Shock and Ramble in the Woods

This morning I went to the woods. I went to the woods because I believe in magic. I believe in magic because this world is deep and mystifying and ridiculous and the handiwork of an almighty, forever young, immortal God. I expect to be shocked every time I wander among the trees. And every time, my eyes grow wider.

I went to bed at 9:30 last night. I’m not usually old, but I felt tired and turned in early. My body woke up around 4:30 this morning. I put a record on in the dark and then lingered in bed, letting the soft music weave into the shadows. After Bible reading and coffee, I went out into the world.

It was about 20 degrees this morning. With the wind chill, it was awful. But there’s a wonderful little valley here in St. Louis where you can wander on trails. Sadly, the dull roar of the highway is always there, but the forest itself is still good.

I picked a new trail in the valley today. Within the first two minutes of walking, I couldn’t feel my face.  And within the first three minutes, I saw a massive buck. He was down on his knees behind a tree, but his bone-white antlers were poking out. After taking a very blurry picture of him with my camera phone, I moved on.

Literally ten steps after that, I spotted four does (not to be confused with dids) sauntering a bit off the trail. Those ladies were much more obliging to a brief photo shoot. The deer in this valley have no fear of people. They will let you get quite close and it’s brilliant.

In contrast, a buck (and I also saw one towards the end of the stroll – maybe it was the same one?), a buck just stares you down. When an 8-point buck is standing twenty feet from you, there’s this wonderful sense of terror. Those black eyes dare you to take a step forward. It’s just looking for an excuse to charge and gore you to death with its spikes. Gloriously humbling.

Perhaps the best part of my morning stroll was the fox. I’d never seen a fox in the wild before, but just after seeing the does, I heard a rustle of dead leaves ahead. I looked up and a faerie firework burst from the dead ground. A golden orange sunburst with a comet tail of black and white. In no more than five leaping bounds, the fox crossed the trail and vanished into the underbrush. I never saw him again. It thrilled me deeply.

And the trees! Oh, the trees. I blame Tolkien for letting me fall in love with them. Bitternut hickories, sugar maples, dogwoods, all silent and old and slumbering in the wind. Crooked and twisted stumps bent backwards and leered at me. I know exactly why I love them. It’s the same reason I love books.

Humanity has its origins in the soil. We are born of the earth, crafted from the dust of the ground. Trees root deep into the same nursery. Ultimately, humans and trees sprouted from the same soil. Humans just don’t lay down roots with the same doggedness as trees.

Books are born from trees. People and trees sprouted from the same depths. So,every time I hold a book, I secretly hope it will take root in the palm of my hand. So far, it hasn’t happened. But I keep praying for that kindred connection to sprout up.

I hope you’ve notice that I use the word “stroll”. I can’t abide people who jog or run through the woods. And even “walking” is a bit too callous and hasty. When you’re in a wood, surrounded by hibernating magic and deep wonder, you have to stroll. You have to keep your eyes open, you have to step quiet, and you have to take time for enjoyment. Otherwise, it’s a waste.

Go find some place beautiful and look at it until you’re shocked. There’s a surplus of magic in this world. Poke it with a stick until the honey seeps out. Amen.

 

Life as Revision

I don’t like second drafts. I never have. In all my lit classes, it was always the worst part (besides group discussions). I hate going back to look at that “ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain”. To see all of my mistakes, all my original word choice, all my stumbling thoughts? It’s a little piece of misery. Maybe that’s why I enjoy blogging. When I write here, it’s virtually all rough draft stuff. I don’t have to labor over it, wallowing through the warts and scuffs. I rarely go back and edit unless there’s a spelling mistake or a grammar spoof. This is a safe place. Rough drafts are safe. But they’re rough.

I’ve never been a perfectionist. In fact, perfectionists sort of annoy me. I’ve always been a B-average student and I’m cool with that. The only time I really push myself to excellence is when I’m interested in the subject material or when I get a bad grade in a class I love. Then, I just get angry and want to get back at the teacher by studying and securing that A. That’ll show ‘em.

But I hate being where I’m at. I always feel I should be better than who I am, than what I am. But to do better means you have to take a long look at where you’re at and change. That’s why I hate doing second drafts. I recognize the need to fix a bit of writing, but to change and polish it means I have to 1.) look at my mistakes and 2.) apply effort to fix those mistakes. It’s all scary pain.

