Andrew Peterson on the Authors Who Kept Us Christian

Hey y'all, before we start, wanted to let you know that this is a new, a refreshed, relaunched version of The Russell Moore Show, including a new theme song, which those of you who enjoyed our episode with John Gara will recognize as his song "Citizens," and is one of my favorites. I love that song and listen to it often, and so I'm really happy to have it here as our new theme song. We also have a new feature here, rather than taking a bunch of questions all at once. I'm going to take them one at a time, a new segment at the end of every episode, where I answer a question from a listener. So stick around after the conversation to hear it, and in the meantime, send me your question about life, work, faith, ethics, whatever to questions at russelmoor.com, and if I can, I'll try to answer it. Thanks for listening. Enjoy the episode. C.S. Lewis gave me a way to think about Jesus. Beakner gave me a way to think about my faith and my story, and then Windleberry helps me think about how I live. Hello, this is Russell Moore, and this is The Russell Moore Show, brought to you by Christianity Today. Here, we look for signposts in a strange time, by standing fast to what really matters. Kingdom over culture wars, truth over tribalism, pilgrimage over partisanship, sanity over cynicism, witness over winning, and Christ over everything. Today we have a conversation to do just that. Hey, everybody, this is Russell Moore, and this is one of our periodic episodes on books, and be sure to stick around to the end, where I'll answer a question from a listener. I have been wanting for a long time to have a conversation with my friend Andrew Peterson about books and about authors, and today I want to specifically talk about authors who kept us Christian, and obviously by keeping us Christian, we mean grace of God and the Holy Spirit, but the way that God used particular authors in our lives to redirect us back to what we already believed. And so, Andrew Peterson, you know very well, singer, songwriter, author has written multiple books, including God of the Garden, and is the author of the Wingfather saga Books, which is now also an animated series. So all kinds of things going on here at the Warren rabbit room here in your chapter house. Andrew, let us do this. Mem, so glad you're here. It's really cool to do this here, because some of my favorite times in life are right here sitting around talking in front of the fire, and I can think of specific moments where I was really discouraged, but nobody would know I was discouraged, and being here just redirected me, even without talking about specifically what I was discouraged about. And so it's meaningful to be here. I want to talk about books. You've written in so many different genres. And one of the things that I noticed when I was thinking about the authors that I love the most, not all of them, but almost all of them write in multiple different ways. Novels, short stories, essays, poems. Yeah. So the some combination of those four, you do a similar thing, but you also write children's literature. What about in your own childhood? What books matter to you? And how did you come across? Man, when I was a kid, I was reading a lot of, I mean the typical hearty boys, Narnia, Lloyd Alexander, the Chronicles of Friday, and which were great. They're still great. The Black Cauldron, which was a really bad Disney movie, and the series of like newberry type books. I loved Beverly Cleary, the mouse and the motorcycle. That's, I mean, I was just in that world. But one of the things I remember most was that my parents, my dad was a pastor and his office was jammed with books. And he's given me some of his books from his library. And I've been so not pleasantly surprised. It's not the way to put it, but just kind of pleased that Francis Schaeffer was in there and CS Lewis was in there, so he was reading all that stuff. I have this vivid memory. Is it barkly? The commentaries, there's like, and they're like purple. Yeah. I remember getting spanked right in front of those one time in his office, not because of them, but just because I was just been over and he will whack me and I looked up and saw, oh yeah, there's barkly. Anyway, but yeah, books were all in our house, but there was a combination of my dad's theology books, but there was also Dickens and Lord of the Rings. And it wasn't like this really literature-infused childhood, but it was always present somewhere somehow. So yeah, that was the stuff. And then around eighth grade, I begged my dad and mom for a series of fantasy novels called Dragon Lance, which were these Dungeons and Dragons adjacent adventure stories. And they were very nervous because it was the eighties. Yeah. And like, the most evil thing you could do was play Dungeons and Dragons. And I remember getting in huge trouble because I had borrowed my friend's Dungeon Master's Guide. I've literally never once played, never played, and for the same reason. Yeah, yeah. But my friends did, and I love the pictures. I was always into drawing trolls and dragons and stuff. And so I had the book in my bedroom that I'd borrowed, like contraband. And they found it. And it was like they'd found heroin. So it was a big deal that my dad and mom agreed to buy me this series of