Holy Reading When It Matters
Rembrandt, Paul In Prison, 1627
In recent writing and teaching I’ve been talking about what I think is at least part of the sorry story of our baffling desire to cancel the cultural drivers of the past. We’ve stopped reading those big books or great poems; we’ve stopped viewing magnificent art. Worst of all we’ve stopped reading the Christian Bible as the animating center of what is true and good and beautiful. Those were the sources of deeper thoughtfulness in the past. Are we really ready to discard it all?
Sadly, we are discovering, when we no longer believe in any source of truth, we soon stop thinking there is anything worth building or keeping, the home, marriage, an organization, a nation, a civilization. When this finally happens, naturally, we begin to ask why read? Why study art? Isn’t it up to each person to decide? Who cares anyway? Why read the Bible when it has become nothing more than an antiquated old scroll?
I’ve been trying to say all of this lately, but I’m feeling like a dog barking up the tree trying to chase the cat away. Maybe my voice really has become irrelevant. Who cares anymore about those books or poems or art or the Bible? Move on. Grow up. Get with it.
What am I missing here? Somebody help me.
Something happened to me this week that took me to a sort of ground zero of thinking about what it means to be human in our time. I listened to Bari Weiss of The Free Press interview a Muslim Arab Israeli. She is married to a Jew and grew up in a small town in decidedly Jewish Israel. She is kind of a celeb as a news anchor in Tel Aviv. The complicated mix of her identities made her especially credible as a new voice for what is happening to us all.
She was very clear: October 7 pierced her to the core and obliterated all previous assumptions about what is good and true and beautiful. How is anyone supposed to build a new life, she asked, when the wisdom of the ages was wiped out in an instant of savagery? She sounded a note of despair and helplessness.
Is human compassion any longer possible? Are we left with only the ashes of hatred? This is a woman reduced to the fundamentals what it means to be human, all the easy, ready answers, whether religious, ideological, national, wiped away.
And then she made an amazing suggestion. The only way forward, if there is one, is to educate our children. This was not mushy, cliched idealism but rather hard-edged realism, a plea, an anguished cry. If we can’t begin anew to educate our children, for things like dignity of others, things like home and family and community, things like compassion, we’re done.
I began to ponder how how we can possibly educate for compassion?
I realized I had no choice but to turn to my own deepest sources, my education, my identity, my faith. That’s a risky move amidst all the fierce differences, all the canceling out of anything as true. And so I take the risk: Renewed education will have to deal with the Christian Bible. There is no other way. Some things are true and some are not. This is where I have to plant my stake.
For some five thousand years and more the Jewish Christian holy scriptures have guided the way toward love and peace and joy. It points the way through inevitable suffering. These scriptures have introduced us to a kingdom beyond kingdoms and a loving God who hovers over it all. I have no doubt these scriptures have lifted up the sanctity of human life and the sacredness of human dignity, without which we become barbaric. Is there any other way to teach compassion?
Does this sound naïve? Well, we’ve been brought down to bedrock questions of what it means to be human. We’re on our knees now. We’ve got to make some choices. I know what my sources must be. I’m ready to dig into those sources each day for the rest of my life. Maybe you’d like to join me.