Life seems woefully fragmented for so many people, including Christians. We have brutally compartmentalized the various facets of ourselves, drawing bold unbroken lines of distinction around our hearts, our heads and our bodies respectively.
Christians sometimes over- intellectualize the faith, making God a mere object of study. Other times, we over- emotionalize, making the Holy Spirit captive to our fickle moods.
Both those excesses have their critics and correctives. It seems to me, however, that contemporary Christianity is in a different kind of pinch that relatively few have even noticed. Our capacity for imagination is atrophying. Our ability to hypothesize and fantasize is anemic. We associate the word “imaginary” with childhood (i.e. childishness) or lunacy.
Our ability to use words to create stories and drama is downright godlike. No other creature can transmit knowledge, elicit emotion and inspire action by storytelling.
Everyone should imbibe great literature but most especially those who wish to be pastors. Personally, I can’t think of anything more practical than reading good fiction and good poetry. If you serve a congregation, what is the best way to gain insight into the people you serve? By conducting scientific surveys, questionnaires, and objective analysis? Or by listening to their stories? When you sit at the potlucks and listen, when you chat with the old-timers over coffee, when you go to their sickbeds or visit them in their homes, you learn how to be their pastor by hearing them tell about their past, talk about their grandkids, complain about their last trip to the doctor’s office.
If you want to grow as a pastor (and as a human), you had better learn how to listen to people’s stories. And how to tell them. The great novels and poetry of Western civilization, whether written by Christians or not, are valuable because they are instructive.
And by “great,” I don’t necessarily mean old or flowery or even well-known. Snobbery is a waste of time. Great books are not necessarily those on the bestseller lists nor on the so-called canons of the past.
Finally, please don’t piously assume that fiction at the religious bookstore is automatically good for you while the pulpy paperbacks in the airport are bad. Don’t underestimate the value of man’s natural knowledge of God or of everyman’s ability to exposit wisdom. There are mountains of insight to be discovered in the talented works of those who confess Christ as well as those who do not. It’s time to mine those mountains.
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Here, Here! I remember Dr. Weinrich saying that if you want to be a pastor and learn how to speak to people in a way that engages their minds and touches their hearts, you ought to be reading fiction and poetry, and watching movies.
The reading because of the things you spoke of in your post, and the movies because you learn how to use allusion, foreshadowing, non-linear modes of storytelling to convey reach people with the God’s law and gospel.
Anthony Esolen in the same interview referenced in my post below speaks of what he thinks is the masculine genius. This genius is the ability to make grammars out of things that we come into contact with. That when we listen to stories we don’t simply get caught up in the story, though there is some of that, but we are also analyzing, dissecting, and organizing themes from all the stories we hear and read and see.
Anyway, this is a great post, Scott. Thank you for sharing.
Wonderful post! I’d never thought about this before, but it makes so much sense. I cringe every time I hear a pastor complaint about having to hear the same old stories again and again from his parishioners. We can learn so much if we would just stop and listen. And some day, I’ll be the old lady talking incessantly and I hope someone will be kind enough to listen to me.
What a great post! But I have to ask — do you have any personal recommendations for either books of poetry or fiction?
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