Into the Fire

It’s easy to understand how the creative man or woman without the friendship and salvation of Jesus Christ could be intrinsically “brooding”. Let’s stick with writing fiction in this artistic assessment.

Fiction has its basic concept in honesty. Make-believe created to illustrate some real part of life. It doesn’t matter if fantasy, humor, or even science fiction is used as the vehicle, the story will still tell something about life—even if it’s only about the imagination of the author. The odds are it will give the reader more than a glimpse of the writer’s imagination. Most likely the story will also give the reader a viewpoint of life in general, a tone indicative of awe, cynicism, hope, or hopelessness. Most writers are mere reflections of their invisible outlooks on life as they perceive it, no matter if it’s set upon a world named “Juwelia” or a tiny town in eastern Washington. Versatile authors create a milieu of characters, diverse and real as the man next door or as fantastical and believable as a Narnia conception.

So with that in mind, someone who is totally reliant upon his wits and creativity, believing his inspiration and talent source come from a place inside his brain or from an outer source such as his communion with nature, the planets, or another human being, it is reasonable to picture this person as “brooding”. When all you have in this life is yourself to count on for all of your physical, emotional, and spiritual supplements, well . . . that’s enough to bring on depression, cynicism, and a certain level of joylessness.

Think about it. Left to his own thoughts, the deep examinations of a man without hope, perhaps assuming “this” is it—all there is on planet earth—eventually those thoughts will gravitate to, “What’s the use?” All the manmade “perfection” in the world—money, success, the fulfillment of physical desires and demands—will not ultimately satisfy the craving underwritten in the human psyche.

The entertaining storytelling of Hemingway, the poignant examination of human need and the failure to meet it in the stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald . . . what became of these men?

Without Jesus, there is only hopelessness.

That is why I regret to see any Christian, not to mention Christian writers, in what I refer to as “the dead zone”. This is the place where hope has become fleeting, prayers have become silenced, and the skin feels like a hardened shell from which the eyes are gazing out from a distance. I once wrote a poem about this place and titled it “Implosion”, picturing myself as a building set for destruction which folds inward upon itself because of the placement of an expert’s explosive charges. Collapsing upon itself.

While the dead zone is not a place I would wish on anyone, there is value in having been there and survived it. It reminds us that the enemy of our souls is clever, vicious, and deceptive, luring us into the captivity of desolation with a few well-placed lies and circumstances which we might or might not be responsible for. And as we slide into this bleak location, our Lord and Savior stands by with us, never leaving our sides, allowing the journey to prove His faithfulness, while we tend to think He is revolted by our decision making, our conduct, our faithlessness at having arrived in this God-forsaken residence.

A few well-placed explosives by the expert enemy, and we are ready to fold. We have become “brooding”, hopeless, faithless, and miserable. We fail to notice our blessings. We write of our defeats and portray the lives of ourselves and others as lacking every good quality worth emulating in life, sarcastic in tone, cynical in assessments, miserable in basic conversation. What’s worse is we have come to believe this is life, this is the “real” viewpoint, the way it is, baby. And in some perverted way we puff ourselves up with a frustrated pride telling ourselves that we’re the only ones who “get it”.

Gone are the truths we’ve known in the Word. Secretly, we deny them. If God is good, then how come . . .? We shudder as we mimic the cry of the world without Jesus. We have become a model for the marginal Christian, and our attitudes and lifestyles expose our nihilism. Our hidden thoughts begin to find fault with our loved ones, thinking they should be able to provide us with more “happiness” somehow.

And if we keep writing through this malaise, no one can tell the difference between a secular author and ourselves because the brooding authenticity is evident and pronounced. And in the bigger sense of what the writing has to offer, and by that I mean its lasting value, it is worthless.

If you’ve slipped so far away from the love of Jesus Christ that you cannot recognize your malady, you are in the dead zone. There is only one way out of there, and that is through the One who waits patiently for you to regain your authority in Him in order to remind the murderer that he has no power over you. When the desire returns to address the truth of your ways, to analyze the insidious lies you’ve allowed to seep into your worldview, to confront the enemy of your soul and remind him of his eternity as opposed to the redeemed position you can retain in Christ, you will pass through this valley of death and emerge battered and bruised from the ordeal but better for it just the same.

Your theology may allow you to believe that you can remain in this place of defeat and continue to meander through being morose, but you must consider this before you settle into it indefinitely. Christ declared his revulsion toward “lukewarm” in His people. He provided the redemption, the tools for survival, the never ending love, the closeness, counsel, and comfort of the indwelling Holy Spirit, and He will gladly go with us into the valley of death, but His ultimate goal is to present us as unblemished by our trials and testings, fully repentant for our periods of faithlessness and hopelessness. He is able to rescue us from the enemy of our souls, but we must not allow ourselves to wallow in the mire of the dead zone without accepting His relief. He is the Hero of our stories, the Rescuer, the Savior on the White Horse.

And for that very reason, we should not be “a brooding artist” if we call ourselves Christians.

Lord God, your Word tells us our hope is in you, our very life is in you. Even in the terrors of real suffering, you do not exit and abandon us. Feeling alone and truly being alone are not the same. If we choose to believe you are who you say you are, then we can survive the trials of the dead zone. Help me to totally rely upon you for all provision and victory in this life for as long as I have it here on earth. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.