Absolute Truths

The original article seems to be rather short and perhaps lacking in detail. Let's expand it to 300 words while maintaining the essence and adding the phrase "utterly tedious" in an appropriate place.

The task at hand was utterly tedious. It involved going through piles of documents, one by one, looking for specific information. The monotony of the process was almost unbearable. Each page seemed to blend into the next, and the hours ticked by slowly. There was no excitement or variation, just the same repetitive action over and over again. It felt as if time had come to a standstill, and I was trapped in this never-ending cycle of tedium. However, I knew that I had to persevere and complete the task. So, I gritted my teeth and continued, hoping that it would all be over soon.

This is my favorite of the Starbridge Series.

The Starbridge Series has always been a source of great excitement and adventure for me. Each book in the series takes the reader on a thrilling journey through a fictional universe filled with unique characters, amazing technologies, and captivating storylines.

What makes this particular book my favorite is the way the author has crafted the characters and their relationships. The main character, in particular, is someone I can really identify with. Their struggles and triumphs are both relatable and inspiring, and I found myself rooting for them throughout the entire story.

The plot is also incredibly engaging, with plenty of twists and turns to keep me on the edge of my seat. The author has done a great job of building suspense and creating a sense of urgency that makes it impossible to put the book down.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who loves science fiction and adventure. It's a must-read for fans of the Starbridge Series and a great introduction to the series for those who haven't read it before.

I read this and the other Starbridge series novels in Seminary in the '90s.

They are truly great reads. The stories are exciting, filled with deep and complex characters, and have wonderful plots that keep you engaged from start to finish.

Through the characters in this novel and the others in the series, three streams of 20th Century Anglican theology are explored. There are also many analogues to contemporary evangelical theology, which is my area of focus.

I found myself in awe of the way God works in and through us, despite our limitations and failings. I also fell more in love with Jesus for the way he rescues people from the damage caused by others and their own folly.

Although it is very different in tone and content from C.S. Lewis' fiction, it seems to me to have the same devotional quality. I look forward to rereading these novels soon and rediscovering the profound insights and spiritual lessons they offer.

I believe that they will continue to inspire and challenge me in my faith journey, just as they did when I first read them all those years ago.

In 1965, Charles Ashworth holds a highly privileged position within the Church of England as the Bishop of Starbridge. By his side is his beloved and faithful wife, Lyle, who has been his pillar of strength.

As a member of the Church's conservative wing, Ashworth is firmly opposed to many of the reforms currently underway in the Church of England. He engages in debates with his opponents in the Church in public forums throughout England. Ashworth excels at what he does and is well aware of his abilities. However, in the midst of fulfilling this role, Lyle unexpectedly passes away. This tragedy shocks him to the core and leaves him completely taken aback. For Ashworth, this is a catastrophic event.

Subsequently, Ashworth experiences a profound spiritual crisis. He undergoes a sort of epiphany as he battles with self-doubt and depression. Susan Howatch does a masterful job in revealing Charles Ashworth from the inside out. We witness his transformation from a proud bishop at the peak of his powers to an old man ensnared in a spiritual crisis. Howatch's portrayal is both nuanced and deeply moving, allowing readers to gain a profound understanding of Ashworth's complex journey.

Reading this book truly brought to my mind a miniseries that I once watched on Masterpiece Theater. The story within the book evolves around the Church of England, much like how the miniseries had its own central theme. Just like in a miniseries, this book has a slow start. The author takes the time to carefully introduce the various players in the story and also delves into the past wrongs that have occurred. It's interesting to note that everyone in the story seems to carry their own baggage from childhood. They spend a lifetime trying to fix these issues that have haunted them since their early years. However, one important message that comes across clearly is that forgiveness heals all. It has the power to bring about a sense of peace and resolution, allowing the characters to move forward and start anew.

Third Reading Summary: The final book of the series takes us back to Charles Ashworth as the narrator, revisiting numerous themes and characters from the previous installments. Despite the series' flaws, Absolute Truths stands as not only my favorite in the series but also one of my all-time favorite fiction books. Similar to my post about Scandalous Risks, discussing this book without spoilers is nearly impossible, but I'll do my best to minimize them and not ruin the plot.