Dragon Lance books. And man, it just lit me up. I loved reading. What is now really bad fantasy? But at the time, it was this escape. And so yeah, I was just way into fantasy stuff. And the funny thing is I've gone back to try to reread some of that stuff, and I just can't bear it. Like I care about pros now in a way that I didn't at the time. And so I've outgrown a lot of that. I don't read a whole lot of fantasy anymore. But it's always kind of, I've got a soft place in my heart for that kind of story, which is why The Wing Feather Saga is that way. You know, it's interesting. You mentioned that reaction to the Dungeons and Dragons. We have a podcast series done by my colleague, Mike Cosper. Oh, yeah, satanic panic, devil and deep blue sea. One of the things is interesting to me because it was really familiar, not with my parents. My parents were comparatively very relaxed. But all around me, there were people for whom that was Dungeons and Dragons is going to lead you right into, you know, sacrificing goats. And so a lot of these people were really suspicious of anything that depicted gods or evil sorts of figures. I mean, I remember being rebuked one time for having a Thor comic book because that's a god. And you shall have no other gods before me, so forth. But the same people didn't seem to have the same problem with Narnia. Right. Very confusing. I have no idea. I've been so mystified by that. And we've bumped into that with Wing Feather stuff like people will ask about the magic in the books and how magic works and all that kind of stuff. And people that are really upset about Harry Potter give Lord of the Rings and Narnia and George McDonald the pass. And I don't know really why. I mean, there are some reasons that I don't think it's a bad idea to be careful and to ask questions about that kind of stuff. But when there is a moral undergirding to a story and it's actually a really beautiful depiction of the Harry Potter books, the power of sacrificial love is kind of the theme of that story. I don't know. It's weird to me. But people do give it a pass. And I'm glad they do. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe it's their entryway through the wardrobe into a lot of conversation. That's thing. What about Lewis? Where did he come into your life? I actually have the box set. You remember that that white I have. Yeah. Oh, there it is. My first copy of Lion the Witch the World Road is right here. I just got goose bumps because of the nostalgia that triggered. But those additions were everywhere. We had the little white cube with all those books in it. And I loved those books. I checked them out from the library too. I was like one of the only kids that was checking those out. And I love. Well, I'll say this. I liked the stories. I didn't always at the time love the fact that they seemed to be trying to teach me something. I'm a pastor's kid. And I was wary of that. What I wanted was pure story. Yeah. If I sniffed a Sunday school lesson, then I would back that up. Sunday school lesson. Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure it was partly because my parents were glad I was reading that and not something else. And they probably were telling me, oh, yeah, you should read that. I didn't really fall in love with the Narnie books until I read them in college, which was the only time I'd reread them since I was a kid. And they just, at this point, I was a Christian. I think when I was a kid reading, I was a cultural Christian, but I didn't really know Jesus yet. And so once I did and I reread them, I was just bold over by it. And then completely lost my mind when I read them to my kids. And I've said for a long time, I think the Narnie books are not best experienced as a kid reading them or even as an adult reading them. They're best experienced as an adult reading them to a kid. Yeah. That's the setting in which they're the most potent, I think, and they're the most potent for the grown-up reading them to the kid. I think that's right. What is it about? This is a side track. But I'm in the same a similar situation where I was as a kid reading all the time except for the required reading. Saying so if something's assigned in class, it is sort of, you know, I would eventually do what I had to do, but it's procrastinated and off to the side. And then I'm reading. Okay. I mean, I remember I have here too. This little, oh my goodness. Illustrated, exact editions. Yeah. That's amazing. This was my favorite day of cap feel. But these little illustrated editions. I loved those. And that took me all into Dickens and Melville. Yeah. We had Moby Dick and Treasure Island, and Oliver Twist, Count of Money, Christo. Yeah. That was how I was introduced to all those stories. That's amazing that you have it. Yeah. Well, I even have, I opened mine up and noticed that I have a math problem that I did in crayon of 50 plus 25. Show you how not adept I am math. I would have to actually write that out, but I did. But what is that that would cause us? I mean, because I don't think that in most ways, you would say where rebellious people is certainly neither of us were rebellious kids in any sort of external kind of looking way. So where does that come from? The thing that popped in my head was the CS Lewis quote about watchful dragons. Yeah. He