I don’t think God minds looking at rough drafts. I don’t think he has a problem with revisions. Ephesians 2 calls us God’s poems. We are his workmanship. In 1 Corinthians, we’re called “new creations”. We are walking revisions. And the glorious, fun, messy, frustrating thing about loving Jesus is that we are always being revised and we are always revising ourselves.

It’s this mysterious pull and tug, this wacky tangle called sanctification. We work, but God works in us. God works in us both to will and to work, but we bear responsibility for our own effort (don’t confuse effort with earning). Every day, God is renewing us and pushing us closer to the image of his son. Every morning, we wake up as rough drafts. We’re closer than where we were yesterday, but we’re not yet made perfect.

God is the Great Editor. He lovingly applies white-out to our sins. He rewrites our words into his own vocabulary of love, while graciously maintaining our own unique styles. He gives us a new title and a new thesis. But here’s the best part: he’s already written the ending. We just need to get there. And he’ll be revising us, draft after draft, until we’re complete.

Thank God for rough drafts. Thank God for revision. Thank God for grace.

Jealous for Love

Puppy Love

I was an awkward 13-year old. All 13-year olds are awkward, but I was a poster child for insecurity. I’ve always had bad posture. My neck naturally swoops forward like a vulture and I hunched a lot in middle school. Still do. On top of that, I had terrible acne. My face looked like the surface of Mars.

To combat the zits, my parents put me on acne medicine. But the medicine dried out every square inch of my head. My lips chapped, cracked, and bled. My nostrils were desert wind tunnels. My eyes dried and itched every day. There’s nothing like puberty to make a guy feel inadequate.

And then there was Megan. Megan was the incarnation of everything a 13-year old boy is looking for: good eyes, good hair, good smile, good legs, and a good figure. She looked good. But realize that 13-year old boys don’t give a great deal of thought to the depth of their standards. They mostly just care about looks. Megan had ‘em and I was 13.

The Setup

Now, most middle schools have some sort of rhythmic ceremonial ritual at least once a year. At my school, they called them mixers. A mixer was intended to be a dance, a first shot for guys and girls to mingle and flirt like the emerging young adults we weren’t. It was invented, I’m sure, to build up our confidence with the opposite sex.

In reality, however, these mixers were less about dancing and mingling and more about standing against the wall while your more courageous friends swayed awkwardly to the music out on the gymnasium floor, all the while trying to avoid direct eye contact with the girls. It was awkward.

But after many bad jokes and much peer pressure, my friends and I had decided to go. And I was actually pretty excited about it. Why? Megan was going.

It had been confirmed by several credible sources that she would be attending the mixer. And it was public knowledge that Megan was going alone. No one had asked her! All that my young mind knew of hope was wrapped up in this one thought: I could go to the dance with Megan.

The idea made my hands sweat, but my chances seemed pretty good. A couple of weeks before the dance, one of her friends asked her if she was going. I remember it clearly. We were in the hallway outside our homeroom, getting books out of our lockers for the next class. Our lockers were close, foreshadowing our all-but-certain future together.

Megan looked up at her friend from her locker on the floor. “I don’t know. No one’s asked me yet.”

With that last sentence, she looked directly up at me. I mean, it was legitimate eye contact. And those eyes told me what her lips were obviously too shy to say: “Jason, hurry up and ask me to the dance, you idiot.”

And so I didn’t.

God made me an introvert. And in middle school, I was a capital I Introvert. I had a few close friends I opened up around, but usually, I never said a word. If the ground swallowed me whole in the middle of algebra, I wouldn’t have embarrassed myself by yelling for help.

And Megan? She was out of my league. Waves of cascading golden hair. Emerald eyes that saw right into your soul. Tall and beautiful. And then there was me. The pimple face kid with the vulture neck.

Last Chance Dance

So, no, I didn’t actually ask her to the dance. But there was still hope. In my mind, I could see it all playing out beautifully.

I would show up fashionably late, dressed in my best khaki pants and polo shirt/blazer combination. With my slickly parted hair and my mom’s vanishing cream to cover up the pimples, I’d be dressed to kill. Pushing through the crowd of swaying slow dancers, I would finally find her. And of course, Megan would be standing by the punch bowl, waiting for me to pour her a glass. Then, I’d follow up with a cool line (“come here often…?”) and ask her to dance.

Then, we’d get married.

It was fool proof. I kept this hope alive for a full week before the night of the mixer. Every day, Megan had been dropping what I’m sure were hints. A cough here, a blink there, a few smiles with her friends. Clearly, she wanted me to ask her out at the dance.

