Guerric Haché reviewed Natural by Alan Levinovitz
Review of 'Natural' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
This isn't a book about answering questions. It's a book about questioning ready-made answers that are rhetorically, theologically baked into our society and our narratives at every level.
It is both a plea for nuance and caution of thought, and an exploration of the real, worthy values and concerns that make people reject nuance or caution in favour of a theology of the natural.
Personally, I found most enlightening the latter, the perspectives on the ways in which secular society is failing to properly answer the human stories and concerns that are, instead, feeding a theology of nature. It's easy to criticize facile equivalencies between nature and goodness; it's somewhat more complex to point out the sheer gnarliness of the conceptual confusions involved; but most of all, it's challenging to confront the ways in which people and institutions who are trying to build a better world are failing to understand …
This isn't a book about answering questions. It's a book about questioning ready-made answers that are rhetorically, theologically baked into our society and our narratives at every level.
It is both a plea for nuance and caution of thought, and an exploration of the real, worthy values and concerns that make people reject nuance or caution in favour of a theology of the natural.
Personally, I found most enlightening the latter, the perspectives on the ways in which secular society is failing to properly answer the human stories and concerns that are, instead, feeding a theology of nature. It's easy to criticize facile equivalencies between nature and goodness; it's somewhat more complex to point out the sheer gnarliness of the conceptual confusions involved; but most of all, it's challenging to confront the ways in which people and institutions who are trying to build a better world are failing to understand the root motivations involved, and failing to provide a compelling alternative.
Do I wish the book contained answers, suggestions, paths forward to solving concrete problems? Of course, but by the end, you realize providing pat solutions is kind of against the point. Do I wish there had been more thematic cohesion, rather than jumping across so many different fields? Maybe - but I already believe in the power and danger of narratives, so the breadth of the book, to me, ultimately reinforced the sense that this narrative of the divinity of nature is both consistently pervasive and consistently confused across a huge cross-section of society.
This book opens a very important discussion that I think could improve to our ability, as a global society, to make the most of our time here to be better neighbours to each other and better stewards of the world. More people need to read it, and think carefully about what Levinovitz is laying forth.
