January Reading

On the plane ride to and from the states I got quite a bit of reading done. I spent a number of hours engrossed in the literature textbook for my class, but I also did some fun reading. Only some of the reading wasn’t fun because it made me second-guess my own choices.

First, I finished the biography of Mother Antonia, which was inspiring and made me question yet again whether I am doing enough, whether I am doing what I’m supposed to be doing. Am I satisfied being a status quo Christian? Shouldn’t I be working a little harder to do something radical for Christ? I could give more. And yet I fail at the very things that are closest, that need to be done most: prayer, loving my family, reaching out to neighbors. Mother Antonia was twice divorced, she raised 7 kids, and then she made private vows and went to live with Mexican prisoners in Tijuana.  Eventually her vows were recognized by her bishop.  But here is a woman who followed a call to the extreme.

We have friends here who are foster parents. There are three times as many foster children on Guam as there are homes for them. Our friends were hoping to adopt the baby they have been taking care of for six months, ever since she was a few hours old, but her grandfather has now decided he wants her.  They are crushed. It’s like having a death in a family.  I admire them for being so generous, but I have these little pinpricks of guilt that I keep using the excuse that we would be ineligible to be foster parents because we have too many children and not enough room in our house or car.  And could I love a child and then give her back to a situation that I know is not perfect?

The other book that got under my skin was Atlas Shrugged. Read it for the spouses' book club. I’m pretty sure few or none of the other ladies will stick through the whole 1026 pages, and I almost quit on it myself. I admit I skimmed quite a bit of the last half.  The book needs a good editor.  I don’t think you could argue that here is a work of great literature.  The characters are flat, the premise is preachy, the language is utilitarian.  The plot is interesting, but slow moving. It’s Ayn Rand’s philosophy that makes the book interesting and compels you to keep reading, and to question how you support your beliefs under a well-thought out attack like this one. Reading it on the tail of reading Mother Antonia’s story was a real study in contrasts.

I last read Ayn Rand back in my late teens and was intrigued by The Fountainhead, enough so that I thought it was romantic to fall in love with an architect myself.  But I didn’t get all the ramifications of her philosophy back then. I think all I took away was that you should always try to do your best, and that geniuses have to be content to walk alone or suffer persecution.  But now I see how passionately she wanted to overturn the prevailing Christian message of self-sacrifice as the highest good. And she makes a strong argument for how this message has been abused by those in political power.

Her philosophy relies on her faith that if people felt free to pursue their self-interest, they would choose what is best.  She didn’t believe in original sin. Nor did she believe in self-sacrifice. On the one hand, it should be easy to discard her philosophy because it doesn’t fit with human experience.  There might be a few men of genius who can look after their own self-interest without becoming selfish, but the rest of us have to contend with selfishness, jealousy, laziness, gluttony, etc.  Plus where do children and old people fit in her vision of society?  On the other hand, what gives her book power is the realism of the bad guys and their misuse of language. She seems prophetic in her depiction of the government using the language of Christianity - love, self-sacrifice, mercy - to justify socialism and the leveling of society.  Especially in light of the recent efforts to quash religious liberty and the implosion of the economy, Rand’s book made me wonder how it could be possible to reclaim these words.

And now I need to go reclaim an attitude of love towards my children who are berating each other while I let them sort out their conflicting self-interests because I’m busy pursuing my own.