Thursday, November 13, 2003
The Confession of a Recovering Addict
Monte E. Wilson III | The lust always to "Be Right" is akin to being on drugs
This last week I decided that the forest of my library needed thinning out. There were simply too many stacks of books: stacks on my desk, on the floor, in the hallway, next to the couches in my office, stacks upon stacks. It had gotten so that I couldn’t even see the books on the bottom shelves of my bookshelves for all the stacks on the floor.
It took me many long hours to sort through and decide what books would remain, which ones would be given away and which ones thrown away for fear anyone would ever read them — especially knowing that they had been in my library. At the end of the ordeal, there were seven large boxes to be donated to a seminary library, two shelves set aside for books of sentimental value and four super-sized garbage bags ready for the dumpster.
“Watchman Nee? I still have his books on my shelves? O, my. It has been far too long since I did this!” (Watchman ended up in the trash can.)
“Matthew Henry. Ha! I remember the days when I thought you were some pretty heavy reading.” (Henry is on the sentimental shelves.)
“The Puritans? What do I do with these guys?” (Some went to the seminary, some that are considered classics remain, and some I discarded.)
“McGrath? You’ll get his books when you pry them from my cold dead fingers!”
“Ratzinger … de Lubac … Kreeft…my ‘Papist’ friends! You guys stay.”
“CS Lewis, Tozer, Chesterton … I know I ignored you guys for a while. Sorry about that. You were even more wise than when I first read you thirty-years ago. You stay!”
“Reconstructionists? Hmmmm … what to do, what to do?”
My library is the story of my evolution as a follower of Christ. These books remind me of where I started out, the paths I followed, and even some of the dead-end roads I thought would lead somewhere useful. Actually, while handling these books and considering my history with them, I realized that all of them had been useful. Of course, some of them were “useful” to me in ways that would not amuse their authors.
It has been said of Spurgeon that his theology came to him whole and sound, and that he never had reason to change it. I wonder about that. Maybe it was true for him: maybe it is simply what his torch-carrying biographers wish for us to believe. I know that my theology has repeatedly changed and, furthermore, that none of my systems of theology was ever consistent. In fact, the card-carrying adherents of whatever “system” I had adopted at any given time never really considered me a “true believer”! It was always a case where I had too much of “this,” and not enough of “that.”
One of the thoughts that occurred to me while I was rifling through my books was that, in the early days of my journey, I would arrive at certain plateaus with the idea that I had finally made it. “This is it. My beliefs may need tweaking but this is the basic system of theology from which I will live, move and have my being." Yet, as surely as I am human, I would later strike my forehead with the palm of my hand while simultaneously exclaiming a Homer-esque “DOH!” I had been wrong, in error, not quite right, missed the boat. After a while I noticed that my teachings were increasingly salted with phrases such as “it appears to me,” “might I suggest,” and “here’s something I have been thinking about.”
At the same time, I also noticed that I started cutting people a lot of slack regarding their beliefs. I don’t mean that I ceased debating (although that too became less and less frequent) or having a point of view: I mean that I started following the Golden Rule. Unless we were discussing some point of orthodoxy, I began refusing to draw swords against those who were genuinely seeking after God.
Another insight occurred to me while packing away some of my books: I sure did spend quite a few hundred hours seeking to understand what God never explained. Whether it was how God was both sovereign and yet we humans free to choose, or a particular conundrum regarding Jesus being both God and Man, I was determined to get it right. Whereas the Bible made broad assertions that were enveloped in mystery, I was going to get beyond those mysteries. I have now come to appreciate the mysteries and to be humbled by them.
I have discovered that being “right” is like a drug addiction. I feel good but I am blinded to what my addiction is doing both to my spiritual and psychological health and also to the damage it is causing in the lives of those around me. The wisdom that comes from above is peace loving, considerate and easily entreated (James 3). My name is Monte Wilson and I am a recovering addict who now seeks wisdom and righteousness, not right-ness. Rather than merely pursuing what is true, I now wish to seek after the Way, the Truth and the Life.
This, from an author who remains in my library:
We admire those minds who have a reply to everything in advance, whose thought has gone forward beyond everything, leaving no more room for invention than for objection on the part of those to come. Nothing surprises them or bothers them, either towards the finer shades or towards progress. Never do they take even a furtive look, through a door at least ajar, towards a yet unexplored domain. The whole world seems clear to them. Everything in them is final. The system they have forged for themselves—or which they have learned by heart—has no pigeon-holes missing. It makes a contented thought for them, already wholly established in eternity. Yet, are they quite certain that that eternity is authentic?
Great minds, real believers, are better acquainted with their ignorance…
Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith
On further thought: I think I will retrieve Watchman Nee from the trash can. I am going to place one of his books in some prominent place where I can be constantly reminded to tread softly on the assertions of others, to maintain a high degree of humility regarding my own assertions and to never be tempted again to the enticing drug of always being right.