If Not for Words

Dear Kate,

There is no quote today, not above.  Below I will quote myself, one long piece I've written close to ten years ago.  I was thinking about Eugene Peterson this morning and searched my old blog with his name (the result can be compiled into a book) and found this piece.

I am not going to temper with it, so you can experience the lucidity of a mad man writing feverishly for an hour.

Yours, Alex

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When I was younger I'd have jumped off a building if not for literature.

At that time literature to me did not include the Bible. The Bible I thought was a joyless book about a rumored-about God. This God never mattered to me then and it seemed my indifference mattered not to him either. How I functioned day after day in various faith communities is a spider web of a conspiracy that though hanged delicately by threads was nevertheless tenacious and long lasting. The Bible was a book about The Truth that didn't necessarily need to speak truth about the next breath I take, and I breathed easy knowing there is a lavish limit to its ability to get close to my neck. What was written between those pages seemed to be a non-issue to the sufficiently religiously persuaded older folks, and the more their empty talk tried to prove the opposite the more this child knew it was just one of those boring games that grown-ups must play. It was like a magic trick that I had grown to see through a long time ago but was not supposed to tell. Not long after I was asked to try playing the magician.

I yearned to hear voices that speak truthfully. I didn't care about The Truth proclaimed in church because what is beyond dispute is beyond reflection, and what is beyond reflection is beyond care. Deep down I've determined if there is truth this was not it. Truth, for one, I knew, does not reduce. It doesn't need to make life smaller to increase its explaining power. It does not brush away genuine questions to clear a way for itself. If life is as full and full of questions as it is, this too must be the intention of The Truth.

Right there and then, I realized The Truth is not an idea but a personal being, with characteristics and reasons and purposes and feelings. What I longed for was not an explanation, for why would a heart yearn for a piece of information if not for its soul-shaking, life-changing implication? Why would I love to be truthful if The Truth is not an object of my affection? Why would I ask for acceptance and understanding if The Truth is simply a standard of being that I either do or fail to measure up to? Truth invites a man to live to the full. Truth wants to relate to me. It validates me: "I am the reason you feel this way."

I never expected truth to answer all my questions. If truth seeks to not reduce life but invites me to open up to live more fully, then there must be always more beyond the horizon that simultaneously protects and blinds me from the vantage of my present moment. I knew I need not have answer for all my questions to live in truth, the same way last night before chowing down I didn't examine every single grain in my rice bowl to ensure it is poison-free. There is trust in my relationship with The Truth.

Because there is always more to it, I expected truth to be something quite beyond my expectation. All human conundrum are moral conundrum at their core; so, to put it most simply, whenever I felt quite contented about the moral stature I've achieved, how right I was about things, I'd always wake up the next morning feeling disappointed by the inadequacy of yesterday's moral ascension. Truth nags. Truth challenges. Truth constantly makes me feel uncomfortable. The only comfort I knew was that there is actually a Truth for me to feel uncomfortable about. A savage would call himself a savage only if he acknowledges there is a non-savage state of being.

People speaks about truth, but truth shuts them up and says "Only I can speak for myself." Literature knows this well, and that's why instead of preaching it chooses to tell stories of truth-seeking endeavors. It is for this reason that "truth-preachers" tend to dismiss literature as morally ambiguous, fluff for the feeble-minded, nothing serious for truth-telling purpose. "The Truth is what it is, don't you try to elaborate on it. God doesn't want us to add stuffs to his words," the preacher teaches. On the one hand the preacher says it is doctrinal to say God wants and is in a relationship with us; in the same breath he adamantly advocates it is all about an ascension to a boxed-up moral state of being. It is like a groom in a wedding declaring his love for the bride in way of formulas, pie charts, timelines, point-form theories to faithfully document and project the trajectory of their love history, all very accurate, even necessary, for truth representation. The bride is in tears. Of apathy and tedium.

To live in The Truth is to learn a new tongue, a strange tongue foreign to the reductionistic way of seeing and being one is taught to practice since day one. What people sing and speak about in church are tall claims, which make the idea of being a Christian all the more acerbic a parody considering how the claims dwarf the actual practice in daily living like a funny mirror. Marilynne Robinson once said, "Anything stripped of the beauty and dignity proper to it is a parody." For the longest time in my life going to church was like sitting through a derivative Hollywood movie that does not even disguise to be something worth more than a dime and a couple of dreary hours. "How can this possibly be The Truth?" I dismissed The Message for its messengers.

Literature is a truth-seeking tongue that is painfully honest about the futility of its pilgrimage. At worst it is self-deprecating, self-defeating, even self-denying, hopeless about its own emptiness. Yet when I was presented with the option to choose between a tongue that is honest about its own dishonesty and one that is dishonest about its honesty, truth tells me anything that is dishonest is irreconcilably self-defeating. I didn't know how to judge what is true---Who ever can? But I do know truth cannot be dishonest. No one is perfect, yes, but whoever makes a habit of lying and feels no problem with it is living an antithesis to truth, period. It is not ideal to listen to a tongue that admits it is vain and its effort often in vain, but, I thought, as long as there is honesty, there'll still be a glimmer of hope. Something's got to shine through somehow.

Eugene Peterson once said it is a curse to read the Bible in isolation. Now he elaborated on this throughout his career as a writer and a pastor. I will here give my own take to this hard truth of a claim. It is really quite simple: a person who reads only the Bible and claims it is sufficient for his purpose cares only about his own purpose to reduce life to what he can manage and God to what he can use Him for. Don't need to go far: log in your Facebook now. Do it, really. Read stuffs that Christians posted, one-liners, pictures, sentimental anecdotes, sort-of-Biblical mottoes, "spiritual" insights and how-to's, links to other writing that they want to piggyback on as if they too can speak the same, sayings of certifiably trustworthy teachers (even Eugene Peterson!!!!). But what the vast majority of them would not do is to speak a new, strange tongue to declare their new-found love found new again every morning. One time a pastor actually said at the beginning of a sermon, "I am going to quote lots of Bible verses today, this way I think I am not gonna go wrong." He knew he was being reductionistic to speak about God this way, but reductionism seemed to be preferred over the risk and ridiculousness of taking God out of a box where everybody finds comfortable to see Him stay comfortably in. The preacher, of course, saved his true tongue for when he is off the pulpit. (Why wouldn't he quote from the Bible when ordering at McD?) Desecration. A stripping of the beauty and dignity proper to the use of a tongue.

Jesus the Word saved me many times over with words, words that acknowledge: Yes, it is ok to yearn for The Truth. The Truth would not reduce you like everything else does. The Truth is quite beyond your comprehension but if you are willing to open up you will apprehend it because you are made for this. You are yearning because Truth first seeks you out, singles you out as a soul unique and important. You matter. Your life matter. Everything matters, because truth matters. Why does a person want to live if not in truth?

It will take me many more words to tell how literature leads me back to the Bible and really reading it for the first time. But today this is where I stop.