Discovering Truth

There are more words surrounding me than there are stars in the sky or drops of water in the ocean. This feeling is exciting at first for someone who has called herself an aspiring writer because writers read. Writers read a lot. Writers read all the time. Everywhere there are words and we love to get lost in them.

It is just that I do feel lost lately, and not the good kind. I can pick up ten books in one night and connect thoughts and ideas and quotes from all of them into one subject. It is magical and yet…scary and overwhelming. All these words composed into beautiful pieces of music that vibrate through the soul, and all of them not mine. And I wonder, is there anything new I can say, about anything?

I think I have an original thought and I find it somewhere else a week later written in a different way. Billions of people thinking thoughts every day for the last how many years; is there anything I can say someone hasn’t thought of before? It doesn’t feel like it.

Poe tells us—in a simply seeming way (uh-huh Poe)—the possibilities for the imagination are endless because the imagination is a combination of things in the universe and the universe is endless. But is it? Is it really? What is there, out in this world, what combination can I possible come up with, orchestrate into something moving and flowing for people to swim in, what can I think that is actually mine? It feels like nothing. Like all possible combinations have been imagined and there is no need for me to write anything.

I write for me mainly I guess. If I want to be honest with myself about it, honest about how self absorbed I am, yet pretend not to be.

Writing and reading help me make sense of the mess of thoughts knotted in my squiggly stringy mess of a brain. It’s much like unraveling Christmas lights, and once they are all finally all unknotted and in a line strewn out in the living room near the tree I can plug them in, light them up, figuring out which ones have broken bulbs, and then I can string them around the Christmas tree.

Unraveling lights gives me strength and sanity and helps me see life as it is, not just how it feels it is. I write for me. But I guess I also figure that if what I write can help me, then maybe I can help someone else by lighting up their living room too, the living room of their hearts I guess. Plus I have experienced all kinds of experiences that are of the growing up and learning how to live kind. Experiences that force wisdom into you. And isn’t a part of life about growing older and wiser and then sharing that with those younger and …well, dumber isn’t right, but it goes with the parallel structure. I want to share wisdom with people. And the wisdom and honesty about my experiences and thoughts can hopefully light up some living rooms. Well, I hope they do anyways, and I can hope. I do hope.

I recently discovered Eugene Peterson’s The Message. I know it has been around a while, but I tend to tread carefully around words, especially the Words of the Lord. I also believe I read what I am supposed to when I am supposed to, and I guess God figured it was time for the what in this moment called when, because there was one day I just knew I had to go buy it and start reading it. And I can tell you I am reading the what exactly when I am supposed to, because I feel like I am falling in love with the Bible for what feels like the first time.

I grew up reading the Bible and going to small private Christian schools where reading the Bible was homework. Words of advice: never get into the awful habit of associating the Bible with the same feelings you associate with homework. Be very careful with Bible studies and classes. The second reading God’s word feels like work, re-evaluate everything, stake a step back, and step back towards God with a different attitude.

I am still trying to pick up the Bible because I want to and not feel like I have to. It is slippery ground, and I guarantee God has a safer path with better traction. The Message feels like better traction.

There are ways to approach His word and ways you probably shouldn’t approach His word. And being excited about reading the Bible, it feeling like I am reading it for the first time, those are the feelings we are supposed to have.

1 Peter helped me through some tough times physically. Taking on the attitude of Christ when it comes to suffering in the body was something I had to let sink into my being so I could handle a rare disease that leaves me in pain constantly. Consequentially I have read 1 Peter many times, but only looking for one thing to get out of it, help with pain. But I accidently turned to 1 Peter in The Message one morning and thought, wow, why haven’t I read it in here yet…so I did.
I was out at one of my sunrise spots, the sun had just risen, was still rising, and I was reading 1 Peter, and new light fell on the chapter to reveal something to me to encourage me to keep writing even though I don’t feel like I have much to say really worth people’s time reading it when so much else amazing writing exists out there…this verse has encouraged me to keep putting the pen to paper, as a writing.com friend of mine has encouraged me:

