) in the form of policies. Some Friends I spoke with commented about their own inner conflict over the idea of implementing policies because of the belief in “that of God,” of a call to Christian forgiveness, or for redemption for perpetrators of abuse.

Mary, an unprogrammed Friend and former sex educator struggled with the issue of forgiveness, which she felt had been neglected in her meeting:

There’s a piece we never ever talked about, about forgiveness. That’s not a word I have heard in my Quaker community. . . . I hear it in [other Christian] communities. But we don’t talk about forgiveness, that people can change; you and I can make a mistake, and we can change; we can own up and apologize.

Friends who advocated for strict policies, on the other hand, did not see them as conflicting with core Friends’ beliefs.

Judy argues that real love for the perpetrator demands such policies:

I truly believe from the depths of my soul that the most loving thing you can do is to hold them strictly accountable and monitor and hold them. When you don’t believe that, it gets a little shaky. You have to know, practically and therapeutically, that’s the best thing for this person’s character problems—their personality disorder.

In my interviews, I heard shocking stories of revelations of abuse and of meetings who tried to respond, only to find themselves incapacitated by conflict. In each situation, the abuser was a person loved, trusted, and respected in their community. This follows the classic pattern of abuse behaviors: “The first likely entry into access to children or vulnerable populations [is] grooming the gatekeepers—the grownups in the room—and so gain access to people to victimize,” says Ashley, a social worker and Friends youth pastor.

“I was overwhelmed by the task of breaking through denial and minimization due to lack of information and understanding of the issues,” recalled Judy about her efforts to educate her meeting on sex-offender typology and treatment:

A man went so far as to say, “You’re dangerous. You’re dangerous to the meeting.” That kind of backlash is sitting there, like a viper, to get you. It feels like it just kept rising up, this visceral reaction that the men and women who supported [the sex offender] had.

Similarly, Ashley reflected, “I was called ‘That Woman.’ I was called ‘the witch-hunt person’ . . . just for trying to get dangerous people from places of power.”

Lacking robust theology, communities center on a vulnerable, vague, and underdeveloped theology surrounding forgiveness and redemption. This lack combined with great ambivalence about the role of oversight in meetings has created a perfect storm: unsafe conditions where abuse can and does occur under the cover of the Religious Society of Friends.
Leadership structures: For good or ill?

Within these dynamics, formalized leadership can be a double-edged sword. Pastoral and evangelical meetings raised issues of unaccountable pastors, while solutions and the most comprehensive policies I encountered also came from pastors, particularly ones with expertise in abuse prevention.

Mary told me:

I’m beginning to think there’s a lot of gifts in having a pastor, who has training in this kind of thing. . . . We needed somebody with some experience and wisdom, and we did not have that person in the meeting. . . . We kind of kept being stuck because we didn’t have [those] capacities.

Pastors, on the other hand, are not always supportive of policy, sometimes using their role to stand in the way. One person I interviewed noted that the most resistance on background checks came from pastors, while volunteers and members largely supported the change.

Even pastoral Friends meetings tend to reject much of the formality of leadership roles and structures. Less formalized leadership roles can also result in less formalized vetting and accountability of the people in these roles.

I observed this in the story of one unprogrammed meeting that put a man with a history of violent serial rape in the position of treasurer and of serving on the worship committee. This individual’s criminal history would have precluded him from being employed in many types of work—certainly as a pastor—so this was a situation where, ironically, the informality of the role made it easier for an offender to be placed in a position of trust, decision-making power, and visibility.

I do not totally blame my former yearly meeting’s elders for failing to recognize how the pastor’s behaviors of omission and dishonesty follow the classic pattern of sex-offender manipulation. Nor do I blame the well-intentioned people I talked with in other meetings who disclosed similar stories of Friends being manipulated. Friends were often put in positions to decide these matters without themselves receiving reasonable vetting and training to prepare them for the task.

Resources in the world of Friends are scarce on these issues, and most of our meetings are poor models for how to protect the vulnerable.

