The Scariest Verse in the Bible

I don’t know that it is particularly useful to have a verse designated as the scariest in holy writ. I remember in college people asking me what my “life verse” was. I guess a life verse is the verse that means the most to your life, following the term logically. I never knew the answer to that question. I like a lot of Bible verses and didn’t have the temerity to label one the LIFE verse for my life. But the question of which Bible verse scares me to my core has been long settled. Maybe someday it will be usurped. Maybe lurking in the pages of, say, 2 Chronicles there is a verse I have long neglected that will sneak up on me with no John Carpenter score to serve as warning, and I will be cast into mortal fear but for now this one is holding steady.  Here it is, from the mouth of our Lord:

“Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” Matthew 12.33-37

I was reminded of this passage as I read Alan Jacobs’s recent article that touches on the implications of Christ’s words in the context of our writing. Here is an excerpt:

“It is curious that Jesus speaks of the Pharisees’ accusation against him as a “careless word” — and disturbing that he clearly does not mean thereby to excuse them. Perhaps we would like to think that our careless words are more forgivable than our calculated cruelties, but it seems that we will “give account” for all our words alike. I doubt that we think about this often enough. There is sure wisdom in the Great Lenten Prayer of St. Ephraim, much used in the Orthodox world, which begins thus: “O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despondency, lust for power and idle talk.” Idle talk! — how many of us would think to place, near the head of a long prayer to be repeated frequently in Lent, a plea to be delivered from that?”

The fact that Jesus had to make this statement shows the universality of this problem and its consistency through history, but I believe the danger is amplified in our culture. Twitter, Facebook, and blogs help us feel as if all of our thoughts need to be posted immediately. It is difficult to pause for reflection; someone might beat you to your observation. And Jesus is stark in the condemnation he issues to careless words. As Jacobs writes, we like to believe that our careless words—that curse word under our breath, the things we yell at a television during a sporting event, the unintentionally critical comments to a spouse or friend—are not all that big of a deal, especially when compared with our premeditated sins. But our Lord will have none of that. What comes out in those careless moments is not an aberration, but the overflowing of the contents of our heart. And that, frankly, is terrifying.

Jacobs goes on to talk about how glad he is that he didn’t publish his first book until he was 40. He had felt like he could write well before then, but was grateful that he wasn’t given the opportunity. It is easier to say stupid things before you are 40, easier to be self-righteous about your beliefs and feel as if you have everything figured out.

And while Jesus’ words freak me out considerably when applied to my spoken words, Jacobs’s reflections have caused me to think more about it in the context of my own writing. It is one thing to be embarrassed about things you have written in the past, and I have certainly written things I am embarrassed about. It is another thing to write something uncharitable, to be condemned by words you haven’t just popped off while angry but actually taken the time to write down. Those words can be careless, too, and sometimes we have to say them out loud to realize how true that is.

I don’t think we think of the implication of our words enough. For someone whose hobbies outside of playing with small blond two year olds and running through the woods basically consist of reading and writing—being inundated with words—I certainly don’t consider that enough. Our faith enjoins us to be careful, though, to take every thought captive to make it obedient to our Lord so that we do not fall into the pit of careless words and idle speech. For, according to our Lord, it is not our prayers that show our heart, but the words we say without taking the time to reflect. And that is terrifying.  

The Old Books and the Quest for Knowledge

There is a great scene in Whit Stillman’s film Metropolitan where the two main characters are talking about literature. The girl is a big fan of Jane Austen whom the boy in turn criticizes. The problem is, though, he has never actually read Jane Austen, just Lionel Trilling’s criticism of her work. He defends this practice by saying, basically, that this way the critic does the work for you and saves you the time to read more criticism.

I remember watching this in grad school and thinking of how closely it approximated the way we were taught to approach literature in school—to be sure, read the primary works or at least one section that is pertinent to your paper, but the real place of intellectual engagement is with other critics.

