Audio Transcript

I’ll be the first to admit that it’s a little niche for us to speak to writers. Most subscribers to this podcast are not writers. I know that. But because of Pastor John’s prolific writing ministry, we get a lot of great questions from writers — and really from all types of Christian creatives. Writing is near and dear to us both, Pastor John — so much so that if you have the APJ book, you’ve likely seen that little section I pulled together “On Writing, Grammar, and Poetry” on pages 411–416. We don’t revisit these themes often, but we do today with this question from an aspiring author, an anonymous girl.

“Hello, Pastor John! I’m seventeen. I just recently discovered this podcast and quickly became a huge fan. I have already listened to all your episodes on hobbies and entertainment, but I would like to ask something of a little more specific nature. I absolutely love literature and writing, but I like to write things that have twists and turns and that are sometimes a little creepy. Is it okay for Christians to write — or read or watch — things like thrillers and murder mysteries, which have some violent or scary elements in them, as long as those elements are not sadistic, sexual, or gratuitous? Or does this violate passages like Philippians 4:8? Sometimes I feel like dark elements serve an important purpose in fiction, because they open the door for great moral and biblical solutions, but I am not sure. I would love your opinion on this matter. Thank you.”

Let me put on my lit-major hat for a few minutes. I don’t usually do this, but I have good memories — a lit major who has spent 55 years almost entirely immersed in the word of God, the Bible, which is a form (from one vantage point) of literature. But from another vantage point, I have found that almost everyone who tries to treat the Bible as literature winds up minimizing the Bible as the authoritative, infallible revelation of the Creator of the universe. The fact that it is both literature and revelation parallels the mystery of the incarnation, doesn’t it? Jesus Christ is both man (which corresponds to literature) and God (which corresponds to revelation). He could not be our Savior if he were not both.

Just so you know, I have not lost the bug. I continue to read and enjoy fiction, and I have written, I suppose, hundreds and hundreds of poems over those 55 years since I was a lit major. I still delight in a picturesque simile like Proverbs 11:22: “Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without discretion.” That’s great. That’s just great. Jesus painted impossibly provocative pictures: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24). That’s good. That’s really good. I still love the cadences of Psalm 1:1: “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers.” That’s good.

But the glorious divine logic and reality of Romans 8:32 exceeds the pleasures of these things a thousandfold: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” The glory of that reality cannot seriously be compared to the pleasures of literary style. Both are good; one is glorious.

We Know Darkness

So, here’s the question I have lived with for decades that relates to this young aspiring writer of dark literature. Here’s the question: Why is it that almost all writers of fiction and perhaps even nonfiction find it easier to write seriously and compellingly about the dark than about the light? Why is it that most writers can produce something credible, authentic, moving, compelling about pain and fear but cannot write with the same compelling credibility and seriousness about joy?

You can see this, for example, symptomatically in television ads. If the writers want to portray some deeper emotion — say, of a family in sorrow — they can generally write something and show something that actually has the feel of authenticity about it. But when they turn to show happiness, the default is silliness. It’s just incredible — a big, wide, toothy grin everywhere, and people falling all over the couch and guffawing, and grown people acting like clowns. You get the impression that these writers are out of their element. They don’t know what to do with happiness. They’re stuck at about age ten.

“To be a good writer about the light requires a long and deep walk with God in the midst of human suffering.”

Now, my tentative explanation for this — why it’s easier to portray with authenticity the human experience of fear and sorrow than it is to portray the human experience of happiness with the same authenticity and depth — is that, for most people, the human experience of serious fear is far more common than the human experience of serious joy. Most people have categories for the stark terror of being charged by a grizzly bear or the panic of being surrounded by a mob or the sinking feeling in the stomach of a window being broken in the middle of the night or the heart-crushing grief at losing a loved one. We know these things. We’ve tasted these things deeply.

But we don’t have similar experiences or categories of serious, humble, invincible joy in the face of pain and death. Serious fear and sorrow is common. Serious joy is not. It seems to me that very often, that kind of joy is replaced with the closest many writers can get to it — namely, a kind of stoic swagger in the face of danger. Which shows that the hero or heroine is coolly above it all, which is the very opposite of the humble, serious, invincible joy I’m talking about, which is so rare and, therefore, so difficult to write about.