That night, my mom dropped me off outside the gym doors. Iridescent streamers waved at me from the doorway. Inside, the bass was turned up way too loud, thudding its rhythm into my ribcage. From multiple angles, strobe lights panicked through the fog from the smoke machines, making me feel for all the world like I could suave and dashing.

For about an hour, I couldn’t find her. Almost all of the girls were lined up against the far wall of the room, looking nauseous and disinterested. But where was my soon-to-be girlfriend? I stared intently from my position at the punch bowl, making sure to scan every face carefully. I got a few rude stares back, but Megan was nowhere to be found.

I was about to make up an excuse to spend the rest of the dance hiding out in a bathroom stall when I noticed it. There were a handful of couples in the middle of the floor. They were all uneasily holding their partners as if they were handling plutonium. But one of the couples seemed a bit more “natural” with the art of slow dancing.

The guy I recognized. He was some complete jerk named Eric. He was good at soccer but had virtually no redeeming qualities as a human being. He was self-centered, cocky, and didn’t know how to treat a girl right. And there, leaning into his shoulder and swaying like a golden willow, was Megan.

I can’t remember if I spit out my punch. I’m not sure if I went out and sulked in the bathroom until my mom picked me up. All I remember is how I felt.

Somewhere inside me, in a dark cave where I keep my precious hidden gods, I felt it. Anger. Entitlement. A morose sense of injustice. It all rose up quickly and soaked in my bones. It took its time and curled around me like smoke.

This girl had obviously been pining for me just as deeply as I had for her. She had all but thrown herself at me. And yet, another guy was holding her tight, moving in a slow, tight circle with her to the raw and honest lyrics of N’Sync.

Smoldering…

But she was supposed to be with me! And she was giving her affections to him? The cocky soccer kid? It would’ve been a good time to pray an imprecatory psalm against him. The good guy is supposed to win. I’m supposed to hit the home run, shoot the bad guy, save the day, and kiss the girl. But, at that moment, some one else had won.

Jealousy. It wrecked me that night. It probably wrecked the entire school year for me. It taught me not to pine after a girl, not to get my hopes up so recklessly. It taught me not to feel. Yes, in hindsight, every problem in middle school sounds like a cliché. But when you’re in those shoes, everything feels so specific. The pain is very real and the heart is very broken.

Everything about my reaction to Megan’s “abandonment” and “rejection” cut me so cleanly. But more than anything, looking back, my jealousy gave me an excuse to throw the biggest pity party adolescence had ever seen.

I spiraled into a very angry depression. I became anorexic. My dreams were haunted by thoughts of suicide. All because of a girl? No. It was all because I didn’t get the affection that I believed I was entitled to. And when some other guy became the center of her universe, I burned. I seethed. I stewed in doubt and pain and bitterness. It was emotional grumbling, amplified and given no escape valve.

My jealousy was unjustifiably centered around myself. It was petty. It was prideful. And eventually, through counseling and the love of my parents, I got through the mess it caused.

What God Is NOT

I shared that little episode of adolescent angst to illustrate a point of opposites. God is not like that. God is so ultimately and profoundly not like me. God’s jealousy is not petty. It is not prideful.

Jealousy is one of God’s attributes. It shows up enough in the Bible to be a defining characteristic of his nature. We just don’t like to talk about it because it sounds bad. But jealousy is a part of who he is. God is compassionate, holy, happy, and good. He is always those things. In the same way, God is always wrathful, avenging, and jealous.

God does not change. He doesn’t go through phases. He’s not a teenage girl. He doesn’t get moody. He doesn’t have good days and bad days. He is immutable. He is unchangeable. So, with respect to this thing called jealousy, God is always jealous.

Love Him First

If jealousy is a desire for misdirected affection, then no one has more misdirected affection than the Creator. He is the author of all creatures. Every man, woman, and child was created to love God above all other things. God is the intended aim of our affection. When this doesn’t happen, it’s called misdirected affection. Where this is misdirected affection, there is jealousy.

God is justly jealous for your love. He is justly jealous for my love. And to paraphrase Tara Leigh Cobble, God can be pretty tenacious about ripping idols out of our hands. Don’t let it come to that. Keep yourself in the love of God.

