Shelf life

Novel reading is now regarded as a rather tame pursuit. When you can spend all night on a dance floor, gamble on the internet, buy pornography in your corner shop and watch 18 rated films at the local multiplex, what could be more harmless than opening the pages of a novel borrowed from the library? Fiction, we are told, develops empathy, provides relaxation, opens our minds; ‘the love of books requires neither justification, apology, nor defence’.

Disapproval

Today’s universal approval has not always been the case. Christians in the past have condemned novel reading. Charles Finney wrote: ‘I cannot believe that a person who has ever known the love of God can relish a secular novel’. And Spurgeon, his sounder contemporary, was only slightly more moderate, saying in a sermon: ‘The mass of popular books published under the name of light literature is to be eschewed and cut down.’

So why this disapproval? Perhaps it is simply the content of the novels themselves. It is certainly easy now to find explicit sex scenes and disturbing accounts of violence or pain in all manner of novels, high or low brow. But this was not the case even 50 years ago (Lady Chatterley’s Lover would hardly raise an eyebrow now) and yet fiction was still frowned upon. No, it was not the plot of a story, rather it was the escapism which ruled it out. Spurgeon valued relaxation — he took carriage rides down Surrey lanes — but novel reading he felt would ‘retard and impede (the Christian) in his good course’.

It is true still today that each novel takes us into a new world — that is a very great part of its’ appeal — and with characters, place and events comes a worldview. We may find a story ‘unputdownable’ because of its excellent writing and gripping plot, but it is also unputdownable because we don’t want to leave our newfound world for the pressing reality around us. That reality means the ironing that needs doing, the difficult phone call to be made, the early night we should have, but also the spiritual reality of the gospel. Most novels will take us into a world with only relative values, where the supernatural is excluded and in which many sins are delighted in.

Be careful

And who are we to turn aside from these centuries of concern? No, we must be very careful about what and how we read, guarding our minds from harmful images which will linger and pollute our thought lives. But we should remember too, that our imaginative and empathetic faculties are gifts from God which we can use to glorify him when we read. It is good to laugh and cry with fictional characters, so long as we are alert to the message and worldview of the author, and so long as our main diet of reading is Christian. I could read a novel a week but will fail to understand and profit from it if I am not spending still more time in God’s Word. Unlike our unbelieving colleagues, we do not need fiction to feed us, emotionally, spiritually or intellectually; we have all the food we need in the Bible. Isn’t this liberating? God’s Word will ‘renew our minds’ and enable us to engage with others, be they fictional or real, from God’s perspective.

Dickens

To many of us, the characters of Dickens, whether from page or screen, might seem old friends; we laugh at Micawber, are melted with pathos and shudder at Uriah Heep. Listening to Miriam Margoyles reading Oliver Twist on tape over Christmas was great fun, but I was reminded of important things about Dickens’s world.

Invariably Dickens’s characters fall into one of several categories: the innocent who suffers heroically, the irredeemably and unselfconsciously cruel, the good-natured eccentric and the rich benefactor, among others. It is a black and white world; rather like a tabloid paper, but written beautifully! We boo at the baddies and cheer the goodies, but are rarely caused to see the common fallen state of all, for, of course, we’re on the goodies’ side. The happy-ever-after is always comfortable domesticity for the innocent and just deserts for the criminal — a world of works. Yet this very simplicity, sniffed at by many critics, causes Dickens’s writing to excite compassion and has actually changed society. And when compared with modern novels so often complicit with sin, his moralising tone which portrays sin as so very ugly and the fallout of sin as so heart-rending, is very welcome. Dickens reminds us that fiction has great power.

The gospel

Yet, however much we can see distorted worldviews around, very many novels should also direct us to the gospel. To go back to Oliver Twist, we see a lost orphan, helpless and alienated, rescued by an all-knowing father figure and finding his true identity (there is more, but not time for it here!). So when you read, look out for sin and redemption; for alienation and reconciliation; for sacrifice and grace. When we meet these elements in the unbelieving worlds of novels we see not only how much the gospel is needed, but also how God has placed his ways of working in the hearts and imaginations of all people.

Looking at secular books

Disapproval

Be careful

Dickens

The gospel

Sarah Allen

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