Customer Reviews

The God File

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Most writing about God in America falls into one of two camps: the pluralistic God of car bumpers that declare "In God We Trust, United We Stand" and the principled God described by the Chuck Swindolls, James Dobsons and Pat Robertsons of the church who believe that God is an understandable God who is best approached by bringing "biblical principles" into play to create a clean, friendly life. While the pluralistic God has no definition because too many people mindlessly believe in "it," whatever "it" is, the principled God does little more than to anesthetize our worries and make us nice, good people.

Gabriel Black, the protagonist in Hollon's book, runs headlong into the ambiguities of measuring God's goodness or badness. The God File is Gabriel's collection of stories written while in prison. The file is intended to gather the evidence of God's existence: "I set out... to put together a file, to look for God in the tiny details, the corners of my days in this place, to find out for myself." Gabriel is not content with nor interested in an amorphous feel-good God and neither is he interested in an understandable God who wants people to live according to categorical, simplistic rules. He is interested in knowing a God who can exist within his messed up, paradoxical yet thoughtful life.

Far too often, each of us takes decisions and judgments about God's goodness based on the same inconsistent, self-focused ethic that enable us to assault the character of a person based on a rude traffic maneuver or writing a check at the grocery store in a debit card age. Our ethic is one that revolves around whether the action of another personality - human or deity - is convenient to the unobstructed pursuit of our expectations of how life ought to be. Very rarely do our expectations involve pain, disappointment, injustice, the stupidity of our own actions and the damage against us invoked by others. Yet these very things happen in our lives.

Life, and therefore, by association, God, is ambiguous. There is paradox and tension in any human life. We are inconsistent, selfish, suffering people. Over the course of many years, Gabriel Black struggles to come to terms with the ambiguities of the God of his experience and the God he reads about in his Bible. He sees his own inconsistence, his own suffering, the absurdities of other people, and the insane criminality of his prisoner peers. In short, he sees broken, confused people. At the same time, *and often in the same situations of pain*, Gabriel sees beauty, wonder, love, mystery and yes, even goodness.

Though it takes time for him to settle into and accept the ambiguities of God's goodness, Gabriel eventually finds himself coming to terms with his own self-imposed prison sentence, his broken relationships and his deep longings for beauty and goodness. The excellent part about Gabriel's acceptance is his willingness to squarely face God's ambiguity and paradox and is willing to say God is good.

... I think Gabriel accomplished what is so difficult for humans to do: to accept and absorb spiritual ambiguity into his heart, soul and mind and to say that life and God are good. Gabriel approaches a place of perception that enables him to stop defining the goodness of God and life in terms of his personal convenience and understanding. Instead, he shifts his notion of goodness from the fulcrum of himself to another fulcrum that brings more meaning to life.

Of course, Gabriel Black is a human being and so his practice of this perspective is inconsistent. The ending of the book makes this plain. The ending and much of the content will make this a difficult book to read for the God-as-a-body-of-principles followers who attach near-canonical weight to Dobson's writings and who judge a movie by the number of swear words in the script. But for the God-seeker who is willing to wrestle with the timeless issues of God's existence and goodness in a world that can undeniably be disappointing and evil, the message of The God File is strangely encouraging.

I sat in my office hunkered over with my head in a file drawer on a ho-hum Tuesday afternoon like hundreds of others when a shaft of sunlight suddenly blazed across my stack of filing. I looked up and out the window and saw the blue sky above the dingy warehouse next door and noticed white, fluffy clouds skittering across the sky. A mimosa tree was gently waving in the breeze. I paused for a minute or two and was totally present in the moment.

The only reason I noticed all of this momentary splendor was because I read this book last night....in one sitting....I couldn't put it down or stop reading once I got started. It changed me, I think, forever.

The prison genre has often been used in novels, memoirs, and film as a stripped-down, bare-bones symbol of an uncaring, overpowering, and alien universe and humanity's reaction to it. Frank Turner Hollon's THE GOD FILE is a fresh and compelling addition to that tradition.

THE GOD FILE is structured as a collection of vignettes, letters, and essays by Gabriel Black, a man sentenced to life without parole in an Alabama prison for a crime he didn't commit. During his 22 years in prison, Gabriel Black structured his life around a search for God in the most soul-crushing environment. THE GOD FILE is the evidence Gabriel finds both for and against the existence of God.

While I have read a few other prison memoirs during the last year (for example, NEWJACK, and YOU GOT NOTHING COMING), THE GOD FILE did more to capture the bleakness and hopelessness of prison and to relate it to everyday life than those supposedly true accounts. Each vignette is delicately and movingly written, and, taken as a whole, paint a picture of Gabriel Black's life and his stance to his unjust circumstance with artistic economy.

A terrific book that should provoke deep thought even among us atheists.