The narrator from the first book, Charles Ashworth, is now in the mid-1960s. At the end of the first book, he married Lyle, who was pregnant with another man's child. Ashworth, having discovered in the first book that the man who raised him was not his biological father but had married his mother to protect her when she became pregnant, felt called by God to do the same. As we return to Charles as the narrator, they have been married for almost 30 years. They quickly had another son after getting married, and then Charles served as a chaplain in World War II, spending most of the war as a Nazi prisoner and eventually ending up in a concentration camp. It wasn't until several years after the war that the couple settled into a reasonably happy marriage. Lyle's fear of Charles' potential death helped her realize that she loved him for himself, not just for saving her from being a disgraced single mother. Charles also loved Lyle, but the distractions of his teaching, writing, work as a bishop, and Lyle's seemingly effortless problem-solving allowed him to take her for granted. That changes early in the book when Lyle has a stroke and dies soon after. (I must admit, I'm not a fan of using wives' deaths as a recurring plot device in almost every book.)

A nearly 700-page book about a bishop's grief may not be everyone's cup of tea. However, there are so many threads from the series that are raised and neatly tied up. It's a big commitment, but as much as I want to recommend Absolute Truths, I believe you really need to read the previous books to fully appreciate it. And those previous five books add up to about 2500 pages on top of the 700 pages of Absolute Truths.

More than anything else, Absolute Truths attempts to show that we can never truly know what's going on inside other people's heads. We can perceive some things and be told parts of the story, but only God knows all. This is exemplified by a long quote from the book's second half, which I'll share without context to give you a sense of what I mean when I say the book is about how only God can know all.

“One can never know the whole story about anyone—yet how we all rush to judgement! How we all love to ignore the truth that we know so little about what motivates other people, what shadows from the past distort their psyches, what demons haunt and enslave them. How readily we say with perfect confidence: ‘He’s despicable!’ or: ‘He’s behaved unforgivably!’ or worst of all: ‘I’d never behave like that!’ Yet how dare we pass judgement when so much of the evidence is beyond our reach? No wonder Our Lord said so sternly: ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged!’ No wonder he said: ‘He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone!’ Jesus wasn’t interested in rushing to judgement. He wasn’t interested in ‘keeping up a front’ or scoring points off those who found him intolerable. ‘Love ye your enemies,’ he said, ‘Do good to them that hate you.’ And time after time he said: ‘Forgive,’ and talked of the truth which sets us free… And so we come back again to our own current quest for truth, the truth about one another. As Charles pointed out just now, we can never see the whole truth; only God can see everything. But we can see so much more of the truth when our eyes are open, viewing people as Christ viewed them, than when they remain resolutely closed.”

The first book was mainly about discovering your true self as God created you to be. Charles, like all of us, is tempted to put up a false front to the world. This is a form of protection, but it also keeps people at a distance. Charles was afraid of making the same mistakes as his father in raising him, so in some ways, he tried to do the opposite, creating new mistakes. In other ways, he unintentionally replicated his father's mistakes. In our attempts to protect children, we can sometimes shelter them inappropriately. In the attempt to not shelter them, we sometimes expose them to harm. In the attempt to allow them to become who God wants them to be, we sometimes fail to give them appropriate guidance. The list goes on.

It's a small part of the book, but after Lyle's death, Charles discovers her spiritual journal. As he reads it, we hear a second narrator offering a different perspective on events we've already seen from other angles. Lyle felt called to pray for Charles and Venetia from Scandalous Risks. She had tried to mentor and guide Venetia, but it didn't go well, and all she felt she could do was pray. Lyle never considered herself a particularly spiritual person. She was organized, good at solving problems, and had a sharp mind. But her faith was more intellectual and expressed through practical acts of service to those around her. Prayer was something she felt completely inadequate to do. In this short section, we get an excellent guide on what it might mean to pray for others, to follow God's will when we don't know what we're being called to, and to see Charles from someone else's perspective, highlighting the bias in his narration of events. Of course, Lyle's perspective is also limited. But with the other narrators in the previous five books, the more narrators we have, the more facets of a situation we can see.

