This post is a perfect complement to your interview with Nadya Williams. I'm currently reading her new book, Christians Reading Classics, and she provides introductions to all kinds of classic Greek and Roman works while contrasting them with Christian beliefs. It's really interesting, and I'm grateful to you for making me aware of it.
Well stated! Having a home library containing a smorgasbord of authors and genres, I find that reading the full spectrum helps me understand other viewpoints, which helps me relate to many different people. I start every day with the Bible, the plumb line upon which everything I believe is compared. The books I tend not to finish are typically stories that have you desiring for sin to happen. My time reading is too precious to waste on glorified sin.
I get that. Every now and then I start a story, pause, and think: do I really want to spend my time with this? Sometimes the answer is no. I can’t think of any time I’ve regretted the choice to discard a book.
Actually, this is one reason I attend Doxacon, one of my favorite things to exist- a Christian scifi fantasy convention run by an Orthodox parish. To take secular speculative fiction (Scifi, fantasy, horror) and read it through the eyes of the Christian faith is really fascinating and so beautiful.
My favorite piece of literature is A Canticle for Leibowitz, which is definitely in the realm of Christian scifi (but actually good and highly acclaimed). But many of my favorites are deeply secular. But if what they write is True, then the Truth will shine through. And it doesn’t even have to be super high-brow either…
I recently reread “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir, an outer-space thriller that’s well written, tense and exciting but definitely not high art. Yet one could easily read it through the lens of God’s divine providence. Often, even the setbacks are a part of the final solution that saves Planet earth. Heck, the space ship (named Project Hail Mary) and the main character’s last name being Grace kind of beg for that reading, I think (despite the author being an agnostic!)
I could go on and on, from my favorite obscure Japanese tv shows to my favorite pulpy scifi and literature classics. Learning, a few years after my reversion, that I could read the things I enjoy throughout a Christian lens really brought my intellectual and spiritual life to light and it hasn’t stopped!
Anyways, the sinks for the encouragement. Going to try to read more widely!
Wonderful! I may be very excited for the movie adaptation next year.
If you like Andy Weir, Bishop Barron did a video on The Martian movie reviewing it through a Christian lens that is very much in the spirit of this article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38ugzsumYPY
I appreciate the central sentiment and am happy to turn it on its head as regards me. I was raised Cathlic and am 90% lapsed, but I have learned with time that some Catholic writers can still have things to offer me, despite my agnosticism. I think of Thomas Merton (who is a wonderful writer aside from the matter of faith etc), and Augustine. Also Dorothy Day. I have found beauty and truth in these writings even if I'm not necessarily on board all the way with the theology. My own writing "doesn't have anything to do with religion," is what I would tell someone, if they asked, but then again, I wonder if that's really true of anything that is making a genuine attempt at touching what's true. Even atheists are religious, in their way.
There is deep beauty and meaning in that tradition, accessible to anyone who looks. I applaud your ongoing pursuit! Good luck on the journey, wherever it takes you.
Great post! As a novelist and writing coach, I think about the issue of "Christian content" all the time. To the surprise of some of my Christian students, I tell them that I outlined the story arc (the three Phases also evident in Scripture and the "hero's journey: setting, contradiction, resolution) for my first novel by literally taking apart my paperback copy of The Silence of the Lambs and examining how many pages in how many chapters that Thomas Harris so masterfully crafted. I've done the same with other books.
I also give them this challenge: If you want to write a "Christian novel," how about you use only the subject matter in the Bible. Of course there's rape and incest and murder and other mayhem, which many do not want to address -- but God did!
This leads to a further discussion -- at what point does such subject matter become no longer instructive? I can answer that from my recent reading (and abandoning) of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. He's a master of suspense pacing in a novel and there was plenty of reason to moralize along with the characters. But when it became prurient -- in other words, when I began to participate/view in the sins, I had to get away. Anybody else feel this way?
I get that. Some books allow us to observe actions without exactly participating in them; others encourage participation, and that can be a bridge too far.
Next semester, I'm teaching a course entitled "Christian Humanist Vision of History." Really looking forward to it.
I bet that’ll be great!
