Reading, writing, and suffering

I tell my students, “If you want to be a good writer, you will need to suffer.” Girolamo Savonarola, one of the most published authors of the 15th century, was burned at the stake; the prolific Martin Luther lived under constant threat of martyrdom in the 16th century; and the 17th century’s most published English author, John Bunyan, suffered in Bedford County jail for 12 years.

If suffering is my due as a Christian writer, what possibly possessed me to become one? “Reading maketh a full man,” wrote Francis Bacon, “and writing maketh an exact man.” I write as I live, under liberating compulsion. And these books, along with the Bible, have helped me understand my calling as well as suffering in the Christian life.

Glimpses of joy

I’ve learned a great deal from well-crafted autobiographies, and in his spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis describes the mystery of finding joy in the midst of suffering. Angry at God after the death of his mother, 9-year-old Lewis pronounced himself an atheist. Later, voracious reading of Milton, Donne, and others compelled him to reassess his atheism: “A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.”

The “endless arguments” that Lewis had with theists in the trenches of the First World War began to expose the vulnerable underbelly of his unbelief. “The war—the frights, the cold, the smell, the horribly smashed men still moving like half-crushed beetles, the sitting or standing corpses, the landscape of sheer earth without blade of grass, the boots worn day and night till they seemed to grow to your feet. … Familiarity both with the very old and the very recent dead. … I came to know, and pity, and reverence the ordinary man.”

Throughout his autobiography we see God’s work, showing Lewis the “zoo of lusts” that enslaved him. He described his philosophical conversion to theism in 1929, and then his conversion to Christ in 1931. We also meet Joy Davidman and follow their courtship and marriage, her tragic illness, and her eventual death. We see the anguish and doubts brought on by the shadowlands of his grief. His suffering prepares us for our own.

Prayer and worship

Another Lewis gem, far less read today, is Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer. Completed just months before his death in 1963, in this book Lewis created a fictional correspondence, in the spirit of his better-known Screwtape Letters. Lewis created a literary method in which to explore his own thoughts on prayer, and nuggets of wisdom can be found throughout its pages.

With chagrin, Lewis watched Anglicans toying with novelty and ­innovation in worship. He decried the attempt of luring people to church through abridgment and simplification of the worship service. He knew where this would lead. “Novelty, simply as such, can have only an entertainment value.” Lewis knew that a good liturgy was not intended to entertain us, but to turn us away from ourselves and fix our attention on the triune God alone. “Every novelty prevents this,” he insisted. “It fixes our attention on the service itself, and thinking about worship is a different thing from worshipping.” Can novelty aid us in our suffering? He concluded his thoughts on corporate prayer, observing that novelty and entertainment in worship, however well intentioned, “lays one’s devotion waste.”

Artistic Biblical vision

John Bunyan holds a revered place in English literature. Undereducated and born in backwater Elstow, peasant Bunyan would write The Pilgrim’s Progress, the great English allegory and the publishing phenomenon of the literary world. Throughout his life, C.H. Spurgeon, the most published author of the 19th century, read the allegory over 100 times. Reading the best books gives us literary and theological traction on the highway of Christian living.

While at his youthful play, one day Bunyan heard a voice from heaven. “Will you leave your sins and go to heaven, or keep your sins and go to hell?” Later, he eavesdropped on several women: “They spoke as if joy did make them speak … and with such appearance of grace in all they said, that they were to me as if they had found another world.”

Bunyan was under compulsion; he had to find that world. By the grace of God, he did, and his book has helped countless others find that world too.

One of the chief benefits I have found in reading Bunyan is the immeasurable scope of his imagination. “Prick Bunyan anywhere,” Spurgeon said, “and he bleeds Bible.” Every place in his little world was fodder for the grand story of redemption; from the Slough of Despond to Vanity Fair, from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, from the Valley of Humiliation and Doubting Castle, to the mortal combat with Giant Despair and flame-belching Apollyon. Employing his boundless imagination, Bunyan wanted everyone he met on his dangerous journey to know the great Deliverer.

Bunyan also had to suffer. For refusing to acknowledge the king as head of the church, he began his timeless allegory confined in the damp walls of a prison cell. If we are Christ’s, we too will have to suffer. These writers have helped me to do so with a measure of joy. After all, the Word who became flesh was a man of sorrows. He suffered and so must we. But that’s not the end of the story. Christ, who Himself wept, one day will wipe all tears from our eyes; we will then see how momentary and light our afflictions truly are—as He promised.

—Douglas Bond is author of more than 35 books, including The Hobgoblins, a novel on John Bunyan