But in the film, as in life, it is apparent that the girl’s simple admiration for Austen is a better way to live than the boy’s cold detachment. And, I would argue, it is more fruitful intellectually. Austen gave the girl both knowledge and delight. What Trilling gave the boy is the appearance of knowledge, without really knowing anything at all. He felt as if he knew Austen after reading Trilling, but all he really knew was Trilling. And Trilling is a poor substitute for Austen.

I am not saying there is not a place for criticism, just that it bears the most fruit if you are already grounded in the actual texts that come under the critical microscope, or you use those works of criticism as a springboard into further reading. Rowan Williams’s recent book on Dostoevsky sent me back to Dostoevsky, wanting to know more and wanting to read a couple of his novels that I had not yet read. This is great, but if you read criticism without any idea of the substance of what the critic is addressing, or read it to tell you what to think about a certain subject, then criticism can make you dismissive and arrogant, thinking that if this PhD I respect already dealt with this author then why bother?

C.S. Lewis, commending the reading of the old books in an article entitled “On the Reading of Old Books,” points out the following:

“There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about "isms" and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.”

I have long seen this to be true in my own reading life. I remember literally trembling the first time I opened the cover of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, practically in fear that I would not be able to comprehend a word. But of course that was not true. And I imagine it is certainly true that I learned a good deal more reading Calvin than I did reading about Calvin. Reading about Calvin is a bit like working one’s ways through the Gospels topically. You can learn a certain amount about prayer or some other thing (useful information, to be sure), but you also miss out on a lot, not the least of which is the notion that a subject such as prayer cannot be abstracted from the other teachings of our Lord. So if people want to know what Calvin said about a hot button topic, like predestination, they are far better served reading the entirety of his systematic theology than they are typing in ‘predestination’ at Project Gutenberg and excerpting whatever they happen to find.

Google and our broader world of technology have taught us to do the latter. There is nothing in our culture, including our education system, teaching us to embrace the former. It is a notably harder way, but infinitely more fulfilling and true to the actual complexities of life and faith.

Questioning Well

I am reading a little book my Matthew Lee Anderson called The End of Our Exploring, a book that explores how we ask questions and our motive behind our inquiries. This is a timely book and a good rebuke to the tendency among younger evangelicals, such as myself, to question everything without really seeking out the answer. Think of Rob Bell as the example par excellence of this practice. Anderson’s broader point is that our questions can be answered if we ask them correctly and actually seek to find the answer. 

He made this lovely observation in the first chapter about how increasing in wisdom increases our ability to ask the right kind of question:

“But if the young question most, the wise question best. The art of questioning takes a lifetime to perfect, for the most interesting questions flow from a deep well of insights. The more we understand, the more fine-grained our awareness of the negative spaces will be. The more we learn about the world, the more we realize how much there is to know, if we will only remember our ignorance and continue noticing the negative spaces. Those who have learned best and longest will explore hidden nooks and corners that those of us starting out cannot begin to imagine. The wise have seen negative spaces that only well-trained eyes are strong enough to detect.”

What resonates with me in this passage is how it aligns with the Biblical view of wisdom: it is hard won and a mark of the elderly. This is why, for example, a freshman in college talking about war being unjust and Jesus being into peace does not carry for me the same weight as Stanley Hauerwas saying the same sorts of things. I might disagree with them both, but Hauerwas forces me to think; the freshman who only thinks she knows does not. It is also why I have come to despise these projects of asking 18 or 19 year old kids why they left the church and taking their pseudo-intellectual response at face value. In a culture that praises youth, Anderson’s effort to focus on the wisdom gained through experience and long-living is welcome and needs to be heard.

As someone who is slowly gaining both wisdom (hopefully) and age (certainly) it rings true. I have written before about how true wisdom does not make one arrogant, but profoundly humble, the depth and breadth of what we do not and will not know smacking into us at every turn. The college freshman is arrogant in his meager knowledge in a way that Hauerwas seems humble in the face of his much more profound wisdom. The Apostle Paul wrote that knowledge puffs up, and this is certainly nowhere more evident than with youthful knowledge.

