I've been reading Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow - and really enjoying it. Here's an excerpt from the book I thought I'd share...
I definitely recommend picking up this book. It is not necessarily theological in nature (as the following excerpt might lead you to believe), but is a book not to be missed.
“I took to studying the ones of my teachers who were also preachers, and also the preachers who came to speak in chapel and at various exercises. In most of them I saw the old division of body and soul that I had known at The Good Shepherd. The same rift ran through everything at Pigeonville College; the only difference was that I was able to see it more clearly, and to wonder at it. Everything bad was laid on the body, and everything good was credited to the soul. It scared me a little when I realized that I saw it the other way around. If the soul and body really were divided, then it seemed to me that all the worst sins—hatred and anger and self-righteousness and even greed and lust—came from the soul. But these preachers I’m talking about all thought that the soul could do no wrong, but always had its face washed and its pants on and was in agony over having to associate with the flesh and the world. And yet these same people believed in the resurrection of the body…
…there is a big difference between the old tribespeople’s coldhearted ferocity against their enemies and Jesus’ preaching forgiveness and of love for your enemies. And there is a big difference again between Jesus’ unqualified command, “Love your enemies,” and Paul the Apostle’s, “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men,” which amounts to permission not to live peaceably with all men. And what about the verse in the same chapter saying that we should do good to our enemy, “for in doing so thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head?” Where did Jesus ever see doing good as a form of revenge? I saw the Bible as pretty much slanting upward until it got to Jesus, who forgave even the ones who were killing Him, and then slanting down again when it got to St. Paul. I was truly moved by the stories of Jesus in the Gospels. I could imagine them. The Nativity in the Gospel of Luke and the Resurrection in the Gospel of John I could just shut my eyes and see. I could imagine everything until I got to the letters of Paul…
“…If we are to understand the Bible as literally true, why are we permitted to hate our enemies? If Jesus meant what He said when He said we should love our enemies, how can Christians go to war? Why, since He told us to pray in secret, do we continue to pray
in public? Is an insincere or vain public prayer not a violation of the third commandment? And what about our bodies that always seem to come off so badly in every contest with our soul? Did Jesus put on our flesh so that we might despise it?
But the worst day of all was when it hit me that Jesus’ own most fervent prayer was refused: “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will but thine, be done.” I must have read that verse or heard it a hundred times before without seeing or hearing. Maybe I didn’t want to see it. But then one day I saw it. It just knocked me in the head. This, I thought, is what is meant by, “thy will be done” in the Lord’s Prayer, which I had prayed time and again without thinking about it. It means there’s a good possibility that you won’t get what you pray for. It means that in spite of your prayers you are going to suffer. It means you may be crucified.”