My Year in Blogging

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,500 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 42 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Honesty in Swaddling Clothes

I’ve written on honesty before, but it’s come up again in my mind. People are messy and it’s great. We’re sloppy, we’re sinful, we’re beautiful, we’re broken, we’re raw, we’re complicated, we’re glorious. And as deep as we are, we can never be fully known by anyone but God himself. But that shouldn’t keep us from trying.

In an interview, writer/musician Tara Leigh Cobble said, “Without honesty, we’re all just trying to impress people and protect ourselves.” I thought about that for a while after I read it. I realized that I agreed with her. The truth is, if I don’t show you who I am, it’s because I’m scared.

I want you to think better of me. I want to minimize the damage vulnerability will bring. So, I don’t show you all my cards. I don’t let you see the real me. And we all do this, every day. It’s dishonesty and it’s how we protect ourselves and it kills any hope for real community.

When we don’t show ourselves fully to other people, we cheat each other out of love. I can’t love a person as I ought (as God loved me) if I’m scared that person won’t love me back. And so we can’t have real and deep community.

God has revealed himself fully to us in the person of Jesus Christ. Christmastime commemorates the honesty of God, his coming to this planet to show us perfectly and profoundly who he is. The baby in the manger was the exact imprint of the Father’s nature (Heb.1:3). Such self-disclosure was an amazing expression of love. So, if I don’t fully disclose myself to another soul, I can’t imitate God (Eph.5:1) as I ought.

It’s only when we show each other who we are, with all our fractured flaws, that we act like our Father in true disclosure. It’s terrifying and it’s difficult, but it’s the only way to be known in deep community. One of the reasons Jesus came was to show us the Father. He gave himself to us so that would happen, so that we could have community with God. This Christmas, let’s give ourselves in honesty to one another. Be brave, be known, and give love.

Merry Christmas.

 

 

The Good Giver of Gladness

Distracted by Shock

I’m working on a paper on Leviticus right now. Well, not right now. I’m blogging right now. Such a funny word. Blogging. I’m distracted by the word “blogging” from blogging right now, which is in turn distracting me from my paper. And we’re back.

I thought I’d take a break from thinking and writing about God so that I could think and write about God. I could count on two and a half hands the number of times I have looked in the Bible and been so utterly shocked by God that for weeks I couldn’t shake it. The astonishment lingers like when you see the flash of a camera on the other side of your eyelids. The image burns itself into the darkness.

A Bible-less Culture

Last week, I was reading through Acts (because I have a severe interest in church planting) and came to a story I remember seeing on flannel graph when I was little. In Acts 14, Paul and Barnabas are at Lystra (in present day Turkey (in present day Asia Minor)). They are preaching the Gospel. They are two Jews (one of them a very learned biblical theologian) and they are preaching the Gospel to crowds of non-Jews. These people have no synagogue. They have no Bible. They have no knowledge of Yahweh. They have no hope for salvation.

They are polytheists. They worship a pantheon, a plurality of deities. But when they see Paul heal a life-long cripple, they worship him. They call him Hermes and they call Barnabas Zeus and the priests of Zeus bring oxen and garlands and they offer sacrifices to them. So, all of a sudden, because God acted through Paul to heal a broken body, the Gospel is capsized and the messengers become the end all be all of the message.

But once the apostles understand what’s going on, they tear their clothes. They show their grief and their heart-sickness at the misunderstanding. The misunderstanding is this: creation should be elevated above Creator. It’s an old heresy and it has been dehydrating souls for millennia, shriveling humans up to the size of their idols.

Then the apostles open their mouths. They explain that they too are broken, sinful creatures, “of like nature” with them. They are no Olympians. There are no Olympians. They are simply worshiping creatures, trying to point the people of Lystra back towards the Creator.

But remember, the crowds at Lystra had no Bibles. They had no concept of the Great Story. They did not know what Yahweh had been doing since the beginning. They could not unscroll the first book of Moses and read the creation story to gain that infinite reference point, to better understand their relation to the Creator.

So, how do you share the Gospel with no “church background”? Here’s how Paul and Barnabas did it. This is what shocked the boredom right out of my heart.

The Gospel of Pleasure

Verse 15: “We bring you good news [we preached the Gospel], that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.”

The apostles redirect the crowds’ right and powerful urge to worship. They simply give them a new aim: Yahweh. The implication of the Gospel is simple: turn from the worthless, turn to the Infinite Worth of God himself.

Verse 16: “In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.”

Did you catch that? Paul and Barnabas know that these people have no reference point for understanding what God has done through Israel and the Messiah. So, they go directly to the things that the people Lystra had always thanked their gods for: rain, prosperity, food, gladness. And the apostles put these good gifts into their proper place:

They are witnesses.

