reading, and writing

I've probably mentioned that I am way, way, way behind on reading for my classes this summer. Both are Bible classes and in addition to the two 300+-page textbooks, we need to read Genesis, Exodus, the four gospels, and the Acts of the Apostels. With two weeks to go, I'm nowhere in the textbooks and only halfway through Exodus... And I realize that one is not supposed to plow through the Bible at speed, but it's been interesting to get a bird's eye view. So far it's made me think, "wow, there's really a lot here" and also, "wow, this seems like a pretty shaky foundation to build a religion on."

This article in the Economist this week about technology and language (will emojis be the death of real communication? spoiler alert, or in case you aren't an Economist subscriber: no) had this to say:

     For millennia, speech was all there was. For most of "recorded" history, nearly everyone was illiterate. Then, in the age of the printing press and mass literacy, writing acquired a kind of primacy, seen as prestigious, a standard to be learned and imitated (often even in speech).
     Future historians may regard that epoch of reverence as unusual. Mass reading has now been joined by mass writing: frequent, error-filled and evanescent - like speech. Little surprise that internet users have created tools to give their writing the gesture, playfulness and even meaninglessness of chitchat. Mistaking it for the downfall of "real" writing is a category error. Anything that helps people enjoy each other's company can only be a good thing.

It's interesting to think about where this is going. The "epoch of reverence" for writing is absolutely mirrored in the story of Christianity: the Reformation and the printing press and the translation of the Bible into the vernacular and sola scriptura and the fundamentalist view that says that God communicates primarily through this one specific written document... Even in the Catholic Church, 500 years later (it's a VERY big ship), it seems the only thing that liberal and conservative voices agree on is that we, too, need to pay more attention to the Bible.

But...isn't one central problem of humanity today figuring out how to enjoy each other's company on this Earth? And what if that means we need to pay less attention to the Bible and more attention to our own stories and the stories of the people around us?

It might mean that writing this blog is more important than doing my reading...ha...I can only hope...