writes about how the story of the gospel was dressed up in stained glass windows and aughtness. He talks about aughtness. Do you remember that? Yeah. Like you ought to be moved by this. Yeah. And like kids kind of like back away from being told what they ought to feel. And so he wanted to reframe the story in a way that would actually sneak past those watchful dragons. I think that was it. It was just like, so I can give you this as an example with the Wing Fether animated series. The team is amazing. And you know, of course, screenwriting is a completely different discipline than what I do. And so I'm not writing the scripts. I'm reviewing them and making notes and stuff. But these are like TV writers that are taking the story and shaping it into an episode. And you know, there are times when I think that sometimes the writers think of it as, well, this is a kids show written by a Christian. And there will be these moments in the scripts where they'll stop and try to make a moral point. And like, especially in the first season, my most consistent note in the sidebar of the scripts was in all caps, no teachable moments. This is not a Sunday school lesson. Like no parent would stop in the middle of a fight and give a teachable thing to a kid. They're running for their lives. Let them run for their lives. Which is not to say that stories don't teach us. Yeah. And I would hope that, you know, if the parents are watching the show that teachable moment is at the dinner table after the show is over. But like that sense of moralizing or trying to teach something was something that I was just allergic to. And I think all of us kind of are the same thing happens with mainstream stuff as soon as I sniff out that, oh, you guys have a point that you're trying to make. I'm like, but man, you lost me. The story was so good till now. So what I remembered was my English teacher, Mrs. Eric, who is a really good teacher in high school. We were reading the old man in the sea. And I didn't want to read it, you know, and I was just like, oh, good grief. And in the discussion after during class, she kind of brought up the symbolism of the old man carrying the mast of the ship up the beach. There's a really clear picture of carrying a cross that's happening, whether it was intentional or not. And I raised my hand. I was like, that's baloney, that's hogwash. There's no spiritual Christian symbolism in a story. That's a dumb way to read it. And I was just that kind of kid, you know. And then I've since gone back and read the old man in the sea. And I can't stop thinking about that Jesus. Like there are now I love the symbolism you bump into in stories. Sounds like Ron Swanson on Parks and Recreation saying, I don't like books with any symbolism. I like something like Moby Dick just about a whale straight forward. With Lewis, one of the things that maybe you picked up as being teaching actually had the opposite effect on me. And for instance, when he would say, now of course, you should never go into an actual wardrobe. Yeah, yeah. To me, that gave it a kind of wink wink nod nod sort of conspiratorial. You're in this as we're going through this story together. And so it didn't feel pre-cheer teaching. And part of that probably was because my parents were completely uninterested in making sure I read anything particular. They mind my reading, but they weren't pushing anything on me. And my church was very biblically literate, but they weren't literally beyond that. And so they weren't pushing it. So this was all stuff I was kind of finding myself. And then because of that, I think I remember just in the middle of right about to lose my faith. It was a teenager because I was so used to people marketing to me. When are you going to rededicate your life to Christ and so forth? And he was just so different from that that showed me a different picture. Did you have a moment similar to that when it comes to Lewis's nonfiction stuff? Yeah, that's a good question. It's funny. I remember reading Mirror Christianity in college. And I've reread it since. And the first half of that book is magic to me. And I always kind of get a little lost and disinterested by the end of it because there's our, you know, he, yeah, the deeper he goes, maybe it's just because I'm not smart enough. But yes, you got the sense that he was actually honest about it. But the only reason he was able to write about some of the doubtful things that we have is because you could tell that he had also experienced those things. And there was no shame involved. It was just like a, it felt like talking to a friend. And you know, and that's the thing is his voice is so clear. That's why you can, he's so quotable. So with Lewis, it was rereading the Narnia books in college. I read Reflections on the Psalms, which I loved in college. And I started the problem of pain because at the time I was wrestling with some of those questions. And that was comforting. I'm trying to remember like exactly when I really fell in love with his stuff. And I think it was just, it goes back to Narnia till we have faces was another one. I was in the middle of a desolate season. And it was like God slipped that book under the door. And I just happened to be reading it and got to the very end of that book. When I was plagued by the same anger that the