I was wrong to ignore fiction so long.

I started off young as a reader, which set me on a good foot, but one of the laments I have of my adolescence is that I wasn’t encouraged to continue being a reader. Sports and then music took over my life. I did the minimal in English classes (though I managed to score high—how?) and you’d be shocked at how few of the classics I’ve read. It wasn’t until I became a Christian at age 20 when my new-found love of the Bible kindled in me a desire to read and learn in order to know God. This meant reading lots of non-fiction as I sought to learn the languages, culture, history, etc. of the Bible. It lead me into degrees in philosophy and biblical studies. All good.

But along the way fiction has played a small to minimal role in my life. I’ve justified myself by thinking it was of a second rate. Sure, it’s a good hobby to have; something to unwind with; something for entertainment.

But I was wrong.

A couple weeks ago, as my mental strength returned in between chemo rounds, I picked up C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy. From the first chapter of Out of the Silent Planet I was enthralled by his ability to write. And I mean write! His words were a joy to read and a story that starts out with a Cambridge philologist didn’t hurt getting me into the narrative either!

But something really changed in me as I kept reading and especially as I moved into and through Perelandra. I started to see life differently and the romantic part of me came alive. It awakened imaginations and feelings about life that were seemingly suppressed down below. It has changed my thinking, my processing, my writing. There’s no way I won’t return to my academic studies a better thinker. There’s no way I won’t return to reading the Bible more romantically. That’s already been the case day by day.

Perhaps the greatest joy of this reading was Lewis’s ability to magnificently retell the story of Eden, good and evil, temptation, Fall, Incarnation, redemption, and New Creation that most awakened in me greater praise to God. At first I thought Lewis was brilliant—and, well, he was. But then I came to see that really he understood God and the Bible so well (not to mention other classic literature) that he was able to tell the ‘Old Story’ in such a way that I have come back to the Bible with awakened eyes. It was me who was dead. Lewis helped me see beyond him, his writing, and his story to the magnificence of God and his marvelous creative and redemptive work. And here he used fiction to do it.