Writing with Serious Joy

Now, my guess at an explanation for why writing authentically about the dark is easier than writing authentically about the light is this: To be a good writer about the dark requires some literary gift mingled with the experience of darkness and fear and brokenness and sorrow that’s common in this world. But to be a good writer about the light requires more than ordinary human experience of the dark or light. It requires a long and deep walk with God in the midst of human suffering.

The kind of serious joy I’m talking about is especially at home in the heart of a Christian, a Bible-saturated Christian. Those outside the Christian worldview have tasted this because of common grace, but it is the peculiar purview of biblical revelation to understand from the inside out what serious joy in the face of suffering is really like — unless, of course, Christians have been forced into the mold of just being like the world, which happens by the thousands.

So, my short answer to our young writer is this: Of course one can write with biblical faithfulness about the dark because the dark is real. In fact, the only people who know how real and how terrible it is are people who know their Bible. Without biblical categories, the efforts of the world to portray the dark fall far short of reality, no matter how terrible they make it look. But to write faithfully about the dark requires a deep awareness that “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). It requires a deep awareness that God is sovereign over the darkness. Creepy is interesting but not necessarily insightful. Darkness will be defeated in the end.

But if you are going to write about the dark in a seriously joyful way that avoids naivete and melodrama, it may take decades of walking through deep waters with Christ. Don’t give up. You may prove to be one of those very rare writers who knows enough about God, knows enough about suffering, has lived enough life and sorrow and serious joy that you could actually write with authenticity about the light even better than about the dark.

Audio Transcript

Well, Why do we thank anyone? It’s a great question, really. Candace writes in to ask it: “Hello, Pastor John and Tony! Thank you for this podcast. It has been a great help to me. And thanking you two plunges us right into my question: How can we genuinely thank anyone but God? If God is sovereign over all things, what role do people themselves play? I just listened to APJ 1195, “How Does God’s Sovereignty Not Violate Our Decision-Making?” but as these truths are new to me, I think I could really benefit from your answer to this specific question: If you go to a restaurant and are served by a waitress, God gives the waitress all the abilities required to do her job, the opportunity to do her job, maybe the willingness to do her work diligently, and her very life and breath and existence. Since she is working, it seems right to thank her for her efforts, but since the Lord gives us everything, it seems right, in another sense, only to thank him. How do you process this?”

Well, I think this is a very good question, even though some people probably will think it’s totally unnecessary since a spirit of thanksgiving seems like such a healthy trait in a Christian soul. Why would anybody ever question it? One of the reasons why it’s such a worthy question is because — now this is going to surprise a lot of people — I’m not aware of any single place in the Bible at all where one human being explicitly thanks another human being for anything. Isn’t that amazing?

I mean, I could be wrong, so if our listeners find an exception to that, they should write you, and you can forward it to me if you think they’re right. That’s where I am right now. So when I hear this question, I say, “Yeah, I’ve got to come him to terms with that.” I know a very godly Christian scholar who sees that, what I just pointed out, and he infers that that’s his duty. He does not thank people for anything. He thanks God for people, and he may tell them that.

Thanks Be to God

So, it may seem like an unwarranted question, but really it’s not. Now, my own conviction and practice is to say thank you a lot. I say thank you a lot to a lot of people — or something like, “I really appreciate that,” or, “You have encouraged me so much. Thank you.” Candace is asking the question like this: Since God is the ultimate giver in the end — through all things, in all things — why would it ever be appropriate to thank anyone but God?

So, Paul says, “From him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Romans 11:36). He says, “Nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25) So, if I’m served well at a restaurant, God created the server, God gave the breath, and God inclined the heart to courtesy. God gave everything that makes my meal pleasant, so God be thanked, not the waiter or the waitress or the server.

“In all of our thankfulness, we should have God ultimately in mind as the giver.”

Of course, that’s true. God did give everything, and God should be thanked. In all of our thankfulness, we should have God ultimately in mind as the giver and sustainer and the providential guide in every good that happens to us — indeed, in every bad thing that happens to us, which God turns for good if we’re Christians. Which is why Paul says, by the way, “Give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18), and, “[Give] thanks always and for everything” (Ephesians 5:20).

