I write violent stories. I write dark stories. I write them for my own children, and I write them for yours. And when the topic comes up with a radio host or a mom or a teacher in a hallway, the explanation is simple. Every kid in every classroom, every kid in a bunk bed frantically reading by flashlight, every latchkey kid and every helicoptered kid, every single mortal child is growing into a life story in a world full of dangers and beauties. Every one will have struggles and ultimately, every one will face death and loss. 

The goal isn’t to steer kids into stories of darkness because those are the stories that grip readers. The goal is to put the darkness in its place.

N. D. Wilson, quoted in Justin Taylor, "Why N. D. Wilson Wants to Scare Your Children"

Christians believe that this world is so much more than a mechanical soulless machine. And yet, we tend to tell our children stories that (we hope) will only speak to their intellects. We want to give them a list of facts to tick off, like we’re trying to communicate a party platform to new recruits, like they’re nothing but brains ready for programming. We feed their souls sawdust and are surprised when they drift away to other cooks (with different tales about reality).

Kids (and adults) don’t just need the truth in their heads — they need it in their bones. They need to know what courage looks like and tastes like and smells like before they ever have to show it themselves. They need to do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly — heroes and villains can show them why. They need to loathe the darkness and love the Light.

N. D. Wilson, "Stories Are Soul Food: Don't Let Your Children Hunger"

Gene Edward Veith on the cultivation of taste:

To fully recognize both excellence and mediocrity requires experience and knowledge. Mortimer Adler, writing about beauty, distinguishes between "the enjoyable" and the "admirable." The enjoyable is subjective--what one person enjoys and another might not, and there are many reasons why someone may find pleasure in a given experience. The admirable, on the other hand, refers to objective qualities, to what Adler describes as "an intrinsic excellence of perfection appropriate to that kind of thing."

Many people find slasher movies "enjoyable," but even their fans would probably not consider them "admirable," either morally or aesthetically. A movie, to be objectively "admirable," would feature among other "perfections" skillful acting, effective editing and cinematography, a well-written script, a thought-provoking theme. To recognize these "perfections" requires knowledge of the techniques and aesthetics of film-making. Once viewers attain that knowledge, they find themselves enjoying movies even more, although they are no longer satisfied by third-rate products. Similarly, people who do not enjoy classical music usually do not understand it. Once they are taught how to listen to classical music--understanding its techniques, its forms, its history, and its meaning--the enjoyment comes.

This process of learning how to enjoy (subjectively) what is admirable (objectively) is known as the cultivation of taste. . . . Obscenity is "tasteless." Preferring ugliness to beauty is "bad taste." Solomon observes that "a fool finds pleasure in evil conduct," whereas "a man of understanding delights in wisdom" (Proverbs 10:23). What we delight in has a spiritual dimension. For contemporary Christians, at sea in a mass culture, taking pleasure in excellence may be an important survival skill.

Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Literature, p. 46

Literature is the record we have of the conversation between those of us now alive on earth and everyone who’s come before and will come after, the cumulative repository of humanity’s knowledge, wonder, curiosity, passion, rage, grief and delight. It’s as useless as a spun-sugar snowflake and as practical as a Swiss Army knife (or, in Kafka’s stunning description of what a book should be, “an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us”). All I know is that when my daughter pushes for another chapter of Laura Ingalls Wilder at bedtime, I feel a part of something very ancient, mysterious and important, something whose existence justifies in and of itself this unlikely experiment of life on earth.

Dana Stevens, "Should Literature Be Considered Useful?"

The whole aim of an intellectual life ... is to behold the truth, and to love it for its beauty.

It’s hard to keep that foremost in mind, when we are met at every turn with a barrage of ugliness: expensive, deliberate, programmatic ugliness, such as that of the prose from the Alaska standards for reading and writing; and when the eyes of the soul are washed in the carbolic acid of relativism; and when truth is reduced to what is demonstrable by means of some measurement; and when reason is but a clever tool for procuring what will sate the appetite.

. . .

You do not read good books so that you can scramble up some tricks, so that you can write clever things about them, so that you can do well on a test and secure a prestigious job and then die. You learn about the language and about what writers do, so that you can read good books and learn to love them, because they are companions who will tell you what they have seen of the truth, and they tell you it in a way you will not soon forget.

Anthony Esolen, "Read Literature to Learn and Love the Truth"

It was the fall of 1936, just at the beginning of the new school year. . . . My veins were still bursting with the materialistic and political enthusiasms with which I had first come to Columbia and, indeed, in line with their general direction, I had signed up for courses that were more or less sociological and economic and historical. In the obscurity of the strange, half-conscious semi-conversion that had attended my retreat from Cambridge, I had tended to be suspicious of literature, poetry . . . on the grounds that they might lead to a sort of futile estheticism, a philosophy of "escape." ... 

