There’s a wild, wild whisper blowin’ in the wind
Callin’ out my name like a long-lost friend…
-Lady Antebellum
I was reading a book last week called The Gutenberg Elegies. It was a collection of essays dealing with the impact our modern technology has had on literature as we know it. The writer took the position that reading as an art form has progressed to its historical apex in the written word, and that our newfound ability to funnel information into our minds at ever-increasing rates using the digital word has been more of a detriment than an aid to real understanding. Of course it was written in the nineties and things like the crassness of the pocket-sized electronic dictionary and the evils of hypertext were squarely in the author’s sights as the perceived Next Great Thing, so I’m sure his polemic would have been all the more frantic if he had had any inkling about the convenient travesty we know as Wikipedia (or worse, the trite little summary of his own life’s work that can ironically be found on that website); but that is beyond our scope here. What struck me was his description of the meaning that is imparted to our lives as we read. Previous to this passage he has been discoursing about a painting of a Victorian woman sitting on a bench in a garden, with a book in her hand, but she is not looking at the book. She is looking away.
“What compels me is that the painter has tried to find a visible expression for that which lies in the realm of the intangible. Isn’t this the most elusive and private of all conditions, that of the self suspended in the medium of language, the particles of the identity wavering in the magnetic current of another’s expression? How are we to talk about it?
“I zero in on the book itself. It is unmarked, unidentified – a generic signifier. But it does not belong to the ordinary run of signifiers: It is an icon representing an imagined and immaterial order. The book, whatever it is, holds dissolved in its grid of words a set of figments. These the reader will transform into a set of wholly internal sensations and emotions. These will, in turn, prove potent enough to all but eclipse her awareness of the surrounding world. She looks not at the garden but through it. What she sees, at most, is a light-shot glimmering of green, nothing more. Of the bench she is entirely oblivious.” -Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age, 1994
Although I love to read and can identify completely with what he is saying on that plane, my thoughts were irresistibly drawn to how this line of thought translates into the Christian experience. We exercise our faith for the same reason a person sits down to read: to escape into a world where meaning can be imparted to his life, and to take on as the reader that all-encircling vantage point of perception that would be welcomed for our own personal struggles that are so cruelly misunderstood by those around us. Faith refuses to accept that the world we see crumbling around us is our eternal destiny. It overturns the tables in the temple, it weeps at the tomb of a friend, it cries out in anguish kneeling alone in the Garden. In our impatience we “bid the wind blow the earth into the sea / Or swell the curled waters ‘bove the main / That things might change or cease.” But when the eyeless rage of the impetuous blasts make nothing of our protests, we are forced back to the place in which we should have begun: the retreat into the world of faith.
It is a strange sort of retreat, for it does not move us out of the world. On the contrary, every day it moves us into engagement with work and play and people and structures and even, like Christ himself, with death. But faith is truly a retreat from reality in that it gives us a glimpse of the normal, a beatific vision (through the pages of a Book, satisfyingly enough) of the way things are supposed to be. Faith shows us what God is like, and thus what he has in mind for us and our world. Having given us the template for glory, it bestows on us the means to take that framework out into our lives and start hanging things on it. Unlike the sculptor who said all you have to do is carve away everything that doesn’t look like the statue, God commands us to piece our lives back together (by the power of the Spirit) to look like Christ. He does not redesign our humanity, he redeems it; and redeeming he glorifies it.
Rahab was a lady of the evening, a prostitute. I think there is perhaps no more heart-rending picture of innocence lost, of a longing for love that will never be found, than of a woman who has chosen this path. And the reason why that is so poignant for me is that this is my story, and indeed it is your story too. Read Ezekiel 23 sometime if you pretend not to know what I mean. Our Husband should have turned in disgust from us long ago.
Thanks be to God that he did not. Instead he sent his messengers to us, people who were not ashamed to come into our house and speak to us the Word of God. And when we heard that the judgment of God was coming, and that a kingdom would be established in the place of wrath in which we had lived all our miserable lives, the Spirit warmed our hearts to a response. Here is the ubiquitous act of obedience we have seen over and over again throughout our study of faith. There always comes a point when, if the scarlet cord is not tied in the window, our blood is on our own heads.
But when you’ve done it! when you’ve taken the fateful action and cast your lot with the invaders, when you’ve put your life – tremblingly though it may have been done, for fear they might find out what kind of person you really are – into the hands of people who are heralding the destruction of your prison walls with the sound of trumpets and rejoicing, and you finally catch sight of the two men who promised to spare the lives of you and your family; how sweet that moment when they welcome you along with them on that journey of joy that will never end. The darkness of the shame that might have overcome you in this moment is caught and dispersed by the brilliance of the sudden realization that these people know exactly what kind of person you are, and that they have brought you with them to the altar, to meet a God who delights to forgive sinners. The wilderness that for so long has been your womb shall now be glad; the desert that has been your heart shall rejoice and blossom abundantly. And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness; and kings shall walk on it, and you will always have a place in Israel.
Christian at Holy Cross, remember who you were. Remember the yearning in your heart that swelled in the hour of your undoing to a desperation you could almost taste, for bygone days in Eden when the sun shone on your innocence. Remember, and know that by faith the Lord has called you away with him – away into a world that hates you, away once more to the perpetual daily struggle with your sinful heart, away with those together with whom you will inherit the land of promise; away to the glorious expression in Christ of all we have ever longed for.
Author: Jeremy Vogan
My name is Jeremy Vogan. I live in Staunton, VA with my wife and four kids. I love to write, and seek to honestly explore the intellectual and emotional implications of following Jesus as a deeply broken person in a twisted, cruel world that is full of veiled beauty and meaning. Writing is part of how I faithfully look for Jesus Christ to someday make all things new. I'd enjoy hearing your feedback! JV