Read The Classics

 ... to get a better handle on the eternal truths.

I'm still working on a talk I have to give in a few weeks and something recently dawned on me, something that is the foundation of my preference for old books. For example, I don't trust history or religion books written after 1960. Why is that?

A fish doesn't know it's in water. We struggle to perceive the implicit biases of our time. When I read Caesar or Geronimo or CS Lewis, it's easy to see unintentional bigotries in their writing. When I read Richard Rohr, it's more difficult because I share many of them without even knowing it and Rohr is a ferociously modern man. Here, I'm using the term bigotry in a neutral sense, the unreasoning attachment to a belief.

Maybe that's why Confessions by St. Augustine is so clear to me. I don't get caught up in or even recognize whatever political affectations he may be displaying, living during the fall of Rome. What speaks to me in his writings must then be the eternal truths about the human condition and not whatever temporal myopia he may have possessed.

Maybe GK Chesterton seems like a genius because we only see his eternal truths and gloss over the more banal sensibilities of his day.