Truth must shape us

I was flipping radio stations the other day and heard this from a contemporary American philosopher/poet:

"They say what don’t kill me, can make me stronger 
 So two drinks a night should help me live longer"
 (Ludacris, "Rest of My Life")

Ludacris, is of course referring to a statement by the German philosopher/poet Freidrich Nietzsche, who did say: 

"That which does not kill us, makes us stronger".

I snickered a little. Leave it to a popular musician to completely miss the point and make it into a song lyric. Probably thinks he's a real clever lyricist for slipping a line like this in.

Lately I've been trying to be less critical in everyday life. Not by just restricting my behavior, but by finding myself in the behaviors I'm quick to criticize. 

The truth is that I interact with a lot of truth and wisdom in a similar way to Ludacris.

I think about the way many of us approach religious texts like the Bible. Ludacris takes a passage from Nietzsche and misapplies it, in this case making it a universal truth, without hesitation that logic might dictate some limits to the ways in which an idea is true. It is obviously not true that anything that doesn't kill us automatically makes us stronger. Chemotherapy is tailored to kill certain cells but not all cells....it may cause a cancer to remit, and even temporarily stall death, but it doesn't "make us stronger". 

Nietzsche was referring to adverse life circumstances, not providing a prescription to take small doses of poison as a method of building physical health. (Interestingly, it seems small daily consumption of alcohol may have some scientific support for having health benefits, but I'm pretty sure this isn't what Ludacris is referring to).

In a conversation the other day someone quoted me Psalms 37:4 "Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart". She used it to justify her belief that God should give her whatever she wanted. I gently suggested that maybe she was too broadly applying an isolated text, and that it was both clear and good that we don't get whatever we want in life. I've desired some rather terrible things after being cut-off by another vehicle in traffic, or after my beloved Green Bay Packers have take a bad call from a referee. When I simmer down I realize the desires of my heart often involve things that in retrospect aren't good for me, and I'm glad that God so often saves me from my self and my desires.

But the reality is that we all do this on a regular basis. Like Ludacris with Nietzsche, and my friend with this scripture, we approach wisdom (philosophical, Biblical or otherwise) like a product to be consumed, and consumed in a way that satisfies us. It is our posture as consumers of truth that leads us to ignore the complexity of a truth and apply it ways that render it untrue.

The truth is, Ludacris, if you're drinking two drinks a night, it probably is to avoid some real difficulty in your life, and avoidance doesn't make us stronger, it makes us far weaker.

The truth is, friend who quoted me scripture, that if you read this Psalm in light of the other Psalms and the rest of the Bible, that God is deeply concerned with the desires of our hearts because they are so often destructive and to us and to others. The Bible is filled with a story in which humanity's desire to be its own gods, is rescued and helped to reshape its hearts desires to what is true, and good, and beautiful.

Whenever we approach truth and wisdom from the position of a consumer, we run the risk of shaping it into something that satisfies us or works for us. But ultimately it should be the other way around. Truth should shape us. It should confront us, challenge us, not give us what we want, but call into question the very legitimacy of our desires.