A Man Called Ove, Without the L

A Man Called Ove, Without the L

Here is my take on A Man Called Ove from a Christian worldview, which I think is fair because many people who profess to believe in and follow Christ are reading, and enjoying, this book. I’ll get to why this is happening. Let’s start with the book, with all sorts of spoiler alerts.

I don't appreciate fiction writers who use tricks to trap the reader into some current popular ideological corner. It's all too clever, condescending, and rather bullyish. By the way, I never feel tricked or trapped by Dickens, or any great classic author. No, this is a modern literary gimmick. This book has several, as if the author writes mainly to this purpose, as if he is more conscious of the message he is pushing on the reader than writing a good story. Much of modern literature is like this. 

For example, in the first fourth of the book the author makes us shake our heads at the cranky Ove. We are hit over the head with how petty and rude he is. The author does nothing but trash the guy. Hold on. A few more pages and we get hit over the head again. Ove is only rude and inflexible because he has had a sad and difficult life. How judgmental we turn out to be! Bad us. Poor Ove. He has a right to be a jerk. Really? Ever heard of Job? Reminds me of a Toni Morrison short story I had to read in school that stealthily manipulates the reader into believing he must be a racist even when he isn’t. It was like being hit in the face with a pie. Whatever the quality of the writing, it's a lousy agenda and a lousy practical joke. On the other hand, in Dickens I learn plenty of things about myself that convict me, that need changing, but I feel the light coming from a universality about the good and bad in human nature the author expertly portrays and my own willingness to examine myself. Dickens is funny but the jokes are not on the reader.

Even fiction needs to be somewhat believable. Where is there a neighborhood on earth where uber-quirky, multiculty, politically correct, ultra-needy neighbors surround the old-fashioned, absolutist curmudgeon, never failing to enjoy his crusty insults while expecting help from him in every situation? It's much too obviously contrived in order to further those agendas, and that makes sub-par literature.

The suicidal Ove learns to put his trust in his own magnanimity, even though he never meant to help anyone and did his good deeds grudgingly; they merely fell into his lap and the memory of his wife seemed to indicate he should do them. I like the movie Hero with the anti-hero played by Dustin Hoffman better. An act of heroism falls into his lap, too, but he doesn’t get the credit and so what? He really is a bad guy and knows he doesn’t deserve it. Secular humanism, or relying on oneself and others for our worth and importance and purpose and meaning, is a sandy foundation, as we know from the scriptures. In fact, we are told we are “cursed” if we rely on man. We should know this  from living life. Okay, it’s nice to help others. We should when moved upon. But we should bear in mind that in our efforts we might actually be causing harm. Such as the nice person who anonymously cleared the snow off our driveway one snowy morning recently. They also unknowingly shredded our electrical cord plugged into our trailer. Lucky nobody got electrocuted!

Humans shouldn’t bet on themselves. If our snow-remover did it for God, relying on Christ, that’s great. But if he did it to get any kind of buzz or check off any sort of list, oops. Try as we might, we let ourselves and each other down to some degree at some point. Ove relied on Sophie, she died, and Ove let that ruin his life—because he relied on her so much. Then all he did was shift to another sandy foundation—other people. But what if he didn't have a ladder; how could have lent one? What if he wasn't strong; how could he have pulled the man off the train tracks? See? We all have limitations. That’s the hopeless part of this secular humanist worldview. It will never be enough. And it will end. As per C. S. Lewis in The Great Divorce, when we get to the other side, there is no such serving others. If that’s what our god is, we won’t be interested in the Real One.

We need to know that this life is not all there is and human relationships are not the most important and mere kindness is not the highest virtue. If we claim to be religious and Christian, we are being tested for where we will spend eternity. God must come first, and truth is the highest virtue. Truth is, we’re human. We mess up. A lot. If only by way of  vanity or laziness or selfish motives. And yes, our motives matter. God sees our hearts. Nothing unclean (that is, not washed in the blood of Christ) can get to Him. Hence, truth is, we need a Divine Savior.

I had fifty pages left. At least there’s nothing gay in this insipid book, I said to myself. Maybe I can finish it. My sister chose it for our family book group after all. Maybe I’ll find something good about it in the end. I woke up the next morning before it was light, fetched the book and curled back up in bed to finish it. The first thing that met my eyes was a new character, or rather the mysterious “sooty-eyed” character we all the sudden know a little better, fully revealed in the last chapters. Gay. Who gets “married” to the obese guy next door. Really? And the icing on the cake? They adopt a child. Talk about gimmicks. Talk about an agenda. The full-on normalization of homosexuality. As Flannery O'Connor put it, "What offends my taste in fiction is when right is held up as wrong, or wrong as right."

Some  readers think this is not an important part of the story, that the gay characters are gratuitous and easily overlooked, which proves my point. The gay thing is another of those carefully placed gimmicks. Accepting homosexuality was purposely saved for last, as the final frontier for poor old traditional, conventional Ove to cross. Hence, readers are led toward the idea that now we better all do what Ove did. Oh, we can keep our harmless personality quirks, but now we have been shown that we must at least tolerate, if not celebrate, every diverse, anti-Christ, politically correct, even highly destructive whim our neighbors, friends, and family members come up with, because these people are our chief reliance.

Ove’s name happens to be Love without the capital L. That is telling. This book is a fractured fairy tale. There is no real Love in it. It's about what people get out of each other. Sure, helping others might relieve people of their grouchiness and troubles for a minute, but if done solely for that purpose  actually draws people one more step away from Real Love, Pure Selfless Love, the Love of God. And away from Christ who embodies that Love.

So why is this book so popular, especially among people who go to church every Sunday and attend temples engraved with “Holiness to the Lord” and profess to love God and follow Christ? That’s easy to answer.

People today have been brought along to think Jesus Christ is merely a good friend who would bring you chicken soup if you had a cold. This is at the least ignorant and ultimately heresy. Jesus Christ himself said he was the Son of God who came to save us from our sins. Sad to say, people would rather believe anything but the fact that they are sinners and need saving, even those who believe they are headed for heaven. Christ was hated, spied on, sought out and killed, and not because he did nice things for people. He was hated because he pricked people’s consciences and claimed to be the only remedy for the fallen nature of mankind. Representing Jesus as merely an example of rendering material, temporal services to one another is a dumbing down of the gospel to the most boring, gimmicky, contrived, godless, hopeless level, wherein we are our own judges. The service Christ offers God’s children is of a divine type, of a spiritual nature. He is our Judge, and our Divine Deliverer, our Rescuer, our Redeemer. And those who resist a sense of sin will never take advantage of the greatest, most wonderful, most interesting gift ever offered.

Sure, we serve others. Drive them to the hospital, loan them a ladder, take them a warm loaf of bread. But at least let’s be honest about it. Most of what we do for others in this time of conveniences and plenty is just fluff. These days people rarely need life-changing acts of gratuitous service, except maybe in third world countries or war zones. Admit it: we do nice little things for people at least partly to make ourselves feel good and needed and popular and important and worthwhile. To top it off, we tell the world via the internet about what we did! It is so easy to forget the first commandment, to love God and give him all the glory. It is so easy to put other gods before Him: our comforts, our deeds, our human relationships.

Want to know how to serve others best? The greatest service you can ever render is to testify of Christ as the Savior of the world, as in the sins of the world, as in our own sins, if we’ll only repent and trust in him. Sadly, only people who are desperate for forgiveness will be interested in serving or being served in this way. But He died even for those few. What a glorious Story. What a glorious Truth. What a glorious Love with a capital L.

A Man Called Ove? Chicken soup for the Godless soul.