The Christian Lens

I have the pleasure this semester of taking as an elective a course titled Literature from the Christian Perspective. In it, we’re examining poems, novels, and short stories through a Christian lens—that is, applying the Christian perspective to what we read. We recently finished reading Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, a fantastic novel that borrows its title from the Book of Ecclesiastes and poignantly captures the hopelessness and emptiness of vanity — of living life without acknowledging the Lord as source and summit.

I read this novel about five years ago while traveling on an airplane to Madrid. On that trip, I read mostly for the European cultural aspect, hoping to get some idea of how to really “do” Spain. In doing so, I certainly enjoyed the novel, but I did not get out of it what I did when reading from the Christian perspective. I read past the lives of despair sloppily patched with socializing, drinking, and licentiousness. I missed the commentary about life lived without a higher purpose. I did not see my friends in those pages, nor did I see a way to help them.

My change in intention made all the difference. And it is a change in the way of reading that I intend to employ for all future reading, especially novels. T.S. Eliot wrote: “But I incline to come to the alarming conclusion that it is just the literature that we read for ‘amusement,’ or ‘purely for pleasure’ that may have the greatest and least suspected influence upon us. It is the literature which we read with the least effort that can have the easiest and most insidious influence upon us.”

When we read a book that is aimed at spiritual growth, financial management, breaking our vices, or other similar themes, it seems that we read with intention, planning to make some change we want to make because of what we read. Similarly, if we embark on reading something that we know opposes what we believe, such as a religiously- or politically-charged commentary, we will do so with our defenses up. However, when we read for entertainment, and I believe this is Eliot’s point, we read differently. In reading for entertainment, we do not look for intentional steps to change and we do not put up our guard. We read simply to enjoy, perhaps even thinking that the fictional world is so different from our own that what happens in it does not really pertain to our own lives. In these situations, if we are open to whatever happens in the chapters, the influence is made. We come to condone, accept, or even look forward to the fictional thoughts and behaviors. Holden Caulfield’s flippancy becomes appealing. Ignatius J. Reilly’s lack of social tact becomes charming. A fiesta with Jake Barnes and company seems incredibly fun. Eliot contends that such things have an insidious influence upon us.

What to do? Stop reading for entertainment? Only read Christian novels? Put our Christianity on hold for the sake of entertainment? These are not good options. My vote is to approach literature (and music and movies and art and…) the same way we do life—with intention and on guard, confident and grounded in faith.