Kethuvim

The book, not the year. Anyway, I'm reading 1984 right now. I read a few years ago, but I didn't really grasp the significance of it. I thought the book was "good," but I didn't really find it unsettling or revolutionary. I'm finding it increasingly hard to read it this time, however.

If you know nothing of this book, I'll give you an incredibly brief synopsis. It's essentially a dystopian fantasy written in 1949. It tells of a world in which no one is free and everyone is under the control of the Party. There is no history, no free thought, no freedom, only the Party. If the Party says that something exists, it exists and always has. If the Party says that something doesn't exist, it doesn't exist and never has. If the Party says that two and two equals five, then it equals five and nothing else. The book follows a man named Winston who is questioning all of this, but is eventually arrested for his wrong thoughts. The Party then tortures him into submission. Read it for the all of the other details, it's a fascinating book.

I've found myself being very uncomfortable in my reading, which isn't like me. I've been trying to figure out why this book is affecting me like it is. The I figured out the reason: it's inhuman. The whole idea of this society is to reduce people to an animalistic existence. They seek to destroy a person's humanity so that they will obey. So why is this unsettling? Because free thinking and the right to make our own choices is what makes us human, and to think about a society where this is impossible is sickening at best.

In Genesis, at the very beginning of human existence, God gives people the choice to do what they want. He tells Adam and Eve, "You can eat anything you want, just don't eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." He tells them not to eat of it, but it's not like he puts a shield around it or anything. They still have the choice to eat of it, God is basically telling them that if they make the choice to eat from it, then everything will be screwed up. As humans tend to do, they make the wrong choice, eat from the tree, and everything goes south. God endowed every human with the capacity for free thought and choices. Not every thought or choice leads to life, but nonetheless, he gives us the right to choose. The fact is that God had to put that tree there because he knew that without choice and free thinking, people could not be human. Without choice, there is no way to love something or someone.

What is really eating at me is how many churches seek to control the behavior and thoughts and choices of their people. I could name a few of these churches within 10 minutes of where I sit typing this. They have good intentions (I think), but what they are really doing is turning their people into something less than humans. If we are told what to think about God and we blindly lock-step to what we're told, then it is impossible to really love him in a deep way. When free thought is taken away, as it is in a lot of churches, then we're robots, and robots have no capacity to feel and love. If anything, a churches main goal should be to find ways for people to be fully alive and fully human. by restricting what someone can think or believe, we're telling them that there is no other choice but to think like we do. Thus, we render them as something less than human. Any thoughts?