Twisted, Bent, Broken, Whole, Healing

Sometimes insight comes from the strangest places and at the strangest times.  After a day of classical education training last Friday, Diana and I weaved our way through Lynchburg traffic and located the nearest Panera Bread.  Placing our orders of Greek salads, sandwiches along with delicious pastries we claimed a booth in a corner nook.  There we discussed the flood of information from her day.  It centered around the trivium, the quadrivium, the two-ness of two, the Fibonacci sequencing, zero as a non-number, and the multiplication of the Trinity.  Very exciting stuff.  (Our friends think we are weird.)

It was another concept, however, that really churned my thinking.  In one of the sessions the presenter encouraged thoughtful interaction with reading choices.  Here is my take-away for understanding and evaluating reading material within the categories of twisted, bent, broken, whole and healing: 

Twisted material accentuates, honors, extols evil. Good is portrayed as evil and evil as good.  These stories are meant to enhance and encourage the evil tendencies of the reader.   

Evil is also dominant in bent stories.  While evil is evil and good is good, evil wins.  Ravi Zacharias describes it this way, “In reality nothing is so beautiful as the good, nothing so monotonous and boring as evil.  But in our imagination it’s the other way around, fictional good is boring and flat, fictional evil is very intriguing, attractive and full of charm.  The roles have been reversed.  Good has become boring; evil has become intriguing."

In the works which are broken we see the depths of depravity.  The storyline portrays the recklessness, the degeneration and the brokenness of human nature leading to feelings of hopelessness and despair.  In some of these works however good is made believable and appealing and there is a redeeming element present.  In the end we get a glimpse of the restoration of all things. Most of the classics are in this category. 

Whole works keep reaching higher toward what could be and should be, toward what we yearn for and hope to realize. They are a source of inspiration in our lives toward those things that are noble, admirable and excellent. We are attracted to the beauty of what is true and good.

It is recommended too that we develop a list of those works that have brought healing.  These are the selections that have been instrumental in our lives personally.  At a deep level, at just the right time and possibly at a crisis point, we have read this work and have been profoundly moved and significantly transformed.  For me The Normal Christian Life, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, and Prodigal God fit into this healing category. 

Days later we have arrived back in the peaceful confines of our home,, and I am still mulling over these ideas.  It occurs to me that in final analysis this framework is far more reaching than just reading material.  Besides providing a way of seeing literary arts (short stories, poetry, novels) it also gives discernment for the performing arts (movies, music, theater, dance) and the visual arts (paintings, photography, drawings). 

I’m thinking we need a forum to discuss what this all means.  It seems as though we should be having open conversations in order to come to some honest evaluations.  This is where we live after all.  It is impacting our lives.  To do so we will need humility, being honest with ourselves, a true conscience, and wisdom from above.