Gedaliah, or Ishmael, or Johanan? (4)

In Jeremiah Chapter 41, after Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, murders Gedaliah; we read that on the following day:

“Now it happened on the next day after the killing of Gedaliah, when no one knew about it, that eighty men came from Shechem, from Shiloh, and from Samaria with their beards shaved off and their clothes torn and their bodies gashed, having grain offerings and incense in their hands to bring to the house of the Lord. Then Ishmael the son of Nethaniah went out from Mizpah to meet them, weeping as he went; and as he met them, he said to them, “Come to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam!” Yet it turned out that as soon as they came inside the city, Ishmael the son of Nethaniah and the men that were with him slaughtered them and cast them into the cistern. But ten men who were found among them said to Ishmael, “Do not put us to death; for we have stores of wheat, barley, oil and honey hidden in the field.” So he refrained and did not put them to death along with their companions.” (NASB)

How touching that Ishmael was weeping as he went to meet the pilgrims who had come to worship God. How can a man’s heart turn to such evil? How can such poison take root and spread throughout his person? First Ishmael aligns himself with Baalis the king of Ammon, who conspires with Ishmael to assassinate Gedaliah. Then Ishmael, while dining as Gedaliah’s guest, murders Gedaliah. Then Ishmael offers hospitality to the pilgrims and murders them. How can man be an angel one minute and a demon the next? How can we produce Handel’s Messiah and also produce the Holocaust?

A lion is a lion, an elephant an elephant, a hawk is a hawk, and a rabbit is a rabbit. When an animal behaves out of character we say it is mad, perhaps with rabies or with another affliction. But what can we say about man? We are not mad, we are man - and man is wicked outside of God, man is murderous, man is treacherous. We permit wickedness as long as it conforms to our cultural standards, but when it violates our standards then we have sanctions, then we have law enforcement; but of course even then often might makes right and money pretty much purchases everyone and everything.

Ishmael was raised in Jerusalem and Judah. He must have known of, or even experienced, life under godly King Josiah. He certainly knew Jeremiah and perhaps other prophets and faithful priests. He must have known somewhat of the Law of God given to Moses. And yet Ishmael flees to Israel’s ancient enemy Ammon, seeks the protection of its king whose name reflects the ancient cult god Baal, and then conspires to murder Gedaliah and other innocents. It would have been evil enough had Ishmael been an average Jew, but he was not, he was of the royal family, he was a chief officer of the king, thus amplifying his evil, his treachery, his deceit.

As Paul illustrates in Romans Chapter One, when the True and Living God is rejected, when the light He gives us is suppressed, a downward spiral begins that accelerates exponentially until the depths of darkness are unfathomable and man is deceived into thinking that darkness is light and light is darkness, calling good evil and evil good. How else can such madness be explained?

And yet, rather than repent man curses God, rather than fall prostrate man stands against God, rather than allow the Spirit of God to melt hearts, man hardens his heart until it is stone and no longer flesh, it is beyond feeling. Just look around today, what do we see?

Ishmael throws the bodies of his victims into a cistern; better not to drink that water - for there is death in the cistern. Wickedness pollutes the waters around it, it infuses death into all it touches; it kills and then it spreads the results of its murder. Jesus called the religious leaders of His day “whitewashed sepulchres” - nice and white and clean on the outside, but inside “full of dead men’s bones”. In our own society we are seduced by appearances; if it sparkles, if the rich and famous endorse it, if the materially successful use it, if the glamorous and beautiful wear it, if the powerful say it is good - then we follow it, we consume it, and we feed it to our children - we do not know that the cistern has death in it. We are like the people of Flint Michigan who believed their state and local leaders that the municipal water was safe to drink when all the time it was deadly.

And what of the ten pilgrims who made a deal with the devil Ishmael? Who refused to be identified with their brethren and die with them? Did these men really come to worship Yahweh at Mizpeh? Or did they just “think” they were coming to worship God? He who seeks to save his life will lose it, but the man or woman who loses his or her life for Christ will save it. What did the other pilgrims think as they saw these treacherous ten disown them? Better to die with the faithful than live with Satan...don’t you think? So much for character.

How did this cistern get in Mizpeh in the first place? Is was made by King Asa (Jeremiah 41:9) when he fortified Mizpeh, and Asa was able to fortify Mizpeh because he made an alliance with, and relied on, the king of Aram rather than the True and Living God (2 Chronicles 16:1 - 14). When the prophet Hanani rebuked Asa because he relied on ungodly Aram rather than God, Asa compounded his sin by casting the prophet into prison. Asa began his reign by relying on God, he ended it by going his own way. A cistern built as the result of an alliance with the world rather than God is ultimately polluted by a member of the royal family (who was therefore related to Asa) - what had its origin in rebellion has its end in rebellion.

Ah well, which shall it be, with whom will we identify, how shall we live? Gedaliah, or Ishmael, or Johanan?

The Fellowship - The Literary Lives of the Inklings, Review

I recently finished the book, The Fellowship – The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski; 2015, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York. At 644 pages (512 pages are the main text, the balance contain footnotes, bibliography, index, and acknowledgements), this is the most comprehensive treatment of the Inklings of which I am aware and it is also the best – both in terms of breath and depth. This is a book to be read more than once.

