Ep. 302: The Spiritual Discipline of Reading

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the indoubt Podcast, where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week we talk with guests who help answer questions of faith, life, and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s word. For more info on indoubt, visit indoubt.ca or indoubt.com.

Daniel Markin:

Hey, this is Daniel Markin, and on today’s episode of indoubt what you’re going to hear is a conversation between myself and Jessica Hooten Wilson, who is a writer. But more importantly, she is just a very knowledgeable person on literature and books. The book she has written actually brings all those things together: our Christian faith, reading, literature, all of that in her book called The Scandal of Holiness. So we’re talking about that but we’re talking about the book and talking about, how do we engage in reading again? This is a really fun conversation because it really challenged me. I got to be reading. I got to get back into this and be spending time, slowing down, and using that reading time to be with the Lord. Using that reading time to know Him better. Not just through the Bible, but through other works of literature that’ll actually point me towards the true things of God in this world. So I hope you enjoy this episode. I know I did.

Hey, welcome to indoubt. This is Daniel Markin, and today I’m joined by Jessica Hooten Wilson. Jessica, how you doing today?

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

I’m doing wonderful, thank you.

Daniel Markin:

It’s good to have you on. Thank you for joining us on the program today. For our guests who don’t know who you are, maybe they haven’t encountered your work, would you give us a quick bio? Tell us who you are, what you’re doing these days? Or as I like to say, what’s your deal?

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

So I have been a teacher for a long time. I started teaching elementary and then high school at a classical school in Fort Worth. Then I loved teaching so much, I really felt like I knew who I was when I was standing in front of that classroom, so I went on to get a Ph.D. in Theology and Literature. I taught great books essentially for another dozen years or so. And now, I’m at the point in my career, I’ve written five or six books, and so I get to mostly write and represent the schools that I studied with and that I trained at and that I loved teaching at. Mostly I’m teaching in the summer, so I’m working at Pepperdine University right now. I’m a scholar for them because they have the Great Books program that formed me and I get to point people back that direction.

Daniel Markin:

Amazing. Okay, so I want to ask this. When you talk about great books … Because literature is super interesting. To me, it’s like a degree where so many people have missed out on taking that. I totally missed out on that. I think reading for so long, for so many people, maybe in my generation, it’s like a tough slog. It’s just not for people. Some people don’t like reading. But I tried my best to train myself to get more into reading and I did that by picking up some pieces of literature. And I loved it.

I think it’s something that more and more people need to add to their entertainment repertoires. Pick up some of the classic books, begin to read those, and allow those to form who you are. Some of your mind and thoughts about things and critical thinking. What would be some of those great books of literature? Because off the top of my head I can think of some of those authors, but if you were to recommend some even before we dive into the book that you’ve written, what would be some of these great books that you’d recommend for us?

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

So, what are some of the ones you think of?

Daniel Markin:

Well, I think of authors like … Well, so I hear of Dostoevsky. All the time, I always hear about him. I hadn’t read him. But I plan to. I have books on my shelf. Another great book, we read John Steinbeck growing up. So we read in school Mice and Men. Then I picked up East of Eden. It was one of the best books I’ve ever read. I love that book. George Orwell, some of his works. Charles Dickens, you have people from that era, Alexandra Dumas. So that’s what I think of. I think of some of that literature. I know I’m probably missing a ton. Classics like Moby Dick. What would be some of the ones that you studied and maybe influenced you?

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

C.S. Lewis says that if you don’t read good books, you’re going to be formed by bad ones, and he’s writing that in the 1940s. I think it’s more true now to say, if you don’t read good books, you’re going to be formed by bad media. And so, there’s good media and bad media, but if you don’t have the thickness of soul that a lot of these great books provide, you don’t know how to discern those things between the good and the bad media that’s kind of always on for us. So I think great books give you that perspective because the media is here and now and immediate and present.

The great books that I think of are the ones that go way back. So you look Homer’s Iliad, Odyssey. Dante’s Divine Comedy. Of course, Dostoevsky, I’ve written two books on Dostoevsky. Flannery O’Connor, Christine de Pizan who’s a 14th century writer that I’m just in love with. You mentioned a lot of the guys, but there’s a ton of women. Anna Akhmatova, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Marie De France, Hildegard von Bingen.

I like to study all of the great writers from the very beginning, looking at the ancient sources, the oldest sources we have, all the way up to now, and who are those voices that are carrying the tradition forward. I think our generation, our students now, have the possibility that if they’re reading in this tradition, they can be part of it. So if people want to be writers and songwriters and artists and creators, they need to have that tradition. They need to have that whole view of the past to write something that lasts in the future.

