Don’t tell your own story—most writers have boring lives. And even if you tell your own story once, whose story are you going to tell the next time? Tell someone else’s story.

–Joyce Carol Oates [1]

I don’t know why, but when I read these words about writing today, they did not only resonate with their seemingly self-evidential nature, but with the glorious shimmer of illumination.  For the first time in a long time, I entertained the thought that I had been a writer and then moved on to the inevitable speculation of whether or not I still was one.  Now this is not a corridor I haven’t wandered down before, and certainly not the first time that my passage down that path was accompanied with pious thoughts of bringing glory to God.

But today was different.  Different in that the thought was not suddenly accompanied with an inexplicable urge to sit down and write something, to go and do something, to exert some effort of my own, to apply some creativity.  No.  Instead, I could only bring myself to whisper to God in fear and trembling, whispering for lack of words in that quiet shock of epiphany.  For the first time, I was struck by the impossibility of the writer’s task and the simple truth that it was beyond me.  How could I write?  How could I, who am so enraptured with myself that I see no need for the appreciation for the Other, no need to pay attention beyond when such knowledge benefits me, no need to step out of the comfortable bubble of unreality that I constantly formulate and reformulate in response to the hostile encroachments of the rest of the world.  No need.  There’s no need to love, because that would be uncomfortable.  That would be unreasonable.  That would mean enjoying something, someone for who they are and not what they represent.  When the only thing in the world that matters is me, what’s the point?

And this was the person who thought he could tell a story.  A story about other people.  With thoughts.  With philosophies.  With personalities.  With life–irreducible to the sum of the psychological and sociological and any-other-ogical terms we try to model them in.

And all of a sudden, I was ashamed.  Ashamed of the “writer” I had been, who had confessed with his mouth that he was writing for God, but believed in his heart that he would justify himself.  Common grace may abound in some, allowing for them to write great books without God, but I knew at  that moment that that was impossible for me.  Without God–.  Without bearing a cross beyond mere writer’s discipline–.  I cannot write.  If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And this fallen, selfish, comfort-loving sinner, apart from the mercy and lovingkindness of his Lord and Savior has not love.

To tell the truth, I’m not sure what to make of this feeling.  Part of me just wants to sit down and write.  But another part of me is afraid that is just the flesh and its temptation.  Is this just some spasm of self-glorifying rebellion?  Or a moment of amazing grace?  Whatever it is, sanctification is important.  I need to be more like Him.

I must spend more time in prayer.  Please remember me in yours.

[1] quoted from Crouch, Andy, “Omit Unnecessary Words”,  The Best Christian Writing 2006, ed. John Wilson. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005.