Post #1 (Longest one ever, I pretty much promise)

Let me state categorically, and for the record, that I think David Foster Wallace is basically the most insightful and prophetic voice in the modern age, in terms of what it means to be a human being living in the tension of the pain/pleasure dichotomy. To quote:

I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction’s job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. I guess a big part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves. Since an ineluctable part of being a human self is suffering, part of what we humans come to art for is an experience of suffering, necessarily a vicarious experience, more like a sort of “generalization” of suffering. Does this make sense? We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy’s impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character’s pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourishing, redemptive [emphasis mine]; we become less alone inside. It might just be that simple. But now realize that TV and popular film and most kinds of “low” art—which just means art whose primary aim is to make money—is lucrative precisely because it recognizes that audiences prefer 100 percent pleasure to the reality that tends to be 49 percent pleasure and 51 percent pain. Whereas “serious” art, which is not primarily about getting money out of you, is more apt to make you uncomfortable, or to force you to work hard to access its pleasures, the same way that in real life true pleasure is usually a by-product of hard work and discomfort. So it’s hard for an art audience, especially a young one that’s been raised to expect art to be 100 percent pleasurable and to make that pleasure effortless, to read and appreciate serious fiction. That’s not good. The problem isn’t that today’s readership is “dumb,” I don’t think. Just that TV and the commercial-art culture’s trained it to be sort of lazy and childish in its expectations. But it makes trying to engage today’s readers both imaginatively and intellectually unprecedentedly hard.

This is a quote I’ve more or less implemented and regularly cited with my Grade 10 and 11 English students, and refer to ad nauseam in class because I think it’s beautiful (in its own way) and true.

For students in a Christian “bubble” [rampant cliché], I see staggering value in the ethos of this statement because the Christian life is often framed in said contextual bubble as good, pure, and perhaps easy, and that the unbelieving, outside world is dark, sinful, and patently wrong. Wallace’s conception of life as 51% pain/49% pleasure, however, applies just as much to the Christian as to the adherent of any other worldview.

On a related note, and in another place in this 2003 interview, Wallace states that the role of fiction is to accurately portray “what it is to be a fucking human being.” He goes on:

This isn’t that it’s fiction’s duty to edify or teach, or to make us good little Christians or Republicans; I’m not trying to line up behind Tolstoy or Gardner. I just think that fiction that isn’t exploring what it means to be human today isn’t art.

From a Christian education standpoint, if we’re not turning students on to literature that explores the depths of the human experience, in all of its fallen and (hopefully) redemptive glory, then I maintain that we’re doing them a radical disservice.

This has several interesting implications for the Christian educator (which I’ll explore more in Post #2). Firstly, it occurs to me that literature of the aforementioned kind can unsettle students' parents. The reason being is that literature of this kind will usually feature certain “unsavory” language or adult themes, both of which many parents may want to safeguard their children from (until what age, I know not). In the shelter/preserve model of Christian parenting (in which the preservation of the child’s innocence is priority #1) lies an inherent danger: What happens to the child when they graduate from their Christian education and go on to the secular university campus or workplace? Essentially, I think the answer to this is that they’re in for a real straight-up and existentially shell-shocking metaphorical smack to the jaw. The outside world will bewilder said child, in a way in which they have no context or tools to adequately interpret, engage, or deal with.

So what are we to do? Enforce the shelter/preserve model favoured by many parents, or equip students with the abilities needed to not only handle a grossly fallen world, but to speak Christ’s redemptive presence into the messiness of the fallen human condition?

Stated rather obviously, I propose the latter option. For how can the message of redemption actually be redemptive without a teenager having prior knowledge of the messiness that needs redeeming?

In the Christian community, and perhaps at times from the parental viewpoint, the emphasis seems to often be on what adolescents should or should not be reading/watching/viewing, rather than on how adolescents are thinking and engaging critically with what they’re reading/watching/viewing. Obviously, there are certain forms of media Christians ought to avoid (pornography, most horror films, and Nickelback come to mind), but a willingness to be open-minded about typically non-conservative forms of literature, film, and music that portray life as it really is (for the purpose of considering what it means to be a human being, as Wallace says) would be beneficial to our Christian students.

Maybe this 51%/49% pain/pleasure conception of life is a bit too bleak for our students? Well, maybe in some ways, but perhaps there's hope in this too. Life as teenagers experience it (even Christian teenagers) isn't always all roses, and certainly from a biblical perspective, this experience is a true result of what it means to live in a state of fallenness, sin, and partial separation from God. But without this ubiquitous pain and suffering we experience on a personal and collective level as humans, there would be no redemption, hope, or ultimate victory. Good literature helps us to empathize with the pain of others and be comforted in the midst of our own pain. It also vividly outlines what it means to be a human being living between the trees, which is to say after the Tree of Life in Genesis 2 (where man falls directly after in chapter 3), and before the reappearance of the same tree in Revelation 22 (where man is ultimately redeemed). Being between the trees is certainly the worst place humanity can find itself (as it's after the entrance of death and before the final absolution from the sin that causes it), but this is where Christ (and good literature) most relevantly speak to us in our human condition.