Insight from Thoreau.

"The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion..."
- Henry David Thoreau

Oh, the oh-so-quotable Thoreau. Only slightly less quotable than his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson. From my limited experience, both of them dropped gems like the one above through their written works as if they were Hansel and Gretel trying to ensure that they find their way back home.

Thoreau and Emerson both were Transcendentalists. Due to my limited knowledge of Transcendentalism and the fact that the details don't matter in this particular instance, I won't go into what that means exactly. The only basic point that needs to be understood for this discussion is that Transcendentalism did not place Jesus Christ at the center of anything, so right there is where Transcendentalists and I part ways.

But when I read that quotation at the top of this blog for the first time, it struck me, almost as if someone had slapped me across the face. It was several weeks ago, a required reading assignment for my American literature class. I'm sure I read it at least five times before moving on.

Thoreau was describing me, even back in the 19th Century. I am one of those "millions." I wake up day after day, just enough to labor in various physical, mindless ways from the time I get up to the time I go to sleep. And because of my current position as student, I am daily called upon to use my brain. And I daily feel as if I'm in a fog, and I almost inevitably fall asleep each time I begin to test the powers of my mind. (As an aside, Thoreau did mean that statement in a figurative sense just as much as in a literal sense, but for my purposes I choose to only address the literal sense.)

This just goes to show how consistent human nature is. Since the first man and woman, people are still people wherever you go. It also goes to show that lots of people make true statements. Thoreau was a person just as much as I am, or any of the most-learned theologians are. He was a human. He knew humans. So lessons can be learned from him just as well as anybody.

But I thank God that I have learned that there is so much more than true statements. Despite millenniums of endurance, true statements can change. They aren't permanent. But Truth in the form of a person, in the form of Jesus Christ, is something that does not change, that has not changed, that will not change. And on that is what I choose to base everything, my beliefs, my ideologies, my theologies. So as much as I appreciate Thoreau for his insight and way with words, I'm happy to know that that's not the end.