Hello everyone,
This past weekend, Charlotte saw its first significant wintry precipitation in over three years. The storm was over by Sunday evening. School was out on Monday (for MLK day), canceled Tuesday, and at this writing on Wednesday, many places still have two-hour delays. Such is life in a city with very few snow resources. No matter how slippery the roads are, the most dangerous thing is still a population that is inexperienced in driving in the stuff.
That’s why on Tuesday morning, I had one of my inexperienced drivers out on the empty roads in our neighborhood. I heard my parents’ voices coming out of my mouth: “let the engine be your brake instead of your brakes,” “stay in the tracks the other cars made,” “aim for the crunchy stuff,” “take your foot off the pedals when you skid,” “the road is different in the sun and in the shade,” and on and on. I am somewhat disappointed to report that we only skidded once.
Many of my friends from central Massachusetts took an aspect of drivers’ ed called “Skid School,” where the teachers would take you out on a skidpad and purposely send you into a skid, so you could learn how to recover. When you passed Skid School, you got a t-shirt that had a big triangle road sign on it that said “I survived Skid School.”
I never went to Skid School. My Skid School was called “Living On the Biggest Hill in Town.”
The Part Where There’s an Essay.
Last fall I dropped by the church office to drop something off. After a few minutes of chatting with the staff, I picked up my keys to go home. One of our interns then asked me the question, “what would you say to someone who thinks it’s not valuable spiritually to read fiction?” I put down my keys. An hour later, I actually went home, and he went back to his seminary homework. This series is inspired by that conversation.
On Christians Reading Fiction: Stealing Past Watchful Dragons
If you grew up in the church, as I did, you’ve heard the gospel literally thousands of times. You’ve heard lots of Christian encouragement and probably too many platitudes -- some accurate, some not.
While we shouldn’t overlook the role of regular Christian teaching in our lives, we can grow numb to it. We’ve heard most of it before, and it doesn’t sound new anymore. It doesn’t sound wondrous anymore. We don’t feel anything when we hear it.
When we allow quality fiction into our lives, we open ourselves up to the wonder of the gospel again, but through a side door. The beauty and wonder of the gospel can get to our hearts without our even realizing it’s doing its work.
In explaining why he chose his specific form of fiction, the fairy story, for his children’s series, CS Lewis called this ability of fiction “stealing past watchful dragons.”
On that side (as Author) I wrote fairy tales because the Fairy Tale seemed the ideal Form for the stuff I had to say. Then of course the Man in me began to have his turn. I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could. That was the Man’s motive. But of course he could have done nothing if the Author had not been on the boil first.
(from Lewis’ essay “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to be Said”
Another way fiction can steal past these dragons is in the revelation of our sin. The Old Testament gave us a perfect example of this ability of a story: the confrontation between the prophet Nathan and King David. You remember the history: David wrongfully took Bathsheba from Uriah while he was at war and had Uriah murdered in battle. At this point in the story, David is very clearly numb to his own tangled web of deceit and sin. God sends Nathan to wake him up. And what does Nathan do? He tells David a story.
There were two men in a certain city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very large flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing except one small ewe lamb that he had bought. He raised her, and she grew up with him and with his children. From his meager food she would eat, from his cup she would drink, and in his arms she would sleep. She was like a daughter to him. Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man could not bring himself to take one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for his guest.
David was infuriated with the man and said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die! Because he has done this thing and shown no pity, he must pay four lambs for that lamb.” (2 Samuel 12)
Because David was caught up in the story Nathan told, he was moved with compassion towards the poor man in the story. This empathy is what he ought to have shown to Uriah (the poor man) in regard to his ewe lamb (Bathsheba). David was caught off guard through the side door of a story.
I’m going to open this up in the comments today. What is a piece of fiction (book or movie) that has caught you up in this way? What reminded you of the gospel or revealed sin to you?
For the Anglophiles
The Westminster Abbey Twitter feed is wrapping up a mega-thread of 100 highlights of the Abbey. This week they featured the quire, which are those fancy carved chairs where the boys’ choir sits. If you show up early enough to wait in line for Evensong, you might get to sit in them. (ASK ME HOW I KNOW) Here’s the whole, glorious thread with beautiful pictures.
Reads & Listens of the Week
Trevin Wax steps on my toes and tells us about 3 Simple Ways to Flatten Your Neighbor. “It’s easy to flatten our neighbors, past and present, into rigid categories, without care and consideration, nuance or grace, and thus betray a Christian anthropology. Here’s how we do it.”
Probably the most controversial thing I did last year was link to this article from The Gospel Coalition about the ethics of vaccination or refraining from vaccination. John Stott, speaking in 1994, has a word on how our fear of being branded legalists means that we shy away from teaching ethics.
This week I started listening to the podcast series Dead Eyes, which the author describes as like Serial, except about something really unimportant. The website description is “Actor/comedian Connor Ratliff embarks upon a quest to solve a very stupid mystery that has haunted him for two decades: why Tom Hanks fired him from a small role in the 2001 HBO mini-series, Band Of Brothers.” My interest is twofold: one, these days I love a real-life story that has very little to do with news content; two, I adore Tom Hanks (as everyone ought to). You can skip episode 7, and there’s some salty language all the way through.
Sharon McMahon did a nice episode on North Carolina Quakers’ role in the Underground Railroad.
Closer to Home
Since we’re diving into a bit about reading today, here’s one of my old favorites from when one of my kids started learning to read: To a Beginning Reader.
To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved. - George MacDonald
Flannery O’Connor for sure. She is so good at getting at those heart issues in surprising ways.
Also, A Picture of Dorian Gray, A Place For Us, Middlemarch, A Christmas Carol, and everything Karen Swallow Prior has ever recommended (but you knew I was going to say that!)