I Saw No Tears - J Edwin Orr
In 2018, after I had started keeping a book list but before I started reviewing them, I read the book Full Surrender by J Edwin Orr. I remember enjoying it, and even collected a few quotes from it in my quote database, including: "Too often prayer is a one-sided affair, degenerating into "Listen, Lord, Thy servant speaketh" instead of "Speak, Lord, Thy servant heareth." (Full Surrender, page 16). Having just finished The Reason for God and looking for another theology book, I noticed I Saw No Tears on my shelf and decided to give it a go. With an author I had enjoyed before and a quite biblical title, I was ready for another meaty challenge to my faith.
I was surprised, then, to find that I Saw No Tears is a book of memoirs, rather than theology, outlining some of Orr's experiences as an army chaplain during World War 2. I guess this disappointed me a little, but what disappointed me even more so was that Orr manages to almost entirely avoid talking about matters of faith in the book at all! Obviously, he is talking about services, and journeys, and his faith, but on almost every occasion in I Saw No Tears this is done in a general fashion, giving basic facts like: "I addressed 1,800 Aussies one night: and on the following Sunday, I talked to a full chapel for Padre Star, in which service twenty men signified their desire to be converted, after listening to an hour-long address on faith." (page 52) What he actually preached on, the arguments used, or even how he held their attention for an hour (he mentions preaching for two hours at least once) goes undescribed.
It feels to me as if Orr has done this intentionally; I imagine that, knowing he had already produced various books of theology he felt like doing something else this time around, but it did make the book a little odd for me. I will also admit that, as someone whose theology is far closer to the pacifist turn-the-other-cheek end of the theological spectrum, I did find his World War Two-era appropriate defense of Christian militarism a bit difficult to relate to; in chapter 2 he outlines a few examples of arguing soldiers out of pacifism and into active service.
Really, this final fact is the bit that needs most remembering... this book was written in 1948, fresh after the end of the war, and it is a book definitely of its time (certain language choices are very dated, and could be seen as a bit offensive by modern standards).
So, yeah. An odd one.
I might have to reread Full Surrender or find another Orr theology book at some point. If this had been the first book of his I had read, it might have been the last. A little interesting from a war perspective, but not much more.
Completed 16 October 2023.
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