TODAY IN MISSION YEARBOOK
Mission Yearbook: Author expounds on reading fiction and growing in faith
How can our faith grow and be challenged through fiction?
That was the initial question that the hosts of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast,” Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe, posed to the Rev. Dr. Doug Basler, the pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Grimes, Iowa, and the author of “All Swirling and Weaving: Reflections on Reading Fiction and Growing in Faith.” Listen to their 47-minute conversation here.
“It’s a great question. It’s central to what I’m trying to do in the book — to introduce fiction as a way of spiritual formation,” Basler told the hosts. While many people read fiction for entertainment, “I think fiction can form us and shape us,” he said.
It’s no accident that Jesus used parables to teach people about the world that God envisioned, according to Basler. “Years ago, I heard Russell Moore say, ‘It’s one thing to believe in the forgiveness of sins,’ quoting from the Apostles’ Creed,” Basler said. “It’s another thing to say, ‘There once was a man who had two sons,’ quoting from Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son.”
“I’m a pastor in Des Moines, Iowa, a Presbyterian pastor, and I believe in the forgiveness of sins, certainly,” Basler said. “I believe that what we say is true in the Apostles’ Creed, but I think Jesus knows how our hearts work and how our imaginations work. He tells a story to help us reshape and retune our understanding of who God is,” this “loving father who embraces his wayward children.”
In the parable, “God is doing a new thing. There’s a party going on, and [the religious leaders who first heard the parable] are standing outside complaining instead of joining the party,” Basler said. “This small story works on multiple levels and has the power to shape our imagination and shape our thinking.”
As Doong pointed out, part of faith is the ability to imagine — to imagine the world as God intends it and to imagine what it means to be a faithful follower of Jesus. “The parables aren’t real,” Doong said, “but Jesus uses them to remind us of these very important lessons.”
When we’re bombarded every day by bad news and incendiary social media posts, “fiction tends to flatten things out. It can remind us there’s a bigger world out there than what we’re consuming,” Basler said. “Fiction can awaken our own stories in ways we typically don’t expect or aren’t necessarily looking for.”
For Basler, one of those moments came a few years ago when he read Wendell Berry’s “The Memory of Old Jack.” An installment in Berry’s Port William series, the book tells Jack’s story through his memory of purchasing a second farm decades before even though he didn’t need it. The decision leads to complications throughout Jack’s life.
“I’m a pastor, not a farmer, and so I didn’t want more land,” Basler said. “But I wanted more people. I wanted a bigger congregation. I thought it would mean I was successful.”
“I saw in Jack’s ambition my own ambition,” he said. “It awakened my own story and forced me to ask tough questions about what am I doing, why am I doing it, and what’s my motivation?”
“I believe the Holy Spirit used that novel to show me some areas of my life where I was heading off track,” he said. “I was just reading a book by an author I love.”
“I really do think [reading] fiction can be a practice of hope,” Basler said. “We see all the struggles out there and we think, what difference can little old me make? Fiction looks at the details of someone’s life, and it’s a nice reminder that the little things do matter.”
Sometimes we read to escape the world around us, “but I think it’s more than that,” he said. “It’s preparing us, shaping us, equipping us to be hopeful and to act in courageous ways.”
New editions of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” drop every Thursday. Listen to previous episodes here.
Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)
Let us join in prayer for:
Keren Strothman, Financial Planning & Effectiveness, Grants Management Office, Presbyterian Life & Witness
Becca Snipp, Financial Planning, Operational Planning & Operations, Presbyterian Life & Witness
Let us pray:
God, help us to discern your presence in all Creation, from the smallest creatures to the great inhabitants of the seas and the birds that fill the skies. Inspire us once again to be caretakers of your holy garden. Amen.