So now I was climbing one of the crowded stairways in Hamilton Hall to the room where I thought this history course was to be given. I looked in to the room. The second row was filled with the unbrushed heads of those who every day at noon sat in the Jester editorial offices and threw paper airplanes around the room or drew pictures on the walls. ... 

It was when I had taken off my coat and put down my load of books that I found out that this was not the class I was supposed to be taking, but Van Doren's course on Shakespeare.

So I got up to go out. But when I got to the door I turned around again and went back and sat down where I had been, and stayed there. Later I went and changed everything with the registrar, so I remained in that class for the rest of the year.

It was the best course I ever had at college. And it did me the most good, in many different ways. It was the only place where I ever heard anything really sensible said about any of the things that were really fundamental--life, death, time, love, sorrow, fear, wisdom, suffering, eternity. ... The material of literature and especially drama is chiefly human acts--that is, free acts, moral acts, And, as a matter of fact, literature, drama, poetry, make certain statements bout these acts that can be made in no other way. That is precisely why you will miss all the deepest meaning of Shakespeare, Dante, and the rest if you reduce their vital and creative statements about life and men to the dry, matter-of-fact terms of history, or ethics, or some other science. They belong to a different order. . . . 

All that year we were, in fact, talking about the deepest springs of human desire and hope and fear; we were considering all the most important realities. . . . [Van Doren's] balanced and sensitive and clear way of seeing things, at once simlpe and yet capable of subtlety, being fundamentally scholastic, though not necessarily and explicitly Christian, presented these things in ways that made them live within us, and with a life that was healthy and permanent and productive. This class was one of the few things that could persuade me to get on the train and go to Columbia at all. It was, that year, my only health ...

Thomas Merton, The Seven Story Mountain, 179-80

A Defence of Poetry by Philip Sidney


Four and a half centuries ago in Elizabethan England, there were a lot of well-meaning Puritans who saw imaginative literature as a waste of time. These folks argued that Christians should read only the Bible, or if they do read something else, they should read only theology, science, history, or philosophy (i.e., ethical teaching). Imaginative fiction and poetry were not appropriate reading for the Christian.

One of these Puritans, Stephen Gosson, wrote a pamphlet that attacked imaginative literature for these reasons. Gosson called his pamphlet The School of Abuse, and he dedicated it to Sir Philip Sidney because Gosson saw Sidney as a fine Christian gentleman, and he figured that Sidney would agree with him that imaginative literature was not appropriate for Christians to read.

But to the author’s surprise, Sidney completely disagreed. Sidney recognized that such a view of literature, although it has good intentions, is wrong—and even unbiblical. Sidney knew that the Bible itself was filled with poetry and narrative art, and that it even includes fictional stories such as the parables of Christ.

So in response to Gosson, Sidney wrote A Defence of Poetry. (By using the term “poetry,” Sidney actually means all imaginative literature—poetry, fiction, and so forth.)

This is a very important work because it validates the many Biblical reasons for the place of literature and stories in a Christian’s life. In this work, Sidney shows that imaginative literature can actually be more effective than subjects like history and ethics at instilling right affections in the Christian life.

Here is a highly condensed version of Sidney’s argument for literature (with some of my comments interspersed):

First, Sidney points out that imaginative literature has been esteemed in all civilized cultures.

Specifically, Sidney discusses how the Greeks, the Romans, and the Hebrews prized poetry and imaginative literature. In these cultures, poets were held in great honor. In Rome, poets were known as “prophets.” In Greece, poets were known as “makers” or creators. These were titles of dignity and honor. The Hebrew poet-prophets wrote down poetry from the very mouth of God.

Sidney’s strongest argument in this section is that much of the Bible itself is given to us in literary form, not through mere abstract teaching. The Bible has lots of stories, lots of poetry, and it shows lots of imagination in its narrative design. Sidney includes two examples of imaginative/artistic literature in the Bible: (1) the Psalms—they teach through highly artistic poetry, not strict prose; and (2) the parables of Christ—they teach through imaginative, fictional narrative stories. So imaginative literature is not condemned in Scripture, but promoted. The Puritans are wrong that literary forms of writing are unbiblical. Yes, they can be misused, but the forms themselves are good.

Second, in response to the false argument that “literature is not true,” Sidney points out that literature does portray truth.

