This book was born of a journey which began in California during the year 1981.  I was sitting in a chair doing nothing, and doing nothing was my favorite thing.  An acquaintance, who was disgusted with my lack of attention to productive activities, threw a book at me and told me to read something.  I did not really appreciate the idea of doing something.  But I was sitting there and I did suddenly have a book in my lap, so I opened it.  I had no idea, as I read through an odd little dialogue written by someone named Plato, that my whole life was about to be remade.  All I knew is that I felt the impact of a wave of intense interest in the character of Socrates and his strange way of asking questions.  Within a month, I had committed the rest of my life to the pursuit of philosophy.  With nothing but a tattered book of philosophy in my hand, and a newfound interest and hope, I was born again. 

Over the course of the next 26 years, it has been my privilege to embrace the best that thousands of years of the struggle and wisdom of humanity have brought into being in the form of philosophy and religion.  It has also been my agony to plainly see the destruction and misery, which the abusiveness within these traditions has caused.  Through it all, I have never lost my interest in asking questions, seeking truth, and opening my heart to life.  But I have often been dismayed at how many use religion and philosophy as a way of closing the heart, stopping the quest, and embracing the stagnation of the human spirit.

                    What is a Gadfly?

A gadfly is any one of several large flies, such as the horsefly.  These flies are known to bite livestock. The word, as I apply it to people, comes from Socrates.  He said of himself, while on trial for his life,

 “…if I may use a ludicrous figure of speech, (I) am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by the God; and the state is like a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life.  I am that gadfly which God has given the state and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you.”[1] 

 Socrates presented an image of himself as a gadfly who bit Athens from its complacency into a state of arousal and irritation.  Socrates’ questioning activity was infectious and not easily dismissed.  Today a human gadfly is any person who challenges common assumptions and conventions. 

 When I went to seminary, I brought with me my zeal for questioning.  I delighted in taking Christianity apart into a thousand pieces.  And I was not especially particular about how I put it back together, before taking it apart again.  I discovered, to my initial surprise, that many of my peers did not share in my delight.  I found out that my joy was suspect, and that my search for truth was a significant annoyance to some of my fellow seminarians.   As I was exposed to the beliefs and attitudes about human life that were embraced by some of my colleagues, it brought to my mind the image of Athens as a great and noble yet slothful and slumbering steed.  To sting such a creature into motion is to risk bringing about possible injury.  But would that be worse than the state it was in?  Besides, I could not stop questioning if I tried.  I could not stop seeing things with new eyes.  The gadfly in this book is a fictitious character, but has some of its roots in this experience.

Why all the Clergy?

Many of the sayings start off with a pastor, minister, preacher, or priest, saying or doing something to which the Gadfly character responds.  This reflects my seminary experience, where I spent a few years surrounded by thousands of persons in various kinds of Christian ministry.  What I have placed in the mouths of clergy, I have heard come out of the mouths of clergy many times.  Some may wonder if the presence of so many church leaders in a less than inspiring light is meant to cast a negative shadow on them in general.  The answer is no. There are many Christians, including clergy, who are a beautiful light in the world.  I know some of them.  And I cherish their contribution to life.  These sayings are only meant to confront beliefs and ideas that are expressed by some, sometimes most, but never all Christians and clergy.

  A note to Christian readers

None of these sayings are intended to replace any of your truths. They are only here to provide a contrasting point of view, which you may use to stimulate your own thoughts.  Many of the sayings yield themselves to multiple interpretations.  When you are in the midst of interpreting a saying, it is more important that you come to experience your own beliefs and presuppositions in some vivid way, than to “discover” my meanings and intentions.

The purpose of these sayings is for the reader to do her or his own thinking.  It is not to feed you my ideas.  Therefore, if you are led to a crossroad in your understanding, question yourself as much as you question the saying.  Do the implications of a particular saying weigh upon you?  Others may see different implications to that saying.  Why do you carry the saying to that particular place in your heart?  That you seek an awareness of the views and understandings, which you bring into your reading of the sayings, is more important than the sayings themselves. 

Try not to measure my words in your scales as if their value could be determined by the balance of your own desires.  But instead, just face your own heart.  It matters not whether you find your spirit merging joyfully with the melody of my song, or if you perceive my tune as discordant and my rhythm irregular.  My goal, with this type of writing, is merely to create moments of openness in which the reader’s heart may feel the calling to embrace its own depths and view things in a different way, even if only for a moment.  Before the veil of the need for familiarity covers your face, you may wish to cast a glance towards your own horizons, which beckon you to see and live deeply.  But if any of you find yourself agreeing with every word I have written, shame on you.  Read it again until you find something to chafe against.

Max Maxwell
March 14^th 2006