The Purpose of This Blog

About 10 years ago I attended an annual literature conference in the town where I had studied writing as a grad student.  It was a chance to meet writers I'd only ever seen on the dust jacket of books and was one of those rare and wonderfully ironic instances where almost as many people turn out for a reading as for a rock concert. This year the conference hailed a world-renowned writer whose life had been as colorful and edgy as his writing, and as prolific.  

Near the end of his "reading" - which had consisted mainly of re-telling his years as an undergrad at an illustrious English university, his struggles as a young and brilliant novelist, and topped off with a giant sideswipe against anyone who wasted their time in MFA programs (the you-can't-teach-good-writing mantra) - he took a sharp turn and, for reasons I don't recall, landed on the topic of religion. Aside from MFA programs (of which I am a product), he had a sincere distaste for religion, mainly Christianity.  It muddies our intellect.  It cripples our progress as a society, a species.  It is, now that we are firmly in the 21st century, completely unnecessary.  

And then he said something that still surprises me today.  He suggested that we throw out the Bible entirely and just move on.  The concert hall erupted in applause.  He made some final comments about what he was currently working on and where he was flying to next and then bid us goodnight.  But I didn't hear much of that.  I was sitting there in the dark wondering what seemed to me the obvious follow-up question to his suggestion: ..." and replace it with what?"  The evening news?  Advertisements?  This guy's novels?  

And, 10 years later, I am still musing about that comment.  And more than that, I am stunned by the number of people who apparently agreed with him. So I thought it might be high time I put that book to the test, personally, as an individual in the 21st century.  

But the Old Testament kind of scares the pants off me.  I'll admit it.  It's dense with an enormous cast and lots of wild parties and plagues.  (Actually, put that way, it sounds like a terrific read but for the long spells where I get very lost and speed read through the measurements for temples.) And, since much of the doctrine it teaches was "fulfilled" (Jesus's words) by New Testament doctrine, I'm going to start there, with the New Testament.  That's the source most Christian sermons draw from, and it was Christianity as a whole that this particular writer denounced.  

I want to examine: What does it really say?  What does it teach?  Is it worth not only reading but living those teachings?  Is it possible?  Is it, after all, valuable still, centuries and civilizations later?  

How does someone go about measuring that?  I still don't know, but I am going to try it out anyway and see what I find. For one whole year I will read and try to live those teachings, and I'll write about what I discover.  But this will not be confessional.  Rather, it will be meditative, I hope.  And, if I do it right, honest.