Climbing Sucks: A Trip Report from the Mountains of Colorado

Last week I got a chance to really get into the mountains of Colorado for the first time in three years, since my wife and I completed the Colorado Trail in the summer of 2010. This, in my mind, is a grave injustice to those mountains and I am very glad that it was rectified. I made a discovery about climbing mountains this go around, or rather owned up to something that I have long sensed: climbing mountains pretty much sucks.

Let me break it down: you transport an overweight Kansan from his slightly above sea-level existence to a valley in Colorado about 8,000 ft above sea level and tell him to start walking up. He can stop when he gets to the top of the hill, assuming he gets there before the wind and rain and lightning come and leave him exposed a couple of thousand feet above the elevation where trees stop growing. For diet you get energy bars which, let’s face it, are the worst food in the world. For drink you get mountain water that our fickle stomachs don’t allow us to enjoy in its simple splendor but filtered with iodine tablets destroying taste and but for the threat of dehydration, making water nearly undrinkable. At best, you have five minutes of elation on top before the threat of storms drive you down; at worst, you die.

Now, let me cut off you naysayers. Yes, the mountains are indeed beautiful. Yes, the exhilaration of reaching the top is acute. Yes, I chose to do this with my extremely limited vacation time. Yes, I will surely do this again, probably often. All of those things are true, yet climbing mountains still pretty much sucks. It is about 90% suck, 5% tedium, and 5% ecstasy.

So I headed down to my favorite part of the world, the San Juans of southwest Colorado, to partake in this cocktail of suck-tedium-ecstasy. And it was everything I hoped it would be. We left Sunday morning from my parents’ house. I had diarrhea that morning. The day before I had put nothing healthy into my body and my body was revolting. It was raining and it would rain on us for our entire seven hour drive to Telluride. We drove 350 miles through Colorado and I did not see a single mountain. When we got to the trailhead it was raining. We had a five mile hike to our campground which we would use as a basecamp to climb three peaks—Wilson Peak, El Diente, and Mt. Wilson. We waited for a bit to see if the rain would clear and it sort of did. We slung our packs on and took off. It would be 48 hours before I was dry again.

The trail to the campground was either very steep and muddy or through alpine meadows which after 15 straight hours of rain are little better than walking through a pond. I was soaked. My partner was soaked. We made it into camp and setup quickly, cooked a dinner-in-a-bag and went to bed at 8 o’clock. I woke up at 4 a.m. and my whole backside was soaked. Apparently there was an indentation beneath my sleeping bag and water pooled there as it rained that night. My sleeping bag was soaked, along with my shorts and underwear, and the clothes I was planning to wear the next day. I sleep with my next day’s clothes in my bag so that they will be warm when I put them on in the morning. In this case there were simply going to be wet.

We woke up late the next morning, though not as late as I feared (my watch was still set on Central Time) and given the near constant rain throughout the night we decided to try Wilson Peak which we would do by itself. We got on the trail at eight and the hike was actually fairly pleasant. My feet certainly weren’t dry, but they at least felt warm. We got to a saddle at 13,000 feet and hiked from there to a ridge a few hundred feet from which we were supposed to be able to see our peak. The fog was intense. Nick, my climbing buddy, said (and not for the first time), “This looks ominous.” But the cloud was mostly white and not very thick and we completed the climb fairly easily. There are some slightly technical sections at the top, but nothing too bad. I always enjoy getting to use my hands while climbing. It rained on us a bit on our descent, but we made good time getting down and both took long naps and read in the tent through the afternoon.

Wilson's ominous saddle

It rained again that night, but we had dug a trench and I didn’t get freshly soaked. Everything was damp in our camp, but we stayed warm. We woke up the next morning and there was an odd spherical light source threatening to rise over the ridge between Wilson and Gladstone Peak. We set out early to attempt El Diente and Mt Wilson, a climb carried out with a difficult traverse between the two peaks. What I will say about El Diente is that is the hardest mountain I have ever climbed. It was not the most frightening or the most dangerous hike, but the hardest. The route description, which I read as we left, not exactly my most Boy Scout moment, says that it is easier to climb the peak from our approach in early summer when there is hardpacked snow. Otherwise, you are left with a couple thousand foot climb up a very loose scree field. And so it was. It was awful, miserable, no fun. We made it to the top, eventually, and there were three people up there who had hiked a different, more stable route. They seemed to have had a pleasant time.

