Giving Wings to Truth

“Religious truth is captive in a small number of little manuscripts which guard the common treasures, instead of expanding them. Let us break the seal which binds these holy things; let us give wings to truth that it may fly with the Word, no longer prepared at vast expense, but multitudes everlastingly by a machine which never wearies to every soul which enters life.”

- Johann Gutenberg

Gutenberg had an unbelievably powerful, world-changing vision: to give wings to the truth through the printed page. There is a limitation to his vision, though, for the printed page is not truth in and of itself, but merely a medium by which truth is conveyed. Far more powerful than any written word is the living Word of God, who strides out of the pages of the Bible in the Person of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Jesus is Truth personified. He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). The printed words of Scripture become truth only when they are interpreted properly and only when they bear fruit in our lives.

The Seafarer

The Anglo-Saxon poem, "The Seafarer," expresses the cry of the heart of one who has left behind "home"--all that is comfortable and familiar--in search of a better home, one that is not merely comfortable and familiar, but one that answers the heart's cry for truth and beauty and goodness, one that is not subject to the frailties and limitations of this transient, earthly life but one that is based on the rock solid hope of an eternal haven where "neither moth nor rust corrupt , and where thieves do not break through and steal" (Matt 6:20).

Loneliness is a mark of such a quest. People back home don't always seem to understand that what is good may not be the best.

That man lolling on fair land
has no earthly inkling of how I
a wretched wreck on ice-cold seas
weathered each winter
exiled from kith and kin.

The Seafarer undertakes the journey in winter, that season which is the antithesis of all that is comfortable and warm. Yet the one who hears the call of that far distant land is not content to snuggle under the bed covers or warm one's toes at the fireplace in the old homeplace. While one may miss the warmth and coziness of the familiar, the heart longs for that unknown shore where...

God's visions are . . . more vivid
than this dead life loaned out on land.

To the Seafarer, the quest is clear:

Come, consider where we have a home, how
we can travel to it, how our travail here
will lead us to the living well-head
and heaven haven of our Lord's love.

Amen!

What Makes You Tick?

Recently in the theological research course I teach, I gave a brief talk on motivation and other qualities essential to writing a research paper successfully.

One slide of the PowerPoint presentation I used was a grouping of cartoon characters including Bugs Bunny, Sylvester the Cat, Wiley Coyote, Elmer Fudd, and the Grinch. I asked the students to tell me what makes each of the characters tick. The answers are obvious: Bugs Bunny loves eating carrots, Sylvester has the goal of catching and eating Tweety, Wiley Coyote loves the idea of catching Roadrunner, Elmer Fudd loves hunting and dreams of shooting Bugs and Daffy, and the Grinch delights in the thought of ruining Christmas.

The students seemed to enjoy the little exercise, and while I had their attention, I asked them, "What makes you tick?" The idea was to get them started thinking about what it is in life that motivates them to do what they do and to be who they are.

Another illustration that makes the same point is the clock. But instead of saying, "What makes a clock tick?" since that obviously has a double meaning, I asked, "What is a clock's reason for being?"

Obviously, the answer is to keep time. But there are those of us who keep clocks even when they don't keep time, maybe because they look good, like the little crystal clock I keep on my desk, or maybe because we like the sound they make, like the cuckoo clock my in-laws keep just because they like the cuckoo. The question to ask ourselves, then, is: "What is my reason for being?"

Hopefully, it's not just to look good or to go cuckoo.

The answer for us Christians is easy: our reason for being is to love and worship God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. That means everything else is extra. It helps us set our priorities and keep things in proper perspective. To put it simply, I revert to my favorite saying, even though I've said it so often it borders on being a cliche: "Will it matter in heaven?" Hopefully, if our motivation truly is to do only what will count for eternity, we will be inspired not only to make the best choices but also to keep on going regardless of any discouragements or setbacks...

...even as Wiley Coyote refused to allow any mishaps -- falls over cliffs or packages that explode -- deter him from getting back up and trying one more time to catch that ever evasive Roadrunner.