Imagination and the Spirit: an appeal to Christians who care about the written word

The Bible is the most eclectic group of writings on the planet. Even if you have not sampled every other collection of literature available, it is still safe to say that the writings contained within the Bible are more variegated, more broad in tone, more satisfying in their uniqueness and appealing in their diversity than anything else that exists. The reasons for this are many, and so obvious that we don't need to be reminded of them. But what we do need to remember, or perhaps to hear for the first time, is that to truly enjoy and benefit from the Bible we are required to approach it with an eclectic spirit.
What I mean by that is that we must engage the passage we are encountering as a unique and singular presentation of some truth. I was once told about a pastor who was so carried away by his particularly narrow theology that he only preached - week after week after week - from the book of Ephesians. For that reason both he and his congregation were robbed of the heroism of first Samuel, the beauty of the Psalms, the enigma of Ecclesiastes, the exotic drama of Genesis, the mystery of Daniel and Isaiah and the catharsis of Judges and Jeremiah. It's as if God had prepared a feast with 66 fresh, exciting courses, and this miserly servant was only passing around the potatoes.
Now, given the diversity of style and figures of speech, and the ancient substance of our primary book, one would expect Christians to be the most liberal and free-ranging readers on the planet. You might expect Christians to enjoy the freedom of poetry, the allure of allegory and the drama of truly unique fiction. If you were to judge by our first preference in literature, then Christians ought to be dipping their minds into scholarly efforts written by historians, essays in philosophy, biographies and true stories... even those without happy endings! But there are two different trends which make it clear that this is not the majority experience for believers today.
The first is the avalanche of Christian fiction which is continuously poured into Christian bookstores. Not that it is wrong to use fiction to explore or communicate Christian values, but this is hardly a good staple. Since fiction is the easiest thing to read, the least likely to change a life and the most likely to be transitory in its effects, Christians should limit what they take in of that genre at the very least. But it isn't just quantity that should bother us: it is also quality. Most of the Christian novels I have read over the last thirty years are very little different in tone or style or plot or device from the more massive and less worthy universe of secular novels which are equally easy to read. Granted, some very fresh and innovative writing is being done in fiction, but it doesn't tend to sell well, and so far it hasn't particularly popped up in Christian venues. This doesn't mean that no Christian fiction is worthy and unique and original, but it does mean that the average and ordinary, the predictable and the pragmatic are so abundant and overwhelming that any originality we may have to offer has likely become subsumed.
I recently ran across this observation from Douglas Gresham, and I think that it deserves our attention. He said, "One of the problems with reading Christian books is that because they are all telling the same Truth from the same source, their authors (with some notable exceptions) fall too easily in the trap of comfortably saying the same things, often in much the same ways." If we have properly ingested the writings of Jeremiah and Hosea and Ezekiel, of John and Paul and Mark, we should be avoiding this trap automatically. Sadly, I believe we have (in too many instances) grasped the point, or one of the points, the ancient authors are trying to make without being equally effected by the ebb and flow of the whole context. Most 'modernizations' of biblical allegories or stories are likely to be little more than a second run at the original story dressed up like a popular novel with the names changed so people can pronounce them. One of the great crimes against Christian literature is an inexplicable lack of soaring imagination.
The other trend, aside from a huge outpouring of mediocre stories, is this unbelievable variety of Bibles. Here the other side of the coin is seen - instead of too little variety, too much. We market a different Bible for teen boys, teen girls, Calvinists, people who are struggling with depression, people who want more money, men, women, men under thirty, women over forty, skaters, children, senior citizens, and college students. What difference can their possibly be between these Bibles? Translations aside, not much. The only difference is in the margins.
As a teaching pastor, I have listened in dismay as many Christians, when confronted with a question about a Bible passage, simply respond by reading what their footnotes tell them. Now before I am burned in effigy, let me say that I have no doubt that footnotes and cross-references in the margins of a Bible can help someone who is studying their Bible. Very good. But this trend is clearly getting out of hand. I first noticed this when I picked up a Bible intended for people who are sick or suffering. The Psalms in this Bible were just like my old Bible. The Proverbs weren't any different. Jesus was still telling the same stories in the gospels. The only difference was the profusion of anecdotes, devotional thoughts and encouraging quotations which filled every page, competing with the original text and clearly more attractive in design and layout.
Now that we are floating so far out to sea, it is probably too late to ask: is this really necessary? Have we reached a point where ordinary Christians cannot read a passage and work it out for themselves? Is it too much for us to linger, thinking over a verse or a chapter, chewing on it mentally until we have gotten something beneficial out of it? It is a mark of our unwillingness to work, or think hard, or labour over scripture that our first instinct is to say "hold on, let me see what my footnotes say." The most valuable book for the Christian's mind is a plain Bible with wide margins and no commentary. Such a tool forces us to think for ourselves or do without, and there are too few of them in circulation!
So this is my plea to the dozen or so people who may see this post. Let's raise our standards when it comes to literature. Let's demand more. Let's prepare ourselves for the very best, most imaginative, original, creative writing in the world by working over the plain, unadorned text of scripture, and then demand that authors who want to say something meet those high standards. Put your ultra-thick, super-commentary-filled, stuffed and plucked Bible on the shelves for a little while, sequester yourself with a copy of the Bible which is liberated and plain, and give your imagination and your comprehension a good workout. You may even find that your understand and your subsequent reading become a little more eclectic.