A concession

Obligatory Impressionist painting accompanying Victorian novel

 

"We all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them." 

 George Eliot, Middlemarch

I recently sat for my MA exam, and studying for this meant ingesting as much of a 36-author reading list as possible. The idea is to produce graduates who are generalists in Anglophone literature, so the list included everyone from Marie de France (who is a PARTAY and deserves a post of her own) to Salman Rushdie.* One of the authors I had to meet for the first time was George Eliot. Going into it, I was pretty stoked to read Middlemarch, because I had heard so much about it from authors I respect, who highlighted its discussion of female agency and intellectualism. Unfortunately, my longstanding struggle with literary Realism was not about to dissipate, and Middlemarch required some of the most stamina I have ever needed in order to finish a book. I couldn't deal with all....that....detail. The entire time reading, I couldn't help thinking that what Eliot would take 150 pages to write, Austen could say in one paragraph. Oh well. (Also Dorothea Brooke is one of the most annoying characters I have encountered. So much for cool, intellectual heroines.)

ANYWAY, I didn't intend for this post to be a rant about Victorian novels. Instead, the above quote turned itself over and over in my head as I read Middlemarch, and I think it's a perfect summary of the novel as a whole. Hypothetical Reader, do not bother trying to tackle all 800 pages of that book; this quote is all you need to know. #lifehacks However, beyond the quote's nature as a key to reading the novel, I really liked it for its own merit as well. Eliot was spot on in diagnosing why we make so many of the stupid decisions we later (or instantly) regret. I was going to try writing a whole blog post expanding on this quote, but the more I try, the more I realize that it really just stands on its own. There is a tangible power to metaphor, and having the self-awareness to recognize how this plays on your perception of the world is incredibly valuable.

Even though I hated almost my entire experience of reading Middlemarch, I consider it worth it for just that one insight.

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* No, I did not read all 36. This is grad school, remember? The true learning objective is being able to correctly guess which items on an unreasonable reading list are the ones you're supposed to know. Pamela did not make the cut.**

** I would like to add that said exam, in an administrative decision undoubtedly sadistic, took place DURING SPRING BREAK.***

*** All professors seemed to have forgotten the imminence of said exam and assigned us EXTRA homework in the weeks leading up to it. Ok, rant over, I promise.

In which I orate

Apparently reading a different VanDrunen book each year has become a tradition for me:

“According to Scripture...marriage is an exalted state. But it is not the only God-pleasing state in which we can live. While the church does well to affirm marriage and childbearing, it often does a disservice to many of its members by marginalizing the nonmarried and the childless. This can happen in various ways. For example, it can happen when churches advertise themselves as being family friendly or as supporting family values, even when many of their members do not have a family, at least not a spouse or children. It can happen when churches treat unmarried adults simply as those who are not yet married, as if their lives are in a holding pattern until marriage brings meaning to them. It can happen when Christians segregate their social lives, as if the people who are married with children should primarily associate with each other and unmarried people with each other (and, when they do mingle, by people talking incessantly about their children as if those without children find such conversations just as fascinating as they do). It can happen when Christians raise girls as if being a wife and mother is the only worthy goal to pursue in life, such that those who do not marry and have children feel that they have somehow failed and are unprepared to find valuable things to do.” 

(Bioethics and the Christian Life, p. 100)

I’ve long been convinced that this is one of the ways the Church today often falls into profound self-destruction. Every one of VanDrunen’s examples has been deeply relatable for me, not only in the local church but the culture of Christianity at large. Touting ourselves as “family friendly” does at least as much harm as the good it believes itself to do, because doing so marginalizes the very demographic that Scripture itself claims is most physically able to serve the church. Furthermore, identifying ourselves primarily by “family values” is indicative of an underlying social gospel - “moral” conduct is now more important than purity of worship or theological integrity. It’s impossible to get the “practical” aspects of Christian living right if we don’t understand them as a product of God-glorifying doxology and doctrine first; failure to do so leads to legalism and, often, abuse.

The best examples of church life I have witnessed were cases in which the church’s theology and worship flowed into proper relationships between members of the congregation; single people in particular were valued for their own sake. They were not treated as inconvenient problems to be solved, second-class adults waiting to finally “grow up,” and they were neither patronized nor exploited. They were seen as individuals who had something to offer to the rest, and were encouraged to maximize these abilities. The fruit of such an attitude played out in the singles’ active involvement in church life. The church needed them. I can’t help but think how much more our churches could flourish if they shared this attitude.

Living in the church for 24 years, I have witnessed how a change in an individual's relationship status can launch - overnight - a flurry of invitations and overtures of friendship which had previously never been offered. This kind of thing can't go on. If there is only one practical takeaway from this post, let it be this: Treat singles as equals (because that's exactly what they are before God).

Atta boy Sidney

Since, then, poetry is of all human learnings the most ancient and of most fatherly antiquity, as from whence other learnings have taken their beginnings; since it is so universal that no learned nation doth despise it, nor barbarous nation is without it; since both Roman and Greek gave divine names unto it, the one of “prophesying,” the other of “making,” and that indeed that name of “making” is fit for him, considering that whereas other arts retain themselves within their subjects, and receive, as it were, their being from it, the poet only bringeth his own stuff, and doth not learn a conceit out of a matter, but maketh matter for a conceit; since neither his description nor his end containeth any evil, the thing described cannot be evil; since his effects be so good as to teach goodness, and delight the learners of it; since therein—namely in moral doctrine, the chief of all knowledges—he doth not only far pass the historian, but for instructing is well nigh comparable to the philosopher, and for moving leaveth him behind him; since the Holy Scripture, wherein there is no uncleanness, hath whole parts in it poetical, and that even our Saviour Christ vouchsafed to use the flowers of it; since all his kinds are not only in their united forms, but in their several dissections fully commendable; I think, and think I think rightly, the laurel crown appointed for triumphant captains doth worthily, of all other learnings, honor the poet’s triumph. 

(The Defense of Poesy, The Major Works, Oxford, p. 232)