Instruments in God’s Hands

But here’s why I don’t think any of those truths means we should not thank other people for benefits we receive through their hands. I think we all would agree that human beings become instruments in the hands of God for doing many good things that God wants done.

So, for example, Jesus says about Paul when he commissioned him, “He is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel” (Acts 9:15). Then he says to Paul, I am sending you “to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins” (Acts 26:18). And of course, this is the way God has worked ever since the beginning. He gives commandments, he gives promises, he gives warnings, he gives help, but there is no doubt that human beings are God’s primary created instrument for accomplishing in the world what he wants done.

So, the question becomes, How does God think about our instrumentality? What status does the instrument itself — us — have in God’s hands? Can the instrument in God’s hands be called good or praiseworthy or faithful or obedient or pleasing? Does God view the instrument in his hands as proper recipients of his rewards, his commendation, his praise? And if God does view the instruments in his hands as fitting recipients of his own commendation and rewards and praise, then what should our attitude and response toward those human instruments be?

Well, the Bible is very clear that God is the rewarder of those who seek him. Several times in Matthew 6, Jesus says that the Father will reward us for acting certain ways. He says, “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 5:12). Time after time, we are told God rewards us for the good that we do. Ephesians 6:8 is an amazing statement: “. . . knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord.” Wow.

And even more than reward, Paul says that we’ll all receive our commendation — and literally the word is praise — from God (1 Corinthians 4:5). That’s almost unfathomable. C.S. Lewis calls it “the weight of glory” that we would ever hear “Well done.” How could God speak such a thing to a worm like me, right? So even though everything good that we do is enabled by God, it is sustained by God, it is made useful by God, nevertheless, God has graciously chosen to look upon obedient instruments in his hands as pleasing to him and fitting recipients of his rewards and commendations.

Voice of Humility

So, my heart inclination is to say that if God almighty — in infinite perfection and having no need whatsoever — can look with favor, and reward, and commendation, and praise upon the imperfect work of his people, might it not be fitting that I would look upon human instruments in his hand with a humble sense of expressed, glad indebtedness? That would be my definition of thankfulness: expressed, glad indebtedness to them for their instrumentality in mediating to me good from God.

“Thanking other people for the benefits they give us is a fitting, humble expression of our glad indebtedness.”

God should always be, in my mind, the ultimate giver, and he gets thanks in everything, for everything. But the role of instruments in his hands is an amazing role, and I am put in debt to that instrument as well as to God. If something good happens to me because of another person’s instrumentality in the hand of God, I am glad, and the mixture of gladness and a sense of indebtedness is what I call thankfulness.

It belongs ultimately to God continually, and I think it is fitting that this gladness find expression toward the morally responsible human instruments in God’s hands as well. In a sense, an expression of thankfulness is simply an expression of humility. It says, “I have become your debtor, and I don’t resent it as though you made me a welfare case. I receive it, and I am glad for it, and I want you to know that my gladness is owing in part to you and what you’ve done.”

So, in conclusion, I would say as long as we are not detracting from God, and we’re acknowledging him behind and in everything that comes to us, then thanking other people for the benefits they give us is a fitting, humble expression of our glad indebtedness.

Sunday school has marked me since my childhood — literally. I have a scar on the top of my right hand from being burned by the popcorn popper when I was about 3 years old. Sunday school has left much deeper impressions, however, in my heart and soul and in the way I have read and understood the Bible for most of my life — especially in terms of how I have read and understood the Old Testament.

For most of my life, I saw the Old Testament primarily as a series of disconnected stories about people showing how (or how not) to live the life of faith. I knew that the Old Testament spoke of Christ, but in my mind, that was limited to the prophecies about the coming of the Messiah.

I did not see that all of the Old Testament prepares us to understand who Jesus is and what he would do. I didn’t understand that from Genesis 3:15 onward, we’re meant to trace the woman’s line to the promised offspring — the descendent of Abraham, the son of David — who would deal with the curse and the serpent for good. I was in my forties when I began to understand that the Bible is one story of God’s redemption through Christ.

When I began to understand that the Old Testament can be understood only in light of Christ, a new world opened. I determined that I needed to go back to kindergarten in terms of understanding the Bible’s story. I bought several books on the topic, including one that revolutionized my Old Testament reading.

Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament

I got no further than the introduction of Christopher Wright’s Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament when I read a passage that blew my mind. Speaking about Jesus’s connection to the Old Testament, he writes,

These are the words he read, the stories he knew. These were the songs he sang. These were the depths of wisdom and revelation and prophecy that shaped his whole view of life, the universe and everything. This is where he found his insights into the mind of his Father God. Above all, this is where he found the shape of his own identity and the goal of his own mission. (11)

This paragraph caused me to think about the humanity of Jesus more deeply. It challenged me to read the Old Testament differently. And it sent me on a mission.

Humanity of Jesus

Though Jesus is fully human and fully God, the deity of Jesus has been easier for me to grasp than his humanity. This passage caused me to stop and give more thought to what it must mean that Jesus “increased in wisdom and stature” (Luke 2:52). Jesus grew in his own understanding of who he was, what his life was all about, and even what his death and resurrection would mean from meditating on the Old Testament Scriptures.

Jesus, typical of Jewish boys of his time, learned from hearing the Old Testament scrolls read in the synagogue. One of the only scenes we have of him as a child depicts him staying behind in Jerusalem to sit among the teachers, “listening to them and asking them questions” (Luke 2:46). He was thinking and putting it all together. He was coming into a recognition that when he was in the temple in Jerusalem, he was in his Father’s house.

“When Jesus read the Old Testament, he saw the suffering he would experience — as well as the glory on the other side.”

We know what he thought when he read the beginning of Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” He read this aloud in his hometown and told the people it was fulfilled in their hearing that day (Luke 4:16–21). What was it like for him to read passages like Psalm 22:14 — “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint”? What did he think as he pondered Isaiah prophesying, “He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5), eventually knowing that he would be pierced, that he would be crushed?

When Jesus read the Old Testament, he saw the suffering he would experience — as well as the glory on the other side. That is why he told the two disciples on the road to Emmaus that if they had believed all that the prophets had spoken, they would have understood that it was “necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory” (Luke 24:25–26).

Reading the Old Testament

This sentence in Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament also caused me to read the Old Testament differently, asking myself throughout, What might Jesus have pointed to and said, “This is about me”?

Luke writes that there on the road to Emmaus, “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). To explain to these followers who he was and why he had to die, Jesus evidently did not start with his birth in Bethlehem, or his Sermon on the Mount, or his wrangling with the Pharisees, or the plot against him facilitated by Judas.

Rather, he opened up Genesis and Leviticus and Psalms and Jonah and Hosea and the rest of the Old Testament and said, “This is about me. . . . This is about the curse I came to bear. . . . This is about the mercy I came to lavish on sinners. . . . This is about the sufficiency of my salvation. . . . This is about my deliverance from death. . . . This is about the judgment that was poured out on me at the cross.”

“It is not just individual prophecies or passages that point to Jesus, but the Old Testament as a whole.”

According to Jesus, it is not just individual prophecies or passages that point to him, but the Old Testament as a whole. He said to the religious leaders, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39–40). And a few verses later, he says, “If you believed Moses you would believe me; for he wrote of me” (John 5:46). The entirety of the Old Testament is about him — not only in its prophecies, but also in its history, its promises, its people, its law, its ceremony, its song.

On a Bible Mission

I can trace the discovery that flowed out of this passage to the personal mission I’ve been on since then. I am on a mission to infiltrate Bible study in the local church with biblical theology. By biblical theology, I mean an approach to the Bible that recognizes its cohesive story. Even though the Bible is made up of various kinds of literature and was written over centuries by forty human authors, it is really telling one story about what God is doing in the world through Christ.

So, how much has that sentence, and these discoveries about the book that Jesus loved most, changed for me? After going back to kindergarten on the Old Testament, I wrote the One Year Book of Discovering Jesus in the Old Testament and then a series called Seeing Jesus in the Old Testament. Now I teach the Biblical Theology Workshop for Women around the country and internationally.

I have found that when people who love the Bible and love Christ are shown how to see Christ from the beginning to the end of the Bible, their joy explodes. Seeing the beauty, sufficiency, and necessity of Jesus Christ from every part of the Bible — including from the Old Testament — has the power to truly, deeply, and eternally change our lives.