In our first Tov Book Club selection, Austin Carty’s The Pastor’s Bookshelf: Why Reading Matters for Ministry, we are treated to a chapter about reading as departing from our world into the world of another, with the implication that we learn to love others.
Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash
Miroslav Volf contends that departure is part of the Christian journey, and sometimes that departure “within the cultural space one inhabits” (Carty, 53). Reading can be a form of departure, even if imagined, because in reading one experience departing from one’s world into the world or experience of another.
Hence, read cultivates empathy, and empathy cultivates love for the other, and hence, in reading we learn to love others.
Carty tells a story about the summer of 2020 and the race tensions in the USA. He wanted to do something about it and began to work with an African American pastor to have a community vigil. But before long he realized many whites were hijacking the moment and turning the moment from “equal rights” into “our own moral righteousness,” which many today call virtue signaling and can be connected to grandstanding. Carty apologized to his friend, who had perceived the same, and they went on, at his friend’s lead, to form a meaningful event.
John Dunne: reading is learning to love.
Question: Which novel has taught you the most to love others? (Mine will be mentioned below.)
So Carty turned to one of my favorite novels, one that will take you into the heart of another person – a nameless black man’s life in America: Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man. In that novel the central character observes with suspicion all the do-gooders who work for the benefit of African Americans. That man was invisible. White people were looking through him.
Learning the life of others, that is, learning to love them, opens us up in ways that expand us into more fully developed persons. In that we realize our own complicities as we learn the experiences of others.
Back to Volf: reading can lead to the embrace of others as we discover the other as our neighbor and to live in community with others. For Carty, reading is his best way to learn love for others.
Reading that teaches us to love others can help turning the invisible people of our society into visible neighbors.
Who has become visible to you because of reading?
Theology that is not loving, theology that is not lived theology, is not full theology. It is thin gruel. Inadequate for what is needed to act as human agents in a world that needs more people loving the other.
What happens to the person who does not read in order to love others, or who does not interact with others in order to love others? What happens to the person who cannot embrace others? They form persons who have a kind of social attachment disorder.
I am still digesting yesterday’s post from Scot, so as I read this I am thinking of the single women. Are they part of the invisible to us church people? Are we even stopping long enough to love them? I have read the chapter on love 3 times….it is beautiful and challenging.
Two that come to my mind this morning are Unbroken and Boys in the Boat. Both authors are talented writers who compel you into the story of the characters. Both deal with pain, trauma and the eventual call to forgive. Very formational for me. Both show me how to love our ones who brought deep harm through forgiveness.