As Christian writer Gene Edward Veith points out, “Sidney [shows] that there is a connection between artistic creation and truth. Fiction is related to truth, as in the manner of the parables, ‘allegorically and figuratively.’ The truth of a novel is in its meaning, not its facts.”

As others have put it, history shows us what happened; literature shows us what happens.

Third, Sidney also points out that writing poetry/fiction is a way that human beings demonstrate God’s image in a unique way.

When we write fiction and show creativity, we image forth God Himself in a way that no other created thing can. God is the great Creator of nature. He created nature out of His own imagination. When human beings write stories, they show God-likeness in that they become creators of imaginary worlds. Again, we are unique among all creation by having the faculty of imagination—and we can use this gift consciously for His praise.

Fourth, Sidney points out that literature can be more powerful than any other discipline in giving human beings a desire for virtue and goodness.

Sidney points out that the purpose of literature is to teach through delight. After reading good literature, we often desire to be people who act virtuously from the heart—action which Sidney says is “the end of all earthly learning.” In other words, Sidney shows that literature helps us become better people because it shapes both our mind and our affections—the head and the heart.

As he continues, Sidney compares literature to history and philosophy (by which he means ethical and moral teaching). As he does, he shows that literature tends to be more effective than these other disciplines at drawing men to virtuous behavior. Sidney points out that . . .

1. Literature tends to be better than philosophy (moral instruction) at drawing people to virtue.

Philosophy teaches only by precept. Philosophy’s strength is that it has consistency and clarity. But its weakness is that it has only weak motivation. (Moral teaching/sermonizing tends to be simply unengaging to the hearers. It's not engaging to sit and listen to a long list of precepts, although it's important and right to do so sometimes.)

In contrast, literature moves our hearts toward virtue. When we read a good story, we are exhilarated—we delight—when good triumphs over evil. In good stories, our hearts are drawn to what is good and right. As Gene Veith points out, “Stories are often better teachers than abstract discourses or straightforward exhortations) as preachers know, who usually fill their sermons with anecdotes and examples to illustrate their points and to move their congregations.”

2. Literature tends to be better than history at drawing people to virtue.

History teaches us by real-life examples. Its strength is that it motivates us to do better, but its weakness is that history is unclear and inconsistent (in real life, sometimes the bad guys “win,” and people who do what is right seem to “lose”). History tells us only what is, not what ought to be. Good literature, however, tells us what ought to be.

To sum up, good literature has the strengths of both history and philosophy, but not the weaknesses. It is both motivating (like history) and instructive (like philosophy).

Sidney says this: “For [the writer] doth not only show the way [of virtue], but giveth it so sweet a prospect into the way, as will entice any man to enter it. . . . He beginneth not with obscure definitions [which bore the listener]; but he cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion . . . and with a tale forsooth he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner. And pretending no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue: even as the child is often brought to take most wholesome things by hiding them in such other as have a pleasant taste.”

In the last paragraph of this essay, Sidney playfully “curses” those who attack literature, and I’ll leave you with his words:

“But if—fie of such a but!—you be born so near the dull-making cataract of Nilus, that you cannot hear the planet-like music of poetry; if you have so earth-creeping a mind that it cannot lift itself up to look to the sky of poetry, or rather, by a certain rustical disdain, will become such a mome, as to be a Momus of poetry; then, though I will not wish unto you the ass’ ears of Midas, nor to be driven by a poet’s verses, as Bubonax was, to hang himself; nor to be rimed to death, as is said to be done in Ireland; yet thus much curse I must send you in the behalf of all poets:—that while you live in love, and never get favor for lacking skill of a sonnet; and when you die, your memory die from the earth for want of an epitaph.”


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From Donald T. Williams' essay "Christian Poetics, Past and Present":

How can Christians make use of the products of an idolatrous culture? In pagan learning, error and superstition are to be rejected. But pagan learning also included the liberal arts, which are servants of truth: "Now we may say that these elements are the pagans' gold and silver, which they did not create for themselves, but dug out of the mines of God's providence." Therefore, it is proper for Christians to "take all this away from them and turn it to its proper use in declaring the Gospel" (Howie 364). Even the infamous art of the rhetorician (we should remember that through the Renaissance, poetry was considered a species of rhetoric) is in itself morally neutral and capable of being used in the service of truth; therefore, "we should not blame the practice of eloquence but the perversity of those who put it to a bad use" (360). This being so, Christians have not only a right but also an obligation to learn and employ the art of rhetoric. Since it is "employed to support either truth or falsehood, who would venture to say that truth as represented by its defenders should take its stand unarmed?" The result of Christians abandoning the field would be that falsehood is expounded "briefly, clearly, and plausibly," but truth "in such a manner that it is boring ... difficult to understand, and, in a word, hard to believe" (369).