Daniel Markin:

I agree. And there’s something significant, too, by jumping into that river and feeling what that’s like as people try and create their own. Because it’s like you want to know what the great pieces are and what those felt like as you read them and what they do. I love that we’re just talking about books right now because this has been pretty fun. What makes good books so rich? As opposed to a quick movie, hour and a half, books, you read those for a number of hours. But what makes them so rich and what gives them such depth?

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

Yeah, absolutely. I love the metaphor you used of jumping into the river, or like diving into my book. The word influence that we have, it means inflow in Latin. So what is flowing into you? When you talk about being formed and then pouring back out, you need to think about the metaphor you just gave. What is that river? Well, it should be things that challenge you to get stronger. The reason that some great books are a slog for people is because that muscle, that mental muscle has atrophied for a lot of us, and we have weak imaginations.

So if we’re going to get strong enough to be able to ride out those currents, you have to begin with these works that ask something of you. If the work just pats you on the back or just says what you already believe to be true, you’re not actually getting any stronger, any thicker, any more able to ride the currents of time and crisis and the things that are going on in the world. Whereas these books, they are showing you something that’s universally true. They’re putting you in touch with things that have lasted forever and that will continue to last, versus the things that change every moment.

Daniel Markin:

Man, times change but people don’t. That’s the thing I learned in my history degree was basically people don’t change. It’s just a cycle and we experience the same things. I find that fascinating. Okay, so now you have written your own books, and one of the ones we want to talk about today is The Scandal of Holiness. Now, I mean as a title, that’s a great title.

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

Thank you.

Daniel Markin:

What compelled you to write this book? So maybe tell us a little bit about what is The Scandal of Holiness and then what compelled you to write that?

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

Sure. So the word scandal, I use very purposefully. We’re talking about things that challenged us, books that challenged us. So, holiness itself is a scandal, and what that word means, it comes from the New Testament use of it is as a stumbling block. So the word skandal, S-K-A-N-D-A-L, means stumbling block. Things that make you trip. You’re happily walking on your way in life thinking where you’re going and what you’re doing, and then something makes you trip and be like, “Wait, what? Where was I supposed to be? Am I supposed to be here or somewhere else?”

So holiness does that to you. Because you think you have life all figured out in what you’re doing, but holiness calls you outside of yourself to something higher and bigger and more meaningful and holy other. That’s what holiness means. It’s so other. That’s why in the Jewish tradition, holiness was separated between you and the curtain so that you couldn’t be burned alive by God.

Daniel Markin:

In the temple, yeah.

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

And so, it’s this idea of holy other. But now in the Christian story, that holy other’s within you and it’s accessible, and God can actually scandalize you. He can make you holy. So the books I write on, these are books that have scandalized me and to stop being so accepting of the mundane, so accepting of just ordinary goodness or even ordinary vice most of the time. Like, oh, it’s just a small sin or it’s a small problem, it’s an inconvenience in my life. It’s not really a big issue that I have. Instead, it’s like whoa, but what could I be if I was scandalized by God into something greater and bigger?

Daniel Markin:

To tease out the metaphor of where you’re talking about with a scandal, I just think of scandals in the media or scandals in a movie or celebrity scandals, whatever, where it’s like you have an expectation and that thing, it gets ripped from you. It’s confusing, it’s hard, and it’s frustrating and weird. You kind of feel like an ache. That’s just interesting to apply that to holiness because when we’re called out about sin as Christians … Because the mark of a true Christian is that we’re repenting sinners. That’s what actually unites all of us. No matter where you come from, no matter what your sin, no matter what, what actually unifies us is that we repent of that sin. We might fall back into that sin, yet what unites us again is that we repent of that sin.

But that’s a hard journey and it’s a deep and difficult thing to do because it exposes you. It just feels like you are at the center of a huge scandal. Yet, it’s the expected thing in the Christian life. Almost like it’s a repeated scandal. You are going to be in this over and over and over again. But the more you can let go of your ego, the easier it is to wade that scandal. And maybe there’s a deeper metaphor there for life and life of faith as well. I mean, what do you think?

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

I think it is a gradual and continual process. In the book I talk about The Scandal of Holiness as that process of sanctification. To be moved to be holy ones, and that’s the word that’s used throughout the New Testament. All the letters that are coming from Peter and Paul are written to the holy ones of God. They’re written to the saints of God, to the sanctus. That’s the Greek for it. They’re written to us to become holy, and it’s a lifetime calling that we are now moving to become holy beings. If we’re going to be holy beings, then you’re right, it’s going to be a daily death to self. A daily being scandalized out of our old nature or our old way of being into the new.