However, I am deeply grieved when our spirituality is misused to justify these kinds of actions. We are not made more spiritual by our avoidance of research and professional resources that are available on this topic. True Friends spirituality is and always has been rooted in honest appraisal of reality: it is faith and practice in integrity with one another.

A well-discerned, Spirit-led ministry does not have to endanger the vulnerable or enable abuse. If we think that such actions are more loving, we misunderstand what love really is. In Matthew 10:16, we are called to be “shrewd as serpents, harmless as doves.” Our love must be informed by reality and judged by its impact, not its intent.

* When partial names have been used they have been changed for privacy reasons.
Further Resources:Wise as Serpents, Harmless as Doves: A Spiritual Approach to Abuse Prevention in Friends Meetings by Jade Rockwell

Correction: Lynn Fitz-Hugh’s name was misspelled in the print edition and an earlier version of this online article. We apologize for the error.

March 2022
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Jade Rockwell

Jade Rockwell (formerly Souza) lives in Richmond, Ind. She is a member of Camas (Wash.) Friends Church of Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends. She has been an attender of both unprogrammed and pastoral meetings and served as a Friends pastor to children and families. She is an MDiv student at Earlham School of Religion. She is expecting her fourth child.

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7 thoughts on “Sheep Among Wolves”

Carol McCoy
Hilltown, PA, March 18, 2022 at 1:40 pm

Thank you for addressing this very important issue and giving it the attention it needs. I agree most Friends are not skilled to handle such situations. More needs to be done at a national level in Friends meetings. Please also include the signs of children and adults being abused at home and trying to find a safe place in a faith community. This organization has trainings which could be led at individual meetings https://www.d2l.org/education/prevention-training/
Reply

Jade Rockwell
RICHMOND, IN, March 22, 2022 at 12:04 pm

Thank you. Darkness to Light is an excellent resource for Meetings.
Reply

Susan Chast
Philadelphia PA, March 18, 2022 at 4:35 pm

You opened the problem wide. I hope your book provides models and answers.
Reply

Jade Rockwell
RICHMOND, IN, March 22, 2022 at 11:49 am

Thank you.
Sometimes it is difficult to discern the direction to take with a big topic like this. My leading was that an alarm needed to be sounded. There is also great need for models.
In the PDF at the bottom of the article there is a simple model that I created for a monthly meeting that wants to begin a process of developing policies. You are free to use this if it is helpful.
There are more comprehensive models available-see the interview with Britain Yearly Meeting this month as well. https://www.friendsjournal.org/building-a-culture-of-safety/ Building a Culture of Safety - Friends Journal

Ideally I think Yearly Meetings do well to work with professional consultants such as Darkness to Light mentioned above, or the one we are working with, Safe Communities safecommunitiespa.org and then the Yearly Meeting can become both a resource and a system of accountability for monthly meetings. Many Monthly Meetings lack the will and/or the capacity to begin this process on their own.
The reality is that Yearly Meetings can be held liable for the failures of Monthly Meetings to prevent harm. Of course, protecting the Meeting is a secondary concern to the most important thing which is protecting people in our Meetings from abuse.
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Michelle Wilkins
Blacksburg, VA, March 20, 2022 at 5:57 pm

We began from a policy created by the Baltimore Yearly Meeting and adapted it to our small Meeting’s needs. The rigorous policy put forward by the Yearly meeting took awhile to implement but opened our eyes to things we hadn’t thought of or thought we didn’t have resources for. But ultimately, we just plain needed to make a few changes for the love of our children and the care of ourselves as teachers. After the point made about the ability of abusers to groom the adults for acceptance, I’m not sure that our “known to us for one year” policy is strong enough even with a background check.
Reply

