.jpg)
We are now in Value Village, and here is where my heart begins to be convicted. I start to pray as I look through the racks of books, faded jeans, and cowboy boots. I start to realize the sin in my heart. My sin is that I am elevating the medium of a great novel and an incredible film to dictate a picture of true love. The result is that love stories are miss categorized. Ideas of love and truth have never seemed so polar, yet so bound. I attempt to mentally recall books that may be in the middle ground, the in-between novels: stories of great writing like Catcher In The Rye but redemptive at love at the same time. I pick up a used copy of The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (Hardcover. Decent copy. $4.99 is high price for a used edition). I already own a copy and off hand I don't know anyone who needs one. I put it back.
Here's the problem. My reading list is imbalanced. My reading list is so skewed that I'm unconsciously attempting to find stories of love and romance while reading authors who have no intention of offering a redemptive view of God, love, sex, and marriage. Choke may present the painful reality of the life of a sex addict. Women may unpack the grotesqueness of being single, old, and lonely living life with prostitutes in beat up hotels across America. Running With Scissors may offer a picture of young homosexual love squashed and abused. At the same time these books have no intention of offering a view of love and life as we are meant to see it through the lens of redemption.
Let me explain redemption. Redemption is Jesus. Jesus, who is God, came to earth, lived as a man, conducted a sinless life, died a painful death on the cross, and in the process atoned for the sins of the world. Our sin - all of our relational, lying, stealing, sexing, conniving, angry, gossiping self - was taken with him to die on the cross. We, so the gospel (the story of God: who he is and what he's done) tells us, are no longer bound or enslaved in our sin.
In addition, Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven to conquer sin and death forever. In this act of Christ we are made new. We are redeemed. We no longer have to act like we previously did, insecure and abused. We are called to be like Christ. The Bible tells us we are a new creation. In the complexity of this life we will never fully realize, experience full redemption in our actions. But we live as a mirror of what our redemption will look like in heaven after we die.
As I stand in the book section, I am convicted. It's not wrong to read modern fiction. It's not even wrong to enjoy reading great writing, or watch a great film. It's wrong to have our truth and idea categories mixed up. Modern fiction and film may tell us a good story, but they may never give us a picture of God as truth as we read it from scripture. I realize in my conversations of love and romance with Nancy that my categories are wrong.
The truth of the Bible is meant to help us negotiate the world of fiction and film, not vise versa. Thus rather than asking the question: Is what you read redemptive?, we should begin to ask ourselves are we reading redemptively?
The truth of the Bible is meant to help us negotiate the world of fiction and film, not vise versa. Thus rather than asking the question: Is what you read redemptive?, we should begin to ask ourselves are we reading redemptively?
Q: Do you tend to read more fiction, non-fiction and/or scripture? (comment below...each category + hrs. per week.)
(to be continued)
AB.
