Keys

I know a man, a very good and even holy man, whom I love dearly. This man has a curious and unassailable certainty that if he could just find the right question he would save the world.

We are talking about the question that will cause both these guys to slap their foreheads and say, “Oh, so that’s what I’ve been missing! It’s all so clear now. Catholic is the only way to go.”

That is, if he can find a perfectly worded question with either a yes or no answer and ask it in such a way that the person must publicly say either yes or no then the self-evident truth will be made manifest. People will have no choice but to assent to the truth, or publicly be seen to be resisting the truth. This will force them to choose the truth, and will be the means of converting everyone to the truth, from the leaders of ISIS to Barack Obama and everyone in between.

So he spends most of his spare time with pen and paper, or typing with two fingers on his rickety keyboard, searching for that perfectly worded question that cannot be ignored, evaded or obscured: the question that will save the world. This in spite of the hard evidence of the last 2,000 years, 2,000 years of the greatest thinkers the world has ever seen continuously praying, pondering, seeking, writing, questioning and preaching and yet the world is still unconverted.

Ultimately, his search will not be successful. He will never find what he is looking for, as long as he is looking for a magic bullet to convert other people. His questions are mostly meaningless to anyone but himself, although to hims they are exquisitely meaningful and beautiful. This is just an extreme example of something that I think we all do, from time to time. That is, we try to open other people’s doors with our own keys.

Just in case you care… Because I’m nerdy like that.

The analogy I’m going to use was suggested to me by my biology professor who used it to explain why some people are lactose intolerant and some people are not. Lactose is made up of a glucose and galactose molecules bonded together, while sucrose, or ordinary table sugar, is made up of a glucose and a fructose molecule bonded together. The chemical formulas are identical, but the shapes and the order of the bonds are slightly different. Everyone has the enzyme necessary to break down sucrose, but not everyone has the enzyme necessary to break down lactose. This doesn’t mean that lactose is a more difficult bond to break. It just means that not everyone has the key. Just because you can’t start my truck with your car keys, that doesn’t mean that my truck is harder to start. It just means that you don’t have a key. If you had a key you would be able to start it as easily as you start your car.

There is a certain cross-over into the topic of conversion. Every human heart is absolutely unique. The key that will unlock the door of my heart will not unlock the door of anyone else’s. The question or statement of truth that resonates deep in your soul and shakes your very being may simply leave me unimpressed. Assuming that my heart is willing to be converted, this doesn’t mean that it is more difficult to convert, it simply means that that statement or truth is not the right key.

If conversion is understood as an ongoing process rather than as a once-for-all event, then the key metaphor can still be used by proposing the image of the human heart as not one door, but as a series of doors, thousands upon thousands of doors. Each of those thousands of doors has a different key. Thus the key that opened my heart yesterday may have no effect today. It is not that I am no longer willing to be converted, but simply that that door is already open. The next door requires a different key.

The analogy breaks down, of course, because human beings are not mechanisms. We have free will. We can choose to open or to remain shut. Someone may present exactly the right key that resonates very deeply with us, and yet we can choose to ignore it and leave that door locked and shut. So the analogy is not perfect (if it were, it would not be an analogy) but it works far enough to illustrate the point that there is no magic bullet to convert others.

At least, not in words.

I think we whose business is words and ideas, whom words compel “to purify the dialect of the tribe,” we fall into this trap more readily than anyone, and with less excuse. We are writers, whether amateur or professional makes no difference. We approach the keyboard too often with a sense of momentous responsibility, as if this post that I am typing write now might be THE ONE! As if it really mattered in the long run whether or not radtrad666 or LbRL_LUV has the last word. People will continue to be wrong on the Internet (and IRL [In Real Life] as well) regardless of what I write or don’t write.

I am not for a moment suggesting that what we write does not matter. The irony of that claim would be too staggering even for me. I am saying that the reception of my writing is not my business. The effect it has is not my responsibility. I am responsible for its truth, goodness and beauty before God. In other words I am responsible for the reckoning I will make of the talent I have been given. Whether anyone listens or not, while a potential indicator of the quality of my writing, is not how He will judge me. “For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”

And really, what reason have I to assume that my words will sway anyone? When have I ever allowed myself to be swayed by anyone else’s words? When has my mind ever been changed by a train of argument? Rarely if ever. I know all too well my own capacity for self-deception. I am a wordsmith. Grammar, syntax, meanings, connotations, the whole jungle that is human speech, that is my playground. Come hunt me if you can. You cannot find me. You cannot trap me with words. I can wriggle out of any verbal trap you set, backpedal, obscure, prevaricate, distract, disarm. To my shame I have done all of these things. The kicker is, I didn’t always even know I was doing them, they come so naturally to me. “Human kind / Cannot bear very much reality.”

There are many routes to the human soul, and words are the easiest and simplest to block off, especially in this day and age, in which words have lost so much meaning.

Suffer with them. They will not be able to ignore you forever.

Love. Only love can break through. Not love in word and thought, but love in action, love in lived experience. This means relationship. This means sacrifice. Most people will listen to hard truths only from people they trust. Love expresses itself in goodness, truth and beauty, and yes, there is a time for speaking the truth in love. However, in order to know that time, you must know that person, at least a little bit. You must love them, truly love them, not just take offense at their wrong ideas. That protestant or liberal or conservative or whatever is not a label, and he is not a potential trophy. He is your brother.

Get to know them, spend time with them, listen to them, do things for them, find out what their love language is and express love in a way they can understand. Learn from them. Suffer with them. Or suffer at their hands. Then we will have the coin to speak whatever hard truth we must. There is no guarantee it will be accepted right then, but it will not be ignored.

I sometimes think we forget that the reason we evangelize is because we want to spend eternity with these people. I don’t think there is a trophy room in heaven.

Ryan Kraeger

Ryan Kraeger

Ryan Kraeger is a cradle Catholic homeschool graduate, who has served in the Army as a Combat Engineer and as a Special Forces Medical Sergeant. He now lives with his wife Kathleen and their two daughters near Tacoma, WA and is a Physician Assistant. He enjoys reading, thinking, and conversation, the making and eating of gourmet pizza, shooting and martial arts, and the occasional dark beer. His website is The Man Who Would Be Knight.

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