The book begins and ends with the question, “What then, were the Inklings?” If you’d like to know, or if you think you know, or if you’re sure you know the answer – this book is for you. If you don’t care about the answer but you have an interest in Lewis, Tolkien, Barfield or Williams this book is for you. If you think life has a purpose, if you think life has no purpose, if you don’t know whether life has any purpose, this book is for you. If you enjoy well-written biography and want to know the lives of two of the most influential scholars and writers of the 20^th Century, this book is for you. I could continue this “this book is for you” list but you get the message – this is a book rich in narrative detail and yet broad enough to appeal to many people. Philip and Carol Zaleski (husband and wife) have written a masterpiece; Philip is a writer and Carol is a professor of world religions at Smith College.

The subtitle is, The Literary Lives of the Inklings; the book explores the lives of Tolkien, Lewis, Barfield, and Williams using their writing as a compass to guide the narrative – what they wrote was who they were and their writing, and the cross-pollination it produced, was the coal that fed the fires of their meetings and friendships. Sometimes the coal fell out of the stove and produced disagreements with sad results. Fire is dangerous.

This is an adult book, it is not hagiography. While I need not write this for most people, there are those who idealize and idolize others and find it difficult to acknowledge their imperfections…and yes…their sins. How is it that we can so easily forget Romans 3:23? The authors treat difficult personal issues and struggles with respect and decorum and do not engage in tangential psychoanalytics; they keep their eyes on the compass and the compass keeps them on course.

As a work of the rare genre of collective biography the narrative comes together nicely with the tributaries entering the River Inklings in due season. Two of the tributaries (Lewis and Tolkien) are longer than the other two (Barfield and Williams). Other Inklings are picked up along the way, such as Dyson, Havard, Cecil, and Christopher Tolkien. Another Inkling’s life (Warnie Lewis) is intertwined with his brother’s throughout the book. Non-Inklings such as Sister Penelope, Ruth Pitter, Dorothy L. Sayers, and of course Joy Davidman also contribute to the river’s flow.

There is an unhappy irony in the title, The Fellowship; for unlike Tolkien’s, The Lord of the Rings, the Inklings unravel and that which was once intimate becomes distant and in some cases bitter at worst, and bitter sweet at best. In the Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of Tolkien’s trilogy, the fellowship is broken, but with the exception of Boromir it comes together at the end in the third volume, The Return of the King. In that light perhaps we can anticipate that when our King returns the Inklings will find themselves in the fullness of reconciled fellowship. This is also a book about friendship; I will explore this subject in the book in a future post.

If you know Lewis’s life well you may find it tedious going over much of the same ground early in the book, the journey down the river is worth it; when we leave home on a long trip we have to travel through familiar places to reach the unfamiliar or to revisit places we have not seen in some time.

The authors provide rich context and explanation of the literary, philosophical, religious, and spiritual currents that informed the lives of these men and influenced their relationships – this context in turn helps us understand their lives and writings.

In our day it is difficult to conceive of a group of men (or women) meeting together every Tuesday morning and Thursday night to enjoy each other’s company, to share their creative work, to critique that work, to talk about ideas, to share stories, to encourage one another, and to vigorously disagree with each other – week after week, year after year. Why weren’t they busy, busy, busy like we are? What did they hope to accomplish, if anything? Surely drinking pints of beer at a pub and imbibing whisky in Lewis’s university rooms could lead to no good thing – not to mention the walks they took together, sometimes for hours, other times for days.

No good thing? No The Lord of the Rings, no Mere Christianity, no Space Trilogy, no Narnia…? to name just a few.   Philip and Carol Zaleski have invited us on a journey well worth taking – There and Back Again.

Robert L. Withers, July 26, 2015

Something of a Treatise – Joy Davidman (Part 5)

On February 7, 1948, Davidman writes To Aaron Kramer, “Your letter relieved me inexpressibly; I’d been jittering ever since I sent mine as to how you’d take it. To be able to take criticism such as that in the spirit you’ve shown is itself a sign of tremendous ability; a person of little talent couldn’t have done it. By all means let’s wrestle on the points you don’t agree with; on many things I was probably over-severe…” [Page 72, Out of My Bone – The Letters of Joy Davidman, Don W. King editor, Eerdmans, 2009.]

I include this excerpt to glimpse how Kramer received Davidman’s criticism and to get a picture of how she willingly returned the conversational ball – the game continued. Giving people what they want is often risky – do they really want our opinion or are they asking so we’ll tell them how beautiful their stick-figure drawings are? Davidman took the time to explain the basis of her critique, writing “something of a treatise” and then using the small treatise as a framework for her direct analysis of Kramer’s work. Without her little treatise would she and Kramer have had a context for dialogue?

How many times have we been jittering after either asking for critique or providing critique? I think a case of jittering is a good thing to have when giving critique, after all, someone has invited us into their life, into their creativity, into the recesses of their soul – that’s a pretty special invitation and to not take it reverently is to profane the relationship.