main character is in that book. And I think that was the book that maybe made me just go, oh my goodness, I think he's a giant. Yeah. Anyway, it's hard to pinpoint a single moment because it was a lot of things. For me, it was Rich Mullens was my CS Lewis. I had kind of lost my faith when after high school and was just casting about. I think I thought of myself as a Christian. But I was playing music and music was this language that resonated with me probably at the time more than stories did. And it was hearing Rich's music. That was the doorway for me. And for discovering Lewis and then rereading Lord of the Rings, you know, as an adult, just completely blew me away. And that tipped me into George McDonald and everything else. The fact that those guys were all multidisciplinary, Chesterton is in that boat to murder mysteries and books of theology and poems. There's something that was so intriguing to me about those guys because there were all these doorways, entryways into their work. But you got the sense they were all talking about the same thing. And my hunch is that that's why those writers are half such staying power is because they weren't just doing one thing. We have a group text thread that I had to explain to my wife one day because the name of it is the great divorcees from way back when we were reading great divorce group of us. And I had to explain to her if something happens to me and I suddenly die and you see my phone, this is not a support group for people considering this. This is what it is. What about great divorce? Where did that show up in your life? That would have been not long after I had moved to Nashville. Man, I loved that book. I don't know. My faith was just expanding. I don't know if that's the right word for it. But like I was encountering things that I hadn't really reckoned with as a younger man, as it now as a dad. And one of the things that I was encountering was my understanding of sin. Learning to think about my own sin without being burdened by the shame that comes with it. But actually just a objectively understanding how sinful I am, like the sin behind the sin, which he has to lose is so good at talking about in screw tape and elsewhere. But that to me is what the great divorce is about. It's about peeling back the layers of what you think was the sin is actually just the surface of what is a deeper sin. That's the deeper problem. And I was reckoning with a lot of those sins when I read the great divorce. And I think I thought when I read the book that it was about heaven, and there is a sense in which it is, but it's really just about the human heart and what sin looks like and how to break free of it. So yeah, it was like in the church that I grew up in, we didn't talk a whole lot about heaven. Like I'm still confused by dispensationalism and millennialism. Like that, all that kind of stuff was not part of the vernacular when I was in church as a kid. So it wasn't mine. Really? And so when people talk about it as this thing, I'm always going to like wait, which one is that again? I don't know what that is. But heaven was just this kind of hazy thing that we'll figure out when we get there. And so when I read great divorce, I think I thought I was reading that. It was like, and it does get to this beautiful longing for the high countries and this pull toward the new creation, but I didn't have new creation language back then. So man, this is random, but I had read Randy Alcorn's book heaven, which isn't like, you know, high theology or anything like that, but somebody given it to me. And I've since gone back and when I sing some of the songs I was writing back then, I changed the words because I didn't have a grounded sense of new creation back then. So it was just kind of like rereading the great divorce, maybe a year or two later, was when I was like, Oh, this is not really a theology of heaven. This is a picture of how to kill the lizard. I wonder if this is the case for you. It seems like for me, one of the things that Lewis did is that I had two categories that both were present at different times. Of God loves you in this sappy sort of hallmarked cardish kind of way that didn't feel all that true. And God is really angry with you. And you know, the old chick tracks, you're going to stand there in the movie theater, you know, of your life and all of that, this terrifying picture. But what Lewis did that I don't think anybody else was doing was giving an actual love of God in which the confrontation of the sin was not about I'm going to get you back. It really was about I want to transform you. Yeah. I know everything there is no about you. I still love you and I'm still coming after you. And this is the transformation. Did you notice that as well? Yes, very much so. And that describes my idea of God perfectly was I was just like, I assumed he was always angry with me or disappointed in me. Yeah, right. Because I was angry with myself and disappointed with myself. I'd believed he was real, but I just didn't really have a sense of that realness being at its heart. Goodness, you know, and so you just get the sense when you read Lewis that he actually had an encounter with Jesus. Yeah. Like when you read Aslan, it just crackles on the page when any time you're reading the Narnie books, the whole time you're