The Wrong Communion

               I had never read....Hillbilly Elegy....possibly because of what I knew it to be....that it might hit a little too close to home....but I had a high opinion of it from what people told me....and therefore of J. D. Vance. I thought he did well in his debate with Tim Walz....in fact the whole debate was a welcome relief in this attack age. My wife and I reserved seats to hear Vance speak at a Black church....and were in the line.....about twenty people from the door....when someone came out and said that they had miscalculated the numbers as they relate to the fire codes....so we did not get in.
               I just finished.....(7AM Wednesday morning).....Vance's autobiographical new book....just released yesterday....Communion....Finding my Way back To Faith....but my opinion of our Vice President had changed quite a while ago. His temper tantrum in the golden Oval Office with Zelensky is not addressed but explained by his life. The book is maybe 50% his personal family life and religious history....30% various social issues....and 20% tops....anything related to politics. 
               I knew what to expect on his conversion to Rome....for it is a normal passage for people who are searching in all the wrong places....and I'll comment on that....but what hit me out of the blue....that I had not considered before....was that ten years ago this was a man that was still trying to mature...who had decided that being a lawyer....after Yale law school and two years of practice....was not for him....and he had made a lot of money through investing in a short period of time.....who within 17 pages of the book....where he was not forthcoming at all about the details on who helped him and how all of this happened....he went from being an investor to a candidate for the Senate....to a Senator....to on the short list for Trump's VP.....to being the Vice President! And now he is on the short list for Republican nominees for president....all in ten years? It is a sobering thought.
                 As for his religious conversion....he had a typical evangelical youth experience at various churches and youth gatherings....with no sound teaching in his life at all....except possibly a sermon here or there....and a little bit of the normal Left Behind hysteria....abandoned while in the army what little of evangelicalism he had in his system....took that emptiness into college and law school....and then....picked a religion that suited his high opinion and confidence in his own intellectual abilities and capabilities. It....(Rome)....was intellectually challenging....(that was necessary)....very tradition oriented....(something he wanted in  his life)....and he had plenty of friends and acquaintances who could encourage him in this area....but it seems none....to give him the biblical gospel of salvation.
                He apparently reads a lot....but once again....not the right books. He made this comment...."I found Lewis (C.S. Lewis)....(whom he read and quoted often)....thoughtful and compelling. But his books weren't the Christianity I'd been exposed to at him." That is an understatement about the great Oxford apologist. His books can stir the mind....but by themselves they are a soup or a casserole without all the ingredients. In another place he wrote...."As a child, I learned that the devil perfected the art of deception." Next to that sentence I put a note in the book....DJT....meaning he knew of deception....but was taken in by the greatest con man of all. I wound up putting that....DJT....for Donald John Trump....in quite a few places in the book....in areas that Vance had contradicted his own beliefs in binding himself to Trump.
                 He gives a very weak explanation on how he can go from thinking that Trump is bad....to thinking that Trump is good. So much of the book was about his wonderful and brilliant wife....so much that I once thought...."enough already".....but does he care about his wife's eternal soul?  I think that the answer to that is probably....yes....but the problem is that he knows how to be devout....and say many of the correct truths and superlatives about God....but chose a convenient method of salvation of faith and works....that does not save.
                  This is a very easy book to read. J. D. Vance does write well....maybe that should have been his primary calling. I address this issue of Roman Catholicism through novel form....and in detail....in my novella....Isaac Crockett....which can be read in a couple of hours if you are ever interested.