Echoes in Eternity

"[Our present sufferings in these bodies] will not be worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed in us."

Here are a couple ("O Come, O Come Emmanuel" pt 1 & 2) excellent sermons from my church this Christmas season. Even if you've heard them already, they worth a second listen. The above quote comes from the second sermon discussing the glory to come in eternity. It reminded me somewhat of what Dostoevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamazov:

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage... that in the world’s finale... something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, of the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; and it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify what has happened.

Oh, never, never can [people] feed themselves without us [the Inquisitors and controllers]! No science will give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.” They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious. Thou didst promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man?

- Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy is when men are afraid of the light. - Plato

As a father who loves to read to my five-year-old daughter and can't wait to do so with my nearly two-year-old son (once he figures out the whole sitting-still-for-more-than-6.8-seconds thing), one obvious question that I need to answer on occasion (both for myself and for curious friends) is "what type of literature can they handle?" And I not just referring to literary vocabulary. Clearly, one can't read Crime and Punishment to a three-year-old because the words alone would lose him like Hansel and Gretel in the forest. But what about the content of that same Dostoevsky book? Even if a child can understand the words, are the "thematic elements" (as the movie rating industry might call them) too "adult" for him? I know plenty of parents who would answer with a resounding "yes."

But is the answer that clear-cut? Recently, I've been reading to my daughter the first in the 100 Cupboards trilogy by N.D. Wilson (Pastor Doug Wilson's son). We're not far enough into it yet to get an idea of where exactly the story is going to take us (my guess is some Narnia-like land), but I am willing to bet that, like the books of Aslan, this trilogy will have some dark moments in it. Isn't it interesting that the classic "children's" literature is ripe with dark plot lines (Dickens, anyone?), while much of today's kid lit is bereft of anything remotely bordering on truly sinister or foreboding?

For my part, I can't wait to read The Lord of the Rings to my kids and, when the time comes, watch the Peter Jackson film versions of the Tolkien trilogy with them (movies are a slightly different animal, as they can overwhelm a child's imaginative capacities). Kids need to know that the world is dark at an early age rather than pretend everything is just Santa Clauses and Popsicles til junior high. N.D. Wilson expands on this point here, saying that the difference between children's and adult literature should be that the truth is just deeper, that adult lit just adds "more dragonflies."

Sure, there are many authors out there who see a children’s book as an opportunity to wise some kids up to the heady ways of the adult world (issues, after all, are important, and future important people should grapple with them at a young age). These adult types want kids to face the Truth, and the Truth is hard. The world is hard and not necessarily interesting... Kid, you’ve seen the world now; I’ve shown it to you in this fine piece of award-winning fiction. Now you know that insurance companies are out to get you, and your sick grandmother and only you can save the wetlands. Or not. Have fun in high school.

On the other hand, the bestseller lists are crowded with kids’ books featuring dragons and vampires and dwarves and many, many comic variations on Tolkien’s creatures and characters. (To say nothing of all the happy, happy endings.) And if you push against this type of fiction for children, you’ll get some very grandmotherly defenses.

A few examples from my own pushings:

It’s important to preserve this time of innocence.

We need to water young imaginations.

What’s wrong with dreaming?

Some kids need to escape (especially when they’re getting beat up at school).

(And variations . . .)

I agree with all of this, but there’s an undercurrent to it that I dislike. The assumption is that kids don’t need/can’t handle the truth. They need some time to be happy before they discover how much the world sucks and/or how boring it really is. Lie to the kids now, and they will look back on it fondly later. (Santa anyone?)

I don’t want to lie to kids. Ever. I don’t want to lull them to sleep before the real world wakes them up with a head slap and a wet-willy in the ear sometime during adolescence. I like the hard-nosed commitment to Truth and The Real that I see in some of my issues-driven colleagues. And I like the joy and the happiness and the thrill that is woven into the work of many others.

The two belong together.

I write kids’ books because I can tell the Truth, and the Truth is that The Real is throbbingly fantastic... I want them to get a world vision that can grow and mature and age with them until, like all exoskeletons, it must be cast aside—not as false, but as a shallow introduction to things even deeper and stranger and more wonderful (and involving more dragonflies).

It is because I try to write this way that I use so much darkness. Evil is more than a prop. True sacrifice is not a sleight of hand. Laughter in the face of adversity is the first step to profound joy in triumph.
...
C.S. Lewis wrote truth for the young, and he wrote truth for the old. The weave is finer in That Hideous Strength than in Narnia, but the truth and the ingredients are the same in both. That apple pie hasn’t lost its savor, and it continues to feed me even when I’m not reading, when I’m walking beneath a row of maples or climbing a hill or slaving on a project . . . when I’m writing.

The Bible routinely is the victim of people deciding to "kidify" it. Rather than tell the whole story of David and Bathsheba (leaving aside details they wouldn't understand), many children's Bible storybooks settle for "David was bad, God was mad" or don't tell the story at all rather than spend the time explaining why a just God would kill a child because of the sin of his father. Avoid those messy stories, and you may get a son or daughter who grows to find Brian McLaren quite appealing. Avoid the Truth of life, and your child will get one big "wet-willy" sooner than later. Be willing to tackle the dragon of life straight on and slay it with honesty rather than escapism.

Read hard children's books to your kids, and read them to yourself as well. As C.S. Lewis once said,

No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty... The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all.

Wonderful quote by Dostoevsky from The Brothers Karamazov:

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, of the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; and it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify what has happened.

It's incredible to consider that God has something so amazing planned that all the suffering in this world until then will be justified. For if mankind had not suffered through droughts, diseases, genocides, earthquakes, and all sorts of evil, would heaven be all that glorious?