Jade Rockwell
RICHMOND,IN, March 22, 2022 at 12:02 pm

It is wonderful that you began, that you found a model and that you took the time to both adapt it and adapt to it as a community. People often want a simple 5 step policy, but I think it is not really possible for that to work well. The community needs to engage with the issues through education and looking at different models to develop something that fits them, that is doable for them, that is responsive to their needs. All this takes time. A worship group of 10 older folks has very different needs than a Friends church of 500 people and many families and programs. Every Meeting does have a need for policy though.
The issue that you raise about grooming of community members is one of the most difficult for most people to navigate. Many who abuse are highly skilled at this and there are many misconceptions about how to spot abuse, what it’s causes are, etc. that contribute to people missing warning signs. A training from a professional about offender behaviors including grooming is a really worthwhile investment for your Meeting to make and can help everyone to be more aware of dynamics of concern.
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2022/08/25

The Meaning Of Life: A Very Short Introduction : Eagleton: Amazon.com.au: Books

The Meaning Of Life: A Very Short Introduction Paperback – 24 July 2008
by Eagleton (Author)
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'Philosophers have an infuriating habit of analysing questions rather than answering them', writes Terry Eagleton, who, in these pages, asks the most important question any of us ever ask, and attempts to answer it. So what is the meaning of life? In this witty, spirited, and stimulating inquiry, Eagleton shows how centuries of thinkers - from Shakespeare and Schopenhauer to Marx, Sartre and Beckett - have tackled the question. Refusing to settle for the bland and boring, Eagleton reveals with a mixture of humour and intellectual rigour how the question has become particularly problematic in modern times. Instead of addressing it head-on, we take refuge from the feelings of 'meaninglessness' in our lives by filling them with a multitude of different things: from football and sex, to New Age religions and fundamentalism. 'Many of the readers of this book are likely to be as sceptical of the phrase "the meaning of life" as they are of Santa Claus', he writes. But Eagleton contends that in a world where we need to find common meanings, it is important that we set about answering the question of all questions; and, in conclusion, he suggests his own answer. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
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`Review from previous edition The book's a little gem.' Suzanne Harrington, Irish Examiner (Cork) `Light hearted but never flippant.' The Guardian. `Wonders never cease. This is popular philosophy by an amateur in the best sense of the word, a man who clearly loves the stuff and writes plain English...[Eagleton] makes his case well and with a light touch.' The Guardian (Review) `It is a stimulating and often entertaining, if at times rather breathless, Cook's tour around the chief monuments of western philosophy and literature...The Meaning of Life is unusual and refreshing.' John Gray, The Independent `[Eagleton] makes his case well and with a light touch... I stand convinced.' Simon Jenkins, Guardian Book of the Week `A lively starting point for late-night debate.' John Cornwell, Sunday Times `Warm intellectual pleasure...meticulous treatment of the subject...It looks like Eagleton got it right.' Mario Pisani, The Financial Times `The name Terry Eagleton...assures us of stimulation, style, sparkling, sometimes acerbic, wit, and wide-ranging erudition. In other words he is eminently readable...[a] commendably pocket-sized book.' Gordon Parsons, Morning Star `With sparkling effrontery, panache, and deft footwork, Eagleton moves from ironic flippancy and caustic demolition to resolute affirmation.' Marina Warner

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Ahmad Sharabiani
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December 19, 2021
The Meaning of Life: َA Very Short Introductions (Very Short Introductions #186), Terry Eagleton

Terence Francis Eagleton is a British literary theorist, critic, and public intellectual. Eagleton has published over forty books, but remains best known for Literary Theory: An Introduction.

We have all wondered about The Meaning of Life. But is there an answer? And do we even really know what we're asking?

Terry Eagleton takes a stimulating and quirky look at this most compelling of questions: at the answers explored in philosophy and literature; at the crisis of meaning in modern times; and suggests his own solution to how we might rediscover meaning in our lives.