just kind of waiting for him to show up in one way or another. And when he does, you just you feel like Lewis knew him. That's how I felt when I listened to Rich Mullins' music. I was like, he's talking about somebody that he knows. Yeah. I want to know that person. And he's talking about a person that he knows and wants me to know too. Yeah. So he must be good. He's not trying to shield me from something. You know, who else did that for me as a high schooler and is also been? I know who you're going to say. Bigger? Bigger. Yeah. And I brought this too. Yes. This is the copy that I picked up in the library discard table when I was a teenager. And I happened to notice today. I don't know how I ever noticed this before. It's inscribed to somebody to Jack from Grace, February 7, 1985. By Beakner? No, no. Somebody had bought it for somebody. It would have been not long after that that I had it. So this must have been somebody who just sort of, you know, gave it away to the library as soon as they got it. But this book and this is a collection of essays that I started with. It's not even my favorite collection by Beakner, but it's the worst cover. It's the worst cover. I don't know why I picked it up. But I'm glad I did because that was a key aspect of Grace keeping me Christian for some of the same reasons as Lewis because with Beakner and then I moved from this onto the novels and onto the other collections of essays and everything else. But he also seemed to talk like a real person about God's love and about the obstacles to it. In a way, nobody I had ever heard before. Were you ever unsettled by him? And the reason I'm asking, I remember him, he would say things like, God, if there is a God, is good and blah, blah, blah, blah. He would add these little tiny, little things and I'm like, that's the kind of thing that I've thought, but I'm afraid. I don't know that I'm allowed to say that. You know what I mean? He unsettled me. I remember, I think maybe it was in a room called Remember, but he was writing about being in Times Square and all the porn shops at about how drawn he was toward the porn shops. And I was a little unsettled because I was accustomed to people who would say, I was in the porn shops, then I met Jesus. Right. And now I'm glad I never encountered that again. And I've known people who would say, can you believe how awful these porn shops are. But I don't think I had ever heard anybody talk about the pull toward that dark aspect of life who really saw it as dark and who understood it as being part of fallen human life in a universal way, even when it's not applied to that. Yeah. You know, you think about when he talks about later lust is the longing for salt for somebody who's thirsting today. I mean, that sort of imagery, that was a little unsettling at first, just because it was kind of like, are you supposed to talk that way? But that's actually what I'm allowed to. That's what I thought. I just, yeah. I mean, again, it's because he didn't grow up in an evangelical situation. He was in New England, and so people are coming at the gospel very differently up there. Like he said things that may have seemed scandalous to us that would have seemed scandalous on the other side of the coin up there. Right. You know, he was probably the most evangelical type person in his community. Right. But yeah, it was, it was like a warm blanket to me at the time to discover that I was allowed to have these feelings and be a Christian or to have these doubts. I mean, he was the guy who made me realize that it was okay for me to be afraid or to have big foundational questions while also walking the way of Jesus and trying to, and believing genuinely that Jesus is real and that I knew him, but Beakner gave me a new language for the pain and the doubt that I was carrying around. But he doesn't do what a lot of people since have done, which is to kind of make a fetish out of doubt. Yes. Where doubt itself is called to the faith is supposed to be. Yeah. It's never that way. It's that the doubt is pushing you along in sort of pilgrimage. Yeah. Ants in the pants of faith is what he said. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And man, Beakner is dangerous because his books are so short. Yeah. And easy to read that like you can binge it. My first Beakner book was The Eyes of the Heart. Yeah. And couldn't believe how good it was partly from a craft standpoint. Like I just, in the same way that you can tell at C.S. Lewis writing, his voice is so obvious. Beakner's voice is the same. Like he just has a way of constructing a sentence that nobody else really does that from an art standpoint. I was so intrigued by it. I just loved reading his sentences. They were like candy to me. But it came to me at the right time. Like I needed that at that point in my life to know Jesus in the ways that Beakner was teaching me about him. But I think I read like 13 of his books in a row. Yeah. Like I just went crazy and couldn't stop reading his books. And again, multidisciplinary. Like Godric is one of the best novels I've ever read. Have you been to Wheaton and seen the Beakner? I have not and I can't believe I have. I didn't know I was allowed to do that years ago. And I just went to the library. I was like, can I look at this box of Beakner stuff? And they brought