Learning to Read

Take care what you might unleash...

I was once told that there was a traditional Jewish practice that forbade the reading of Ezekiel prior to age 40. I think of that as optimistic. I also think that the modern mind is unable to fathom the notion that reading is anything other than a neutral activity. At most, we reason, there might be information that I cannot understand. Rarely do we believe that information can be harmful.

It can kill you. It can plunge your mind into the outer darkness. Reading is dangerous.

The German poet, Goethe, famously wrote, “Der Zauberlehrling,” a poem most will know from Walt Disney’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” In it, a sorcerer’s apprentice becomes bored with his chores and uses a spell to enchant the bucket and broom to do the work on their own. However, things get out of control. The apprentice chops the broom in two in order to stop it, but, instead, it becomes multiple brooms. Mickey Mouse demonstrates the chaos in his usual brilliant fashion. When the old sorcerer returns (in Goethe’s poem) he says that none but the Master should dare to summon the broom.

In the Mickey Mouse world of modernity, everyone fancies himself a Master.

In Goethe’s poem, there is a wonderful line: “Die ich rief, die Geister, / Werd’ ich nun nicht los” (”The spirits that I summoned / I now cannot rid myself of”). We are awash in a sea of spirits, summoned by our own arrogance and foolishness. Dostoevsky portrays this same madness in his well-named book, The Demons.

All of this from reading? Yes, when we read the wrong things at the wrong time. The soul is a spiritually delicate thing, easily damaged and slow to heal. Modernity has an arrogance concerning almost everything. We imagine ourselves to be the wisest and most clever people within all of history, constantly telling ourselves that we know better than all who have gone before. As such, we think nothing of cherry-picking ideas, assuming that we understand them and have their mastery.

Valeria Alfeyeva, the mother of Met. Hilarion Alfeyev, wrote a very captivating semi-autobiographical spiritual novel, Pilgrimage to Dhzvari. It relates the story of a woman coming to grips with faith in the waning days of the Soviet Union. She finds herself and her son at a monastery in Georgia that is in the process of being restored and rebuilt. The abbot is deeply insightful. I was struck in my reading when the abbot becomes very upset with her after learning that she has read St. Maximus the Confessor. He wonders if she can possibly be saved! His advice is that she should read no more in a day than she prays.

I know of far darker stories. Orthodoxy, at present, is inundated with inquirers. The parish to which I’m attached will have received around 100 new members in this calendar year alone. It is a story that is being duplicated all across our culture. With inquiry comes the deep temptation to leap forward to the “deeper” things, to look for a mastery that cannot be found on the internet or in a book. Self-appointed apologists, without training or accountability, offer a knowledge that they themselves do not possess. We are not saved by information - quite often, we are destroyed by it.

What is so dangerous? The knowledge of God is personal and relational, not academic. God cannot be studied like a lab rat under a microscope, nor is theology a philosophical system, a simple matter of ideas. Those statements which we describe as “dogma” are, to quote Fr. Georges Florovsky, “verbal icons.” All of these things exist as God-given gifts that enable us to enter into union with Christ, in body, mind, and soul. It is a marriage between the self and God.

There are very sensitive aspects of the soul that must be given proper regard as we approach God. If, for example, our knowledge of God does not result in an increasing love of our enemies, then we are in delusion. If, for example, our knowledge of God does not result in an increasing knowledge of the self (including, especially, its most shameful aspects), then it is delusional.

I regularly see discussions on the internet of some of the deepest mysteries of the faith - often treated with the same casual treatment of philosophical topics. We debate what we should, in fact, simply adore. “Orthodoxy” does not mean “right teaching.” Its best translation is “right glory,” that is, “right worship.”

It is in worship, in true adoration, that we come to know God. It is in that same apprehension of the true and living God that we come to know ourselves, and encounter ourselves in abhorrence. It is something that we cannot approach lightly. Such knowledge can crush us. For, at the very time we abhor ourselves, we must know the true depths of God’s love. Otherwise, such knowledge would be unbearable.

Christ spoke to His disciples, James and John, who wanted to sit at His right and left hand. “Are you able?” He asked.

The same question can be asked of the Scriptures and of the writings and teachings of the Church. Are we able? Is it time? Am I ready? Do I truly want to enter into union with God through Christ?

He is a loving God and has, from the beginning, given us the fullness of His Church to guide us into that union. We cannot do these things alone, nor as masters. May God give us patience - for “in patience you will gain your soul.” (Lk. 21:19) Read sparingly, and for the sake of your soul rather than for the sake of information. Read for correction rather than mastery. Don’t forget to pray.