The meaning of life is that which we choose to give it.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز دهم ماه مارس سال2010میلادی

Title: The meaning of life; Author: Terry Eagleton; Translator: Abbas Mokhbar; Tehran, Age Publishing, 2018, on 223 pages; ISBN 9789643291693; The topic of life from British writers - 20th century

Is it correct to propose a general question, such as "the meaning of life", in a time when general answers and great meta-narratives have disappeared? The question about the meaning of life is a question that was raised mostly in the modern era, because in pre-modern societies, people looked for the answer to this question mostly in religion, and thought that religious doctrine, "the meaning of life." "He answers the human being on the earth, with the legend of creation, and the idea of the end, and the destiny of the holy destiny;

In the "post-modern" era, it is not encouraging to propose general answers, because most of the post-modernists considered the general answers to be "transcendent", and they were and still are, that human knowledge is "partial", and therefore, General questions and answers, such as the question about the "meaning of life", do not lead anywhere; In the book "The Meaning of Life", "Terry Eagleton" has criticized the answers to this question in "Cultures", "Schools", and "Great Thinkers", and in response to this question, is the "Meaning of Life" the same? , which is made in the way of life and actions of people? They come close to this answer, that "if our lives have a meaning, that meaning is what we give to life"; In his book, "The Meaning of Life", "Eagleton" seeks people, more than anything else, in "love for man", and describes love as "creating space for other flourishing"; The book "The Meaning of Life" in four chapters with the titles: "Questions and answers", "Question of meaning", "Eclipse of meaning" and "Is life what you make it?" It has been arranged

Date of update: 10/12/1399 AH; 09/27/1400 AH; A. Sherbiani
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Amen
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March 28, 2019
Eagleton bases his discussion on presenting three historical periods for the formation of meaning. In the pre-modern era, when the existence of God was considered self-evident, and basically the question of meaning did not arise much, and the question of meaning was actually a question of the level of faith. In the modern era, with the formation of secular mentality, man seeks to understand nature and history and universal aspects in life with a scientific method and enlightenment philosophy, which provide models for understanding meaning, but do not have metaphysical properties. And finally, the post-modern era, which criticizes modernity for considering universals such as science, nature, and history, putting them in the place of God, while the era of partial generalization is over and everyone makes their own meaning or gives meaning to their lives individually. Gives. Eagleton criticizes the intersection of such a postmodern approach and the results of progress in biological and evolutionary sciences; An approach that focuses on human beings and is the basis of a pluralist and liberal view in the post-industrial society

Therefore, by considering an Aristotelian approach to the problem of meaning, which mentions virtues and by accepting their non-individual properties, they go beyond the individual, he explores individualistic approaches in order to reach his desired conclusion. In this regard, the tragedy of meaning and nihilism of the modern era must be overcome, because that era has a historical memory of the past that assumed meaning and lost it all at once. The postmodern era is not the era of the decline of meaning, because it does not presuppose the existence of meaning and has no memory for it. Therefore, it can create new meanings. But Eagleton does not accept the formation of meaning in a vacuum because it is affected by the meanings made by others and in interaction with them, our meaning finds its existence.

These are the introductions that lead Eagleton to adopt a social and experience-oriented approach to meaning, an approach that obviously has a Marxist and collectivist characteristic and finally talks about the formation of meaning in the case of a larger whole (community) which basically follows There is no meaning, but a collective meaning beyond everyone's understanding appears in it. The factor that binds people together in such a context is love, a love that arises from the nature of human mortality, and according to Eagleton's definition, it is sacrificing a part of one's being for another, which if it happens to everyone, in such an exchange It creates new meanings. In my opinion, Alain Badiou's footprint is quite evident in such statements

Regardless of these thought-provoking discussions, Eagleton's complex and metaphorical language, sometimes full of irony, makes it difficult to understand the text and shows off his literary character. Linguistic discussions about the word meaning, especially in the second chapter, sometimes seem out of place and may not have definite functions at this time. In addition, Eagleton's Aristotelian approach, which appears in many places in the book, is consistent with his summary path, while the Platonic approach, which is the basis of many spiritual philosophies and traditional mysticisms, seems to be deliberately ignored. which somehow attack Eagleton's results, and Eagleton, whenever Matalhin's feet open to the subject, just passes it by with a sting and sarcasm and does not give an explanation for his opposition or neglect. Apart from instilling such a selective view on the history of dealing with meaning, reading the book is not without grace to understand a leftist approach to meaning in a material context and emphasizing its experience-centeredness to create material meaning.
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Ahmed Ibrahim
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November 7, 2018
"But if life has meaning, it is certainly not of the speculative kind. The meaning of life is not so much an assumption as a practice."