Gladness Points to God

They are all good gifts that point deeply and fervently back to the Giver of all good gifts: Yahweh. The living God who made everything gives humanity good things, not so that we should be thankless, but so that we may follow the trail back to the living God who takes good care of all people.

But notice something incredible here. Not only does God give good things, he gives satisfaction itself. It is God who satisfies the heart. It is God who imbues us with gladness when things go well, when we sip our pumpkin spice lattes, when we stroll in the rain for the sake of strolling in the rain. Any joy or happiness or delight you’ve ever felt was a gift from God. More than that, it is a witness to God. It was given so that you might be redirected from the gift back to the Giver.

God does good by giving us gladness. I have friends (some who love Jesus, some who don’t) who are much happier creatures than myself. I’m something of an Eeyore (and that’s okay, Tiggers). But they are almost skillful when it comes to sucking the marrow out of life. I love being around them. They’re wonderful. Their gladness and their happiness is proof that God is good. It is God who gives gladness. It is God who gives satisfaction, on any and all levels.

Happiness (and I make no distinction, as some Christians do, between joy and happiness) is engineered to give pleasure. That pleasure is designed to point us back to God. Adam and Eve wandered from God, seeking their joy apart from Yahweh. Yahweh has provided the way back to his own goodness through his Messiah, Jesus Christ. Yahweh himself is the source of all pleasure (in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore- Psalm 16:11). And all throughout this world, Yahweh shines in all that’s fair. He has dotted our paths with sign posts, all pointing us back to his goodness and beauty.

The Gospel is for anyone who wants happiness. The Gospel is for the lovers, the dreamers, and me. The message of the Christ’s Gospel of pleasure is this: all satisfaction is ultimately given to make us turn and worship Yahweh, the living God who created us all. Try and remember that the next time you enjoy one of his good gifts, whatever it might be.

 

Remember

Every letter St. Paul wrote is basically divided into two halves: the doctrinal and the “practical”. We talk like that, but we probably shouldn’t. Scholars talk like that. Study Bibles talk like that. Seminaries talk like that. And so everyone talks like that.

But the implied tragedy in that distinction is that doctrine is somehow impractical. If you read through the first few chapters of Ephesians or Galatians, the impression is that you don’t see a single command. And Christians love to have something to do.

But nothing is more practical than what you believe. Theology (honestly followed) pushes us deeper into good deeds. And in Ephesians 2:11-13, in one of the most doctrinally thick chapters in the New Testament, there is a command. It requires no action, no speaking. It is a command to remember.

“Remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands- remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

That is the Gospel story. Where we were (separated, alienated, strangers, hopeless, without God), where we are now (brought near), and how it happened (by the blood of Christ).

Remembrance is the Gospel imperative. Because of what God has done for you, remember what God has done for you. Paul, in this middle of this rich theological discourse, sits down to take a breath. He leans across the table, smiles and says to us, “remember”.

Jonathan Edwards said it best. “Remember what was once your case, and what it is now, and prize Jesus Christ.”

Filled in the Cracks

I spent some time with Psalm 33 this morning. Sometimes a certain verse (or even just half a verse) sings that siren lullaby and I’m utterly smitten. Today, it was the second slice of verse 5: “the earth is full of the steadfast love of the LORD” (English Standard Version).

That phrase “steadfast love” enthralled me.

The New American Standard Version translates those words as God’s “lovingkindness”. In the New International Version, it is God’s “unfailing love”. The old King James renders it simply as God’s “goodness”. I love the way Eugene Peterson’s puts it. “Earth is drenched in God’s affectionate satisfaction” (The Message).

Hesed. The “h” is pronounced like the Scottish “loch”. Just cough a couple times and you’ll get it. Then emphasize the second syllable and you’ve got it. Hesed is the English transliteration of the Hebrew word for “steadfast love”. It’s the covenant love of God’s faithfulness to His people. It’s God’s “I’m-not-going-anywhere” love. No matter what we say, what we do, how far we stray, how heinously we sin, God has hesed for us. It is His loyal love. It is a deep, profound, indomitable affection.

And Psalm 33:5 says that the earth is filled with that kind of love. What does that mean?

Open your eyes.

Take a breath.

Sit still and listen.

