Loving Our Neighbors as Writers

 

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

    A writer’s job is often lonely work. Sitting behind a computer, typing and retyping sentences, we forget that people will one day read our words. A face will gaze at a screen, a booklet, or a novel that contains our words. This is not an empty face – one that symbolizes the crowds – but the face of a person. Someone who has opinions, dreams, questions, and emotions.

    A real person, not a theory, will read and process the stories we create or the articles we craft.

    For this reason, a writer’s work has a relational component. The words we weave together touch the lives of people. We can easily forget this in the wild flurry of creativity. All we see is the raw creation in our hands as we sit alone and are blinded to any marks of darkness or ill intent.

    Emily Byrd Starr experiences this in Emily Climbs when she writes a mocking obituary poem about old Peter DeGeer to spite her Aunt Elizabeth. In sheer delight at her creation, she takes the poem to her teacher, Mr. Carpenter, and proudly presents it to him. She soon realizes her mistake when he asks her if such writing is worthwhile. 

    As he told her, “There is a place for satire – there are gangrenes that can only be burned out – but leave the burning to the great geniuses. It’s better to heal than hurt. We failures know that … Be merciful to the failures, Emily. Satirize wickedness if you must – but pity weakness” (Montgomery 25). She had not only created hateful, mocking words about a man who had recently died but had also hurt her friend who already felt like a failure.       

    To not consider the impact of our words, and to use them to wound instead of to heal, shows we do not care about others. We do not love our neighbor.

    During my MFA degree program, I studied under a professor who reminds me somewhat of Mr. Carpenter from the Emily of New Moon series. He had a way of helping students see reality and truth, just as Emily's teacher did. His classes introduced me to authors who could paint scenes that transformed ordinary moments into something magical, but also writers who used their craft to create stories that left me shaking my head, wondering why anyone would want to make something so vulgar and ugly. In his lectures, he taught literature and the craft of writing while drawing the students back into a biblical framework for writing. He often asked jarring questions – ones that awakened us to the reality that we have an audience of living, breathing humans. What we write will affect them, just as I was affected by the stories of the authors he assigned us to read. 

    “How can you love your neighbor through your writing?” He asked in multiple of his lectures.

    Loving our readers, as our Savior wants, means writing the best we can with clarity and preciseness. However, loving our readers also means much more. As I pondered this instruction, I knew it also meant thinking of my tone and intent in a piece. Do I come across as sarcastic, angry, or condescending in my writing? Am I fair in my presentation of arguments, or am I tilting my paper in favor of the position I favor? Is the story I am writing something beautiful, true, and good? Not that I am ignoring the harsh realities in life or the brokenness in the world. Rather, I should write with the knowledge that my writing can influence people for good or evil. Will I point them toward the light or push them farther into the darkness?

    Let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that creativity and writing are excluded from questions of morality. What people fill their eyes, ears, and minds influences their actions. Although readers have free will and choose to read the things they do, writers carry a responsibility. If what we have written wounds someone, or leads them to stumble into sin, then our Lord will hold us accountable on the day of judgment (2 Corinthians 5:10). He will tell us that we had not loved our neighbor – or Him for that matter – when we chose to stuff books and articles with words of hate, bitterness, or vulgarity.

    A writer’s job is a responsibility. We must choose what to do with the keypad or pen that sits in front of us. Will we write with a love for others, directing them to the Light? Or will we allow darkness to creep out of our hearts and onto the page to infect more people? 

    I pray that each of us will choose love. 

“If I can write an unkind letter, speak an unkind word, think an unkind thought without grief and shame, then I know nothing of Calvary love” (Amy Carmichael, If, 15). 

Sources

Carmichael, Amy. If. CLC Publications, 2018.

Montgomery, L. M. Emily Climbs. Virago, 2014.

Further Reading

• Practicing discernment in what we choose to read is important. Randy Alcorn has an excellent blog post about this, called “What You Read Builds Who You Are,” and provides insights worth considering.
• Katelyn J. Dixon shares her thoughts on the power of words in this beautifully written essay, “The Given Word” on Renovaré.
• As we write, or speak, to others, we are wise to pray and ask for the Lord’s help. We are dependent on Him in all areas of life. In “The Writer’s Prayer,” Dan Balow provides some written prayers we can use to get started. Consider also reading St. Thomas Aquinas’ “A Prayer Before Study.”
• In a previous blog post, “The Power of Words,” I wrote about the impact that writing and words can have on our lives. Often, the art we create can influence people in ways we do not expect.  
• One of the stories I read in a class taught by the professor I mentioned in this post inspired a New Year’s essay centered around Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych. Living with an eternal mindset is important for us all, including writers.