Is the question about the meaning of life his question is meaningful? Is it a general question question that many people can answer the same? Certainly not, and this is what the writer is dealing with here.
In the first chapter the books begin to raise the question and show its illogicality and that it is nothing but a meaningless linguistic manipulation, and the problem of language has occupied our modern times until we no longer find any outlet from it, the problem of language in contemporary philosophy is what Terry Eagleton discussed at the beginning. In the second and third chapter, it deals with the problem of meaning and what this concept symbolizes when combined with any subject, and the problem of the eclipse of meaning and the decline of man into nihilism by discussing the most important points that have raised philosophers since Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and contemporary existentialists, as well as what these things represent in the doctrine of religious and fundamentalist fundamentalists. In the last chapter, he moves on to the second and most important part of life, our treatment of it, and how we coexist.

The affiliation of this book or any book to a very short introduction series does not mean that it is suitable for everyone. Here, for example, the writer delves into the problems of an entire era in a philosophical language, which makes the reader who is not interested in philosophy immersed in it and does not know his head from his foot, even if reading it carefully will not be useful.
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Trevor
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May 3, 2011
This book is quite fun – as long as you don’t take it too seriously, and, let’s face it, it is almost impossible to take seriously a book called ‘the meaning of life, a very short introduction’. There is something paradoxical about the meaning of life being an introduction – surely we are after conclusions.

This has a nice pace and enough jokes to keep you smiling between ideas. My favourite joke in the whole thing (one I’d never heard before and feel very surprised that I never thought of it myself) was the reported t-shirt that reads, ‘What if the hokie-pokie really is what it is all about?’

He covers a lot of ground here – none of it all that unfamiliar, although, I don’t really mean that as a criticism. Lots of stuff on Aristotle and Schopenhauer, Kant and Wittgenstein, Nietzsche and Jesus. So that a lot of this was also a nice and quite easy introduction to philosophy too and its relationship to theology and aesthetics and other things along the way – post-modernism, mostly.

Like I said, this is a quick and amusing little book and such are both its failings and successes. He is always clear and that has to be a good thing.

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Fact100
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November 8, 2021
As someone who asks, questions and seeks answers, it was a work that I liked very much. The fact that he questioned the questions and their significance while searching for the answers gave me a new perspective on my behalf. What is the answer? Perhaps we will never know or comprehend. Maybe it really is 42. Keep looking for answers... but there's a new question to ask: What's the question?

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Mehmet
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ReadJanuary 20, 2022
"If our lives have meaning, that meaning is something we give them;" (p.45)

One should not look at its pretentious name and think "I can find the meaning of life in this book". This book naturally, other books as well; He probably won't be able to say the meaning of life with a crack, but the feature of this book is more about why we seek it, why we question it, and what this questioning really is, rather than the "meaning of life". In other words, we can say that the book traces the meaning of "the meaning of life".

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Amir
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February 19, 2015
If you want to get a philosophical understanding of the proverb "Falling from the meek into the cauldron", this book is a good choice. The author made an appointment with himself to write an easy and ok book for the general audience. But... yes, you guessed it right. If we want to respect social relations and not use the main word, we have to use the verb "dirty". But in fact, in the true sense of the word... [again, you guessed correctly] the book turned out to be very watery, and this does not reflect the structure of the book. By the way, Eagleton has started from a good place. At the very beginning, he focused on the meaning of "meaning" itself. But I will leave it up to you to judge how well he managed to do this

Another important point of the book is the conclusion of the book. In the end, the author keeps the two competitors of love and happiness as the final options for the meaning of life. But it is not known how these options can eliminate other options. The author has not provided any convincing reason for his work, why, for example, wealth cannot be the meaning of life. Can simply stating that wealth is a "tool" deprive it of the ability to be the meaning of someone's life? Or, for example, why not freedom? no why not Why love and happiness at all?

