{"id":9551,"date":"2016-10-06T21:20:09","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T04:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=9551"},"modified":"2016-10-06T21:20:09","modified_gmt":"2016-10-07T04:20:09","slug":"whats-in-your-inner-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/whats-in-your-inner-library\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s in your Inner Library?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Upper<\/a>

Upper Library, Christ Church College, Oxford\u00a0(Photo credit: Loren Kerns)<\/p><\/div>\n

Taking seriously the advice\u00a0of our\u00a0lead mentor, Dr. Jason Clark, I read a vast number of reviews about Bayard\u2019s How to Talk About Books You Haven\u2019t Read<\/em>, before reading the book itself. If the reviewers are to be believed, Bayard\u2019s book is either pure satire, a serious treatise on discussing a book without reading, an offering of practical ways to NOT read a book delivered with wry humor, or a mockery of the literati<\/em>. The truth is, I think the reviewers are all a little bit right.<\/p>\n

Bayard, an author, literature professor, and psychoanalyst, has coyly taught us all how to discuss books without reading them, while encouraging us to love reading with tantalizing excerpts from the works he uses as examples. He offers us the freedom to skim (15), draw on the thoughts of others who have actually read the books (18), use our \u201cinner libraries\u201d to inform our thoughts and opinions (73), to boldly admit we have not read a book while still offering an opinion (137), and to freely impose our own judgment regarding a book upon others (149).<\/p>\n

It was Bayard\u2019s description of the anthropologist who tried to share Hamlet<\/em> with the Tiv tribe of western Africa that got me to thinking that perhaps some Christians have read Bayard\u2019s book and are applying the principles on a regular basis when discussing the Bible. I think it\u2019s fair to say that many Christians, at one time or another, have indulged in the freedoms I mentioned above when discussing the Bible. A quick look at Facebook is enough to give evidence that at least a few (okay, MANY) Christians feel free to impose our own judgment about what the Bible actually says, oftentimes without actually reading more than one proof texting verse. Harsh? Maybe so, but I still contend that many of us (I certainly include myself in this) have taken the approach of an anthropologist who tries to make a story (in our case, the gospel) relevant to a group of people without first learning how that people\u2019s inner book or inner community library will hear and receive the story. When it gets frustrating, like the anthropologist, we get snappish with the people who \u201cdon\u2019t get it\u201d and say something like, \u201cTheir hearts were hardened like Pharaoh\u2019s.\u201d What does that even mean? Of course, if we follow Bayard\u2019s instruction and speak with utter confidence, we can actually convince others we KNOW what that means.<\/p>\n

This may sound like I\u2019m taking a swipe at Bayard and his book, which is not at all the case. I found the book to be quite helpful and insightful, especially when discussing the way in which we use our inner book and inner libraries to help us more fully understand a work that we simply do not have the time to read deeply. While reading this book, for example, I thought about, How to Read a Book<\/em>, which our cohort read a few weeks ago. Many of the thoughts shared by Adler and Van Doren in that book align beautifully with Bayard\u2019s witty examples. I found myself wishing Bayard, Adler, and Van Doren could get together and write a book called, How to Read a Book and Talk About Those You Haven\u2019t Read<\/em>. Bayard\u2019s love of literature and clever wit would bring a certain joie de\u2019 vive<\/em> to the plodding, but useful methods of Adler and Van Doren. It would be the best of both worlds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taking seriously the advice\u00a0of our\u00a0lead mentor, Dr. Jason Clark, I read a vast number of reviews about Bayard\u2019s How to Talk About Books You Haven\u2019t Read, before reading the book itself. If the reviewers are to be believed, Bayard\u2019s book is either pure satire, a serious treatise on discussing a book without reading, an offering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[660,477,908,909],"class_list":["post-9551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adler","tag-bayard","tag-literature","tag-von-doren","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}