More than Bananas: Crumbs..., #1

By Glenn Myers

Instead of nothingness, there's us.

Instead of a blank oblivion, there are celebrity TV shows, duck-billed platypuses, galaxies, music, cheese, and you and I.

There's got to be a story behind this. 

How was this allowed to happen?

How did nothing become something?

And how did the something become this?

Not to mention: Why is there suffering the the world?

Or: Why are there three-toed sloths?

And: How do I live a good life?

Science explains why I evolved to eat bananas, but not the rest of this stuff.

To explore that, we need something more than bananas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fizz Books
• Release date: Jul 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9780095601061

Glenn Myers

Glenn Myers has been a writer and editor all his life. Brought up in West Yorkshire, he has lived in Los Angeles, Singapore, London and Cote d'Ivoire, but has settled with his wife in Cambridge, UK. As a journalist Glenn travelled widely to write a series of 11 books about the church in minority settings around the world. These books sold widely and were translated into many languages. Since turning to comic fiction, he writes about the invisible worlds that we all live in--much more exotic than mere reality. He was in a coma for four weeks in 2013, but assumes he's stopped hallucinating now. Glenn has also written non-fiction exploring the spaces between doubt and faith, and he blogs at slowmission.com. They have two grown-up children. He and his wife are members of their local Anglican church. He enjoys cafes, board games and his hammock, though not all at the same time.

Book preview

This was very interesting to me as I am not a follower of any orthodox religion. I love the witticism that Glenn applies throughout this book and his, sometimes, irreverent outlook on Christianity and how it can be applied by anyone who wants to find themselves through Christianity and Jesus. It contains some powerful messages for anyone looking to find how to go about gaining this without being a dry and boring lump of text that tries to shovel religious dogma into the reader. Patricia Walker, Goodreads 

Quite splendid, one of the best Christian books I have read since C S Lewis ... It is one of the very best pieces of contemporary apologetics I have ever read: clear, flowing prose, complex ideas simply expressed ... Hooray! David Satchel F. Inst P.

More than Bananas is a wonderful book: intelligent, reasonable and realistic.  It gives a clear presentation of how the Christian faith is a perfectly rational approach to the world, in accord with science, and offers an excellent antidote to those who feel that faith and science are mutually exclusive.  At the same time it is deeply personal, warm and funny.  I recommend it highly. Dr David Bowler, Reader in Physics, University College London

Your book is wonderful! I do hope that it is very widely read. Prof. Sir Colin Humphreys CBE FRS, Cambridge University

More than bananas

How the Christian faith works for me and for the whole Universe

Glenn Myers

Copyright © 2016 Glenn Myers

First published 2014 by Fizz Books

Glennmyers.info

ISBN 978-0-9565010-5-9 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-9565010-6-6 (epub)

Glenn Myers has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

3

Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com  The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Cover design by Chris Lawrence

[e-mail]

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library

for my son Thomas,

of whom I am inordinately proud.

Contents

Introduction 9

1 The problem 11

2 Let’s get ontological 17

3 Love and pain 23

4 Fall 29

5 The wrestling ring 39

6 Getting us to believe it 49

7 The loss and prophet account 59

8 The world of I-Thou 69

9 The King is among us 83

10 A good life in a mixed-up world 91

11 The end 97

About this book 99

Further reading 1

Introduction

I wrote this book between mid-August and mid-October 2013, after a strange period in my life when doctors saved my life on three separate occasions in four years. I have never written an easier book. I think it was because I'd been thinking and blogging about this stuff for a long time.

It describes how the Christian faith works for me, and in my view, for the whole Universe. The title comes from my belief that current science, almost magical as it is in explaining lots of things, doesn't quite do it as an explanation of who we are really. It gives a fine account of why I eat bananas; it's less good on why I puzzle about how to live a meaningful life.

Hope you enjoy the book. Feel free to email if you'd like to continue the discussion. I hope to put some of the questions and responses up on a website somewhere if that's OK.

Glenn Myers, Cambridge, October 2013

www.glennmyers.info  www.slowmission.com

1 The problem

It's odd that we exist at all. Yet we usually ignore this because:

1. It's really too hard to think about

and

2. We have many other problems that take our attention. Here are some of mine (I am on holiday). Was that a grey hair I saw this morning? Is it too chilly to sit outside? Can I be bothered to make another cup of coffee before lunch?

Yet perhaps we ought to try to think about the big stuff, at least once in our lives. Today I am writing this, looking out over Pembrokeshire hills. Today (a different today) you are reading what I have written. We are linked across time by a thread of text and thought. The fact we are each thinking thoughts is perhaps evidence enough that you and I both exist.

How can we exist?

We have no idea how or why this happened, or what to do about it. Instead of nothingness, there's us. Instead of a blank oblivion, there are celebrity TV shows, duck-billed platypuses, galaxies, music, cheese, and you and I.

There's got to be a story behind this. How was this allowed to happen? How did nothing become something? And how did the something become this?

Science takes us part of the way, a dazzling story, now well known in outline: the start of the Universe in a burst of light; the development of complex atoms; a happy, random arrangement of organic molecules that leads to the self-replicating machine called Life; mistakes in the self-replicating machine which means it can develop new forms; then squillions of years of adaption and growth and finally some hairy beasts wandering the African savannah in search of soft fruit.

My problem is that all this wonderful scheme only explains a little bit of us. It accounts for my liking for bananas and sex, because both those things help preserve my genes for the next generation. It means I'm pretty darn good at shopping, especially down the fruit aisle, where intelligence matters for nutrition. You won't find me mistaking an avocado for a mango. In all this, I am evolution's child.

But why do I hope and dream? Why do I hum music? Why do I long to meet God? Why does death, so normal a part of the cosmic order, as necessary as compost, feel like a rip