And now Lord, as I send these words out, let them do your work. Even if only one should be helped, let that be my joy. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
George Orwell, that venerable author of Animal Farm and 1984, claims in his essay Why I Write that all writers are vain, selfish, and lazy. Even with the only meager writing I have done so far, I plead guilty to Orwell’s verdict. Pride being the protean thing that it is, has to be one of the writer’s most formidable foes. It’s so easy to bend your writing to serve your own personal ends rather than God’s glory. Yet God could use your pen, for His glory, if you let Him. We soon ascribe our talents and abilities to ourselves, forgetting that it is God who causes us to will and to write for His own good pleasure. Writing and creative expression for a Christian means to further God’s glorious purpose and draw men closer to Him.
No experience should be wasted on a writer. As God deals with you, as He comforts you in your trials and tribulations, you should mean to describe your circumstances and proclaim your testimony by writing in a manner that God will clearly be seen and lifted in His glory. We still live with the words of Job and his friends, and see a little of our own distress in those bitter passages from a man who wanted to understand why God afflicted him so much.
As much as God would have chosen to speak audibly to us, John Piper says, He speaks to us by words on paper. We hear His voice in Scripture, He speaks to us in a book, presumably to illustrate the transcendent importance of writing. Written words live with us. Alan Jacobs boasts about having published his first book when he was already very old, and in that way, he made fewer mistakes he won’t have to regret. When we first begin to write, and express ourselves, we do it with so much headway, and mostly with an arrogant attitude that admits no correction. Later on, however, in retrospect, we are so ashamed to consider such impertinence. John Piper, in one of his Ask Pastor John Podcasts with Tony Reinke, explains why it takes a deep knowledge of God and His ways to properly write dark literature, and way more to be able to rightly write uplifting literature. Otherwise we risk producing nothing more than a variation of the tawdry work that now floods our libraries and the internet.
To write well, as God would have us, our hearts and our minds need to be aflame, so that like David we can cry, my heart is indicting a good matter, or, my mouth is the pen of a ready writer. It’s only God who makes ready writers, and as we allow our spaces and time to be occupied with useless trinkets, we stifle our ability to delightfully express God’s wonder. John Piper makes it clear that our writing should make God look better than anything else in the world, make the path of sin look worse than anything else in the world, and make the path of righteousness look beautiful in spite of all the difficulties that the path of obedience might bring. The perceptiveness that would make that possible is the result of properly studying both God’s world and God’s word.
It follows then that we are to write for God. But before we write for God, we should write to God. Taking writing as a form of worship so to speak. That way we will pen our words with intention, and discipline ourselves in order that we do not become slack and vain as we are wont to do. Just like with prayer, even with writing, there are days when the whole affair feels so foreign and fruitless, but even then we should plod along nonetheless, because soon we find ourselves stumbling upon something truly remarkable. “One line of a poem- only one line, but thank God for that one line- drops from the ceiling,” says Thornton Wilder, citing an unnamed writer of sonnets. Yet you don’t wait for it, you go looking, and afterwards you fashion the others around it.
Maybe this business and obsession with writing is only a concern for writers. I don’t think so. Annie Dillard in The Writing Life says it really makes no difference whether you write a recipe or whether you write Moby Dick, so you could as well just write Moby Dick. And to advance C. S. Lewis’ argument in Learning in War-Time, just as when you don’t read good books you will read bad ones, and if you don’t think rationally you will think irrationally, I think it would then follow that if you don’t write well, you will write badly. There’s nothing praiseworthy about being unable to write clearly and interestingly. And now, especially at a time when we do quite a lot of writing when we text each other, we could at least slow down a little bit and make it a point to be precise.
But you can only go so far in writing well if you read well. It has for a long time seemed reasonable to think that good writing is made from good reading, and we learn to read properly as we learn to write properly. Francine Prose says reading a good book makes you want to write one, and later on, wrapping up her book Reading Like a Writer she explains that if we want to grow roses, we should visit rose gardens. Read for Courage, she aptly names that last chapter. Read for courage, dear writer. In case you don’t know where to start, and before I risk overwhelming you with a million book and author recommendations, allow me to remind you that no rose garden beats the Bible. Visit it often, and read it with intention, and it will surely furnish you with the inspiration you need to write what you must. O dear friend, take a pen, and let God guide your hand.
Stay lit.
Henry Madaga.
You can find more of my work on Litnerd Letters