I read a book or two on writing every year. Jared Wilson’s new book, The Storied Life: Christian Writing as Art and Worship, is one I will read many times. It is a book that combines reflections on the craft of writing (like how to arrange a book) with reflections on God’s crafting of writers.
There are great sections on the nuts and bolts of writing. His look behind the curtain at publishing was especially helpful. His section on “platform” is wise and sobering: “If your options are “publish or perish,” choose perish. The gospel promises life for those who do” (151).
But this is much more than a toolbox for writers. Wilson gives a perspective of Christian writing that pushes us deeper into the beauty of God’s story. He says, “The best writing does not come from those merely skilled as writers but from those deeply skilled as humans” (32).
Become a Deeper Person
Wilson quotes the scholar Brevard Childs’s answer when a student asked him how to become a better writer; become a deeper person. Perfect grammar can’t cover a shallow heart. We become deeper by engaging God’s word with a healthy curiosity, a fruitful imagination, and the stillness to be shaped by scripture. We are drawn into the Bible as the general revelation of creation leads us to long for God as he reveals himself through the gospel. Writing takes us deeper into the gospel story and God leads us to become deeper people as we write.
Christian writers are first, Christians, and their art is an act of their worship of the triune God who saved them and made them his own. Sales and cultural hot takes don’t drive their writing. Instead, being formed by God and his story, they stare at the world with curiosity and imagination that leads them to put pen to paper. Wilson says, “Writers can’t write unless they also stare and ponder. Writers can’t write unless they dream”(82).
Psalm 19 is a helpful picture of how God forms us while we stare and ponder. David stares at creation and sees “the heavens declare the glory of God.” He ponders the “law of the Lord” and his soul is revived and his eyes are enlightened. Then he ponders himself in the story sung by the heavens and declared by the scriptures, leading him to worship. “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer” (Ps 19:14). Finally, David invites others to stare at, ponder and be transformed by the story forming him.
This is good Christian writing. “The call to write is a call to press deeper into The Story,” Wilson says, “And when we do, we find that we are not just being called to ‘make stuff,’ but to be made. God’s calling is in fact a storying of us” (191).
Help Your Readers to Become Deeper People
A good Christian writer keeps their audience in mind, aiming to shine a light on a small corner of the massive canvas of God’s glory for them. Wilson says, “Good writing resists the cleverness of mere consumer taste and seeks to cultivate instead an interest in the world beyond what is located in individual pleasure receptors” (7). Good Christian writing doesn’t tickle people’s ears but pushes them deeper into God’s story. Wilson says, “I am convinced that until we begin to see our lives as part of a story, we always believe, even if just subconsciously, that our lives are aimless and boring” (28).
Writing isn’t Christian because it hits a quota of Jesus mentions. Instead, “for writing to be well thought of as Christian, it must reflect The Story” (29). This includes the darkness and the light. “The story that God is telling in the world is beautiful, but it is not always perfect” (67). There are forms of Christian art that don’t ring true because they are too clean and sanitized. These run too quickly and easily to a happy ending, as though reciting Romans 8:28 makes cancer disappear.
I find Wilson’s challenge on this point very helpful:
“Christian writers will find that to write in a way that is true, they must also give space for the incursion of the world into the attempt to subdue it. Parted waters recede. Manna spoils. Weeds shoot back up. We do not have to yield to the reality of the curse, but to write what is true, we must be honest about it. The worst Christian writing glosses over the dirt in the garden of cultivation” (38).
The care of the Shepherd in Psalm 23 is more beautiful because the valley of the shadow of death is terrifying.
Good writers help us see the world with sharper eyes. Good writers help us feel the pain of sin. Good writers help us lament with honesty before God. Good writers bring us out of the shadowy valley because Jesus walked out of the grave. Good writers teach us to look up and behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Jared Wilson does this in The Storied Life. He says, “Good Christian writing is “theology adorned with beauty” (129) and he practices what he preaches. Anyone interested in becoming a better writer, a deeper person, and growing as a Christian, would make a good investment by buying this book.
Scott Hurst pastors at Northminster Baptist Church in Toronto. He enjoys sports, books, and spending time with his wife and their two boys. Keep up with his writing at Write to Understand.