From a letter of Martin Luther:

I am persuaded that without knowledge of literature pure theology cannot at all endure, just as heretofore, when letters have declined and lain prostrate, theology, too, has wretchedly fallen and lain prostrate. . . . Certainly it is my desire that there shall be as many poets and rhetoricians as possible, because I see that by these studies as by no other means, people are wonderfully fitted for the grasping of sacred truth and for handling it skillfully and happily.

Shared this with my students this week.

Why do I have to study literature / composition? Why do I have to write a literary analysis paper? I don't see the point.

Here are some answers, with help from Arthur Holmes's The Idea of a Christian College:

Reason 1: You are not merely a worker, a professional, or even a scholar. You are a human being created in God’s image. The Christian study of the liberal arts explores what it means to be a human being created in God’s image.

“The liberal arts [literature, history, etc.] are those which are appropriate to persons as persons, rather than to the specific function of a worker or a professional or even a scholar. A person may be all of these things, but she is more basically a person. It was Cicero who defined the liberal arts as those which are appropriate to humanity. If one is to be anything more than a specialist or technician, if one is to feel life whole and to live it whole rather than piecemeal, if one is to think for himself rather than live secondhand, the liberal arts are needed to educate the person. There is no difficulty in transferring this clue concerning liberal education to a Christian conception of persons created in the image of God. We are to image God in all of our creaturely activities, our cultural existence and every phase of our humanity. To image God in the fullness of our humanity is our highest calling.”

Reason 2: Usefulness isn’t the point. Literature (and the other liberal arts) may be useful in some ways, but their “usefulness” is not the point. They are intended to help us think about things like beauty, goodness, truth, and what it means to be human—things that have value in themselves, regardless of their usefulness.

"In his classic nineteenth-century work, The Idea of a University, John Henry Newman distinguishes between liberal and useful arts. It is not a complete disjunction, for the liberal arts are also useful, and the useful arts are often based on liberal arts and sciences. But the point is that some arts are more liberal than others, and some are more useful for economic and other particular purposes than they are of value to us in themselves. The distinction is worth preserving. It is the distinction between intrinsic and instrumental value. Some things have little but instrumental value; for example, a shining new coin with the head of George Washington on one side and the American eagle on the other has instrumental worth: it is good for what you can buy with it but little else. If you tell me it is of intrinsic worth and you value it for itself, I call you a miser. Other things have far more intrinsic worth as well as some instrumental value. Understanding is valued for itself. Beauty and goodness are of value in themselves. . . . Liberal learning concerns itself with truth and beauty and goodness, which have intrinsic worth to people considered as persons rather than as workers or in whatever function alone.

“We may distinguish along these lines between literature as one of the liberal arts and journalism, in which the use of what is written predominates; between the natural sciences as a quest to understand nature, which is liberal learning, and the technology that does something with it; between political science on the one hand as the attempt to understand political institutions and processes, and propaganda techniques on the other; between the science of psychology and the useful art of counseling; between theology and the work of evangelism; between philosophy as a liberal art and apologetics as one use it might have. Usefulness is no crime. But the practical uses of things we learn are limited and changeable, while the effect of learning on the person is less limited because it lasts. Liberal learning therefore takes the long-range view and concentrates on what shapes a person’s understanding and values rather than on what he can use in one or two of the changing roles he might later play.”

Reason 3: Education is not really about usefulness, but about the kind of person you are becoming. What kind of person are you turning into? A person who thinks only about a job, only about “usefulness”? Or a person who understands what it means to have godly character and to love things of intrinsic worth, like beauty, goodness, and truth?

“The question to ask about education is not ‘What can I do with it?’ That is the wrong question because it concentrates on instrumental values and reduces everything to a useful art. The right question is rather ‘What can it do to me?’” To the Christian in the Christian college, then, the development of an inquiring mind becomes an expression of faith and hope and love addressed to God. It is part of our response to God’s self-revelation."

 Reason 4: The difficult work of carefully dissecting a text and writing an articulate analysis paper based on that text develops your intellect and your ability to reflect—and both a well-developed intellect and the ability to reflect have value in themselves, regardless of their usefulness.

"Intellectual development requires that we read and write. Reading is of course prerequisite to informed conversation, an art that is often sadly underdeveloped today. Writing is prerequisite to exactness of thought and expression. Together [reading and writing force students] to think and then to reshape their thoughts in more and more consistent and cogent and lucid ways. To read is to gain input, to fertilize imagination, to conceptualize, to follow an argument, to evaluate. To write is to become articulate, to express what I feel and explain why I feel as I do, to expound, to argue, to offer good reasons, to explore relationships, to have a sense of the whole, to see things in total context. [For a student] to [learn to read and write well] is to think for himself, to develop more fully the possession of his God-given powers. He becomes . . . a reflective, thinking being."