This holds true for Ashworth and Aysgarth as well. The series, in some ways, has been a conflict or at least a difference of opinion between the two, with both seeking spiritual direction from Jon Darrow, the Anglo-Catholic/Mystic who is the third strand of their relationship. Just as Charles found additional perspective by reading Lyle's journal, Ashworth and Aysgarth end up in Darrow's cottage seeking spiritual direction simultaneously on two different occasions. This isn't so much a coincidence as it is a result of their need for spiritual direction due to their conflict. Darrow puts them in the same room so they can recount their problems from their own perspectives. While the reader already has some of the perspectives, there's a revelation when the person they thought had it all together externally is vulnerable enough to share the pain beneath the surface.

The surface-level theme of the book is that Ashworth realizes his pursuit of Absolute Truths must be balanced with grace for specific situations where individuals need to be dealt with according to their needs and with a love that sometimes requires different things in different circumstances. This isn't moral relativism but a recognition that while God may be able to see how all things fit together perfectly, we can't. There are various discussions about Paul's statement that all things work together for good. These discussions have nuance, and overall, there's real theological and spiritual wisdom. But the summary finding is that God loves us, and even if we can't see it all, God continues to be with us and seek our good. This quote sums it up well:

You and I, of course, would see this as an example of the redeeming work of the Holy Spirit. So perhaps one might argue that our task as priests is not primarily to condemn sinners but to facilitate the work of the Spirit so that all suffering, merited and unmerited, may be redeemed. Then indeed we would be able to say with St. Paul: ‘All things work together for good to them that love God.’ What a hard saying that is, and how easy it is to pay it lip-service in the name of piety while side-stepping the task of expending blood, sweat and tears to make it a living truth.

This is partly about making the effort to get involved in people's lives and express that love tangibly. We can't take on the role of God in the world, but we also can't abandon the world or those around us. We all have a role as uniquely created individuals in the world as we seek God.

Fiction is crucial for exploring what it means to pursue God and live in the world. We don't have to experience everything ourselves; there are things we can learn through observation, even if that observation is of fictional characters.

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Short Review: This is my second reading of Absolute Truths. It's the final and best book in this excellent series. The series as a whole is about a group of Church of England clergy in the mid-20th century. The focus of this book is on what it means when Romans says 'all things work together for good for those that love the Lord.' Charles Ashworth (now Bishop of Starbridge) has his third life crisis.

This isn't traditional Christian fiction. I don't think US evangelical publishers would publish the series. But this is what Christian fiction should be: a realistic reflection of life, theologically rich, but not falsely perfect.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/absolute-truths-by-s...

These books have had a truly profound effect on me.

I delved into the series several years ago, and to this day, I have never forgotten the captivating characters, the thought-provoking ideas, the thrilling intrigue, and the way the stories seamlessly insinuated their way into my thinking.

I have absolutely loved reading them and will eagerly wait for more masterpieces from this highly accomplished writer.

I read her earlier works many years ago and was deeply enamored with her unique methods and the remarkable continuity present in many of her stories.

I don't know if she can surpass this outstanding series, but I truly hope she gives it a try.

Her writing has the power to transport readers to different worlds and make them experience a gamut of emotions.

I look forward to seeing what new and exciting creations she has in store for us in the future.

I had no idea that there was a series!

Surprisingly, this particular one holds its own very well.

It has managed to capture my attention and engage me from the start.

The story is unique and the characters are well-developed.

Even without the context of the other books in the series, it is still a thoroughly enjoyable read.

I found myself completely immersed in the world that the author has created.

The plot is full of twists and turns that kept me on the edge of my seat.

Overall, I am very impressed with this book and would highly recommend it to others, whether they are familiar with the series or not.

It just goes to show that sometimes, a single book can make a big impact on its own.