To “wrestle on the points” does not mean to wrestle with each other; we miss that at times – when self-worth or self-image or self-esteem or whatever we choose to call it is at stake then it is difficult to wrestle on the points because the transaction is personal – it’s isn’t about the subject matter it is about people. Much of what I observe in the public arena today is about people as opposed to being about the points – no matter what the arena of ideas, be it political, theological, sociological, etc. People ask me what I think about a certain popular media preacher and I must tell them that I don’t know the person or watch or listen to the person – however, what I have read that the person has written gives me concern over whether his message is centered on the Christ of the Cross – they are often taken aback and wonder what I have against the man. I have nothing against the man per se, I don’t know the man…but I must wrestle with the points of the Gospel – is the Cross central to his message?

By the same measure people are often against social and economic equity and justice not because they have really wrestled with the points but rather because advocates of just causes are demonized and caricatured – people are attacked at the expense of wrestling with the issues. No one is perfect, every Achilles has his or her heel; if we make the rhetoric about the vulnerable personal heel we move the discussion away from substantive wrestling with the issues – we sell so many more newspapers that way, we garner higher viewer ratings, and we manipulate the crowds.

Davidman and Kramer portray a nice model of mentor – mentoree; risk, give and take, a willingness to examine oneself on both ends of the relationship, a commitment to the relationship.

Jittering now and then is a sign of health.

Something of a Treatise – Joy Davidman (Part 4)

Continuing with Davidman’s letter to Aaron Kramer:

“Yours, with the hope you will not be too angry, Joy.”

I include Davidman’s conclusion to illustrate the risk she felt she was taking, “with the hope you will not be too angry.” She was asked to critique Kramer’s work and she honestly did it, working through the material he sent item by item, giving Kramer both something of a treatise and a critique. As she concludes the letter she hopes that her correspondent will not be too angry.

Telling others the truth, even when they ask, often involves risk; the risk of misunderstanding, the risk of relationship, the risk of rejection. As straightforward as Davidman is, she is concerned about the risk.

After her signature Davidman then includes a recommended reading list of around 80 authors and works, at the end of the list she writes, “The list is chosen for a specific purpose; to establish a background of culture and a foreground of good style….When you have read it all, you will not of course be really educated; but you will be able to meet an Oxford don or a Harvard Professor of English and follow, more or less, what he is talking about; and you will certainly be better able to criticize your own work…you will know how much you still have to learn and where to find it. Well, I’d better stop now before I collapse.”

She titles her list, “Education of a Poet”, and she indicates that an “*” by a title “means indispensable”. On the list is the King James Bible followed by eight asterisks with the note, “You can skip the begats; but no one can really write English well unless he has been through the Bible a couple of times.”

How long did it take Davidman to compose this letter (which takes 17 pages in Out of My Bone, The Letters of Joy Davidman, Don W. King editor, Eerdmans 2009)? How much thought and energy did she invest in responding to Kramer’s request for a critique? How seriously did she take his request? Had she already compiled a list of some 80 books and authors or did she do this just for Kramer?

This is a picture of mentoring; truthful, thoughtful, and vulnerable; Davidman felt vulnerable when all was said and done and perhaps Kramer felt vulnerable when making the request for critique – mentoring entails vulnerability for both the mentor and mentoree. How would Kramer take the critique? We’ll see in the next and final post on Davidson’s letter.

Something of a Treatise – Joy Davidman (Part 3)

Continuing with Davidman’s letter to Aaron Kramer:

“I am going presently to discuss your work in detail; but first I want to make some general appraisals. You seem to have little power of self-criticism. There are some fine things in the pamphlet, but they are side by side with work which no one should be wiling to have printed.”

[Page 59, Out of My Bone – The Letters of Joy Davidman, edited by Don W. King, Eerdmans, 2009.]

Davidman’s letter to Kramer occupies 17 pages in Out of My Bone, Davidman indeed discusses Kramer’s work in detail; she gives him what he asks for – but how will he receive it (a question that will be answered in a future post)?

The best educational experiences I’ve had were my preaching courses at Gordon-Conwell; they taught me a new level of self-critique and they taught me to listen to the critique of others. I dared not preach a message without engaging in ruthless self-critique beforehand and I had better learn to humbly and respectfully listen to the critique of my peers and professors after I delivered a message. Having said that, self-critique remains ruthless work for me, trying work – work akin to weeding a garden. I’ve never said, “This is going to be a great day, I’m going to weed the garden!” On the other hand, if I keep my eye on the prize, on the end result, I am motivated to weed the garden and to weed my speaking and writing. The closest experience to the preaching courses I’ve had is that of working with editors; it is an “Ouch!” and also an “I’m glad (I think) you pointed that out.”

I once asked the book editor of a popular and very good writer how he handled the editorial process, she replied that it didn’t make any difference how many bestsellers he had, he always doubted the artistic worth of what he had written and hearing critique remained painful. I equate some things in my life to eating ice cream, which I love; I don’t think I’ll ever feel like self-criticism or receiving the critique of others is like eating ice cream.

When I interview prospective employees in business I ask questions designed to measure their self-critique. Questions such as, “When you look back over your career, if you could go back and do one or two things differently what are they and why?” There are some people who can think of nothing in either career or life that they would do differently, at least that’s what they tell me. Within the church, when helping others in spiritual formation and when considering candidates for leadership positions I also look for the practice of self-critique.

