It's a Gift

Last week I re-read The Giver. I hadn't read it since college, and I had forgotten what a great book it is.

For those who don't know, it's a kind of sci-fi story about a society that, in an effort to cut out all chaos, instability, etc. has done away with emotions. (This concept has been looked at in movies, since the book was written.) Jonas is a boy who, when he turns twelve, instead of being given a job like all the other children who are now "adults," is chosen to be "The Reciever," the only person in the entire community allowed to have memories. At any rate, as Jonas has memories transferred to him from the man who has been "The Receiver," his world begins to change. He sees color for the first time. He experiences emotions, both pleasant and hurtful, in ways he never has before.

The interesting thing that happens as Jonas begins to see and feel all these things for the first time, is that he realizes how blind the rest of his community is to how false they're lives really are. He now realizes that when families gather each night for required talks about their feelings, while they really believe they're working through their feelings and emotions, it's all just surface and a shadow of the things Jonas has felt in the newly transferred memories. He comes to realize that the laughter and tears of those living in the community are actually just logical reactions to objective observations of situations. No one actually knows what happiness or sadness is.

As I was reading this book, the music of the gospel played loud and clear in my ear. Those of us who are followers of Christ, know exactly what Jonas went through. We know what it's like to look around and realize that the rest of the world is existing in a perpetual state of being duped. They believe they're what they're feeling and experience is real, what they were made for, and they might even think they're reactions are honest, real, and raw, when really, like the folks in Jonas' community, what they're really experiencing is much like logical reactions to objective observations of situations. The aisles and aisles of self-help books at Barnes and Noble, and the hours and hours of talk radio and television, though they may seem very deep and probing, are shown to be surfacy and manufactured.

Here's the thing: that's what the gospel does. It opens your eyes to reality. It's not a reality that's always pretty or easy. Like Jonas, our eyes are opened for the first time to the fact that people die. We realize that everything we've been taught to believe is really just contrived and sterile. In other words, the introduction of the gospel into someone's life, much like the introduction of memories into Jonas' life, doesn't "fix" the problem. But, just like the memories, it gives us a context to know how to deal with the realities of the world around us.