This sucked

Don't let the smile fool you, this sucked too

A fleeting moment of victory

On top we had decision time: whether or not to try and complete the traverse. Nick wanted to, I didn’t. I wasn’t afraid of the traverse, I was afraid of getting down. Another example of my poor planning is that I forgot to get a route description of the path down from Mt. Wilson. I thought the description of the traverse had it, but it did not. Mt. Wilson looked similar to El Diente which we could only climb because our route had told us which couloir to hike up. I was worried that without direction we would not be able to discern the path down from Mt. Wilson. There is an old climbing creed that imparts much wisdom: getting up is optional, getting down is mandatory. This creed is heightened when you have a three week old baby daughter waiting for you on the front range. We opted out. It was the smart decision, if unsatisfying. The climb down from El Diente was horrible, one of those deals where it takes you as long to get up as it does to get down. We made it back, rested and ate lunch, and then hiked back to our car to head to the next mountain.

The traverse we decided against

Toby is not impressed

The previously lake-ish meadows

There is not much to relate about climbing Mt. Sneffels other than it was spectacularly gorgeous. We slept in our car on the side of the road that night because camping was prohibited. We got an early start and climbed it in less than two hours. The views from the top were panoramic. We could see the peaks we had already climbed as well as the rest of the 14ers in the San Juan range and countless other mountains. We descended, stopped in Ouray for a burger and a beer on the way out of town, and then drove the six hours back home. We could see the mountains on this drive and they were beautiful. It made me sad to put the San Juans in my rearview. Those mountains seem to pull me in every year or two and I can’t wait to be back. If I ever become an independently wealthy novelist or somesuch thing I am buying  a house in Ouray and you can all come to visit. The entry fee will be single malt scotch or baked goods, preferably both.

The top of Sneffels

The view

I was joking with my climbing partner on the way home that only rich people would think to hike mountains for sport. Poor people don’t need any help making their life hard because they are busy trying to live according to McDonalds’ excellent new budgeting plan. The privileged climb mountains because they feel soft and privileged. In other words, we go for the 90% suck. We go because we want to push, because we want to feel connected to a nature the entire structure of our lives obviates. I want to bang my knee on a rock, get pebbles in my shoe, go to sleep and wake up wet, bang my head on a rock, eat freeze-dried food created for astronauts, feel a lump in my gut when I look down a couloir I somehow have to climb down, bang my shins on a rock. I want to remind myself that suffering makes for rewards, that coasting up Pikes Peak in a train is qualitatively different than running up it in a race, that the views are different if you earn them. So when I said earlier that climbing mountains sucks I wasn’t really denigrating the act. The fact that it sucks is the point.

Long's Peak "The Homestretch"

After resting for a couple of days in Denver I joined a friend on Long’s Peak for his first 14er. We made excellent time through the initial hike, blowing by every other group out there. We slowed a bit on the more technical sections but still made it to the top in fewer than four hours. The final pitch on Long’s is called “The Homestretch” and it is a 300’ vertical climb up a notch to the top. I showed my climbing partner the line and told him I would see him at the top. And then I took off and something odd happened. I almost ran up the pitch. My heart was beating furiously, my breath panting, but I didn’t stop. Not until I was on top. A guy I passed got to the top and asked me if this was something that I do every week. I told him that I was from Kansas and hadn’t done this in years. The look he gave me was priceless.  

I don’t tell this story to toot my own horn, or only to toot my own horn, because I am nothing special, physically speaking. A mostly out of shape Kansan. But a week in the mountains and I am running up the final pitch on Long’s. The mountains are a weird place. I remember thinking for a few seconds as I made that climb that my lungs were too strained to get oxygen to my legs, that I was simply going to lose control and crumble and look like a fool. But I didn’t. That feeling—on the edge of losing control—sucks, but the feeling of my body as it regulated itself while I caught my breath on top was priceless. 

And then, of course, there were the views.