I've just started reading Donald Miller's follow-up to Blue Like Jazz, a much meatier but just as entertaining little collection called Searching for God Knows What. Sitting out on the porch this morning, the dawn full in my face, I couldn't help but quote whole sections of it into my journal. Great, sweet truthy bits like this one I just have to share. He's talking about how Biblical authors spontaneously break into poetry when the ideas get too big to be related by literal language. How we betray moments of truth, of love, of surpassing beauty by stabbing at them with our wimpy formulas and steps and bullet points:
If you ask me, the separation of truth from meaning is a dangerous game. I don't think memorizing ideas helps anybody understand the meaning inferred in the expression of those ideas. .... I wondered if when we take Christian theology out of the context of its narrative, when we ignore the poetry in which it is presented, when we turn it into formulas to help us achieve the American dream, we lose its meaning entirely, and the ideas become fodder for the head but have no impact on the way we live our lives or think about God. This is, perhaps, why people are so hostile toward religion. (57-59)The poetry isn't just the vehicle but is intrinsic to the meaning. I love it, and I dare you to disagree: Do you remember the story, or do you remember your Grandpa's voice and smell and the twinkle in his eye as he told it? Which was the more important?
The fundamental truths are simple. Really, really simple. But they're also extraordinarily difficult, and please don't try and make them simple. I plan on working them out for the rest of my life.
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