Because of my alcoholism, I’ve spent a lot of time over the last ten years or so among evangelical Christians. That’s because most recovery programs (the kind that don’t cost tens of thousands of dollars, anyway) rely heavily on faith rather than therapy, mostly Christianity. Say what you want about it—and there’s plenty to say—but that approach does work for some people. There are significant numbers of people out there who are searching desperately for something to believe in, something with the potential to change their lives.
Unfortunately, faith is something I’ve always struggled
with. Maybe it’s because of my education or my intellectual curiosity, maybe it’s
because of Star Trek and sci-fi in general, or maybe it’s because of my
own stubbornness, but I’ve never been able to bring myself to wholly believe in
something on faith alone, especially if it runs contrary to logic or reason. I
may love my stories, my TV shows and movies, my comic books and novels, but I
don’t believe in the literal reality of them. They’re metaphors, thought
experiments, goals to strive for, but not actual reality. They’re something I
need to reinforce every day, like someone devoted to their faith needs to
reinforce their belief every day, but they’re not objective fact and they’re
not always terribly well-written or conceived. (Some of them can be quite bad,
in fact, and it’s important to be able to judge each individual story on its
own merits, rejecting the bad ones and embracing the good ones.)
In Christian circles, daily devotionals are very popular.
For those that don’t know, devotionals are typically small books containing
individual entries for every day of the year. Each entry contains a brief
passage from the Bible followed by a few paragraphs written by the author
(usually a pastor) expanding on the day’s scripture and providing analysis.
Devotionals are meant to be read one entry at a time, every day, and then prayed
about by the reader with the goal of receiving true insight from God.
As someone who has never been able to fully embrace faith, I’ve
never been crazy about devotionals and, when I’ve been asked questions about
the day’s reading, I’ve always reflected on them from a more academic or
historical perspective than a faith-based one. The Bible really does contain a
great deal of historical fact, even if I do believe parts of it are embellished
to a greater or lesser extent. That’s the nature of writings that have been
around in one form or another for hundreds or thousands of years.
One day, in a large, chain bookstore, I came across a small
book titled The Intellectual Devotional. In the upper corner of the
cover, it boasted “365 DAILY LESSONS FROM THE SEVEN FIELDS OF KNOWLEDGE”.
Intrigued, I picked it up and paged through it. I had never seen anything like
it, but sure enough, it offered brief, daily lessons on topics like history,
science, and the arts, one for every day of the year.
I ended up buying it that day, and I proceeded to read it every day just as faithfully as other people read their Christian devotionals. It was great, actually, to get a little bit of education every day and to feel like I was exercising my mind a little. I’ll admit that I also got a little bit of amusement out of reading about academic subjects that most of the other people I was with would have laughed at. I can be disagreeable like that sometimes.
But my point is that personal fulfillment comes in lots of
different forms. Contrary to what some people who have you believe, there is no
one, universal right answer for everyone. That’s why it’s so important to
understand Who You Are, so you can then find what fulfills you and how that’s
different from other people.
We can’t live anyone else’s truth. All we can do is live our
own, but to do that, we have to first know what it is.