Davidman was straightforward, and if there was nuance in her critique of others I haven’t found it in this volume of her letters. She gave encouragement and vision to others, she identified the good, the better, and the best…and she also pointed out those things which no one should be wiling to have printed. That may seem harsh to those who live in the world of the touchy – feely, but to those seeking to grow and improve their craft it is an education that money can’t buy.

Alas, since we tend to tie everything to self worth these days we often feel threatened when our work product is critiqued; we translate the language of clinical criticism into the language of feelings and emotions and personal acceptance – is it any wonder the quality of work and the ideal of workmanship have plummeted in our culture?

When we ask for others’ opinions and insights do we really want what we’re asking for? When we give people requested critique are we sincere or do we take the easy way out? Suppose I received a letter from Joy Davidman that had the above paragraph in it – how would I respond? Would I keep reading what she has to say?

What would you do?

Something of a Treatise – Joy Davidman (Part 2)

Continuing with Davidman’s letter to Aaron Kramer:

“…the snow-covered hill outside my window is not beautiful in itself, it is only beautiful to my mind and if I were not a human being with an aesthetic faculty implicit in my nature, if I were a slug for instance, it would not be beautiful to me at all…[emphasis added]

“But ethics and aesthetics do depend to a certain extent upon the intrinsic nature of consciousness. It is not possible to arrive at a utilitarian or economic-determinist explanation of the sense of beauty…[emphasis Davidman’s]…

Davidman – Gresham (she was Mrs. William Gresham at this time) came into a relationship with Jesus Christ in 1947 – 1948. This letter to Kramer was written January 26, 1948. She began reading C.S. Lewis in 1947. Those who know Lewis will recognize in Davidman a kindred spirit – a sense of the aesthetic, a sense of beauty, a recognition of the aesthetic in human nature. I haven’t read anything that suggests that Davidman read in Lewis anything she didn’t already know, but rather that in Lewis Davidman found an affirmation of what she was working through in her heart and mind; perhaps in one sense Lewis was the sun and rain that fed the seeds of awareness in Davidman, perhaps he was an element of the light leading her out of a dark place.

I think it’s fair to say that Joy Davidman did her best to be a good Marxist and that there were two primary reasons she left Marxism; the philosophical, moral and practical inconsistencies; and simultaneously her continued pursuit of beauty and joy (in the transcendent sense of those two words).

Consider the following excerpts from the letter to Kramer:

“…we have almost invariably, for lack of guidance from Marx, made the economic-determinist error, thus: from Ethics is what serves the working class to Ethics is what comes in handy at the moment. Also: from Aesthetics is the study of man’s innate sense of beauty to Aesthetics is the study of man’s recognition of his true self-interest.

“I am not exaggerating; this has happened to my knowledge to a very grievous extent. Not once, but dozens of times, Marxist would-be-writers have told me in one way or another that nothing is beautiful except as it is useful. Applied to writing, this comes out as: I need only to follow the party line and I will have created a masterpiece. It would be nice if it were true; unfortunately it ain’t.” 

The battle with the utilitarian is something that many have engaged in from ancient days; the tyranny of the practical, of the expedient – the assault of the utilitarian on propositional truth and transcendent joy and beauty (the image of God in man responding to its Creator…marred as the image is). Our minds are made to respond to the intellectual truth of God, our hearts are made to respond to the beauty of God – the “I” responds to the “Thou” and we become the Bride of Christ, we come home to our Bridegroom.

Davidman saw that theoretical Marxist Ethics was altogether different from practical Marxist Ethics, the latter was the trump card, it was what comes in handy at the moment. But this is always the struggle, including the struggle within the professing Church in 2014. The practical trumps obedience to Jesus and His Word, the utilitarian drives our decision-making, church consultants and technology have replaced God’s Word and the Holy Spirit; witnessing is treated as an option; self-denial considered an archaic idea and command. The numbers drive everything; they drive how we spend money, they drive who we tailor our outreach to, they determine which churches ministers will serve – numbers are our default decision-making benchmark – and there is little or no angst if our decisions do not coincide with the Word of God, the teaching of Jesus, the leading of the Holy Spirit, or credible counter-cultural witness to the world.

So our decision-making in the professing Church is often no different than atheistic Marxist decision-making – if it works it’s good and if it doesn’t work it’s bad. How many books and videos are you going to sell if you don’t follow that philosophy?

Davidman wrote, “Applied to writing, this comes out as: I need only to follow the party line and I will have created a masterpiece. It would be nice if it were true; unfortunately it ain’t.”  Davidman could not sell her soul, try as she might, hope in Marxism as she might, she couldn’t do it. Jesus says that whoever seeks to save his soul will lose it; Davidman could have saved her Marxist soul by denying the contradictions with which she was faced, but she didn’t deny them and as a result found her soul. Pascal, Chesterton, Lewis…what they had been told by the world, by the established order, contained inherent contradictions; what they had been told violated the image of God within them (marred as it might be), it violated the logic of their observations, it just didn’t make consistent sense. Davidman tried to write the party line, she tried to be a good soldier, she gave it a good try – but in the end she left the realm of the walking dead and followed the Light of Christ and came to find, in the words of the Hebrew psalmist, that “In Thy light we see light”.

