For Ever Reading...

Arthur Schopenhauer once wrote in a short essay, "For ever reading, never to be read!" This simple phrase has stuck withe me for at least the couple of months since I read the essay, but I think it has a lot to say. So much, in fact, that I decided not to read while I was waiting for my dinner to cook, but to write instead.

What that statement really is, is a challenge. It is a challenge to pursue activity and creativity, and to really see what one is made of. In my opinion, we live in a world of self-servitude, meaning we like to have things handed to us. We watch television because it hands us entertainment, we have the internet on our phones because it hands us information. Book reading, is different, though. To read a book, one must be able to sit down somewhere and take the time to actively read the words on the page. What is more, is that the reader must use his or her mind to actually make sense of what the words mean. I doubt that I would meet much opposition when I say that reading is an activity of the mind, and a worthy activity to consume our time, but Schopenhauer challenges us to take one step further.

The apostle Paul once said of spiritual gifts that they first ought to edify the entire congregation. Schopenhauer takes that point and applies to to education/knowledge/learning. Let's think about it: what good does it do to sit in a library and read all day (certainly more than sitting in front of a television, but keeping Schopenhauer's next step in mind...)? Not much. It does plenty of good for the reader, but on the other hand, does it? The reader, presumably, gathers a wealth of information and new, refreshing insights from his/her day of reading. Good. But is not application of that new knowledge what makes it count? Is not potential energy a mere concept, whereas kinetic energy actually does something? Is a faith without works not dead?

Reading definitely takes ambition and patience, but writing takes even more. To write something intelligent takes more than a creative mind. It takes an understanding of the way things work and an understanding of how to apply it. I just finished the book White Teeth by Zadie Smith. It was brilliant. She draws eloquent analogies, has a distinctive understanding of how several different cultures operate, and weaves different perspectives on numerous topics into her fiction. At the same time, she draws the reader in to enjoy a beautiful process of character development. It was a great read. I should rephrase that: It was a great write. Smith took an idea that she could have kept to herself and shared it with the world (it is on the New York Times bestseller list). She had ideas that were influenced by one thing or another. She read books that helped her develop her own writing style. She had a vision that would be a lot easier to develop in her head that take the time and money to write on paper. Still, she wrote it, and now more than just Zadie Smith is benefiting from her ideas.

The same is obviously true of nonfiction, my genre of choice. I am currently reading a book called Hamlet's Blackberry by William Powers, which explores the hyper-connectivity of the modern world. Powers made observations, formulated ideas and hypotheses, and did his fair share of researching to polish his idea in his own mind. What takes real ambition is authors' willingness to write. Let me repeat my own hypothesis - what good does it do to obtain all of this information and store it away? Nothing! Share it! Teach it! (Believe me, I would if I could find a teaching position!) Write it! Debate it! Let it grow! There is no worse sentence for the fruits of education than to let it rot away untouched.

Another point - if one does not share his or her thoughts through writing or some other medium, the thoughts will atrophy and disappear. Just as obtaining and absorbing and hording knowledge is a non-edifying way to use said information, not exercising it is just as bad. This is one of my greatest regrets. I value the intellectual conversations I might have these days because it gives me a chance to exercise what I have learned and use it in different situations. I wish I would have chosen do this in college. I wish that while the knowledge was still fresh in my mind, I would have had the good sense to put myself in challenging situations where I could use what I know to gain more knowledge. Sharing knowledge will always yield enormous returns. If one should choose to invest a certain amount of knowledge or learning in another class or individual who is willing to talk about it, no doubt that knowledge will return with a new spin or perspective. Just as Schopenhauer begs of intellectuals to share what they have learned, I would say that a dynamic conversation would also do the trick.

I think what Schopenhauer means when he laments, "For ever reading..." is this: Please make sure that the reader is not the only one benefiting from what has been read.

God!

Regina Spektor came out with a new album a while ago. I think it is called Far or something. There are a few songs from the album that come up on my "The Weepies" station on Pandora, and I especially enjoy one called Laughing With. The lyrics explore different situations in which we do NOT find ourselves laughing at God, e.g. in a hospital, when we realize the last thing we will see is a pair of hateful eyes, or when the doctor calls after some routine tests. However, Spektor maintains that God can be funny, and in the end, concludes that we are actually laughing with God.