Daniel Markin:

And guess what? That old nature in being still calls. It’s like an old slave master that still is trying to call us. Paul used that language. It’s like you were slaves to sin, now you’re slaves to Christ. You’ll be walking on the street and the old slave master sees you and still calls your name. Everything in you from your years and years and years and years of doing, you hear that voice and your head snaps. You look and it’s like, “Am I supposed to do this?” Because that’s what was so natural for so long, and yet we respond to a new master and that new master is calling us to follow him.

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

Well, and that’s why I wrote the book. What I’m trying to point out is yes, that is incredibly true, but where that old masters are coming from has a lot to do with media, distraction, bad marketing, temptation towards bad reading, towards bad books. If you’re going to be able to hear the voice of God, you have to know what God sounds like. And God speaks to us through beauty and truth and goodness. If we are not cultivating an imagination that is always responding more to that voice where we can hear what is beautiful, where we can see what is good, where we can love what is true, if we’re not cultivating that in ourselves, then we are going to be led astray towards the things that are easier, less scandalous, less challenging, more affirming of who we already are versus who we’re supposed to become. So we have to do the hard work of reading the difficult books that make us stronger to resist that temptation of the old master, and be drawn always towards the new one.

Daniel Markin:

So using that metaphor you mentioned of exercising that muscle, what I just heard you say there is almost like we’re talking about discernment. As you grow as a believer, we’re trying to grow in our discernment to follow the things of God, to walk in holiness. For maybe our audience who are new believers, when we talk about salvation, there’s three phases of it. There’s justification which is done by Christ and Christ alone. He justifies us. He declares us, in a very legal way, not guilty. Okay, we’re innocent.

But then there’s part two, which is sanctification, which is that lifetime of back and forth, back and forth, returning back to the Father, returning back to Christ. But then, the last piece of salvation is glorification, where we actually become fully like Christ. Now we become like him. Everything we’re doing is to become more and more and more like Christ. And while we don’t become fully divine as Christ is divine, we become as close to the image of God that we can in this life, which, interestingly enough, we have to die. That’s the last piece of our sanctification, is we have to die just as Christ died. But then, just as Christ was raised to life, so we will be with Him in Heaven, which I always thought, that’s a pretty scary way to end sanctification. But I suppose as you grow and grow in sanctification, it becomes less and less scary.

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

Well, that’s why I write about death in this book. It’s the very last chapter. It’s all about not being afraid of death but remembering it constantly, facing it, imagining what death is going to look like. Novels are, to me, the most vicarious way to experience something that we will only experience once and never again. That’s death. And so, it is an unknown for all of us. No matter how close it comes to you through other people, it is unknown in yourself. So you have to live vicariously through fiction to actually be able to dwell on that death, to not be afraid of death, to recognize it as that door towards glorification. I think that fiction can do that for us. I think it can help us imagine what it means to die well. By reflecting on that, then we also, of course, then look back and say, “Well then how do I live towards that good death?”

Daniel Markin:

Yeah, towards a good death. I think right now we have a culture that’s really afraid of death. Let’s talk a little bit about literature and I want to hear how you talk about this in your book, too. How do they talk about death in some of these great works? Then how do you bring those together in your work? Maybe, do you compare and contrast what good death looks like as Christians? And so, what does that look like? Think about the great writers. How do they talk about death?

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

Well, talking about death throughout all of literature would be a huge thing. I only take on three different instances in which I see glimmers of sanctity in how characters handle death. So one of them that I look at is Walker Percy who’s a writer I just really enjoy and love. He wrote a book called The Last Gentleman. It ends with this young man who, he must be 16, 17 years old and he’s dying of cancer, and there’s an atheist onlooking who’s been his friend on this voyage, knowing the whole time, the whole time they’ve been friends, this guy Jamie, 17 years old, is dying. And so, the atheist, Will Barrett, is looking on this, and the young man asks to have a priest there at his death.

But it’s this amazing contrast of the holiness that’s going to be happening as this young man is baptized right before he dies, and the stench and foulness of the actual death. It’s a beautiful moment to realize the reality of God, where God comes in to the lowest places. I mean, God is born among dung in a manger in the lowest places. God is not afraid to enter into the death of a child; in this instance, a teenager who’s dying a gruesome death. God enters that space. The priest who’s there is just perfunctory. He’s not a grand man. He’s just performing the rite. He does this all the time. He works at the hospital. He sees death constantly. It means very little to him to keep moving through the motions. Yet God can work through that vehicle who isn’t even a great priest because God is great.