We may not be Marxists, but we are not immune from the virus of utilitarianism. That is the magnetic north of our society and it has become the magnetic north of much of the Western church. We can learn from Davidman.

Out of My Bone – Book Review (Part 4 – with Associated Thoughts)

Continuing with one last segment from Davidman’s letter to H.H. Lewis: “My last criticism concerns content. Poetry must appeal to the imagination and the emotions; correct political statement is not enough…And to appeal to imagination and emotion, the poet must use both himself; he must work through the five senses, not through the power of argument…if you do not take the trouble to imagine your subject completely, how can you expect the reader to do it for you?

“Just stop reining in your imagination; let it go and take a look at the real lives and sufferings of real people on this earth. Then come back and tell simply what you have seen.”

While argument has its place in prose and public speaking, I’ve excerpted the above comments on poetry because of Davidman’s emphasis on the imagination. In an age of data and information our imaginations are atrophying, we also confuse imagination with imaginary – they are not synonymous.

Is what the Apostle John saw in Revelation Chapters 4 and 5, the Throne Room, imaginary? If so, we should forget about reading them. Can we see what he saw with our imaginations? Yes we can. Was Jesus walking with two disciples on the road to Emmaus imaginary? No it was not. Can we use our imagination to walk with them, to hear them, to feel the road beneath our feet, to experience the ache of weariness, the perplexity of hearing (on the part of the disciples) that the tomb of Jesus is empty? Can we sense the disciples’ intrigue with Jesus, their wonder when He vanished from sight?

I have often heard others say that they found the subject of history boring; then there are the few who tell me about a teacher who made history come alive. The former usually had teachers who told others about history, the latter had teachers who showed their students history, who gave them a guided tour of people and experiences, who transported their classes to walk and talk with those who lived and loved and died decades or centuries or millennia ago. But you can only escort others to where you have been yourself, otherwise all you can do is to give facts and figures and read words – data and more data and more data – what good is it to read about the road to Emmaus  over and over again if we haven’t walked it?

This is one reason why I love using the historical present in speaking and writing, it helps in transporting us back to the time and place of focus. It isn’t, “Jesus said, Let not your heart be troubled,” it is rather, “Jesus says, Let not your heart be troubled.” It isn’t, “And Peter and John ran to the tomb,” it is, “Peter and John run to the tomb.” Go back with me to the Upper Room, go back with me to Easter morning; hear the words that Jesus speaks as the apostles hear them, run with Peter and John to the tomb, don’t be a bystander, don’t sit in the bleachers, get out on the field and play the game.

But our audience can only get out on the field if we take them there, and we can only take them there if we have been there first, and we can only go there first if we use our God-given imaginations. The Bible is a book filled with images, images that we try to explain away and reduce to the mundane – how sad…all those images without people who will use their imaginations to experience them and thereby understand them with their hearts. I’ll tell you what, if you’ve ever been to Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon you won’t forget it; nor will you forget if you find yourself in the Upper Room.

Out of My Bone – Book Review (Part 3 – with Associated Thoughts)

Continuing with Davidman’s letter to H.H. Lewis: “These defects [see the previous post] are thrown in sharp relief in your work by your habit of mixing styles. You will use the funniest, the least dignified of slang phrases in the same line with some of this pompous old stuff; and consequently the slang looks cruder and the fancy language sissier than ever. Once you pick a style, stick to it. It’s like the tone of your voice; it adds a great deal of meaning to the words themselves, and if you changed tones five times in speaking a sentence you’d confuse everybody.”

While Davidman is writing specifically about poetry, her observation applies to all genres of communication; though I suppose in post-modernity many people might not notice – so accustomed are we to discontinuity and disjunction and disharmony. It seems that communicators and artists and musicians must be asking today, “How much noise can we make?” when engaging in what passes today for creativity. When I was a child we had “dot-to-dot” books (do they still publish them?). You drew a line from 1 to 2 to 3 and so forth and when you were done you had an image of an elephant or a dog or a house or car. In post-modernity a dot-to-dot book need not result in a discernable image. In today’s milieu a speaker or writer can change tones five times in speaking a sentence and few people will notice, so accustomed are we to our disjointed world.

Davidman continues, “Abusive epithets have no place in poetry; they belong on the back fence. Instead of calling Hitler a so-and-so, the poet must show Hitler doing something which at once makes it clear to everybody that he is a so-and-so; then you must have proved your case without even needing to state it.”

This is a tough rule to adhere to because it requires discipline and sweat and merciless editing. It is so much easier just to get to the point and call a spade a spade without describing the spade; it is easier but it is not memorable – not memorable for the audience and not memorable for the communicator.

When the communicator forces himself to show and not tell he is likely to gain a deeper understanding of what he is talking about, likely to discover nuances he didn’t see, likely to walk down paths previously hidden. Once the communicator takes the journey himself then he can describe the journey to others, once the communicator has seen something then he can show it to others.

