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Jester reading a book (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Of all the books I have ever read and studied, I have only encountered one where I have been told repeatedly that I cannot understand it unless I first
believe everything it says. Yes, I am referring to the Christian bible and
the magic that protects it from being deciphered by non-Christians. This claim has always struck me as being thoroughly ridiculous and has led me to laugh in more than a few faces. It is not that I dispute the need to interpret some books, reading meaning into the author's words. Many books require this, and I can accept that the Christian bible might too (although interpreting what many claim is at least divinely inspired strikes me as arrogant). What I dispute is that the claim that one must believe a book prior to being able to understand it is anything but nonsensical.
I studied many books during my years in school. I don't mean I read them, although I did that too. I mean I studied them in the sense of critical analysis and interpretation. In elementary school, this largely focused on reading poets like Robert Frost and discussing what they were communicating. By grade 5, we were reading some of the less complex literary classics like
To Kill a Mockingbird, and this would continue into junior high. In high school, the books become more complicated (e.g.,
Moby-Dick). The complexity continued to increased in college where I encountered everything from short stories written by African authors, modern literature (e.g.,
Beloved), and classic non-fiction relevant to my major (e.g.,
Man's Search for Meaning). Graduate school would bring more focused technical non-fiction reading, necessary due to the increasing specialization.