{"id":26342,"date":"2013-05-13T07:27:46","date_gmt":"2013-05-13T12:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=26342"},"modified":"2013-05-10T23:29:27","modified_gmt":"2013-05-11T04:29:27","slug":"rereading-a-prayer-for-owen-meany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2013\/05\/rereading-a-prayer-for-owen-meany\/","title":{"rendered":"Rereading <i>A Prayer for Owen Meany<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I never re-read books, but I decided to read this one, twenty-two years after I first read it, because &#8220;he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.&#8221; That&#8217;s a quote from the first sentence of the book, but it is true, literally true, for me, too. \u00a0I feel somewhat guilty that this book triggered my conversion, because it is not G-rated; in fact, it is a little crass. \u00a0It isn&#8217;t sweet and it isn&#8217;t fluffy and it criticizes religion and miracles and believers just as much as it celebrates them. But I don&#8217;t think I read this book by accident. I have a vivid recollection of standing in the aisle of a used book store in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with this book in my hands. I think someone knew I needed Owen Meany to save my life.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Rereading it was scary; what if it was stupid this time? The thought gave me, as Owen Meany would have said, THE SHIVERS. \u00a0But I was flattened by how . . . perfect . . . it was. \u00a0Two decades later, I was stunned to see the ways in which this was exactly the book that could present the kind of faith that would make sense to someone like me . . . someone who, like Owen Meany, absolutely believes in God, but is disgusted by the piously orthodox hypocrites that hide behind religion, someone who expects God to have a detailed plan for his life, but isn&#8217;t a puritanical killjoy. \u00a0I thought its work was done the first time I read it, but, if anything, it was more of a gift the second time, as I realized how perfect this book was for someone like me.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>It&#8217;s almost as if\u00a0<i>Owen Meany<\/i>\u00a0was AN INSTRUMENT IN THE HANDS OF GOD.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I never re-read books, but I decided to read this one, twenty-two years after I first read it, because &#8220;he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.&#8221; That&#8217;s a quote from the first sentence of the book, but it is true, literally true, for me, too. \u00a0I feel somewhat guilty that this book triggered my conversion, because it is not G-rated; in fact, it is a little crass. \u00a0It isn&#8217;t sweet and it isn&#8217;t fluffy and it criticizes religion and miracles and believers just as much as it celebrates them. But I don&#8217;t think I read this book by accident. I have a vivid recollection of standing in the aisle of a used book store in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with this book in my hands. I think someone knew I needed Owen Meany to save my life. Rereading it was scary; what if it was stupid this time? The thought gave me, as Owen Meany would have said, THE SHIVERS. \u00a0But I was flattened by how . . . perfect . . . it was. \u00a0Two decades later, I was stunned to see the ways in which this was exactly the book [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26342"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26415,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26342\/revisions\/26415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}