From the Mouths of Babes

For the last few years, I’ve (on very sporadic occasions) been looking for good recent Christian fiction. Now, I will confess that in my mind the desire generally takes the form of a question: Where are the C. S. Lewises of today? I say I confess it because it’s a ridiculous question. Why don’t I ask where the Dante of today is? The Shakespeare of today? Writers of this caliber don’t, to borrow a phrase from a cliche about a different subject, exactly grow on trees. Part of what makes C. S. Lewis “C. S. Lewis” is that there wasn’t one before and wasn’t one afterwards. So my search as defined by that question is futile.

But if I mean that I wish to find an author who expresses a Christian view in fiction of an eloquent prose while exploring human mysteries and philosophical conundrums without claiming to answer all questions with shallowly quoted Bible verses, I have some hope of finding satisfaction. (Now, I trust that any Christian reading this ridiculously niche blog will know what I mean. But just in case, I’ll say that if one of my children were to die, I believe that the friend who cried with me would be displaying a more Christian response than the one who told me that God works all things together for good for those who love Him and then sat silently with dry eyes.) Every time I look through the internet’s tragically small number of lists of good recent Christian fiction, the recommendation that seems to come up most is Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River. Now I know why.

Enger starts the book with a miracle. I’m sorry for the slow start on this post, but I have to interrupt myself for a bit more background on what I’m looking for. I believe that the Christian novelist faces an almost insurmountable hurdle merely from the definitions of the terms. How can a Christian outlook be shown without at least the implication that miracles are possible? And yet, how can a humanly contrived story be good if miracles solve all the problems? Enger’s solution is one of the two main factors that led me to love his book. By putting the miracles up front, he doesn’t escape any writer’s obligation to resolve conflicts without recourse to a deus ex machina. The miracles don’t answer any questions; they only raise them.

Reuben’s father walks on air one evening (without knowing it: his eyes are closed in prayer), but God doesn’t heal Reuben’s asthma. A miracle clears up some adult acne in one scene, but God allows an incident of sexual assault, a kidnapping, and a cold-blooded killing. Now isn’t this just like the Christian life? Every Christian eventually has to grapple with the question of why God doesn’t give us miraculous relief from the problems that seem most important to us. Why hasn’t God healed my hand? Why didn’t God make certain coworkers nicer to me? Why hasn’t God kept all our family holidays happy and argument-free?

Now I’ll tell you what I really think. I think God puts us here as an author populates a world with characters: in order to have stories to tell. Without sexual assault, kidnapping, and killing, Enger has no story to tell. And without weird fingers and colleagues who kept me sleepless at night worrying about their lawlessness and relatives who turned holiday celebrations into obligations, I would have no story worth telling, no life history that will one day bring glory to God in a way unique to my experience. Isn’t the point of my adversity not what God does to get me out of it but what I do in response to it? How else am I supposed to comfort others with the comfort I’ve experienced in the midst of hardship if I haven’t had hardship? How am I supposed to count it all joy when trials come my way if none come my way? (You see, I can quote the Bible, too. But the next time I have a trial, don’t tell me glibly to “count it all joy” or you may find yourself in need of comfort!) The structure of Enger’s story makes it very clear that Reuben’s dad’s bit of levitation isn’t anywhere near as important in the long run as what Reuben and his family do in response to bloodshed.

My second favorite aspect of the book takes much less time to explain. Enger pulls off an excellent trick in prose style. Reuben tells his story in first person and frequently says that he’s not a writer. His nine-year-old sister, Swede, he claims, is the real wordsmith, and he includes several extensive quotations from her overwrought, cliched, sing-songy epic poem about an outlaw in the Wild West. It’s hard to imitate bad writing. I’ve tried, and it always comes out too egregious. But Enger hits the bulls-eye with Swede. The poem is thoroughly entertaining and absolutely essential; it develops Swede’s character (develops it, in fact, both in her world and in ours), and Reuben’s admiration for it reveals parts of his. But it’s not good. As bad as his sister’s poem might be, though, Reuben believes he lacks her level of talent. And he isn’t totally wrong. It’s not that Reuben indulges in false modesty or has a fluency that he just can’t see in his own work; his grammatical stumbles and sometimes flat descriptions are right there on the page for us to see. And yet, in the end, this fellow who consistently can’t find the right words without seeking inspiration in a child’s purple doggerel ends up speaking powerfully. I’d say the effect is something like Huck Finn only different. But you really have to read the book to understand what I mean. I don’t have the words to describe it.