And so, this whole moment is redeemed in a very scandalous way because everything about it seems to point against our sentimentalism. We want a beautiful death. We want a holy death. We want light entering the room. We want angels singing. We want a priest who gives us all the right words at the right time. Yet, God goes through all of these mundane things to show His glory even in this moment. And so, it’s just a wrecking scene that sticks with you.

And so, that’s just one instance I think of literature making you grapple with death and not having an easy answer, not having something you can put on a bumper sticker, but changing your heart and giving you images that you hold onto and that you stay with so that you’re constantly wrestling with these questions for yourself and you move towards mystery. You move towards greater knowledge than what you knew before.

Daniel Markin:

Wow. The image of, one of my friends, her grandpa was known here in Canada as a great pastor. His ministry is just known as this great ministry of just loving, caring guy, brought people together. On his death bed, he had cancer, he had all his children and all his grandchildren come to the hospital. One by one, he had each one come into the room and he talked to them and told them what he loved about them and what he wants for them, and just almost blessed each one of them in this beautiful way, and then eventually passed. And this is all while he is in the hospital. But here’s someone who in his last moments is ministering to his family, loving his family, and showing them this doesn’t have to be a scary thing. This can be a beautiful, amazing, meaningful moment that can set you up for the rest of your life. How amazing is that to actually have a good death and think about someone who’s moving towards holiness in that moment. It’s pretty impressive.

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

I do talk about beautiful deaths like that too in Death Comes For The Archbishop because that kind of death, that’s imitating Jacob. Israel giving the blessing to all the 12. I mean, that is what we’re called to do is not be afraid of it, to be communal, to not be isolated, to not be alone in death. To really find a way to pass onto the next generation so that they’re not afraid of death because it doesn’t have to be something fearful.

Even one of my, I think, most moving stories that I talk about in the book is from A Lesson Before Dying, which is by Ernest Gaines. It’s about this young African-American in the 1940s who’s falsely accused of a crime and is going to the death chair. He’s going to be executed. Yet, he goes at the end through a real trial throughout the book, but he goes at the end wanting to imitate Christ. He wants to stand tall. He wants to be like the sheep going to the slaughter without making a sound. It’s this beautiful portrayal of courage in the face of injustice. I mean there’s just all these great examples of what death looks like and I think we all imagine that for ourselves. We want not just to live well, we want to die well. We want the story to have a good ending in that sense.

Daniel Markin:

In the book that you’ve written here, The Scandal of Holiness, what is the most challenging piece for us, and then what’s also the most rewarding piece for us as you’ve crafted this book?

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

I think one of the most challenging things is the idea of contemplation. I’ve been a teacher for a long time of college and my college students always want action, action, action. But action without contemplation is going to run you dry. You’re going to go empty very fast. You might be headed in the wrong direction with the right motivation and still end up with wrong results because of that. So contemplation is this necessary precursor to good action.

Daniel Markin:

What would you say is good contemplation? Can you put a time stamp on it? What does that look like for you?

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

No. I talk about it in the book. I wrote a whole chapter on it. So the practices of contemplation of what they look like, I would just recommend reading the book because the process of contemplation is not quickly stated. It’s something that takes a long time. It begins with reading scripture, with praying the words of scripture, with meditating on them, wrestling with them. And you move towards a place where you see God and you know His piece. You know what He wants you to do and you do it. Then, of course, you have to return to that, like you said, every day.

One of the images that I use that’s from the medieval tradition is the image in which Jacob saw the angels ascending and descending, the latter. So the process of contemplation is a constant ascending the latter and then descending again to do the work, and then ascending the latter. So it’s a continual thing. I think that’s really challenging for people who are very active-oriented. They really want to change the world and make things good and I get that. So that, I think that’s the most challenging. What was the second part of the question? You said most challenging and then?

Daniel Markin:

What’s the most rewarding? Rewarding.

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

Oh, yeah. Oh, I don’t even know how those could be different. I mean, I think the most challenging things in life are the most rewarding.

Daniel Markin:

There you go.

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

I mean, really they are. For me, it’s the idea that I keep hitting on, which is you cannot be a saint by yourself. I hit on that in almost every chapter, this idea of it should be freeing for us to recognize we’re not isolated. Holiness is not about self-improvement. It’s about being in a community of people and recognizing you belong there. You have a place in God’s story and you get to be part of it, you get to participate. He’s inviting you into that. That should be really freeing and encouraging, especially in this time of isolation that most of us have experienced the last couple of years. I think that that should be the most rewarding news in the book.