Familiar territory is dangerous territory; we think we know the familiar and we think we can walk right by it and tell others about it without slowing down, stopping, and pondering what we think we know. This is one reason why working with children is both challenging and enlightening at the same time; it is challenging in that we need to communicate descriptively, we can’t take shortcuts by just telling them things (or at least we shouldn’t take shortcuts); it is rewarding in that as we force ourselves to describe subjects and objects we see new images which lead to our own greater understanding. Adults let us get away with laziness, children don’t. If children don’t see what we’re saying they’ll let us know one way or the other – by words, by body language, or by looking for something else to do.

A couple of years ago I read a popular biography of Dietrich Bonheoffer, at times when the author was dealing with Hitler and Hitler’s ideas he resorted to what Davidman was talking about in her letter to H.H. Lewis; I recall a passage about Mein Kampf; Hitler’s book was dismissed out-of-hand without any description of what Hitler wrote in the book – this was not helpful and it was lazy…it was also poor writing. There was so much of this type of thing in the Bonheoffer biography that I felt I was watching a DVD with gouges in it, stopping here and skipping there – shame on the editor.

Back to the danger of the familiar; some years ago when preaching through the Gospel of Mark I came to Mark 12:28 – 31 in which Jesus says that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. I’d known that passage since I was fifteen years old, it was one of the first passages I learned by heart after meeting Jesus, but preparing to preach that passage by showing what the passage meant required more sweat and pumping iron than just about any passage I’ve ever taught; one of the most familiar passages to me required the highest degree of work, of dogged determination, of perseverance. I also knew that while my audience may not know the passage by heart that it was a passage whose concepts they had heard and therefore were likely inoculated against – I needed to take them on a journey to explore and see the passage. The result was a message that I could see and illustrate and could show to others.* If you were to put me on a plane land me in an unfamiliar land without Bible and notes, by God’s grace I could preach and teach that passage because I’ve seen it and showed it to others. I like to think that my listeners were turned into viewers that morning and that they could also share the images of that message with others. If my listeners haven’t seen then they haven’t heard.

Joy Davidman understood the difference between telling and showing; perhaps this is one reason she was a gifted collaborator with both William Gresham and C.S. Lewis; Lewis’s Till We Have Faces would likely not be the book it is without Davidman’s partnership. Her advice is a bastion for those who strive to maintain clear and meaningful communication in an age of incoherence; her advice was needful when she wrote it in 1943, it is indispensable today. 

------------------------------

*The message title is; A Ladder or a Loveseat? Is our relationship with God based on climbing a ladder to earn His acceptance, or is it sitting on a loveseat with Him in Christ, loving and being loved?

Out of My Bone – Book Review (Part 2)

Anyone contemplating reading Out of My Bone, who has not read Lyle Dorsett’s biography of Davidman, And God Came In: The Extraordinary Story of Joy Davidman, might want to consider reading the biography before reading the letters. The biography will provide context for the letters; this is particularly helpful since the range of correspondence in Out of My Bone is limited.

Davidman, who was born in 1915, had a remarkable intellect, graduating from Hunter College in 1934 and then from Columbia University with a MA in 1935 (she graduated from high school when 14). Considering that she died when 45, I can’t help wondering “what might have been” had she lived longer; what books and essays might she have written, what might her literary and intellectual and spiritual partnership with C.S. Lewis have looked like, and how might have she continued to grow in her relationship with Jesus Christ?

One of Davidman’s letters that struck me was written to Harold Harwell Lewis (dated June 7, 1943 – no relation to C.S. Lewis) in her capacity as an associate editor of New Masses, the magazine of the Communist Party of the United States.   It begins: “Dear H. H. Lewis, I’ve been looking over some of your poems, and I’ve been impressed with the broadening scope of your work…You are certainly growing as a poet.”

Well into the letter Davidman writes, “Another way in which your work is getting above the heads of the audience is in its diction…Our task is to bring poetry back to spoken English; a good rule is to use no expression in poetry that you can’t imagine yourself using in conversation.”

“When you show that you know more than your audience, it should only be something that your audience really needs and wants to learn. You have another trick of inventing words, using hyphens to create what are known as neologisms – horrible things; and using a jawbreaker where a simple one-syllabled word will do.”

“Not only do big words look grotesque; they are also limp and colorless, because they have no associations. A reader will get a mental picture when you say tulip tree, but if you call it Liriodendron tulipifera you will leave him blank. Or imagine using “maternal progenitor” for mother.”

Her letter to H.H. Lewis covers six pages in Out of My Bone and I’m going to quote from it more in the next post; consider the time and thought Davidman is putting into encouraging and critiquing her correspondent, this is quite the investment – and one which Davidman is willing to make with those who “have an ear to hear” what she has to say. Unlike the passive communication style that our 21^st century society is perfecting, Joy Davidman gets to the point, expands the point, and then gets to the next point without apology or without using phrases like in my opinion.

Her above-quoted advice is good for writers and speakers today, even writers of emails. I recall once, in Boston, hearing a seminary professor speak at a breakfast of business and professional people and cringing at his theological jargon – even if his audience could deduce the meaning of the jargon the process of deduction would have distracted it from following the speaker’s line of thought, it would have been akin to taking the wrong exit ramp from an interstate highway and then figuring out how to get back on the highway.

