Saturday,
June 28, 2008 at 9:03am
“Look,
Gail.” Roark got up, reached out, tore a thick branch off a tree,
held it in both hands, one fist closed at each end; then, his wrists
and knuckles tensed against the resistance, he bent the branch slowly
into an arc. “Now I can make what I want of it: a bow, a spear, a
cane, a railing. That’s the meaning of life.”
“Your strength?”
“Your work.” He tossed the branch aside. “The material the earth offers you and what you make of it…
There are a number of paragraphs throughout this book that resonate really deeply with me. I had a rush of thoughts after reading this and am going to try and work them out.
It’s been a common theme in my recent discussions with people, the meaning of life. The conversations are destined to glance from love to God to some other cliché and misunderstood concept. You won’t find it surprising that when I talk with the religiously inclined I get some version or another about how life is about worship, surrender, and faith. I think that what these people are holding up in such high exuberance is so artfully masked its led to every reason we can surmise to hate existence. Why is God praised? He created the cosmos, He lives forever, He is eternal peace and love, He is every answer, He is the means to His end. He is the effortless worker. People are not deterred by the atrocious acts He commits in the bible, because it isn’t about said atrocity, simply that He Is doing it. When’s the last time you can say you have been completely the person you are during some endeavor? When has life felt effortless and fluid? The unwanted and unnecessary stress of beleaguered minds wondering what the future holds, how their engagement was read, and why they acted in a way they can’t define. I feel that this lack of definition only stresses those with the wrong focus. This maddeningly obvious condition that makes you feel guilty and condemned after being put into words.
Let’s take a look at the Jesus story. His life was about his works and miracles. No one would ever dream of feeling like an equal separated from the flock. His most famous “act” was to die on the cross and forgive you of every sin. The most brilliant and selfless move of the miracle working teacher was to forgo what he was doing and allow himself to be martyred. Here’s where it gets interesting. Howard Roark is the character in The Fountainhead who is the quintessential martyr, in a sense, for the almighty I. He gets battered, mocked, and screwed over by almost everyone. All of it leaving him indifferent to them all. He doesn’t forsake his way for the sake of appeasing others. He doesn’t compromise and doesn’t care to hold any power over them. Every structure that is put up by him is magnificent for one reason, the fact that he designed it. What does the Jesus story tell us in light of this? It tells us to give up. It says to sway to will of fate and God. Our purpose is not in what we stand for, it is in that we stand for God, accept his gift, make of ourselves an offering. Only through subservience will we be allowed live forever and bask in the Light. Riddle me this. The God who seems to dwell within the character Roark, an atheist none the less, that sees the magnificence that can be achieved in creations emanating the human spirit decided the only way to instill and redeem humanity was to sacrifice it?
Those who crafted what Jesus would be were ingenious. Jesus gave up. Jesus was allowed to doubt the insatiable Will. He was granted the privilege of not just being the martyr for our sins, but also for the thing we feared the most; the will to conceive of something so perfect it would cast upon us the fear and loathing that comes with comparing it to reality. Jesus denies us reality, and therefore denies us any chance to understand the kind of will depicted in Roark’s character. Every job you could be doing, every testament you could be making, every mark on someone’s life that signifies that You, this person here and now was here, proud, and acting in the only way possible is erased. While Jesus was giving handouts, someone was working that much harder to say look what I can do on my own. Look what I can stand for. How can you mourn the death of a God? When you mourn the death of your soul and your will. When you watch the epitome of hopes and dreams suffocate and bleed out, you’re the one that can’t breathe or move. The whole reason his drawn out suffering death is endlessly praised is because people have become so disillusioned about who they are that all that’s left is to idolize suffering and death. They want to map their pathetic lives onto his works and call it saved. They want to transfer their pain as if it isn’t theirs to have, as if they didn’t earn it and can’t handle it. The most masterful maneuver in all of this, is that you are promised the type of fulfillment and joy that a character in a book about selfish magnificence would make you jealous of. Do you not see how hopelessly backwards the Jesus story is? He is the ultimate contradiction of any kind of God what would work to put him here. Our works, our story, and our will do not have to die in order to be recognized for how important they are. Deny this, and live in the hell you’ve created.