Every beauty around you, every good thing that benefits you, every soul that cares for you. Those are bright parables of love. Those are striking expressions of the Lord’s hesed. Earth is drenched with it. That shagbark hickory tree that is growing right now in a quiet Colorado acre that no human eye will ever see? That is God’s hesed filling the earth. He is the Creator. He is faithful to His own handiwork. And when it comes to the souls He redeems through the blood of His Son…

Hesed. Faithful, loyal love. He is faithful to us because He is faithful to the blood of His Son. He loves us and has bought us for Himself, for His own good pleasure. That is the type of God we serve. That is the God who fashioned our hearts within the womb. And the earth is filled with that love. We need only look around and be grateful to remind ourselves of His love.

Look. Listen. Breathe. Every crack, every cradle, every canyon, every cold stream: proofs of His ever-faithful love. And He is ever faithful to us in that love.

Be aware.

Apples of Gold In a Setting of Silver

Reactionary Action

Up until the time of the Romantics, no one ever suggested that literature and the arts were a worthy goal to pursue for their own sake. The idea of beauty as its own end really only came into the public square in the nineteenth century. Before that artistic revolution, beauty was decorative. Beauty was ornamental and secondary and a lovely afterthought. Beauty had always a means to an end.

Since the Romantic period, however, people have fallen in love with beauty. Art for art’s sake has become a worthy endeavor and, as such, we’ve all become a bit obsessed with it, haven’t we? Is this a bad thing? Yeah, probably. C.S. Lewis cautions us, “By valuing too highly a real, but subordinate good, we have come near to losing that good itself.” We can dislocate things and overemphasize what should be secondary (like beauty and excellence and diligent art).

But the problem today is that many Christians have swung too far the other way. In an attempt to put beauty back in its place, in an effort to subordinate beauty to its original role, we have over-reacted. Christians have been so keen to keep God’s glory and mission the main thing, that they have under valued beauty. And because of the florid language that so often clothes good literature, Christians can sometimes dismiss it all as mere verbal swagger. And we do so to our own injury, I think.

Pretty Talk

There is beauty in literature. People can string lovely, heartbreaking words together in sentences that shake the soul and widen the eyes. Consider this excerpt from Lewis’ That Hideous Strength:

“But it did not matter: for all the fragments — needle-pointed desires, brisk merriments, lynx-eyed thoughts — went rolling to and fro like glittering drops and reunited themselves. It was well that both men had some knowledge of poetry. The doubling, splitting, and recombining of thoughts which now went on in them would have been unendurable for one whom that art had not already instructed in the counterpoint of the mind, the mastery of doubled and trebled vision. For Ransom, whose study had been for many years in the realm of words, it was heavenly pleasure. He found himself sitting within the very heart of language, in the white-hot furnace of essential speech. All fact was broken, splashed into cataracts, caught, turned inside out, kneaded, slain, and reborn as meaning. For the lord of Meaning himself, the herald, the messenger, the slayer of Argus, was with them . . .”

We would be hard-pressed to find an excerpt of equal transcendence in modern literature, especially in the Church today. Such beauty adds depth to the soul and mind and we have much need for depth today. Flannery O’Connor lamented our evangelical aesthetic poverty:

“Ever since there have been such things as novels, the world has been flooded with bad fiction for which the religious impulse has been responsible. The sorry religious novel comes about when the writer supposes that because of his belief, he is somehow dispensed from the obligation to penetrate concrete reality. He will think that the eyes of the Church or of the Bible or of his particular theology have already done the seeing for him, and that his business is to rearrange this essential vision into satisfying patterns, getting himself as little dirty in the process as possible. His feeling about this may have been made more definite by one of those Manichean-type theologies which sees the natural world as unworthy of penetration. But the real novelist, the one with an instinct for what he is about, knows that he cannot approach the infinite directly, that he must penetrate the natural human world as it is.”[1]

Beauty Via Sweat

And writing is difficult. It is extremely hard to make something beautiful out of words. And in hard work (whether done by a Christian or an atheist), we see the image of God. We see in it the faculties with which God gifted humanity: creativity, industry, cultivation. We create only because God creates. And good literature, like all good work, is an example of disciplined excellence. Gustave Flaubert, the author of Madam Bovary, is an example of artistic striving.

