You can often discern what Isaac is thinking, even if he doesn’t tell you. When he wants to make trouble, his lips are pulled thin and the tip of his tongue shows through his teeth. When he is irritated, his eyebrows push together and he squints like a little cross-eyed thug. Plus there’s usually some …
Caleb is learning to play chess. I realized this weekend that he often thinks three moves ahead. I will not lose to a seven-year-old. I played in a tournament once, and lost to a fourteen-year-old. That was humiliating enough. The first time I realized there are people smarter than me — people who simply have …
It took the slimmest of Supreme Court margins to afford states the right to stop the practice of seizing the skull of a partially-born infant and either crushing or puncturing it. I used to think that people just didn’t know, but when even The New York Times accurately describes the procedure, it’s safe to say …
It was a scene we’ve witnessed before, from the safety of our living rooms and offices: a school building that has become a slaughterhouse, and scores of police officers arrayed outside, waiting for . . . something, for orders perhaps, or for the specially trained tactical units, or perhaps just for the shooting to stop, …
Well, I let a week of things that pay the bills get in the way of writing my fourth and final installment on this topic, and I think I’ve lost my steam. Or maybe there’s just nothing left to say, other than that good writing flows from good reading, both at the level of the …
We stood in church and sang the hymns, the boys with their shirts tucked in for once, me in a tie for once. Caleb had written on his notepad: “He is risen. He is risen indeed. Eastre Day. Amen.” We sang the hymns and the sound of it would make even the heaviest heart lighter, …
And so they led him up the hill, and they nailed him to a cross, and they watched him bleed and die. From Frederick Buechner’s Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith: “What was brought to completion by such a life and such a death only he can know now, wherever he is, …
After I discovered Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River, I breathlessly recommended it to my friends. I could barely disguise my disappointment when some said it was “too slow,” or “hard to get into.” I love them all the same, but I couldn’t help but view them as slightly handicapped, like someone who is colorblind, …
Christian Fiction, Part III: Bad Writing Is Evil Read More »
What is Christian fiction? Does Doris Betts’s story, “Serpents and Doves” count? In it a dying, guilt-ridden man has a feverish conversation with the Devil that brings him to realize the salvation that has eluded him. Then there’s Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, wherein a priest is executed for refusing to renounce his …
There’s a debate in Christian writing circles arising out of the perceived difficulty of getting publishers under the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA) umbrella to carry more “literary” work. The underlying conflict between literary and mass-market fiction has existed in one form or another long before the CBA took root, of course. The first time a …
On Christian Fiction, Part I: Bad Readers Make Bad Writers Read More »
Something that has always bothered me about the theological enterprise is an undercurrent of arrogance, the notion that we possess so clear a discernment that we can build mental boxes to contain the wild God of the ages. I once heard a sermon where the pastor quoted a brilliant theologian, who was commending Jesus for …