It is through the work that people do to exemplify this spirit that they live forever. There is no place for sympathy or excuses. You are not measured by how sorry you can feel about what you’ve done.
“Your strength?”
“Your work.” He tossed the branch aside. “The material the earth offers you and what you make of it…
There are a number of paragraphs throughout this book that resonate really deeply with me. I had a rush of thoughts after reading this and am going to try and work them out.
It’s been a common theme in my recent discussions with people, the meaning of life. The conversations are destined to glance from love to God to some other cliché and misunderstood concept. You won’t find it surprising that when I talk with the religiously inclined I get some version or another about how life is about worship, surrender, and faith. I think that what these people are holding up in such high exuberance is so artfully masked its led to every reason we can surmise to hate existence. Why is God praised? He created the cosmos, He lives forever, He is eternal peace and love, He is every answer, He is the means to His end. He is the effortless worker. People are not deterred by the atrocious acts He commits in the bible, because it isn’t about said atrocity, simply that He Is doing it. When’s the last time you can say you have been completely the person you are during some endeavor? When has life felt effortless and fluid? The unwanted and unnecessary stress of beleaguered minds wondering what the future holds, how their engagement was read, and why they acted in a way they can’t define. I feel that this lack of definition only stresses those with the wrong focus. This maddeningly obvious condition that makes you feel guilty and condemned after being put into words.
Let’s take a look at the Jesus story. His life was about his works and miracles. No one would ever dream of feeling like an equal separated from the flock. His most famous “act” was to die on the cross and forgive you of every sin. The most brilliant and selfless move of the miracle working teacher was to forgo what he was doing and allow himself to be martyred. Here’s where it gets interesting. Howard Roark is the character in The Fountainhead who is the quintessential martyr, in a sense, for the almighty I. He gets battered, mocked, and screwed over by almost everyone. All of it leaving him indifferent to them all. He doesn’t forsake his way for the sake of appeasing others. He doesn’t compromise and doesn’t care to hold any power over them. Every structure that is put up by him is magnificent for one reason, the fact that he designed it. What does the Jesus story tell us in light of this? It tells us to give up. It says to sway to will of fate and God. Our purpose is not in what we stand for, it is in that we stand for God, accept his gift, make of ourselves an offering. Only through subservience will we be allowed live forever and bask in the Light. Riddle me this. The God who seems to dwell within the character Roark, an atheist none the less, that sees the magnificence that can be achieved in creations emanating the human spirit decided the only way to instill and redeem humanity was to sacrifice it?
Those who crafted what Jesus would be were ingenious. Jesus gave up. Jesus was allowed to doubt the insatiable Will. He was granted the privilege of not just being the martyr for our sins, but also for the thing we feared the most; the will to conceive of something so perfect it would cast upon us the fear and loathing that comes with comparing it to reality. Jesus denies us reality, and therefore denies us any chance to understand the kind of will depicted in Roark’s character. Every job you could be doing, every testament you could be making, every mark on someone’s life that signifies that You, this person here and now was here, proud, and acting in the only way possible is erased. While Jesus was giving handouts, someone was working that much harder to say look what I can do on my own. Look what I can stand for. How can you mourn the death of a God? When you mourn the death of your soul and your will. When you watch the epitome of hopes and dreams suffocate and bleed out, you’re the one that can’t breathe or move. The whole reason his drawn out suffering death is endlessly praised is because people have become so disillusioned about who they are that all that’s left is to idolize suffering and death. They want to map their pathetic lives onto his works and call it saved. They want to transfer their pain as if it isn’t theirs to have, as if they didn’t earn it and can’t handle it. The most masterful maneuver in all of this, is that you are promised the type of fulfillment and joy that a character in a book about selfish magnificence would make you jealous of. Do you not see how hopelessly backwards the Jesus story is? He is the ultimate contradiction of any kind of God what would work to put him here. Our works, our story, and our will do not have to die in order to be recognized for how important they are. Deny this, and live in the hell you’ve created.
It is through the work that people do to exemplify this spirit that they live forever. There is no place for sympathy or excuses. You are not measured by how sorry you can feel about what you’ve done.
