Listening to the Ancient Giants

If you think seriously about matters which truly shape and turn the life you are living, then the following question should not be dismissed.

To whom are you listening?

There are 10,000 voices that fill your ears and vie for your heart on a regular basis.  The onslaught of modern voices is not necessarily a life-giving stream for the heart.  It appears more to be the shallow, swirling, and muddy backwash of an unwelcomed flood.  Paul worried over young Christians who would be "carried about by every wind of doctrine."

A Proverb suggests that we do well to "guard the heart, for from it flow the springs (or issues) of life."

Jesus remarked, "It's not what goes into a man that defiles him, it is what comes out of a man."

If our heart requires rich and nourishing deposits in order to produce that which is wise and life-givng to others, guarding the heart means carefully selecting its inputs.

I'm not suggesting ignorance of the current blather.  However, awareness of the chatter within the "backwash" is not the same as drinking regularly from it.

READING THE OLD BOOKS

In his biography of C.S. Lewis, McGrath draws attention to an important essay the Oxford scholar wrote in 1944 entitled "On the Reading of Old Books."  Lewis observes:

Every age has its own outlook.  It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?"—lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Dr. HG Wells and Karl Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.

This quote from the essay offers substantial wisdom about shaping the perspectives of my heart.  The full piece is worth reading, and can be found by doing a search with Lewis' title.

"What 'old books' might I read?" you ask.  That's a fair, and important question.  

You might begin by asking a more precise question.  "What are the issues (or core questions about life) that need firm resolution in my heart?"    Or, more simply, what inside do I need to get straightened out?   It can be helpful to write out the key matters upon which you need conviction grounded in truth.

Then, once you have determined the answers which need discovery, as the wisest people you know -- and especially those who know God well -- for suggestions on which ancient giants are worth listening to.

Your heart --and life -- will be grateful you did.