Reading Journal - Entry #5
Ploductivity, That Hideous Strength, and The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self
Welcome back to the Reading Journal!
This week, I’ll start with my thoughts on Wilson’s, Ploductivity, since I finished it not long after last week’s entry was published.
Ploductivity
The last section of this book was more focused on productivity, and Wilson’s suggestions come down to doing a little, a lot. If you do a little bit of something every day, six months later you’ll look up and realize you’ve accomplished quite a lot.
I’d like, though, to mention something that Wilson talked about when talking about vocation. He mentions the idea of mastering the craft involved in your vocation. This idea was helpful to me. I hadn’t thought of vocation this specific way before. If someone had asked me if a Christian should strive to master their craft, I would have said yes, of course. That it is actually part of the calling, though, to be working toward mastery was a needed shift in my thinking. For example, if Bob is called to be a musician, he is also called to become a master musician. He is called to be the best musician it is possible for him to be. He is not to merely be as skilled as necessary to be good (or even the best) at the job in which he finds himself at any given time, perhaps making slow progress throughout his life. On the contrary, He is to consider the pursuit of the highest possible mastery in his instrument as part of his calling as a musician.
I think of the parable of the talents. We have all been given natural gifts and abilities to suit our calling and these gifts and abilities are sanctified by the Holy Spirit. These gifts are the talents we’ve been given and we are responsible for the return we are able to provide on that “investment.” It is not my responsibility to compare my return to the return Bob is making; Bob may have received more or less to begin with and his return is his responsibility. I am to be faithful to focus on mastery as a way to maximize the return on the talents I’ve been given so that I can then lay that return at Christ’s feet when I come before Him. I am to put my abilities to use to be maximally effective for the kingdom of God.
Overall, I found this book incredibly helpful and will be returning to it again, I’m sure.
That Hideous Strength
Speaking of plodding, I am still plodding along through this book. It is longer than the other two were but no less interesting. The pace has just started picking up, which is helping to motivate me to continue on.
There have been several points so far where a character has said or done things that sound like something I’d read from a progressive article or reveal the character’s hypocrisy when it comes to their agenda for the nation. The way some of the characters in the N.I.C.E. look down on the country folk is almost exactly the attitude I’ve seen from many influential members of the American upper class, whether they be Evangelical elites or secular ones, toward conservatives in flyover states. It doesn’t seem to matter to them how cultured, educated, or wealthy someone is; if they have conservative views, they must be a regressive and simple-minded individual. That’s how these characters come across, with the attitude that if someone disagrees with them they must be stupid because no intelligent person would disagree with them.
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self
I’ve made some good progress on this book this week and am excited about some of the realizations to which Trueman led me; at least, as excited as one can be about finding out they’ve been looking at something the entirely wrong way.
I realize I’ve jumped in without explaining much. I’ve been listening to the section of this book where Trueman discusses at length Rousseau and his influence on the Romantic poets. This section made me realize a couple of things.
First, the idealization of a “simpler” life (i.e. farming, working at a trade, country or village living) in Romantic literature had become a part of my way of thinking. I’d allowed myself to adopt the Romantic idea about life away from the city without ever considering that this idealization was a result of the assumption that society has a negative impact on individuals, instead of a positive one. Obviously, there are bad societies and society can certainly have a negative impact on a person. However, the negative impact comes as a result of the sinful condition of man, not as the inevitable result of any society.
Second, while I knew that we should not try to be true to ourselves but we should be conforming ourselves to the will of God, I still notice ways that I’m chasing the “authenticity” that Trueman mentions when he discusses Rousseau. For the same reason listed above (the innate sinfulness of fallen man), this “authenticity” or “natural man” is not anything worth pursuing. My feelings regarding my identity are not reliable guides at all and should be rejected as such. Emotions are fine gauges for what is going on inside of me or how I’m reacting to a situation but they should immediately be brought into submission to the truth of Scripture.
The irony is that, as soon as I stop chasing that false authenticity, I start the process of becoming the person God made me to be. The identity given me by God, while it may not be the one that feels most natural to me, will be both the most effective for His kingdom and will lead to the most satisfaction in Him. These reminders are always needed in a culture like ours and I’m glad to have heard them through Trueman’s work.
This post is quite long enough for this week, so I’ll wrap up with that. There are more sections I’ve read of each work but I think those thoughts sum up my main takeaways from this week’s reading.
You may have noticed that I’ve adjusted the structure of the publication a little bit, with Notes from the Fray and the Reading Journal now being separate sections. Anyone who has subscribed already, I kept subscribed to both but it is now possible for someone to subscribe to receive email updates for just one or the other if they’d like. If you’d like to manage your subscription, you can do so by visiting your Substack account page. I made this change to allow room in the publication for other projects as I have the opportunity to pursue them in the future.
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In Him and for His Glory