Can you share the outline of that course (ie course topics/themes), wavetops primarily? This sounds very interesting
This post is a perfect complement to your interview with Nadya Williams. I'm currently reading her new book, Christians Reading Classics, and she provides introductions to all kinds of classic Greek and Roman works while contrasting them with Christian beliefs. It's really interesting, and I'm grateful to you for making me aware of it.
If I were teaching classic lit, I’d definitely include Nadya’s book. It’s a remarkable introduction. I learned a ton reading it.
Well stated! Having a home library containing a smorgasbord of authors and genres, I find that reading the full spectrum helps me understand other viewpoints, which helps me relate to many different people. I start every day with the Bible, the plumb line upon which everything I believe is compared. The books I tend not to finish are typically stories that have you desiring for sin to happen. My time reading is too precious to waste on glorified sin.
I get that. Every now and then I start a story, pause, and think: do I really want to spend my time with this? Sometimes the answer is no. I can’t think of any time I’ve regretted the choice to discard a book.
Excellent article!
Actually, this is one reason I attend Doxacon, one of my favorite things to exist- a Christian scifi fantasy convention run by an Orthodox parish. To take secular speculative fiction (Scifi, fantasy, horror) and read it through the eyes of the Christian faith is really fascinating and so beautiful.
My favorite piece of literature is A Canticle for Leibowitz, which is definitely in the realm of Christian scifi (but actually good and highly acclaimed). But many of my favorites are deeply secular. But if what they write is True, then the Truth will shine through. And it doesn’t even have to be super high-brow either…
I recently reread “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir, an outer-space thriller that’s well written, tense and exciting but definitely not high art. Yet one could easily read it through the lens of God’s divine providence. Often, even the setbacks are a part of the final solution that saves Planet earth. Heck, the space ship (named Project Hail Mary) and the main character’s last name being Grace kind of beg for that reading, I think (despite the author being an agnostic!)
I could go on and on, from my favorite obscure Japanese tv shows to my favorite pulpy scifi and literature classics. Learning, a few years after my reversion, that I could read the things I enjoy throughout a Christian lens really brought my intellectual and spiritual life to light and it hasn’t stopped!
Anyways, the sinks for the encouragement. Going to try to read more widely!
I loved Project Hail Mary—all of Weir’s stuff as a matter of fact. He’s great.
Wonderful! I may be very excited for the movie adaptation next year.
If you like Andy Weir, Bishop Barron did a video on The Martian movie reviewing it through a Christian lens that is very much in the spirit of this article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38ugzsumYPY
I appreciate the central sentiment and am happy to turn it on its head as regards me. I was raised Cathlic and am 90% lapsed, but I have learned with time that some Catholic writers can still have things to offer me, despite my agnosticism. I think of Thomas Merton (who is a wonderful writer aside from the matter of faith etc), and Augustine. Also Dorothy Day. I have found beauty and truth in these writings even if I'm not necessarily on board all the way with the theology. My own writing "doesn't have anything to do with religion," is what I would tell someone, if they asked, but then again, I wonder if that's really true of anything that is making a genuine attempt at touching what's true. Even atheists are religious, in their way.
There is deep beauty and meaning in that tradition, accessible to anyone who looks. I applaud your ongoing pursuit! Good luck on the journey, wherever it takes you.
Such a fine essay. Thank you.
My pleasure! Glad you enjoyed it.
Great post! As a novelist and writing coach, I think about the issue of "Christian content" all the time. To the surprise of some of my Christian students, I tell them that I outlined the story arc (the three Phases also evident in Scripture and the "hero's journey: setting, contradiction, resolution) for my first novel by literally taking apart my paperback copy of The Silence of the Lambs and examining how many pages in how many chapters that Thomas Harris so masterfully crafted. I've done the same with other books.
I also give them this challenge: If you want to write a "Christian novel," how about you use only the subject matter in the Bible. Of course there's rape and incest and murder and other mayhem, which many do not want to address -- but God did!
This leads to a further discussion -- at what point does such subject matter become no longer instructive? I can answer that from my recent reading (and abandoning) of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. He's a master of suspense pacing in a novel and there was plenty of reason to moralize along with the characters. But when it became prurient -- in other words, when I began to participate/view in the sins, I had to get away. Anybody else feel this way?
I get that. Some books allow us to observe actions without exactly participating in them; others encourage participation, and that can be a bridge too far.