“Flaubert was always adamantly opposed to illustrations for his literary works. This apparent contradiction can be explained by his concept of pure art and his association of art with style, from which it follows that one art cannot be translated into another. For Flaubert, writing was a long, sometimes agonizingly slow, quest for perfection in style. His correspondence is filled with descriptions of his efforts to polish his prose, to eliminate repetition or assonance, to find le mot juste [the right word].”[2]

Beautiful literature is a reflection of hard work and diligent practice. Excellence in one’s work is a birthmark of Protestantism (though by no means restricted only to that sect). Doing one’s best, pursuing beauty and honorably discharging one’s duties are all valid ways in which one may honor God. Literature can be an expression of that goal.

I repeat, writing is difficult. Perhaps a qualification is necessary. Writing well is difficult. Thomas Wolfe, in his classic novel You Can’t Go Home, describes his main character, George Webber, deep in the process of writing:

“Already his next novel was begun and was beginning to take shape within him. He would soon have to get it out of him. He dreaded the prospect of buckling down in earnest to write it, for he knew the agony of it. It was like demoniacal possession, driving him with an alien force much greater than his own. While the fury of creation was upon him, it meant sixty cigarettes a day, twenty cups of coffee, meals snatched anyhow and anywhere and at whatever time of day or night he happened to remember he was hungry.”

Any dedicated writer is familiar with that struggle to create excellence (minus the cigarettes, perhaps). So, should a Christian writer be any less dedicated to producing good art? If a Christian writes with the end of glorifying God in all his effort, his art should be the best possible art that he can accomplish. It may not be the most “spiritual” or “religious” art he could make, but it should be beautiful.

Bring It Back

“Artists are called and gifted- personally, by name- to write, paint, sing, play, and dance to the glory of God.”[3]But the Church sometimes can have trouble finding the value in beauty. It’s not functional enough or it’s just too subjective to be “true”. We make up our own reasons to dismiss it. But as a result, many artists in God’s kingdom generally get shuffled into to the corner while the rest of us glorify God by working “real jobs”. We devalue those people and their gifts and we grind all their beauty into a sad pile of irrelevance. To quote Aristotle, “It ain’t oughta be like dat.”[4]

The skillful writing of good fiction and good poetry is rare. When it is done to the glory of God (whether it is overtly Christian in theme or not), we should acknowledge the art, praising the Creator for the work of the sub-creator (to borrow a term from Tolkien).

Beauty is not the main thing. But neither is it unwanted, like a Cubs fan in Busch Stadium. I long for the day when we can return to a robust and balanced appreciation for beauty. And one of the paths to that end is to crack open a good book and taste all the beauty.

 

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[1] O’Connor, Flannery, Mystery and Manners, p.163

[2] The Gustave Flaubert Encyclopedia edited by Laurence Porter (Westport,Connecticut:Greenwood, 2001), 15.

[3] Ryken, Phillip Graham, Art for God’s Sake: A Call to Recover the Arts, 2006, p.24

[4] Not really.

Fixin’ False Frailties of Fears About Fiction

Ketchup

Once upon a time, I vowed to be consistent on this blog.

Oops.

I’m currently on fall break from seminary. It’s been nice to have my morning’s back. I’ve watched very little TV and have done a lot of reading and writing. I’m looking forward to answering a few personal letters today. My Cardinals are on the verge of coming back in Game 6 to force a final victory in the World Series. The Rangers? That great and worthy opponent? That quixotic band of dreamers That gallant team from Texas without a Series title? And they think to challenge the mighty Cardinals, a franchise with no less than ten championships? It baffles the mind. I hope Pujols doesn’t cut them too deeply.

Some news on the book front. I’ve decided to pull my story from the publishing house that was courting me. It’s been about 3 months since I first sent my manuscript to them and I think I need to pull back from that whole process. Little progress. So, my little owl story is looking for a new nest. If you have any Christian children’s publishing houses in mind, please let me know. This whole sh’bang is mighty exhausting.

Dearest Tess, You Teach Me Much

I’ve been working my way through Tess of the d’Urbervilles. It’s this beautifully depressing novel by Thomas Hardy. Tess, the heroine of the story, makes herself the victim of most every single thing. Nobody blames Tess more than Tess does. The entire novel is a series of hope and despair, hope and despair. Hardy sets you up for love, and then throws you down in a pit of rejection. Merciless.

Why am I reading it? A few reasons. 1.) A good friend recommended it. 2.) I love sad things. 3.) I feel that, because of reading it, I understand the human condition better.