Reading Between the Lines by Gene Edward Veith Jr.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an outstanding book. I assign this for one of my classes (Adolescent Literature) as a broad introduction to forming guidelines for literary taste and literary standards, and my students have commented on how helpful and insightful the book has been for them. I'm wearing my own copy out from underlining, starring passages, and writing in the margins.

Veith shows the importance of the word over the image, gives us an insightful synopsis of literary history, and then gives excellent guidelines for cultivating taste, with page after page of insight. He also includes a great appendix with his recommendations for good fiction, poetry, etc. This is helpful for not just people interested in literature. Pastors/theologians, artists, aspiring writers, and anyone else who likes to read will greatly benefit from reading this book slowly and carefully.

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"The best writing--whether 'realistic' or 'fantasy'--tends to involve us in life more deeply. This may be another mark of excellence in writing as opposed to the racks and racks of lurid romances, formula science fiction, predictable thrillers, and breathless fantasies of wealth, sex, and power that clutter up the drugstores and bestseller lists. Good literature may give us escape, but it also brings us back, rearmed with insight for our everyday experiences and with a new appreciation for the texture of actual life. Bad literature makes us despise our lives, wishing we could be like the fictional people we read about and causing us to regard ordinary living as boring. Good literature makes us understand and appreciate our lives, opening our eyes to the drama and significance of the story we are living."

Gene Edward Veith, Reading Between the Lines

I resist treating a poem or novel like a puzzle that has to be figured out. Once the meaning is deciphered, under this view, we can put aside the book, perhaps wondering why its author did not just come out and tell us the idea in the first place. I contend that the imaginative activity that takes place as the eyes scan the page provides both the pleasure and the intellectual value of reading. Interpretation is important, but appreciation and enjoyment must come first. --Gene Veith, Reading Between the Lines

God's creation, including the creatures in it, have meaning and importance because God made them. The world is therefore worthy of the writer's portrayal and understanding and love. The same doctrine assures Christian readers that their interest in the portrayal of human experience in literature is not frivolous but essential.

Leland Ryken, "Thinking Christianly about Literature"

The Biblical endorsement of [artistic] creativity is matched by its respect for beauty and enjoyment. When God formed paradise, the perfect human environment, he "made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food" (Genesis 2:9, ESV). God's design for human life, in other words, is aesthetic as well as utilitarian.

How can a person read literature to the glory of God? By enjoying the beauty that human creativity has produced and recognizing God as the ultimate source of this beauty and creativity. Christians do not need to defend literature, as most people have done, solely on the didactic grounds that it teaches us. Literature has a reason for being quite apart from that. In a Christian worldview, literature exists for more than our enjoyment, but not for less.

Leland Ryken, "Thinking Christianly about Literature"

The example of the Bible confirms the importance of [literature]. If the message of the Bible were all that mattered, there would have been no good reason for biblical poets to put their utterances into intricately patterned verse form, or for biblical storytellers to compose masterfully compact and carefully designed stories. In God's economy, the writers of the Bible did not have something better to do with their time and ability than to be artistic to the glory of God. The writer of Ecclesiastes speaks for other biblical authors as well as for himself when he tells us that he arranged his material "with great care," and that he "sought to find pleasing words" (Ecclesiastes 12:9-10, RSV), or "words of delight" (12:10, ESV).

Leland Ryken, "Thinking Christianly about Literature"

Christians have traditionally found it difficult to grant integrity to this world of the imagination and have found ways to suppress or discredit the imaginary element in literature. One tendency has been to denigrate fiction and fantasy as being untruthful, frivolous, a waste of time, escapist, and something to be left behind with childhood. Others have tried to excise the imaginary aspect of literature by acting as though literature is a direct replica of everyday life, ignoring all that is unlifelike about it. . . .

[But] there is no valid reason for the perennial Christian preference of biography, history, and the newspaper to fiction and poetry. The former tell us what happened, while literature tells us what happens. 

The example of the Bible, which is central to any attempt to formulate a Christian approach to literature, sanctions the imagination as a valid form of expressing truth. The Bible is in large part a work of imagination. Its most customary way of expressing truth is not the sermon or theological outline but the story, the poem, and the vision--all of them literary forms and products of the imagination. . . Literary conventions are present in the Bible from start to finish, even in the most historically factual parts.

LelandRyken, "Thinking Christianly about Literature"