RELIGION TODAY FEATURE STORY
The Journey Toward Meaning
"The Long Journey Home: A Guide to Your Search for the Meaning of Life"
By Os Guinness
Reviewed by Stephen McGarvey
In his latest book, "The Long Journey Home," Dr. Os Guinness tells of economist
E. F. Schumacher's visit to St. Petersburg, Russia, when it was still under communist
rule. Although he had a map of the city, he became lost. What he saw on his paper
did not match what he saw right before his eyes - several huge Russian Orthodox
churches. They weren't on the map, but Schumacher was almost certain of what
street he was on. Schumacher's confusion was solved when a tourist guide explained
that in the Soviet Union, they don't show churches on the maps.
Life is often like this in America as well. Through school, college and
career, people are handed maps to success with obvious holes in them.
These holes are found where spiritual truths once stood. "The Long
Journey Home" was written to fill in these holes in the map, to point
people who are searching for meaning in their lives toward what they
know they've been missing.
Whenever people are faced with life-changing events, as they were on
Sept. 11, they are forced to reassess the world they live in. Watching a
tragedy as enormous as the deaths of thousands of innocent people will
no doubt shock many Americans into a new search for significance in
their lives. We've already seen the beginning of this search for
healing and meaning as prayer returns to the public square. When
disaster strikes, it isn't the atheists and agnostics we see on CNN, but
rather, people of faith. In the coming months, it will be the job of
Christians to point these new seekers in the right direction, toward the
gospel of Jesus Christ.
"The Long Journey Home" is an excellent tool for an unbeliever looking
for life's meaning. The book is unique because it is written expressly
for seekers. "You have yards of books you could never give to an
unbeliever," Dr. Guinness tells Crosswalk.com. "They just wouldn't be
interested." Indeed, most books on apologetics presume either the reader
already has an interest in Christianity or is working on a seminary
degree. "Journey," however, assumes nothing beyond the fact that the
seeker can read and he or she has decided that in some way, life should
make sense.
An unfortunate aspect of American apologetics, according to Guinness, is
that too many apologists speak only to Christians. "If you look at the
calendar of speeches of the best Christian speakers you will see about
80 percent [of their speaking engagements] are to Christians; it's
absurd. So I make a practice of speaking to seekers. There's no use
preaching to the choir. It sounds so elementary, but it isn't done."
This does not mean that there is nothing in "Journey" for Christian
believers. On the contrary, Guinness' book shows Christians why they
believe what they believe. Most Christians realize that at some point in
their lives they made a huge leap of faith, yet most of them could not
describe that faith to an unbeliever. "Journey" gives those believers
fascinating anecdotes and examples of ways some of the world's greatest
Christian thinkers expressed their faith.
Is religion only for ignorant people? Much of "The Long Journey Home"
seeks to answer "not so." Guinness quotes writer Anne Lamott's
experience growing up: "None of the adults in our circle 'believed.'
Believing meant that you were stupid. Ignorant people believed, uncouth
people believed ..." Guinness shows how many of the world's greatest
thinkers, writers, artists, musicians, scientists, inventors, etc., were
people of great faith. "My own focus is that I think restoring faith in
Christ to its intellectual preeminence is one of the great needs of the
American church," Guinness says. "Thinkers are the unreached people
group in America." Guinness writes "Journey" in such a way that it is
easy to understand, yet intellectually honest.
In its effort to reach seekers, "The Long Journey Home" takes an
interesting new approach to apologetics. Guinness combines the two
prevailing views of apologetics (presuppositional and evidential) into
one broader perspective, or what Guinness calls "the four stages of a
thoughtful person's quest for meaning." Most Americans no longer have a
worldview based on a Judeo-Christian understanding. Thus, a Christian
must typically lay down much groundwork to help today's unbeliever
understand the gospel message. "Journey" is divided into four "stages"
that will help the Christian do this.
The first stage is the time for questions; it is the time in life when a
person becomes a "seeker." It's the time when, as Guinness says, "life
suddenly becomes a question mark." This "question mark" might take the
form of a positive wonder, or it might be a life crisis. It depends on
the person. Yet, according to Guinness, most apologetic approaches skip
this phase. "We give answers before people have questions," he says.
Stage two is the time for answers. Here Guinness compares the three big
families of faith: Eastern, Secular, and Biblical. "Many people get
bogged down looking at the thousand and one religions in America," he
says. "But you can focus them down because all faiths fit into these
three categories. They are families in the sense that they have a family
resemblance and they go to the same sources of ultimate reality." The
book explains that Eastern religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, New Age) go
back to an impersonal god. Secular religions (atheism, agnosticism,
naturalism) believe the ultimate source of reality is chance plus time
plus matter. The Biblical family (Judaism, Islam, Christianity) find
their source in an infinite and personal God. "Journey" compares the
families and shows why Christianity is superior. This is the
presuppositional part of the book.
Step three in "Journey's" construct is the time for evidences. Is there
a way to prove what we say is true? Yet, unlike the typical evidential
approach to apologetics, Guinness approaches the search for evidence of
faith with proofs first, rather than disproofs. "We must have both
presuppositions and evidences together flowing out of the first step,
questioning. The polarization between the two is absolutely hysterical,"
he says. "It's time we transcended the controversy."
The fourth and last section of the book addresses the time for
commitment. When all these things are gathered up, commitment is the
next step. Guinness says we see two paradoxical components in all true
conversions. One is a great sense of individual responsibility. Never
does a human being feel more himself or herself than when he makes the
decision of faith. On the other hand, he senses that it's not him, but
God doing it. As Guinness puts it, "All the previous levels of search we
think we are seeking, searching, sifting and suddenly we discover that
we've been found."
"The Long Journey Home" ends with a challenge to the post-modern reader.
Do not neglect the journey. Too many Christians, according to Dr.
Guinness, say that once you've got your faith, you've arrived. "They
ignore the journey, they ignore the mystery," he says. "There's a lot of
journey in life, ups and downs, disasters and triumphs. We haven't
'arrived,' even though we believe in Christ." Secularists are the
opposite. You never really 'arrive' in life, the journey is all there
is. "That's rubbish, too, because you only travel if you're traveling
homeward," Guinness says. "The Biblical position is a wonderful middle.
When we meet Christ but we're still wayfarers, we're booked, but there's
a lot of journeying till we get home. So coming to faith is only the
beginning of the journey home, and it only ends when we get home to the
Father."
October 26, 2001
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