At Last, Finished!

I finally finished Life of Pi by Yann Martel. I started reading it my senior year at the BYU and got about halfway through it before I was distracted by something and never picked it up again. It had been so long since I started it, I just started it over again, even though I made it a good 2/3 of the way through it the first time around.

I absolutely loved it. Several people told me their version of it all before I had read it, but I was able to keep an unbiased opinion of it. I appreciate the story for what it is, and as Pi says about how the animal version is better, "And so it goes with God."

I also agree that it is a story that will make you believe in God. The story itself, maybe not so much, but the commentary on God and faith and religion and prayer is incredible. For instance,

"I'll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the cross, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."

And,

"There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, 'Business as usual.' But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.

"These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defence, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush."

Well, you get the idea.

It was pretty amazing.