In terms of emails, how often have I read an email from someone trying to impress readers and thereby coming across unnaturally, using words that they would never use in normal conversation – and sometimes using words whose meanings they sadly do not know.

I like words, and I like increasing my vocabulary, and I like using different words, including words that aren’t used very often (because if I use them I’ll learn them) – and therein lies the danger if I forget my audience and forget the message – the goal in communication (unless your goal is subterfuge) is for the listener or reader to see what you’re writing or saying – it is incumbent on the one doing the writing or speaking to do it well – and that means to do it with the audience in mind.

There are writers and speakers that are Gnostic in the sense that they portray an air of mystery and secrecy; follow them to become initiated into hidden wisdom and knowledge; use their jargon and “voice” to enter the inner circle of acceptance and ascendency. We see this in art, we see it in religion, we see it in academia, we see it in literature; I suppose we see it just about everywhere – why I even see it in business with buzz words and phrases and in thinking that often has no foundation and that is not logical. We think fancy words indicate learning, knowledge and wisdom – too often they indicate shallowness and egotism. Davidman could see through façade, some people appreciated that and some didn’t. I think Jesus probably would have said to her, “Behold an Israelite, in whom is no guile.”

To be continued…

How A Word Or A Tangent Can Lessen The Impact Of A Message

A letter, written by an acquaintance, appeared this week in our local weekly newspaper. For the most part the letter was well-written and contained good facts about the subject matter – the opening of a local Pregnancy Support Center. It also contained important facts regarding a certain organization vehemently opposing the Pregnancy Center. The writer’s presentation of the facts was well done and thought provoking – if a reader had never considered the information before the reader might well ponder the letter; and if the reader had been opposed to the Pregnancy Center’s opening prior to reading the letter, such a reader might well have paused to reconsider his or her position.

It was a fine letter until the last paragraph when the writer referred to the opposing organization as “those nefarious places of business”. What was the point of this language? What was the point of the letter?

If the point of the letter was to set the record straight regarding the Pregnancy Center and its opposing organization then the writer accomplished that goal prior to the last paragraph. If another point of the letter was to provoke thoughtful consideration among those readers who may have opposed the Pregnancy Center or have been ambivalent about the Center then the writer did a pretty good job of doing that prior to the last paragraph. But then we have the characterization of the opposition as “those nefarious places of business”. What could such characterization possibly accomplish?

From a communications point of view the adage “show don’t tell” still stands – don’t tell me something is nefarious, show me that it is nefarious. Such a statement is not likely to encourage supporters of the opposing organization to reflect on the information previously presented in the letter, on the contrary, it may evoke a reaction that will lessen the likelihood of such reflection – for while information encourages reasoning, adjectives such as “nefarious” evoke emotion, in this case possible defensive emotion. The characterization of the other organization as “nefarious” was unnecessary and, I think, counterproductive. It may have made the writer feel good, but we ought to communicate with the reader or listener in mind – I’ve been guilty of this many times so I know whereof I write (or speak).

This in turn reminds me of a presentation I heard in the past year on a Sunday morning; the focus of the presentation was to be the speaker’s testimony, of how the speaker came to know Jesus Christ. It was a pretty good presentation, just as the above letter was a pretty good letter; but at one point during the presentation the speaker negatively referred to two well-known Christian authors – associating them with the devil and occult; then at another point the speaker raised the issue of how people interpret the seven days of Genesis – portraying those who do not believe in seven twenty-four hour days as not believing the Bible.  

In the case of the presentation did the speaker enhance or hurt the communication of the Gospel by introducing topics that may cloud the issue and dull the thrust of his testimony? I’m not aware that belief in seven twenty-four hour days in Genesis is necessary to our salvation; nor am I aware that thinking that these two well-known authors are outside the pale of Biblical Christianity is necessary to coming into a relationship with Jesus Christ. It may have made the speaker feel good to make these statements, but did these statements serve to communicate the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Did they serve to draw a listener into a relationship with Christ?

When we take any doctrine or opinion and place it on the same level as the person of Jesus Christ, when we add anything to the basic equation of trusting in Christ, of believing in Christ, of repentance to salvation in Christ – then we tread on dangerous ground and place barriers to knowing Jesus that I don’t see either Jesus or the Apostles erecting in the Scriptures.

I read a pretty good letter, and I heard a pretty good testimony – they both would have been better if their respective goals and audiences were kept in mind. As I wrote above, I’ve been guilty of these things more than once. As soon as we introduce a tangent or a statement that can hijack a listener’s or reader’s mind and pull him or her away from the main point then we have run the train off the track – no matter how good it made us feel.

C.S. Lewis on Writing and Learning by our Mistakes

On August 31, 1958 Lewis writes to Joan Lancaster:

I am sure you had fun writing the stories. The main fault of the animal one is that you don’t mix the reality and the fantasy quite in the right way. One way is Beatrix Potter’s or Brer Rabbit’s [note: by Joel Chandler Harris]. By fantasy the animals are allowed to talk and behave in many ways like humans. But their relations to one another and to us remain the real ones. Rabbits are in danger from foxes and men.

