A morning with Ralph Waldo Emerson

The famed transcendentalist accompanied me to the library this morning, and we sat in my favorite spot. Overstuffed armchairs are the best place for heavy thinking, and I suspected that Ralph had a lot of controversial things to say. It took two hours for him to explain to me, through his essays "Self-Reliance", "The Poet", and "Address to Harvard Divinity School", his view of life. I'm disappointed, actually. Rather troubled by what he had to say.

Last week Ben Franklin enlightened me to the possibilities of man's intellect in business, invention, and discerning human nature. He wrote some good stuff in "Poor Richard's Almanac" but at the same time I despaired at his removal of God from society and from life's meaning. (I was, however, impressed by the man's productivity. The guy spent most of the day studying, inventing, or discoursing, and wouldn't even stop to play cards for fear of wasting his time.) What was so discouraging to notice in his writing was the emphasis on success and wealth. That's all he worked towards. It's easy to see America's roots of materialism and self-fulfillment in his example. And okay, granted, Ben Franklin was one of those linchpin people who set a moral and intellectual example, and we probably owe him something. What we don't owe him is a thankfulness for the protection of our spiritual heritage, which is something that seems to disappear in the mid 1700s in America.

Emerson writes lyrically and expresses ideas with poignant images and breathtaking ideals. However, his individualistic viewpoint of life that rejects historical Christianity, values nonconformity, rejects submission to anyone, much less God, believes the soul and nature are the most important things in life, and simply points our worship towards nature and our own amazingness and productivity is saddening. What does he say about Jesus? That Jesus was a good man with beautiful ideals and poetic language, but that you, too, can have that same nature. Praise yourself. There is God inside of you. After all, Jesus' example shows us that God wants to incarnate himself inside every man. While it's true that we are created in the image of God, we're called to only reflect his glory and direct our worship back to our maker, not to our own divine selves. Emerson, dude! You were way off track.

I will at least thank Emerson for his time and for illuminating the origins of our American culture. His writings did help me understand how we've ended up where we are today as a culture: obsessed with self-gain and advancing up the social ladder, holding relative religious beliefs, withholding our tithes and offerings, and doing whatever makes us feel happy or individualistic. Be yourself, the culture says. Do what you want to do.

If I was a philosopher, I might write something to blast those ideas out of the park with God's truth. I wish I could! I somehow didn't have words for Emerson this morning. Thus I blogged, and there lies the end of my disturbing morning adventure with Emerson.