“Be generous with the different things God gave you, passing them around so all get in on it: if words, let it be God’s words…” -1 Peter 4:7-11 (11 in NIV)

But then I got to thinking deeply about whether or not everything I have written, all my words, if they are God’s words. At first I was alarmed because I can tell you that they are not. Not everything I have to say is Truth, God’s Truth: something I believe He would say.
But then I thought of the book of Job. And how in Job not all of what Job says or what his friends say are not the words of God. I mean they are because they are in the Bible, but you have to look deeper inside the words to find the actual Truth.

Most of Job talking back and forth with his friends are words rooted in emotions, deeply rooted in emotions, and not in God’s Truth. They are just talking, with very aesthetic poetry, because that’s how Moses’ pen rolls on scrolls. (That was silly, but it made me giggle; hopefully you giggled too.) And their words on paper are full of what they are feeling, not with the Truth of the situation: why Job was being tested.

They had their opinions for sure why Job was being tested, but we discover through the beginning of the story when God is bragging about Job to the Devil that Job is a good man, and “there’s no one quite like him—honest and true to his word, totally devoted to God and hating evil” (1:8). So it wasn’t as Job’s friends thought, he wasn’t being tested because he was evil, sinful. They were not speaking truth. They kept attacking Job telling him what a sinner he was and that was why he was suffering. This just wasn’t the case.

So I got to thinking about why Moses would put all this dialogue in there. All this human thinking rooted in emotions. If this book is indeed the first book written according to Time’s line in the bible, and thus this kinda is God’s first message to humanity, why is it so important to keep all these emotions in the bible that just aren’t true? They aren’t God’s thoughts, they are man’s.

But I think this is God showing us how we are. The Truth isn’t something He would say so much, but rather He is truthfully showing us our humanity.

Smallville has Clark being told that his human learned emotions are his biggest weakness. Perhaps they are ours too. Perhaps talking when emotions are high needs a big “yikes!” sign from Wyle E. Coyote. But also, perhaps, God is showing us how we get sometimes. That He knows we get this way. That He knows we need to yell them out and let Him get rid of them. To spit out the ick and cleanse ourselves. And perhaps the Truth of God lies in us more being able to discover what isn’t true so we can better understand what is.

After 37 chapters of human thoughts rooted in emotions God finally has had enough. In Chapter 38 God finally confronts Job, and God came in a “violent storm.” God asks Job, “Why do you confuse the issue? Why do you talk without knowing what you are talking about?” Eugene titles the section, “Have You Gotten to the Bottom of Things?” Job was trying to figure things out, and then we discover that He can’t. Then He shuts up and listens to God. Then they talk. Then He is amazed and in love with God and feeling like everything is going to be ok.

Italo Calvino said that “writing always means hiding something in such a way that it then is discovered.” Perhaps Truth isn’t seen at first glance when reading the dialogue between these friends in Job, and perhaps the Truth won’t be seen when reading something I wrote, my thoughts rooted in emotions mainly, but perhaps in both, Truth can be discovered if you look a little deeper, past the surface level emotions and into either what God would or wouldn’t say to or about humanity.

Because I will write something, then God tends to confront me with different ideas about what I just wrote. My words are conversations with God. And hopefully I shut up long enough to listen to Him and discover what truth I can discover and then share it with all of you.

Most of what I write is based on what I feel, and I am assuming I am not alone in my feelings; I assume I am not the first to feel what I am feeling. There is not much I can experience that someone else hasn’t experienced and talked about already, but that won’t stop me from writing things out, from unraveling lights to light up living rooms of hearts. I feel words are something I can give and I truly hope both you and I can discover His Truth inside my words, inside my emotions, inside my heart’s pulse on the page, and because of that I plan for now for giving freely of hopefully His words. If Truth isn’t always directly written by me, which it won’t always be, then I hope at least some can discover truth in what I have written, discover what God would or would not say to us, humanity.