Insights from My Readings

So for Christmas Tara and Dov gave me a book called The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J. Jacobs. It's a great book. A.J. Jacobs is a writer for Esquire magazine and also wrote a book called Know-It-All which I haven't read but which I gather is a book about him reading the entire encyclopedia.

When this book started A.J. was an avowed agnostic. For those of you like me that don't have a clear-cut definition of what an agnostic is this is how Merriam-Webster defines it. A person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god. So I would say that he started out this project as a neutral party. But the book is quite good, it's written as his journal and he records the experiences the frustrations and the epiphanies he undergoes. One of them struck me as something so simple and yet something that I and a lot of us forget and at which we fail. I'm going to include his entry. It's header is "Honor your father and your mother..." Exodus 20:12

'Tonight Julie (His wife) and I are going over to my parents' house, and I plan to make a conscious effort to be more honorable...Despite the embarrassingly early curfew they game me in high school, despite the daily guilt trips about not seeing them enough, despite the quibbles, they've been, on balance, very good parents. Just last week I figured out something about my dad. i realized that he checks my Amazon.com page every day, and if there's a bad review up there, he clicks on the "Not helpful" box. It makes me want to hug him - if we weren't both so repressed."

This experience with his father made me think. What do our parents do for us that we don't realize, or that we don't see. We always expect that we know everything. We feel that when our parents aren't perfect we have every right to criticize, or mock them and their decisions but the truth is that we don't know everything they do or have done for us. We don't realize, or comprehend everything that they have or will sacrifice for our benefit and it seems really childish for me to hold a grudge, or for me to think I know better. This extends not only to my parents but to those around me. I find that when I'm judging someone I'm doing so on such limited knowledge that it makes me appear arrogant, selfish and prideful. I know now why the scriptures teach us 'judge not lest ye be judged for with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged." I would hate to be judged by anyone else on their limited knowledge and I would hate to think that if I judge someone in this manner that the Savior would use this same limited judgment on me as a punishment or as a lesson to me. We should be less arrogant, less prideful, less selfish and refuse to judge someone else by what we know of them because what we don't know is probably much more than what we do know. This is just one thing I realized from this part, but to continue with his entry:

"I don't treat them nearly well enough. I honor them only in a lip-service way. I call them every weekend, but I spend the twenty minutes of the phone call playing hearts on my PowerBook or cleaning the closet while tossing out the occasional "mm-hmmm. " I delete without reading my mom's emailed jokes about vacuous blondes or wacky etymology."

This reminded me of Isaiah 29:13. "Because this people draw near with their words And honor Me with their lip service, But they remove their hearts far from Me, And their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote" Not only do we do this with the God, but we do it with our parents as well. We think that we can honor them in body but not in spirit. We don't truly honor them we just make a show, or pretend to honor them. I think this commandment wasn't meant for outward show but like so many that God has given us it was meant to change the way we think, and feel. We are meant to change our hearts, to soften them towards our parents so that we feel that we honor them, deep down in our hearts. Because no matter how good of an actor we are we can't lie to ourselves and we can't lie to God. Both know whether we truly honor our parents or not. I guess I digressed there but the point is that we should not just show honor to our parents but to truly change our hearts, and our outlooks. Further speaking of the night he and his wife were having with his parents, A.J. said:

"Tonight is dinner and a DVD...About forty-five minutes in, during another musket loading scene, I look over and notice my mom asleep in her chair. And not just light dozing. We're talking mouth-agape, head-slumped-on-the-chest deep slumber. I nudge Julie. At this point, I am planning to whisper something clever along the lines of 'Looks like my mom is really enjoying the movie.' Or perhaps I would have gone with a sight gag - an impression of my mom with her jaw slack. But I stop myself. This isn't good-natured jesting. It has a tinge of mockery to it....I just smile vacantly at Julie, who then goes back to watching Jeff Daniels."

This las paragraph was what really moved me. My family and I like to joke around and I like to think that most of the time it is good-natured jesting, but more often then not what I saw has that tinge of mockery to it. Isn't it better when confronted with this dilemma just not to say anything. Especially when directed to someone we are supposed to honor. I think that I can hold my tongue more often when some jest comes to my mind and I will place this filter most seriously on my conversation and dialog with my parents and I would recommend that to everyone.

I really enjoy this book and I think that I will continue to post insights that I have from all my readings and my everyday life. If I bore you I'm sorry but I'm still going to do it. Hopefully this may start some talk amongst us all but if not I still feel that it was a good entry.

Chris Steele