Let me harp on this last one. I understand that Tess is fictional (more’s the pity), but I’ve known people like her. So have you. They are victimized at every turn and they daily shovel guilt and shame over their own heads. They are convinced no one could ever love them because of the mistakes they’ve made in the past. Tess is a victim of careless physical and crushing emotional abuse. And reading about her generates empathy in my cold soul.

I can put myself in her shoes and feel her pain because I see it all unfolding on the page in front of me. Now, that might sound silly. What good is it if I learn to empathize with some figment of a dead Englishman’s imagination? Tess is a picture of so many faces. If I can learn to feel her pain, I will be better prepared to care for that pain when I see it in the real world.

There is value in fiction. But for a surprising number of Christians today, literature is escapist nonsense at best and a dangerous distraction at worst.

What is Fiction?

There is a certain level of discomfort among Christians with respect to literature. For some, it is a vague uneasiness, a dim and unsettling suspicion. For others, it is sheer mistrust. Fiction, poetry, what the Romantics once called “poesy”: all hazards for the devout Christian soul.

At least, this is one popular misconception.

Fiction is often seen as the opposite of fact. Fiction, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “that which is imaginatively invented; feigned existence, event, or state of things; invention as opposed to fact.” Opposed to fact. And Christianity is all about facts. Jesus is God. The Bible is God’s Word. Paul was a man. In love with facts, Christians tend to shy away from fiction and poetry as dishonest and silly slight of hand.

For sure, there are many Christians who simply don’t see the value in fiction or poetry. Time is precious and if a Christian is to make the most of her time, should she really spend a few hours reading a Jane Austen novel? If the saints are to be edified, is it worth the effort to bury our noses in a book of verse? Surely, God would have us take our reading seriously. Why bother with a book if it is not Scripture (or if it is not a book about Scripture)?

But there is another historical definition in the OED for fiction: “the species of literature which is concerned with the narration of imaginary events and the portraiture of imaginary characters.” There is “a category of poetry that is truly ‘fictional,’ in the sense that the poet is neither lying nor relating erroneously held views, but is…telling a story that he had made up to be like reality without claiming that it is reality.”[1] It is this flavorful definition of fiction with which I am concerned here.

Is It Real?

Even if the Church seems to be enamored of facts, we need not shun fiction as a tangle of lies. “Truth in the genre of fictional literature, then, is not what is empirically verifiable, but it is what is considered true within a particular conceptual system, whether rooted in an ideological worldview, or, as in the case of Lewis’s Narnia or Tolkien’s Middle Earth, created out of the cloth of the author’s imagination.”[2] There is a shade of truth in fiction that is no less real, though it is “breathed through silver”.

To hold a keen appreciation of literature as antithetical to Christian devotion is both wrong-headed and insensible. For one thing, such a false dichotomy ignores the spiritual titans of church history (Donne, Milton, R.C. Sproul, George MacDonald, and C.S. Lewis, to name a few). If we count hymns as poetry apart from music, we could add old lights like Charles Wesley and Martin Luther as writer-pastors. If fiction and poetry hold no legitimacy in a Christian worldview, we neglect, by extension, the wisdom of our forefathers in the faith. And what a baby to be thrown out with the bath water!

To quote Gene Edward Veith Jr.,

“Fiction lends itself well to the exploration of spiritual issues, since the form gives life to ideas, making them tangible and relating them to human life. . . . And yet, good Christian novels are rare. . . . It is preachy, contrived, and it does not ring true.   The story is often formulaic, and the characters are stock “good guys” or “villains,” with no complexity or inner lives.  The obligatory conversion scene is often unrelated to the on-going plot, coming as an interruption rather than as a believable development in the character’s life.  And, ironically, much of today’s Christian fiction is moralistic, rather than evangelical, presenting good characters to emulate, rather than sinners being forgiven.”[3]

Christians should not be so eager to dismiss fiction because it isn’t “real”. If they do, they do it at the risk of diminishing their own selves. More thoughts on this tomorrow. Oh, hey look! Footnotes!

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[1] E. L. Bowie, “Lies, Fiction and Slander in Early Greek Poetry,” in Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World (ed. Christopher Gill and T. P. Wiseman;Austin:University ofTexas Press, 1993), 20–21

[2] Estes, Daniel J., “Fiction and Truth in the Old Testament Wisdom Literature”, in Themelios, vol.35, issue 3, Novemeber 2010

[3] “Fiction as an Instrument for the Gospel: Bo Giertz as Novelist,” published in A Hammer of God: Bo Giertz, 2005, Augsburg Fortress, Minneapolis, MN