The other way is mine: you go right out of this world into a different creation, where there are a different sort of animals…

…I hope you don’t mind me telling you all this? One can learn only by seeing one’s mistakes…

I post this excerpt because I’m interested in writing, in Lewis’s approach to writing and imagination, and in Lewis’s coaching and critique. As I’ve written before, I love Lewis taking the time to share insights with correspondents – with reading their material and thoughtfully responding to it.

One can learn only by seeing one’s mistakes… This is a hard saying in 2012 when feelings are valued above objectivity and when personal likes and dislikes rule the day as opposed to objective critique.

In a recent business meeting I was asked, “How did you feel about presenting this budget in its current form?” I restrained myself from a straightforward response, for how I “felt” about the budget was not the point, the point was whether the budget was a representation of reality.

I often encounter managers who will not tell their subordinates what they need to hear about their performance because “they will take it personally”. What often ends up happening is that the subordinate finds himself seeking other employment and the manager fails to grow as a manager because he uses feelings as a compass as opposed to facts. We miss the truth that we can work with facts while taking others’ feelings into consideration, people do matter, their feelings do matter – but the truth, or honest critique, must not bow to feelings which change as the wind.

While there are certainly other ways to grow in addition to seeing one’s mistakes, it is doubtful whether one can grow without seeing one’s mistakes. When playing a musical instrument and hitting a wrong note we (hopefully) recognize the error as it occurs, and hopefully we don’t take it personally, and more hopefully we don’t ignore the misplayed note – why should it be any different in other spheres of life?

Sports analogies are helpful to me when I reflect on learning from mistakes. Baseball teams have pitching coaches, hitting coaches, conditioning coaches – and one of the roles of these coaches is to critique players’ performance; it is a foolish player who rejects out-of-hand a coach’s observations and advice.

Yet most of what we experience today is feeling-oriented and feeling-dominated critique, and in the end we all lose. We lose because we don’t deal in truth, because we aren’t challenged to communicate in constructive ways, because we won’t take a good look at ourselves. We also lose because often, when the truth finally comes out, it comes out in ways that are not fruitful and that are without consideration for others. Anger, which we see so much of today – is partly a result, I think, of our collective sorrowful lack of daily communication skills and our burial of truth in daily life.

I have seen churches where feelings and harmony were dominate at the expense of truth. I have seen students who think they are getting an education when what they are getting is the lowest common denominator so that feelings won’t be hurt, tuition will be paid, and instructors will not have to deal with conflict and investment in students.

As Lewis well knew, no writer can grow without critique; self-critique and the critique of others. The Inklings were many things, including a critique group – critique was part of the fabric of Lewis’s life – it was invigorating as well as painful. But what is true of writers is true of us all – how much growth do I forfeit by being overly sensitive to critique? How much growth do I forfeit by not examining my own life by the light of God’s Word and in the light of the Holy Spirit? And what, I wonder, would my friends and associates tell me about myself if I had ears to hear them?

C.S. Lewis on Writing: II

Continuing with Lewis’s September 2, 1957 letter to Jane Gaskell:

You are too fond of long adverbs like ‘dignifiedly’, which are not nice to pronounce. I hope, by the way, you always write by ear not by eye. Every sentence shd. be tested on the tongue, to make sure that the sound of it has the hardness or softness, the swiftness or languor, which the meaning of it calls for.

Haskell was 14 when she wrote the book Lewis read; she was 16 or 17 when Lewis wrote to her. Here is a world-renown author and professor at Cambridge taking the time to write to a teenager, and not just write, but to critique and offer advice.

Lewis concludes the letter with:

I hope all this does not enrage you. You’ll get so much bad advice that I felt I must give you some of what I think good.

C.S. Lewis on Writing

On September 2, 1957, Lewis writes to Jane Gaskell. Gaskell had written a book when she was 14 that Lewis reads and comments on. Since Gaskell’s book is in the genre of fantasy, much of what Lewis writes is about that genre. However, there are a couple of paragraphs that apply to us all; whether we’re writing or speaking:

Never use adjectives or adverbs which are mere appeals to the reader to feel as you want him to feel. He won’t do it just because you ask him: you’ve got to make him. No good telling us a battle was ‘exciting’. If you succeeded in exciting us the adjective will be unnecessary; if you don’t, it will be useless. Don’t tell us the jewels had an ‘emotional’ glitter; make us feel emotion. I can hardly tell you how important this is.

When preparing sermons I found the temptation to succumb to what Lewis warns against was a temptation to take the short-cut – telling people what I wanted to them to experience rather than working to bring them into the experience. I could write the words “tense” or “exciting” or “amazing” in seconds, but it might take me hours to structure words and passages that would cause the congregation to sense tension, excitement, or amazement.

When listening to presentations, whether in a Christian gathering or elsewhere, as soon as I hear someone succumb to the above temptation (usually with no idea what they’re doing) I want to interrupt the speaker and talk about what he or she is doing. It happens more often than not, and it happens with people who have been doing public speaking for years. Writing and public speaking, at any level, is a craft, and as a craft it should be honed and practiced and critiqued – just as a concert pianist practices and practices and then practices some more – so should we constantly be aware of our writing, our speaking, our communication – it is a never-ending endeavor.

I’ll share a second paragraph in Lewis’s letter in my next post.