This got me thinking through a perspective that I have been considering for a while. This is, that God is real. We think about this, we know this, but like pictures of victims in the Holocaust, it is so real that we just do not think of it as actually existing. Take the Holocaust - we have all seen the photo of the little Jewish boy with the Star on his jacket, hands in the air, with the muzzles of Nazi rifles pointed at him and his family. Tragic, we think, a real mess. But how often do we consider the absolute reality of what we kind of know exists? Where is that kid now? Is he buried somewhere under some war-scarred plot of land in Europe? Is he some other kids' Grandpa who never talks about his childhood? What was going through his young mind when he saw the soldiers yelling at him and pointing their guns at him, and the rest of the crowd throwing their hands up in the air?

My point is, sometimes things are so drenched with reality that they hardly seem real at all. And that is the way it goes with God.

There are so many ways in which God as a concept is disguised as a word. To me, at least, that is what it seems like sometimes. We pray to "God." We say, "Thank God!" We mutter, "Oh my God..." And we do not really know what we are talking about. Even as professing Christians who claim to sincerely believe that Jesus is 100% man AND 100% God (homoousios, meaning "same substance" as in, Jesus and the Father are homoousios, also the only meaningful Greek word I know) we really have no intention of applying our Sunday School cookie cutter God to the rest of our lives.

(Before I go any further, I would like to clarify that I am generalizing. I am by no means accusing anyone of not having a faith or of being guilty of what I am describing here. If I were not the worst of us all, I would not be writing, so be slow to call me a hypocrite, please. I am well aware of that.)

Let's take a faith-based approach to the concept - not just the word - of God. Can you imagine the ramifications of God creating AN ENTIRE UNIVERSE? How dare we, as mortal, sinful, disgusting humans, at the same time we are polluting this Creation to a point of no return, claim to love this God and expect him to love us back? We can not! Yet He does...which is just another unfathomable mystery of the workings of God. How can we balance our evil and ignorance against God's endless grace and love? It seems unlikely that God would care for one second about what happens to us...Yet He does! And on top of that, He sacrificed Himself so that we could continue to screw up, spitting in His face as we do it, and be able to repent and ask for forgiveness to live in an eternity with GOD. What is this concept of God? We really just pay lip service to the word God (and the Word of God) and do not really take the time to actually comprehend just how incomprehensible GOD really is.

Philosophically, God is the ultimate end-all and be-all of what philosophers have thought about for centuries. Let's start early: Plato famously wrote about the cave where people saw shadows and thought that was all that the world was made of. God is no shadow. I think that we see shadows and see the light of God behind them, i.e. a sunrise, that feeling when they play your favorite song in church, etc. I think that when we talk about God we are really talking about God's shadow. But that is not the case - God is reality. If there is one thing that is real, it is God. Next guy - Rene DesCartes famously said that the only way we know we exist is that we can question our own existence. God exists. We know he is real because we know we are real. We all know that we were created in God's image, so even if we are only existing outside of the physical realm, and DesCartes was right in thinking that our life is a great dream, we know that God has a conscious being and one heck of a creative imagination. There is, of course, the great debate over sin and evil and how an all loving, all knowing, all powerful, always present God can allow it to happen. We don't know why for sure, but we know that there is an all loving, omniscient, all powerful, and omnipresent god - and we know him as God.

A friend of mine in Frederick came up to me after an ultimate game once and said, "Hey Paul, we should get together and talk about God sometime." The problem with that is that the first thing that came to mind was, "How nebulous!" And it is true. God's vastness takes us by surprise, and we comfort ourselves with the knowledge that we know God as a word, as a term, as an expression, and as a familiar face (the irony in saying that...) in Bible stories. That is why it is so difficult for us to imagine God as being real, despite us knowing His existence. The very concept of God existing seems so foreign to us, even though we tell ourselves that we are in constant contact with Him every day.

It would be a mistake to draw similarities between God and "big brother" or 1984. The purpose that God has for always being there and being so real is not for spying on us. But God is ALWAYS there, whether or not we can see Him or feel Him. This may just betray the place where I am in my spiritual walk, but I would like to believe that we are all guilty of this in one form or another. God is REAL. God KNOWS us by name. God LISTENS to whatever asinine request we present before Him. And as if getting over the reality of God was not difficult enough, we are blessed to struggle with the paradox that even though we are who we are, we are still loved by GOD. Not God the word, everyone knows that he loves us, but we are loved by GOD the CONCEPT.

Now that is something to think about...