From Pascal to Augustine

While browsing a bookstore, a parable came to mind. I was on my way to eat at a friend’s house, a gourmet cook of nouvelle cuisine: she made exquisite food, beautifully presented, but usually not enough for my appetite. Those delicious little servings mocked me.

I had missed lunch that day and was ravenous as I made my way to her new address. The directions weren’t clear, and I was having a hard time finding the house.

Famished and lost, I kept driving by a hot-dog stand. The aroma had the same effect on me that the sirens of the Greek myth had on the hapless sailors in their waters. I didn’t merely want a hot dog, I needed a hot dog. I reasoned, she never serves enough food anyway. Why not have a snack to hold me over until I get there?

I stopped. But what to order? The menu was huge. I settled on a regular hot dog, a kraut dog, and a chili dog. They really aren’t very big, after all. And what’s a hot dog without french fries? A day without the sun, oatmeal raisin cookies without cold milk! So I ordered a large bag of fries, too.

And since fries are salty and hot dogs are spicy, I added a large soft drink to wash it all down. I felt much better.

I finally did find her house. She had prepared a wonderful meal. It was probably the best meal I didn’t enjoy. I was so full, I even left food on the little plates.

A parable — a silly, but true and truthful story of how the great enemy of the best is not usually the worst, but the good. Life, and ministry, is full of hot dog stands, easy and pleasant detours from the best. They leave us stuffed in our spirits, overloaded and soul-crammed, not with the Bread of Life but with spiritual junk food.

Why did such thoughts come to mind in a bookstore? There I stood, so much to read and so little time. And thousands more books published each month. Most will feed me, yet leave me stuffed but empty in my soul; entertained, but not enlarged, engaged but not enriched.

I am hungry for the permanent, the substantial, the true. On every level of my life I want to “not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life” (John 6:27).

It’s time to read fewer books but better. It always was! Less is more. John Piper has written a nourishing book about a nourishing writer, Jonathan Edwards: God’s Passion for His Glory. Edwards is perhaps the greatest intellect this country has produced. But he can be daunting, both in his style and his content. So, to encourage the reader, Piper urges us to think of the better as often being older and harder.

Why older? Because our own times are stuffy. We need more air. Piper cites C. S. Lewis’s recommendation of the old as that which keeps “the clean breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds.”

Why harder? If we are to be enlarged in our minds and spirits, we must wrestle with ideas and language that are beyond us, that make demands of us. Says Piper, “Raking is easy, but all you get is leaves; digging is hard, but you might find diamonds.”

The persistent question of our culture is “What’s new?” God’s enduring question is “What’s best?”

So, begging the pardon of my local bookstore, and the publishers of the numerous periodicals I snack on, I’m going to take some of the old books off the shelf and set my table with more solid fare. It’s been too long since I’ve feasted on Pascal and George Herbert. I haven’t touched Augustine for years. And, oh yes, the Bible: I’ve spent too much time using it for sermons and too little time simply feeding on it for life.

Ben Patterson is dean of the chapel at Hope College. To reply, write Newsletter@LeadershipJournal.net.