I do not presume to know all the ways God works in a person’s life. What that means practically is that I am often not sure if God is doing something in my life or if my flesh – egged on by Satan in the blender of the world – is simply doing what it wants to do. If I am considering some ungodly pursuit, then it is clear; when I am reflecting on esoteric and ethereal things, trying to see behind the wizard’s curtain, it is not always so obvious.

I do know what God is doing – conforming me to the image of Christ (to the extent I will allow it) and bringing glory to himself. I know, too, that it is the Holy Spirit who accomplishes these things. It’s the how that I am unsure of: Is this a rabbit hole God wants me to follow? Or is this a bad rabbit hole I need to get out of? I don’t know.

Such is the quandary in which I have found myself recently, shoved toward the rabbit hole by the debacle at a church with which I was involved. What precipitated the present dilemma was the – timely? untimely? – reading of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZAMM henceforth) by Robert Pirsig.

N.B. – If you are of the sect that avoids secular stuff or anything that flirts with false religion, consider the author’s note at the beginning of the book:

What follows is based on actual occurrences. Although much has been changed for rhetorical purposes, it must be regarded in its essence as fact. However, it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It’s not very factual on motorcycles either.”

I’m pretty sure God prevented me from reading the book when it first came out for either one or two reasons: if one reason only, then it was because it was a book that would not have been good for me; if two reasons, then it was because God knew it would not have been good at that time but it would be good for me at a later time. So, if it’s one reason, then God didn’t want me to read ZAMM at all. But if it’s two reasons, then God didn’t want me to read it before he had first prepared me.

ZAMM came out in 1974; I became a Christian late in 1974. It could be that if I had read it then, in my B.C. days, it would have interfered with conversations I had with Christians and might have postponed my conversion for some time (I do believe in election, but not so much an appointment that I will meet God at such and so time).

More likely, though, is the very strong likelihood that had I read it 34 years ago much of it would have been lost on me. For one thing, I wasn’t so intellectually curious back then. For another, there was too much smoke in my neurovascular system, i.e., marijuana smoke. I might have been inoculated (following Bem’s theory) and the significance of the book lost on me permanently.

But now I have read it and I cannot undo the impressions or effects that it has had. So I have to figure out if the book’s impact is a good thing God brought into my life or some insidious evil that God allowed to come into my life. As of this writing, I think it was a very good thing for me to have read the book, although I cannot tell you why. And I can see how the book’s effect could be dangerous for me, too, and must admit that I would be sad if that proved to be the case.

Some of the effects I can describe and some I cannot. Some I understand and some I do not. And some I can attribute to God’s work in my life and others – well, I don’t know. Hence, the problem of rabbit holes.

Here’s one effect:

Pirsig says a lot in the book about people, psychology, philosophy, society, education, father-son relationships, and our relationship with ourselves. Describing one of the characters, he says:

He felt that institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions. He came to see his early failure as a lucky break, an accidental escape from a trap that had been set for him, and he was very trap-wary about institutional truths for the remainder of his time . . .

The Church of Reason, like all institutions of the System, is based not on individual strength but upon individual weakness. What’s really demanded in the Church of Reason is not ability, but inability. Then you are considered teachable. A truly able person is always a threat.“ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

There is a phenomenon that psychologists, not knowing how else to describe it, call “personality integration,” an Ah! Ha! moment wherein the psychic pieces come together to make a coherent whole. To anyone aware of my long history of, in Tom Petty’s words, “runnin’ down a dream that never would come to me,” it should come as no surprise that Pirsig’s words were remarkably healing. Suddenly almost all of my experiences of the past 34-plus years tumbled into a new category which was immediately understandable, recognizable, and (in many ways) vindicating.

Yes, but about that rabbit hole . . .

Is this a good thing or not? Is it merely a rationalization I can employ to justify or comprehend more than three decades of frustration with Institutions that (in my mind) ought to know better? Or is this a snare of the enemy into which I have fallen? Is it a subtle means of conforming me to the world?

There are no definitive answers. There are, however, hints and kindred spirits – hinting spirits like Harry Blamires, a great Christian thinker (so say some) who, in 1963, wrote:

The [Christian] thinker challenges current prejudices. He disturbs the complacent. He obstructs the busy pragmatists. He questions the very foundations of all about him, and in so doing throws doubt upon aims, motives, and purposes which those who are running affairs have neither time nor patience to investigate. The thinker is a nuisance. He is a luxury that modern society cannot afford. It will therefore naturally, and on its own terms justifiably, strive to keep him quiet, to restrict his influence, to ignore him. It will try to pretend that he does not exist. . . .

But the Church is false to itself when it rejects the thinker. And therefore, in so far as it adopts the fashion of the secular world and tries to submerge thought under learning, prophecy under scholarship, wisdom under know-how, it strives to secularize itself; in other words to destroy itself . . . Thus our complaint against the education through which our [pastors] are prepared for their duties might justly be widened into a complaint against the bias of our educational system in general. It is not geared to the production of thinkers. It is geared to their obliteration.“ The Christian Mind

But the fallacy is blatant, is it not? Blamires is a “kindred spirit” or “great thinker” because I agree with him. If I did not, I would hardly regard him a “great thinker” and certainly not a “kindred spirit.”

Perhaps (although this too may be nothing more than a rationalization) it comes down to this: do I have the courage or faith to follow and live out that which I believe to be true? Will I walk the path which is opening before me? And do this regardless of what others think of or say about me? Perhaps this is part of living by faith, something that devotion to Christ demands: a commitment to follow the path – down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass – wherever it leads as long as it does not depart from Scripture. And to do this regardless of whatever anyone else might think.

Perhaps. Who can say?



Namárië.