In Memory of M. Scott Peck - "Life is Difficult"

I just saw that M. Scott Peck, author of "The Road Less Traveled" and other books has passed away.  Over at Mere Comments, S.M. Hutchens has a nice memoriam for Peck and some reflections on Peck's book "People of the Lie."

I read "The Road Less Traveled" when I was in college.  I'm not sure why, other than someone must have recommended it.  As I remember, I greatly enjoyed and profited from the book.  I also read "People of the Lie" awhile later.  I may have dabbled in some of his other writings after that but somewere along the line through reading bits and pieces of other things he had written and reviews of his stuff I got the idea that he had become a bit of a wacky-doodle with a mixture of Christian, psychological and new age influences.  So, I held off recommending him to others and really lost interest in reading his stuff.

As I became more familiar with Biblical Christianity and Biblical counseling, Peck's words became less and less attractive to me.

Still though, to this day, I think the first page of The Road Less Traveled has one of the simplest and most profound statements about the difficulties of life in this world that I have ever seen. 

This demonstrates the profundity of which he was capable, and at the same time his frustrating eclecticism.  On this page he proposes a profound biblical truth yet cites the Buddha as an inspiration for it.  Of course this verifies Van Til's assertion that all other worldviews must borrow capital from the Christian worldview to make sense of their worlds.

I have often called these words to mind and have recommended them to many.  It may be that these words struck me as so profoundly because I read them in my youth.  College was a time of exhilarating freedom and excitement for me, yet it was a time when I also got hints that life would be hard.  Who knows, maybe I read this book on the heels of failing a test or getting dumped by a girl.  Whatever the situation, the notion that "Life is difficult" struck me as a profound insight.   And certainly life has proved the truth of this since then.

Indeed, what Peck is saying here, in effect, is that we must accept that we live in a fallen world.  The fallenness of this fallen world is far less debilitating to those who can accept the fact that is fallen. 

Once we accept the fact that life is difficult we can address the difficulties.  Once we accept that we live in a fallen world, we can begin to push back at the darkness that came as a result of the fall instead of whining about the fact that someone turned out the lights.

So, may M. Scott Peck rest in peace and I offer the following to you as a means of encouragement for you and as a way of remembering this flawed, yet brilliant man.

Life is Difficult.

This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.  It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it.  Once we truly see that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult.  Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult.  Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy.  They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others.  I know about this moaning because I have done my share.

Life is a series of problems.  Do we want to moan about them or solve them?  Do we want to teach our children to solve them?