"Unselfish Prose"

I am working my way through the beautiful art and writings of Tyndale's Mosaic Bible, with its devotional text which surrounds the New Living Translation with artistic images and writings of authors from the 1st century up to today. It really is an exceptional experience, and helps surround the beauty of the NLT Text (in my opinion, the most beautiful english translation for pure reading) with a multi-sensory environment that aids in bringing the text alive.

The ancient writers in particular get to me (and even those not-so-ancient writers of the 16th-19th centuries). I realized that there is something about language that gives them an advantage. Though writing in the vernacular of their day, their writings tranported into our postmodern context show a depth that is poetic, passionate, and artistic. They are in a sense timeless, in the way that high church worship is always timeless. They don't submit themselves to modern slang, hipness, or relevance; bur rather serve to call us out of our "selfish" existence and into a more selfless, timeless experience; and when we empty ourselves of ourselves, God can fill the void.

Consider this writing by Thomas À Kempis:

Grant me, O Lord, to know what I ought to know,
to love what I ought to love,
to praise what delights Thee most,
to value what is precious is Thy sight,
to hate what is offensive to Thee.
Do not suffer me according to the sight of my eyes,
nor to pass sentence according to the hearing of the ears of ignorant men;
but to discern with a true judgment between things visible and spiritual,
and above all things always to inquire what is the good pleasure of Thy will.

This is such a complete prayer for spiritual living, with obvious tangible desires expressed by the writer, and yet the language is anything but self-oriented. The very essence of the prayer seems to throw the writer upon the mercy of God, and orient everything in his life to God's command and influence. There is nothing to call attention to the writer; in fact, the writer seems to disappear in his writing entirely, leaving us with a vivid picture of complete, no-holds-barred access to the Father. The last sentence, in particular, sums up the prayer, and the entire Christian life: to ask God, "What is the good pleasure of Your will?""--a prayer that we could never pray enough.

So often older English, replete with Thee's and Thou's, has been reduced to dead ritual and mere rote, and thus abandoned from modern and postmodern worship. But maybe the problem isn't in the language, but rather in us: maybe we have become too busy, too scientific, too motivated, too organized, too goal-oriented, and too intentional in our lives to stop and to listen. Maybe we haven't taken the time to allow the older language, this high church vernacular, to slow us down, to change us, to place us back in a simpler and yet more profound time: when men and women of faith "laid aside every encumbrance" (Hebrews 12:1), and rather than fitting God into their busy lives, molded their lives around an eternal and omnipotent God, trusting that He would shape them fully and completely.

I believe that there is more to this style of writing and expression than meets the eye (and ear), and that we would do well to take the time to immerse ourselves in this world a bit more--for we would certainly be the better for it.