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A Question about Reading

This week, I finished Alan Jacobs’s provocative A Theology of Reading.

This is a book I’ve needed to read. Last week, I wrote a statement about faith integration for a promotion application, and the book’s refrains of love and generosity were ringing in my ears. Jacobs explores the way our readings can change over time, exemplified by a detailed examination of WH Auden’s relationship to Soren Kierkegaard (probably my favorite part of the book). And most of all the book gave me some follow-up reading; the book convinced me to return to John Milbank and (especially) Mikhail Bakhtin.

The book also left me with a question. At the book’s close, Jacobs examines Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and its satirical take on the “institutionalization of charity,” a dangerous pitfall if one substitutes a bureaucratized love for one a personally vulnerable one. Jacobs turns his eye to the academy at the book’s conclusion, but I was left wondering about another extension of Jacobs’s insight.

As an English professor, I feel conflicted about the fact that I am part of the institutionalization of literature and of a certain kind of reading.

My question then: is this kind of “institutionalization” a potential problem?

Does it contribute to the analogous problems as charity’s institutionalization?

If so, what are some ways we can combat those potential problems?

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Political Standards

This was the kind of freshman English student I was…

In my Honors Composition class, we were asked to write a rhetorical analysis of Mark Twain’s essay, “The Lowest Animal,” which facetiously argued that humans were the lowest creature on earth. Being the wag I was, I wrote an equally facetious rhetorical analysis that claimed I had figured out how to assess creature-dom and that humans had just beaten out manatees for the crown of Greatest Creature on Earth. My categories? Food, Mood, and Peace Corps. Of course, humans were the only creature to come up with the Peace Corps, so that was their trump card. (BTW – I somehow managed to make an A- on that paper which still boggles my mind).

The takeaway? The standard matters. Continue reading “Political Standards”

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Meditation

For my devotions on Monday, I read Psalm 1, and verse 2 hit me like a semi-truck: “[Blessed is the man] whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.”

First, it would be an exaggeration to say I delight in God’s law. I delight in chocolate and NBA playoff basketball and a good book and playing music with my brother and going on walks with wife and daughter. I read my Bible every day, but do I delight in God’s law? Not so much.

Second, if you asked me at any given moment what I was thinking about, the answer would be food 80% of the time. So I’m falling short on the whole day/night meditating on God’s law thing too.

Suitably convicted, I decided to do two things: pray every day that I would begin to delight in God’s word, and try to keep one verse from my devotional reading in my mind each day as something to come back to.

This week, God, in His infinite wisdom, decided to show me first-hand what constant meditation looks like, and how I am (for now) doing it wrong. Continue reading “Meditation”

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Discipleship: There’s an App for That?

While the world went gaga for Pokemon Go this week (and by “world”, I mainly mean “my wife and her best friend”), I was trying out some other apps: MyFitnessPal, Goodbudget, and GiantSlayers. Health, money, and discipleship—these were the ostensible aims of these respective apps. (I know, GiantSlayers sounds like a video game app, but it’s actually a Bible-verse/devotional service. Bear with me). Continue reading “Discipleship: There’s an App for That?”

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Rejoice and Weep

15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. – Romans 12:15

12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by[c] one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.   – I Corinthians 12:12-14

Last week in Sunday School, our class talked about the violent deaths of black civilians and police officers over the past couple of weeks and what, if anything, our response as Christians should be.

Almost immediately, we ran into a very specific impasse: we have had and will have a very difficult time relating to something that is so outside our socio-economic bubble. Our class is made up of mid-30s, fairly affluent, educated, white couples. While we have our political or even theological disagreements, we are much more like each other than we are not. The deaths in Baton Rouge, St. Anthony, and Dallas are beyond our ken. While we know that the best thing for us to do would be to listen to someone whose experience is not ours–to hear a cop or a minority speak about their experiences and vulnerabilities–we didn’t have that option in our class on this particular Sunday. Continue reading “Rejoice and Weep”

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Faith and Rationality in Macbeth

This has been bugging me since my ENGL 112 class ended.

We talked about RATIONALITY and IRRATIONALITY in Macbeth and in our lives as a way to start thinking about why the play still matters.

As my students completed their daily writing, I listed a bunch of topics where you could experience the pull between the rational and irrational in your life. They included:

  1. Love
  2. Family
  3. Career
  4. Friends
  5. Money
  6. Health

Here’s what’s been bugging me. The most obvious category of my life where I experience the tugs of Rationality and Irrationality is my FAITH, and I left that category out! Continue reading “Faith and Rationality in Macbeth”

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Mr. Church

This past Sunday morning, I was Mr. Church. I attend a pretty big Methodist church in Summerville, and I was the lay liturgist for the 8:45am service. That meant I explained and read the Old Testament lesson for the day, offered the corporate prayer, gathered and prayed over the tithes and offerings, and even gave the closing benediction. Then I walked over to the Sunday School wing of the church facility and taught Sunday School to a class of 30+ people.

And I did a good job. The pastor complemented my prayer from the pulpit. A couple of class members pulled me aside to thank me for the Sunday School lesson.

Boom.

Spiritual mission accomplished. Continue reading “Mr. Church”