Daniel Markin:

And it’s timely for us especially because I think we fall into patterns of holiness just being like, do these things and then God will like you again. Even we can fall into that self-help way where it’s like, if I do these things, I’m actually growing in holiness. While the practices and the things that we do are vital, if you come at it with the wrong motive, thinking that these things as an end to themselves are actually going to make you more holy without bringing God into that, you’ve missed the whole point. What God’s after is relationship with you. In a sense, the closer you try and get to God, if your heart is just “I want to be with you, Lord, I want to know you,” that’s just going to result in holiness. There’ll be some times of discipline, but it’s like a loving discipline where He’s just transforming you and it hurts, it’s scandalous. But it’s going to result in more holiness.

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

Yeah, absolutely.

Daniel Markin:

Wow. Okay, so what is something you want to encourage us with or maybe something you want to challenge us with as we think about holiness, as we think about reading and literature, and all these things? Maybe, take our conversation. What’s one thing you want to challenge us with as we come to a close?

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

People who want to love the Lord, if they’re not practicing the spiritual discipline of reading, then they’re not going to be able to access the Lord as much as they could. I know that that’s a hard saying, but the reality is God chose to reveal himself in words, stories that were passed down that became the Old Testament, and also Jesus Christ is called the Word. Then we have the revelation that is codified for us, and the Christians became people of the book. So God created the whole world through words. God has created us to be word beings. It’s one of the things that differentiates us from animals. And so, a spiritual practice of loving God is to give you the resources that you need to love him more and better through reading words and knowing words, and memorizing words and having a whole treasure ark within you of beautiful, good, and true words to fight the noise that is around you.

To me, that is the greatest spiritual discipline that is needed in this generation. It’s hard, but it is worthwhile. It should be just as much as like fasting or praying to also be a reader.

Daniel Markin:

I’m inspired. I just want to pick up a book right now and start reading again. Well, it’s something I’ve enjoyed doing and I have totally fallen out of the practice. My wife and I, when our twin babies came along, I just came to the end of my masters and feelingly exhausted with that. On the day I handed in my last assignment for my Masters, Elise tells me we’re pregnant. That worked us into this crazy. So I feel like I haven’t even spent time reading it and I’ve really enjoyed it. If I can get past my tiredness, but maybe I just got to work that muscle and really dive into that and read.

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

It increases your energy. Speaking for someone who’s been pregnant five times and has three living babies, it is a hard thing, but it has always increased my energy. My brain returned more than a lot of my pregnant friends who weren’t readers. I had more knowledge of myself, more awareness of who my God was constantly. I have felt less drained over the years than people who I know who aren’t readers. It’s a reality that seems ironically not true. It’s like Martin Luther who said, “I have so much to do today, Lord, that I have to pray three hours.” He’s like, “Whoa, wait, what?” So it’s kind of like that. Lord, I’m so tired. That means I have to read poetry. I need to go read so that I will be less tired.

Daniel Markin:

Wow. Well, let’s all be readers and let’s follow the Lord. Just quickly before we close, just where can we get this book? Where can we pick this up?

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

Sure. It’s everywhere. I usually recommend Eighth Day Books because it’s my favorite small bookstore. I love supporting the small bookstores. But you can find it online anywhere or hopefully at your local bookstore. I hope you pick it up. I hope people read it. It’s also on Audible. It’s on audio books so you can get a copy, too.

Daniel Markin:

Well, thank you Jessica. Thank you for joining us today. It’s been great.

Jessica Hooten Wilson:

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1:

Thanks so much for listening. If you want to hear more, subscribe on iTunes or Spotify, or visit us online at indoubt.ca or indoubt.com. We’re also on social media, so make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Daniel Markin:

Indoubt is a ministry that exists to engage young people with Biblical truth and provide answers for many of today’s questions of life, faith, and culture. Through audio programs, articles, and blogs, indoubt reaches out to encourage, strengthen, and disciple young adults. To check out all the resources of indoubt, visit indoubt.ca in Canada or indoubt.com in the U.S. Or if you’re in a position or share a passion for the ministry of young people, you can support the ongoing mission of engaging a new generation with the truth of the Bible. First, you can pray for this ministry. Second, and if you are able, please consider a financial gift by visiting indoubt.ca in Canada or indoubt.com in the U.S. Your gift of any amount is such a blessing and an answer to prayer. Thanks.