Quixotic - Steve

Cervantes' classic Don Quixote is fascinating.

Disclaimer up front: I've only read the first 150 pages, and have not read any secondary material on this work (usually the best way to go, I figure. Read the classics, not about the classics).

Cervantes obviously has a beef with romantic illusion. Where Quixote hears 2 armies facing each other in battle, his trusty squire Sancho sees 2 flocks of sheep. When the hidalgo Quixote chooses sides and charges, killing several sheep, he gets whacked around by some shepherds' slingstones. Hmm. Wake up, Don. If you read reality wrong it'll bite you in the end. It's a realist's take on the world, mocking those who make more of mundane events than is actually there. The romantic who creates these illusions often does so in order to selfishly feed his own ego, or naively to fit two things together (books and sheep) where there just isn't any connection.

I love my books, just like the man of La Mancha did. I think Cervantes is wrong if he takes his critique of romanticism too far, asserting that there is no connection between books and the world outside your house. Ideas do have consequences. Ask Marie Antoinnette about that. Words change people, who change things. This frightens some people, so that they avoid all the words they can. Others use words as a tool to gain or keep power. God calls us to use words to glorify Him, to point to His Son Jesus as the Savior from the wrath of God against our sin (Acts 4:8-20), to edify others, and to meditate on the true, good and beautiful (Philippians 4:8).

So, while there is always a danger of being led astray by deceptive philosophies and words found in books, I'll keep reading my books, distinguishing romantic illusion from truth that has yet to be lived out in the world, and needs to be. When books change me, all of a sudden I look Quixotic to people, jousting with windmills. But sometimes books describe reality better than our mundane assumptions do.