A/N: Random articles.  My thoughts on free speech, free thought, censorship, etc.  I’ll update this series periodically (read—randomly, whenever I feel like it, when I get enough reviews: choose your favorite). 

A/N: This first essay focuses on some books my church had stored away in shameful condition.  They have since been moved to a nice new library, and then, five weeks later, boxed up again when we moved (we are currently without a permanent church building).  I haven’t been to church since, so I’ll have to get back to you on their present treatment.   

            Anyone who professes to love books should be required to visit a damp, darkly-lit back room in my church.  I don’t think a person can have a true appreciation for how bad a book’s condition can become until he has sorted his way through boxes and boxes of neglected, unorganized religious texts.  It imparts a whole new appreciation for well-kept libraries with their card catalogs and their Dewey Decimal system.

            Instead of shelves, my churches’ books are in boxes.  Large cardboard boxes, even, some with sides ripping out, and some with the sides already ripped out.  Then too are the large chunks of what look like plaster and ceiling tile mixed in with the books—I am unable to ascertain their origin precisely, and even less am I able to understand how they found their way into a dozen or so boxes of church books.  And then, there is the damp.  The damp, you can imagine, is the major source of decay in the boxes, but what methods it employs!  People who have never navigated such a boxed library can scarce imagine.

            Among the interesting effects of the damp is the tendency of paper and glue, long unmoved, to become stiff and brittle to the gentlest touch.  The searcher, finding an interesting-looking tome, opens it to what looks to be the proper distance to the table of contents, and, with a loud C-R-R-ACK, finds himself with a book in two separate volumes.  Among the boxes, one finds many small blocks of pages, neatly torn out of some unknown book, swimming around lonely and naked.  Also interesting is what I have come to call the “glue effect.”  Two books, sitting on top of each other unmoved for longer than I care to imagine, tend to become fused together.  Separation is a nasty process involving the ripping of entire jacket covers and the illegibility of entire book fronts or backs—and what a noise!  It sends shivers down my spine every time I try to pry off a promising-looking book for closer inspection.

            I was raised to regard books as almost sacred.  The destruction, or the willful harming, of a book was tantamount to blasphemy from my preschool days onward.  When I was a few years older I understood that this attitude of my parents was not so much a cultish devotion to the books themselves, but to the worldview and philosophy they symbolize: the free search for and acquisition of knowledge.  I now understand my mother’s oft-quoted phrase, “If you see a book-burning—there is something seriously wrong.”  So the state of the books in my church’s back room is nearly painful to me whenever I come upon a text in particularly sorry shape.

            I think the fact that I feel for these books at all is a testament to my upbringing, especially when one considers what I actually think about most of the books my church has stored away.  To be sure, there are a few gems among the rubbish heap, but these are precious few—at least, to my opinion.  A few months ago I picked up a promising-looking book entitled The Power of Prayer and found that it contained instructions for causing God to give you whatever you pray for—be it health, happiness, or a new Ferrari.  One pseudo-scientific-looking book spouted evidence that Heaven was a physical planet, condemning the faith of those who believed in a spiritual place of happiness for the afterlife.  One helpful volume, entitled The Compact Guide to the Christian Life, attempted to explain the eternal fate of non-Christians by claiming that they would not wish to enter Heaven, they were not created for Heaven, they would therefore fit in much better in Hell, and, anyway, God ordained the existing order of damnation for the benefit of the rest of his creation.  I never quite caught a satisfactory explanation on that point, but I doubt that was the purpose of the book.  I also found an out-of-place copy of Sewing Made Easy, featuring a smiling, attractive young woman on the cover showing off clothes that she may or may not have actually made herself.  I never quite found out how that one related to the church setting, but it is amusing to have it turn up every once in a while amid the obviously Christian books. 

            To return to the church literature, everything was from one viewpoint.  And though there was quality literature present—a battered but still recognizable copy of C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters sits atop a thought-provoking volume of American Literature and Christian Doctrine that has been fully investigated by at least one book-lover at the church that I can mention—much of the literature present is uninspired, a simple recapitulation of traditional Baptist doctrine.  It can be expected that a church will own predominantly religious books, but I was, and continue to be, disheartened by the majority of what I find, which is one-sided and often shallowly optimistic or commanding. 

            So why still this love for the books?  I wince every time I have to rip the back jacket of Put on a Happy Faith! to dislodge Heaven is a World.  I open Studies in John gingerly, hoping to avoid the tragic CRACK of doom for its ancient binding.  Why do I even care?  Few of the books mean anything to me, and they are in such awful shape. 

            I think you have to go back to the lessons of my childhood to ascertain the reason for my caring.  Books, no matter their content, are symbols of free inquiry, free expression, free acquisition and sharing of knowledge—of all kinds.  The books I might personally find odious another might take great joy in.  The author’s words must reach the public unsullied, the book must not be harmed.  The harming of a book, any book, in my mind, is a crime.  It is painful to see so many books left out to rot, books that may someday find themselves on a library shelf in our new church building, but for now, are dreadfully exposed to the elements that so prey on helpless paper, cardboard binding, and glue.  I have a sneaky suspicion that I may be one of the people involved in such a relocation to a happier home.  Maybe I am guilty that I have not pursued it already.  Or maybe it is just the idea of those forlorn old books, to all appearances unwanted: washed-out jackets, books “glued” together, jacket faces ripped off, covers torn, and loose pages strewn all over, that makes me mourn.  An almost-unthinking kind of tenderness and care for the old texts.  Yes, I think it is that.