This is one of the brilliant sentences of the book

in a world where absolutes have no place, even despair cannot be absolute
.
philosophy
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Omar's wish
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August 23, 2020
"The meaning of life is not a solution to a problem, but a question of living a certain way. It is not a metaphysical question, but a moral question. It is not something separate from life, but the thing that makes it worth living; that is, it represents a certain quality, depth, abundance and strength of life. And in this Frame The meaning of life is life itself, but only after it is understood in a certain way.

The second joint reading with Dr. Ahmed Taha, of a very complex subject and a book that is not really just an introduction, but is not read until after careful readings in philosophy and on various topics.
Were it not for the joint reading, this book would not have been completed. Thanks for the kind companionship and deep discussions.
2020 philosophy very short introduction
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Leyla Shb
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March 14, 2022
If we have entered the world through mutual means, this should have strong consequences for the question of the meaning of life.
*******
I read this book twice, once I read it halfway, and then I went back to the beginning of the book and read it from the beginning, because in the middle I realized that I didn't get anything coherent and maybe my information is little.
But there are three factors in disliking this book, one is that the author himself does not know what the meaning of life is and he is not going to get an answer because this question has no answer and he jumps a lot in the explanation of this issue, he goes from one theory to another and is unable to make a connection. And it should be coherent and express fluently so that the audience does not have difficulty in understanding
. Secondly, the translation is not without fault and the translator has fallen into the same trap as the author, and in some places the content is not comprehensible at all, and he was also unable to give a smooth translation because he was with the author. It can be pulled in any direction.
Third, for such a book, you must have a series of information.

In some places, it had interesting content, for example, where it discusses the fact that a series of questions arose because of the structure of our language and is fundamentally wrong,
and also that the question of the meaning of life has no answer, and if creation has no purpose, then life is meaningless. It cannot be vain
, or the expression of the opinion of some believers about the fact that God had no purpose in the creation of man and that the universe owes no meaning to man.
I have a criticism for the author, he completely beat the postmodernists, but in the end, the result was not much different from them.
********
The meaning of life is more of an action than a statement. This meaning is not a mysterious truth. Rather, it is a certain form of a life. Therefore, it is only in life that it can be known

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Eli Za
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ReadAugust 16, 2018
I don't know if it is because of the translation of the book or because the author wrote it like that, some paragraphs of the text are not really understandable. The reason they are not comprehensible is that they are hard to write, not that there is an incommunicable or difficult concept in them. In my opinion, he twisted many things so to speak, while it would have been much easier to express them. Since Terry Eagleton is also a genius in the field of literature, this style of writing is strange to me.
In my opinion, the fourth chapter is the brilliant chapter of the book. It is written in a simple way, it is full of words and practical. It is a hard book to read that I personally do not regret reading, but honestly, I do not recommend anyone to read it.
Historical-political-social Philosophy
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Cambridge Handbook of Age and Ageing Edited by M. L. Johnson, V. L. Bengtson, P. G. Coleman and T. B. L. Kirkwood Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-521-82632-2. £65. | Age and Ageing | Oxford Academic

Cambridge Handbook of Age and Ageing Edited by M. L. Johnson, V. L. Bengtson, P. G. Coleman and T. B. L. Kirkwood Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-521-82632-2. £65. | Age and Ageing | Oxford Academic

Spiritual Care in an Age of #BlackLivesMatter by Chanequa Walker-Barnes, Lee H. Butler JR. - Ebook | Scribd

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Spiritual Care in an Age of #BlackLivesMatter: Examining the Spiritual and Prophetic Needs of African Americans in a Violent America

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2022/08/26