Blogging in Christ — Issue 22

Be Findable by the Seeking

A man sits down at night with a question he cannot shake, and he searches. He types the words as best he can, clumsy and partial, because he does not yet know the true name of what he seeks. Somewhere, perhaps, a writer has already written the thing that would answer him, or open the text that would. The question for the writer is narrow, and easily corrupted: shall the piece be findable by the seeking man?

The counsel of the age answers with a whole trade. Learn the phrases men type. Shape the title to the phrase, not to the text. Repeat the phrase until the machine ranks the piece, and let the ranking do the work of the herald. A piece can be made to surface before a thousand eyes that never sought it, and a writer can learn to count those surfaces as fruit.

But the counsel mistakes the kind of thing a search is. A search is not a market to be captured. It is a neighbor, seeking, in the dark, with words he does not yet have right. Scripture gives seeking a place in God's own ordering of the world, before any writer ever thought about it.

Paul stands in Athens and lays the order out. God "made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the surface of the earth, having determined appointed seasons and the boundaries of their dwellings, that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us." (Acts 17:26-27) Mark the joints. God determined the boundaries, and the purpose of the boundaries is seeking, that men might reach out and find him. The finding is possible because he is not far from each one of us. Nearness is the given. The writer's work does not create the nearness. It must not create distance either.

That is the first demotion, and it settles the whole subject. The machinery of discovery is a servant, not a lord. It can carry a true name to a seeking man. It cannot make a man seek, and it cannot make a found thing take root. The Lord himself sets the terms: "Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened for you." (Matthew 7:7) The promise is not that every surface becomes a conversion. It is that real seeking is not left empty. Therefore the writer's business is not to manufacture seekers. His business is to leave nothing between the seeker and the thing sought that his own craft put there.

The seeking Scripture describes is wholehearted. "You shall seek me and find me, when you search for me with all your heart." (Jeremiah 29:13) Likewise: "But from there you shall seek Yahweh your God, and you will find him when you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul." (Deuteronomy 4:29) A man searching with all his heart will not be helped by a piece that ranked well and said little. He will be helped by a piece whose name told the truth about what lay beneath it, so that he found the thing he sought, or found plainly that it was not there and could seek elsewhere without having been robbed of his evening. Honesty in naming is therefore not a tactic. It is love of the seeking neighbor.

Paul shows what true naming looks like in the very city where he spoke of seeking. "For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription: 'TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.' What therefore you worship in ignorance, I announce to you." (Acts 17:23) He did not rename their altar to suit a crowd. He read the inscription as it stood and announced the God it could not name. So a title must read the piece as it stands. A piece about one text must not wear the name of a more popular text, and a narrow piece must not pretend to be broad in order to catch a wider net. The man caught by a false name has been misled, and the misleading is the writer's, even if the machine did the carrying.

Here the proverb gives the scale: "A false balance is an abomination to Yahweh, but accurate weights are his delight." (Proverbs 11:1) A baited title is a false balance. It weighs light in the search and heavy in the promise, and the reader discovers the fraud only after he has paid his time. A stuffed page, crowded with phrases no man would speak in order to please a machine, is the same fraud: words present, meaning absent, the scale rigged. An accurate weight is a title that weighs the same on the search page as it weighs on the page itself. The writer who keeps accurate weights need not fear being found less often. He need fear being found false once.

The second service is order. A seeking man needs a plain path from the name to the thing. Nehemiah's readers give the rule in a single verse: "They read in the book, in the law of God, distinctly; and they gave the sense, so that they understood the reading." (Nehemiah 8:8) A piece that can be found but cannot be followed has only moved the obstacle from the door to the hallway. Plain headings, a first paragraph that states the burden without coyness, sentences a stranger can follow: these are not concessions to a machine. They are the same hospitality that distinct reading was. Paul states the same rule for speech, and it holds for writing: "So also you, unless you uttered by the tongue words easy to understand, how would it be known what is spoken? For you would be speaking into the air." (1 Corinthians 14:9)

There is a tension here that must be kept, not solved. "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter." (Proverbs 25:2) God conceals, and men search. The writer stands in neither place. He must not conceal what God has revealed, burying a plain text under obscurity and calling the obscurity depth. Neither must he pretend that true depth can be flattened into a phrase any search will instantly master. Some texts yield only to the man who stays. The kingdom itself is "like treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid. In his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field." (Matthew 13:44) The treasure was hidden, the man found it, and the finding cost him everything. A writer who makes his piece easy to trip over has not made the treasure easier to possess.

So the demotion is complete. The trade of discovery is taken down from lordship to service, and its service is threefold, and nothing more. Name the piece truly, so the seeking man is not lied to before he begins. Order the piece plainly, so the man who finds it can follow it to the end. Leave the door open, so he can read it without first paying, joining, or proving himself worthy of the room. Those three are the whole of the writer's part. The rest belongs to God, who set the boundaries so men would seek, and to the seeker, who must search with all his heart.

This frees the writer from the arithmetic that corrupts the trade. He need not chase every phrase men type, nor mourn every piece that few find. A piece that is true, plain, and open has done its work in the order of seeking, whether ten men find it or ten thousand. The finding is not the fruit. The seeking man himself is not a number to be increased. He is a neighbor, in the dark, reaching out for one who is not far from him.

"Seek Yahweh while he may be found. Call on him while he is near." (Isaiah 55:6) The nearness is already given. The writer's task is only to see that his own craft does not stand between the seeking man and it: no false name on the door, no tangled hallway behind it, no locked gate before it. Let the title tell the truth. Let the order be plain. Let the door stand open. Then leave the seeking to the seeker, and the finding to God.