Reading tonight has prompted me to start a series on my blog that I’ve wanted to start for some time, and that is a series on reasons for reading. Why read? What do we get out of it and what is the fruit of our labor from spending so much time as we do on harvesting the ripe books, letters, works, etc. we set to read? These posts will, of course, be in no special order, but will be added as reasons come to mind.
#1
Confirm what you’ve already been thinking.
Reading can confirm what you been thinking. Now, of course, reading also challenges what you’ve been thinking, and rightfully so, but that is the reason of another, separate post. The confirming that I am talking about is best illustrated by the reading I was doing tonight that both prompted this series and the confirming of one of my thinks; namely, that in our minds, there are “little systems.”
The work I was reading tonight, Robert Reymond’s A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, forefronted this thought of mine that has been on the backburner for some time, that of systems. Quite unexpectedly did Reymond lead me to this confirming of my thought. I was very pleasantly reading along on the nature of biblical truth (univocal vs. analogical)–I love reading on subjects of which I’ve not read anything before–and BOOM! There it was: a short quotation and footnote with Alfred, Lord Tennyson as the referant.
Here’s where I was reading:
“Every time [one] rejects a proposition as false because it ‘contradicts’ the teaching of Scripture or because it is in some other way illogical, the proposition’s sponsor only needs to contend that it only appears to contradict Scripture or to be illogical, and that his proposition is simply one of the terms…of one more of those paradoxes which we have acknowledged have a legitimately place in our ‘little systems,’ to borrow a phrase from Alfred, Lord Tennyson.”
Footnote 30, placed after “Tennyson,” then reads:
Tennyson writes:
Our little systems have their day,
They have their day and cease to be.
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou , O Lord, are more than they.—In Memoriam.
A smile broke out on my face like a 14 year-old’s acne! “This is why I read!” Here, my friends and faithful readers, is the first reason that I would like to point to you why I read: to get confirmation. Right here is a double dose. Not only has Tennyson written my thinks 150+ years before me, but Dr. Robert Reymond has written them in his work as well. This little Tennyson poem (if you can call it that–I’m not good with poetic categorization) has instantly become one of my favorites. Why? Because it has confirmed what I was thinking. We read to get new ideas, yes, but what fun it is to have ideas confirmed when reading. Are you as excited as I am? Who cares!
Thank you, Tennyson. Thank you, Reymond.
My “little system” in my mind is having its day–this post is one example. But my little system will cease to be! It’s but a broken light trying to imitate the bright, glowing sun that is God!
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