Fearless Faith

A family member completed her PhD requirements this week, successfully defending five years of reading, research and data gathering while suffering the occasional indignities that accompany any graduate program and its institutional biases. That has not changed much over the decades. The “good ol’ boy network” is alive and well, but progress is progress any way we measure it.

A three-and-a-half-decade gap separates her graduate experience from my own. The most significant change during that time is the way information is gathered and processed. Days spent in various university libraries underscored the tedious nature of research. Living in the library was very near the actual truth for many grad students. And if an article was not to be found, an interlibrary loan request could be made, replete with indefinite delivery dates.

Study carrells usually lined the sunshine window side of the libraries, and flickering fluorescent lighting filled the shadows beyond. While most carrells were for everyone’s use, one knew where worst-influence grad students hung out. They managed to occasionally study, but it was an easy temptation to get caught up in frequent games of hide-n-seek in the “stacks,” a common descriptor for the rows and rows of floor to ceiling books and esoteric journals. Playing tag in the stacks was another perfectly good waste of energy, although an argument could be made that timeouts from reading helped maintain students’ sanity. Liaisons in the stacks by some? Strictly theoretical. I never dared find out, although it was a bragging right for some.

The bowels of the university library offered both terror and hope; terror invoked by the sheer volume of resources and awe at the possibility of discovering something overlooked that would inspire humanity. As it turned out, the more truthful reality was that most of our work product, at best, might be mentioned in a footnote in someone else’s thesis. Volumes of photocopied articles and abstracts have resided in my basement since, a testament to how difficult it is to discard work that seemed oh-so-relevant at the time.

So how did the monks do it? How did they so precisely copy and maintain accurate accounts of long-ago compiled scripture, by hand nonetheless? In hand copying, photocopying or scanning research articles, nothing was unimportant, especially insightful margin notes and comments that held sway over one’s own belief. They were seldom quoted but never discarded, rather like manuscripts in modern times. What margin notes appeared to get it right? Which ones failed? What was mere commentary versus exposition? It seems the mantra could have been, “if it is in the margin, include it.” The monk’s job was to copy, not editorialize.

So, what to do with apparent additions or deletions to ancient scriptural writings? Take them at face value and don’t get derailed agonizing over them, in essence getting lost in the stacks. You are neither the first nor the last that will ponder the point, and losing sight of the big picture is always going to pose a present risk. How would Jesus handle the issue? We raised the question within a wonderful group of theologians of late and unanimously concluded that Jesus would simply have us love one another and that we should stop worrying over minutia. See? That wasn’t so hard, was it? Tag, you’re it!