Reading the Old Books: Great Literature & the Life of Faith: In the Desert (GH #28)

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

In the Desert (GH #28)

I do not understand the fascination with the desert. It’s all around me in Southern California: both the desert itself and people’s fascination with it. The desert to me has always seemed dirty—everything tinged with the same color of dust. My readers, including my dear brother, who actually prefers to go off driving into the New Mexico desert, are yelling at their screens right now: the desert is not monotone, it’s full of life, it’s no more dirty than a tropical forest, etc. But, for me, the desert represents a wasteland, dry and barren of possibility, open and exposed to the scorching sun. If I have to drive through it, it’s something to pass through as quickly as possible.

My pastor last Sunday began a series of sermons on Jesus’ temptation by the devil in the desert (Luke 4). He highlighted the contrast between the first temptation with the first Adam in the lush garden of Eden and this second temptation with the “last Adam” (I Cor 15:45) in the arid desert. Jesus Christ, led by the Holy Spirit, intentionally put himself into a climate where he would be tempted in the most natural ways (hunger, thirst, discomfort, discouragement), as well as in supernatural ones (Satan’s challenges), in order to demonstrate for us how to win the battle against temptation.

Life is, of course, replete with its lush forests and arid deserts, its times of plenty and its times of drought. For me, the desert is a temptation: a temptation to complain and be discontent. George Herbert expresses this well in his poem “The Bunch of Grapes.” Likening the experience of the Christian life to that of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, Herbert says,

“We have our sands and serpents, tents and shrouds;

Alas, our murmurings come not last!” (17-18)

So true: our response in the desert tends to be complain first; ask questions later.

I will quote another line from Herbert, this time from his poem “Home”:

“Nothing but drought and dearth, but bush and brake,

Which way so-e’re I look, I see” (49-50)

The desert is a temptation: to despair in the wasteland. All seems barren. No possibilities. Maybe the seeming wasteland continues for as far as the eye can see.

What might it mean to embrace the desert? I’m not sure I’m ready for that one. Christ’s response to his temptation in the desert must be a key to our survival in the times of drought in life, though: stay rooted in God’s Word, know that the Holy Spirit can enable one to win the battle against temptation, turn to the Savior who can sympathize with us in our temptations, and maintain hope of the reward to come as a result of winning the battle.

So, should I yearn to see the “oasis” (to belabor the metaphor), or should I learn to appreciate the desert? I don’t know that I have the answer.

1 comment:

UnknownApril 11, 2013 at 11:40 AM
Well said, Jen. Of course, it is the desert that makes one appreciate the oasis. Unless you're a wandering Israelite, of course.
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Why Old Books?

C. S. Lewis wrote that old books, so often shunned by readers even of his era, might be able to teach us much wisdom and truth that our contemporary age has forgotten (at best) or ridicules (at worst). See, for instance, Lewis's essay "On the Reading of Old Books" (from which I've taken my blog title), where he states, "It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. . . . 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."

How often does the average American (or insert English-speaking-person here) read something written by an old dead guy and consider that, as a result of what we've read, we should "possibly modify [our] thoughts or [our] behaviour" (Lewis, The Screwtape Letters)? I'm not striving for anything ambitious with this blog, but perhaps by sharing the tidbits from my reading of old books (typically works of early English literature) and highlighting a story element, a concept, a passage, a word, I can take part in the tradition of passing along to you the lessons of beauty, truth, and goodness conveyed by these works.

There's one more element to this exploration: the old books, at least those written in the English language, were written mostly by people of faith in a culture of faith--namely, the Christian faith. As a Christian myself, I find the old books present all kinds of lessons for a life of faith.

For those of you in the literary know, you'll find that my approach to literature has been influenced heavily by Sir Philip Sidney's Defense of Poesy, as well as by neo-formalist criticism and, as already demonstrated, the great Medieval & Renaissance scholar and man of faith, C. S. Lewis.