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Notes -
I don't think this does a great job of relaying Douthat's thesis specifically, but I will say that it was delightful to read the second half, where he gives a fresh glance at the gospels.
One of the first pieces of advice I give to anybody interested in Christianity is to sit down and read a gospel, in one sitting. If possible, find a printing of the gospel without section headings or verse numbers, because those just confuse and aren't authentic to the original text anyway. Then read it. Hold all your questions until the end - jot them down if you like, but keep reading. Get through the whole thing in one sitting. And then see how it affects you.
Unfortunately even for churchgoers, one of the most frequent ways to experience the Bible is to hear it chopped up into tiny morsels, and then for each morsel to be surrounded by so much sugar and honey, in the forms of prayers and sermons and hymns, as to make them palatable. But how much scripture can you really get that way? Put all the extras aside, and have a full course meal of nothing but scripture.
Often, I find, when people do this they are shocked by what they find. Perhaps the story is much more dramatic than they thought, or it's much more bizarre and incomprehensible, or they find themselves drawn to or repulsed by characters they never thought about before, or they just realise that the puzzle pieces fit together in a way that they had never registered. But it usually does something, and that something, whatever it is, is worth exploring.
I'm more likely to read a Gospel, now, than I was prior to reading the review.
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