It was required reading in a required course — Western Thought and Culture, or “Western Cult and Torture,” yok-yok — that was slotted first thing Monday morning. A triple strike.
I fared as poorly in this class as I did in the others, but I tried a little harder. The subject matter was of interest, and professor John Franklin was a gently engaging sort whose egalitarian approach to all questions asked was somewhat at odds with the Evangelical culture that surrounded and employed him.
My recollection of those classes is very hazy, but one morning stood out. A student managed to sidetrack discussion of what we were supposed to have read by asking how best to divine the will of God for one’s life. Franklin responded that he believed the will of God was the same for all people — to do justice, seek mercy and and walk humbly. Matters like “Whom should I marry?” or “Is God calling me across the seas?” were best decided by applying as much common sense as people could muster in the given circumstances.
Applying common sense — what a thought.
For some reason I kept Sire’s book at hand, even after tossing all the others. I’d struggled with it originally, then just gave up. It was my first encounter with dialectic philosophy, and frankly I wasn’t up to it.
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| Other titles from that era: honestly, how could either dialectics or piety possibly compete with the capers of Tarzan and Queen Nemone? |
I was done with post-sec, but remained keen on self-improvement. It behooved me, I thought, to read difficult books. Sire’s book had been difficult — I’d fallen off the bike once; it was time to get back on.
I read him while taking the bus to and from work. And for whatever reason, this time the book clicked. “A basic worldview catalog” — yes, that was it exactly. All these inexplicable, yet common, points of view made explicable — and set in clarifying contrast to my own. It really did feel like the windows of perception were opening on “the universe next door.”
Reading Sire gave me such a jolt of confidence in my newly discovered capacity as a critical reader, I abruptly changed my mind about post-sec and at the last minute re-enrolled in university. This time I eschewed both the religious and the practical and opted instead for critical — literature, philosophy, some theory. And for the first time in my life I earned grades I was proud of.
Eight years later, back in Toronto, a friend visiting my suite noticed the book. “James Sire,” she said. “I’m interviewing him next month!” She worked the religious-journalism beat on a cable TV show. Sire’s title was then in its third or fourth edition, with bonus material on the then-prevalent New Age movement, and he was coming to town to bang the gong.
“Could you get him to sign my copy of The Rebel?” I asked.
That got a laugh. In fact I was giving my proposition serious consideration. At the conclusion of her visit, though, both Sire’s and Camus’s books remained on the shelf.
It was meant to be a soft interview. Sire was not someone who needed rocking on his heels, and asking him to sign for Albert Camus could only have been seen as a pissily ironic gesture on my part.
But Sire had indeed pointed me toward Camus — the Absurdist philosopher was one of many whom Sire attempted to call into account in his brief “catalog.” In the summer of '85 I thought, hooray, Sire wins the argument! But Sire concluded his book by saying not only that he was under no delusions he’d settled any arguments, but that he hoped his readers would follow his example, roll up their sleeves and engage in deeper study of the matters he’d raised.
James Sire’s catalog lit the fire within at a time when the spark was beginning to fade, and for that I am in his, and John Franklin’s, debt.
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