Two books: Wright and Sandel

N.T. Wright: The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is

This book by N.T Wright (New Testament Scholar and professor at St. Andrews) is better than I expected. This is not a proper book review by the way. And I’ve read it just once. It is a small book packed with valuable insights on the person of Jesus. Jesus? Haven’t we known all there is to know of him? Not really. Why should we study him in detail anyway if we believe what he says? Wright takes us into first century Judaism: being still in exile although back to their homeland from exile, waiting for a messiah (not a purely spiritual sin-forgiving Christ as we think), how Jesus understood his vocation ( The chapter Jesus and God is a tough one), the resurrection as new creation (and not simply that it means you can now go to heaven), post-modern critique of arrogant enlightenment and Wright’s critique of postmodernism itself-to appreciate but also go beyond it and to come out on the other side. The Chapter, ‘The Walk to Emmaus in a postmodern world’ takes the cake. It is a beautiful, beautiful chapter. Let me say more after reading the book again.

Michael J Sandel: What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets

Everything is up for sale: paying up to jump queue, paying people to stay healthy, making money out of expecting people to die early, paying kids to read books, paying to get license to kill an endangered animal, etc, etc. Sandel (Professor at Harvard University) argues that there are non-market goods in the society which should not be for sale. When a non-market good is commodified and put up for sale, it corrupts the good. Against popular market reasoning that standard economics does not corrupt the goods it transacts, Sandel argues that market crowds out morals. Through examples as given at the beginning (there are so many examples in the book from various areas of life, amazing how he collected all of them), he highlights the ethical dilemma when markets are applied to walks of life erstwhile not touched by market economy. Sandel's arguments are few (although useful and sufficient), but the examples in the book are enough for readers to conclude for themselves that the markets have gone way too far.