I posted a short entry about God’s Debris in mid-December. My intention was to read the book and then share my impressions here. The reason it’s be such a long delay is that I decided to read the book again. I felt it was necessary to pay better attention to the various themes in the book in order to explain my reactions and thoughts.
The book is interesting in that it has different levels within the story. The gist of the story is a conversation between a very old man and a young man that arrives at his door. Their conversation makes up most of the book and creates situations that the author intended to make us think about ourselves and our world.
The superficial level in the book is the main characters’ experience as they interact. It is fantastical, yet believable, and weaves the other two levels together. The book wouldn’t quite work without the story line; but it would also be worthless without the thought experiment held within.
The second level involves practical advice for living. The young man gets solid counseling from the old man regarding love, relationships, friendships, luck, and success in life. This level is interesting, engaging, and useful for anyone that reads it. It is still not the main focus of the dialog, however.
Finally, the deepest of the three levels or themes is driven by the old man’s teaching of how the world works. Throughout the book the story line jumps between levels one and two but often gets injected with number three. This third and most important theme is a philosophical commentary about faulty, human-centric world views. The old man covers science, religion, culture, and many other issues within this commentary.
After the second reading of the book, I started to separate these streams into their own sub-books and ideas. This helped me to take away the good ideas and leave behind what I thought wasn’t as valuable.
The best part of the book, in my opinion, is that third and most profound level. It’s an analysis into our cultural framework that mirrors the thinking and reading that have guided my spiritual, mental, and emotional journey in the last four to five years. This thought experiment really caught me off-guard with how much it related to my own development.
For that reason alone I would recommend this book to anyone. Be prepared to see through the story and the practical advice, though, in order to seize the grains of cultural analysis that lie below. Adams’ purpose in writing the book is to cause the reader to think, and it did just that for me.
Read God’s Debris (free PDF download).