Dav's Rating System:
5 stars - Loved it, and kept it on my bookshelf.
4 stars - Liked it, and gave it to a friend.
3 stars - OK, finished it and gave it to the library.
2 stars - Not good, finished it, but felt guilty and/or cheated by it.
1 star - I want my hour back! Didn't finish the book.

"The God File" is a an excellent book that keeps the
reader captivated from beginning to end. The Author has
a gift for injecting the reader into the main
character. The story takes the reader on a
fascinating thought provoking journey to determine
whether or not God actually exists. It is a story
told with brutal honesty. As with Frank Turner
Hollen's first book "The Pains of April", I was left
with a lesson in humility. Today after reading "The
God File" I came up with my own conclusion about the
existence of God. In the process, my own life had a new
perspective. I rediscovered my own priorities.

Gabriel Black was sentenced to life in prison. He has all the time in the world to sit and think about things that the common person just overlooks or takes advantage of. He decided to search for God in prison. Each chapter is titled with what he believes is proof that God excists.

The one thing I loved about this book was how deep thoughts he was. I had to keep underlining stuff in the book that I really liked a lot. Really made you think a lot.

This is one of those books that I wish I wrote.

Gabriel Black is the instrument of his own punishment, a young man who has taken the murder of his girlfriend's husband on his own shoulders, accepting the blame for a crime he has not committed. When his girlfriend, the only other witness, makes no effort in his defense, Gabriel is left alone behind prison bars. In this vast wasteland of personal pain and the struggle to account for a misspent life, he begins a lifelong search for deliverance.

Sentenced to life without parole, Black sets himself the task of finding God in the lowest of places, where the dregs of humanity endure endless days of mind-numbing boredom with only their twisted memories for company. Some spend the years reading, learning about a world they barely remember and may never see again, while others escape into monotonous drug-induced sleep or give free reign to the demons that have brought them to this place.

Walking a landscape of despair, Hollon treads familiar territory as his protagonist gathers the contents of the box that will define his life, piece by piece, assimilating The God File. There are soulful letters, mournful essays, remembrances of things past, questions about this terrible struggle, all arranged in a particular order of importance. All attempt to explain the inexplicable, to find a place where belief can coexist with despair.

Gabriel's quest is intensely spiritual; the years he spends gathering this ambiguous evidence are part of his evolution toward the answer he so desperately craves. It would be impossible for Gabriel to find God when he first comes into prison. He hasn't achieved the maturity to save himself, let alone determine the existence of God. Each particle of thought scribbled on a scrap of paper in The God File is necessary to the whole. Gabriel has been baptized Catholic and his journey is littered with the small rituals, pieties and beliefs that are wedged so deep in the soul they almost cease to exist, until they are needed. Then, in the never-quiet, never-quite-dark, they emerge, tiny hopeful prayers, begging for a response. From God.

For Gabriel to find an answer to his question and know peace, he must be willing to endure each step of the agonizing journey. After all the wasted years, all the unspoken entreaties, Gabriel must experience patience. He has nowhere else to go. It is his journey alone and his personal path is intimately marked by the struggles of his individual soul. Yet Gabriel finds the courage to make each fragile leap of faith, to surrender his haunting question: "If God gives me more than I can endure, how can I know?" Gabriel listens to the faint sound in the chambers of his tortured mind, hoping to understand. Perhaps, after all, he will find peace of mind. Luan Gaines/2003.

I dislike reviewers who hyperbolize, but it's hard to resist when describing this book. Hollon writes in a clean, succinct, disturbingly moving style, rather like Hemingway with Faulkner sensibilities. For anyone who cares about The Big Questions, this book may be your epiphany.

The God File is a very good book. The read was very quick. It shook my comfortable life. The book made me forget about the flying time from San Francisco to Memphis. I had to control my emotions by pausing the read - so not to wear my emotions on my sleeve. Frank Hollon has a very interesting mind. The main character makes one think deeply. The book makes one think about how important decisions are in ones life. Its nice to see one examine the good, especially when all is not well.

This is the most powerful book I have read in a long time. Insightful, spellbinding, disturbing at times, but absolutely worth the read. It is one of those books that linger in your mind long after you have finished it, compelling you to discuss it with family and friends. I eagerly await the next work by this promising new writer.

A great sculptor once said, there is a masterpiece in every stone. I simply chip away the rubble so others may view. Frank Turner Hollon has chipped away a true masterpiece out of a setting that most would find obscure and offensive. I view "The God File" as the ultimate detective story, the search for ones faith in God. Page for page one of the best novels I have ever read. Weighing in at less than two hundred pages it surely packs a solid punch. A reader will be feeling this one long after the final bell. Frank Turner Hollon's "The God File",a new author, a new novel, and maybe a newfound faith.