it out and the manuscript for Godric is in there. And the essay that he wrote as a young man that he got high marks on that he's written about in one of his memoirs as like the moment that he thought, I think I'm going to be a writer. That essay is in there with like a note. It's wonderful. Yeah. You should totally check it out. But yeah, I've got my, you can't see it on camera obviously. But my Beakner shelf is at the top right there and right under that is my Tolkien shelf. And then the gesture to gel from the CS Lewis shelf and the George McDonald shelf. And all of those guys like you were saying came at the gospel in several different ways. You know, Beakner, your time at heaven. Beakner helped me identify a problem and give a picture that I needed. The problem was, I don't think I would have ever been able to articulate this. But it would have been a sense of seeing heaven as all of this is over, including those things that are fleeting. You want to hang on to those things. And I would see that as carnality wanting to hang on to that. I should be willing to say this is all over and it's gone. It kind of reminds me of now. As a dad, I'll say to my wife all the time, I wish that somehow I could have all of the kids here at every one of their ages again. I don't want them to be two again. Right. But I'd like to see two-year-old Samuel again or two-year-old Jonah again for a little while. It was that sense. And Beakner helped me to understand time and eternity with one little image, which was he gives that image of a pinwheel where the wind is blowing it. He says the wind is blowing the pinwheel until it's all merging into one thing. And this is what time is. It says what he's doing is what T.S. Eliot does later with four quartets. But that image just complete. I remember where I was sitting when I thought, "Oh, this makes sense." I love that analogy. Do you remember what book that was in it? I was in one of the, I want to say it was in wishful thinking. Do you have a Beakner book that you recommend to somebody who's never read Beakner book? Yeah. I normally tell people get the little listening to your life devotional, which is every day there's a different piece, not necessarily because of that, but they can read different parts and see what it is that they want to say it is that's her read. There are some people who are going to be drawn toward the memoir aspects that won't be toward the essays and so that's normally where I tell people. How about you? Secrets and telling the truth, the gospel is fairy tale, comedy fairy tale and tragedy here. But telling secrets especially, I remember buying my dad a copy of that because it's kind of written for pastors. Again, I grew up in a culture where it wasn't normal for the pastor to ever talk about his own sin or his own doubts from the pulpit. And I'm comforted now when a pastor, I mean, gets up and talks about their own struggle, you know? Like the church we attend, Ashley Cleveland spoke last Sunday and she talks, often when she speaks, she talks about her recovery, you know, the fact that she spent time in AA and she quoted T.S. Eliot like five times and it was just a way of presenting the gospel and the kind of the way you were talking about. I trust this person because they're bringing all of themselves to this and Jesus is still good and he's still at the heart of it all, you know? And that's how I feel about Beakner. I've felt a little sad for him sometimes because he was on the rise. He had written those first two books before he was a Christian and was on the way to becoming a literary great and then he became a Christian and felt this pull to write about Jesus and that was the worst thing you could do in his culture. And so he kind of, and there seems to be a little bit of sadness about him, the fact that he was never really paid attention to. So it always pleases me when people discover him because he was such a treasure, I think. I was telling somebody one time because I was listing several of the really influential authors of my life, Beakner Walker Percy, a couple others, where there had been the experience of a father having died by suicide. Yeah, yeah. And I said, I don't know why that would be coincidentally there because I don't have any experience with that. My father, you know, obviously, did not be suicide. He wasn't even depressive or anything. I said, so it's just sort of a nod coincidence. And the person said, yeah, but your dad had a massive heart attack and almost died in your 12. Don't you think that play maybe? But a lot of that shows up in Beakner, that sort of backstory. And also, I think, just like with Lewis with love and wrath, I had a category of sort of Lucy Goosey, your life is a series of random moments and then you stop every once in a while and interact with Jesus. I also had encounter this really rigid sort of Christian fatalism. Everything that happens, God is directly doing to you. And Beakner came in with this understanding of life as plot that changed everything for me as well. Yeah. Pay attention in your life to the fathomless mystery that it is is one of the things that he says. And while life itself is grace and all the death that ever was set next to life, wouldn't scarcely fill a cup or whatever you allude to that one of your songs. Yeah. Yeah. I spoke at a Beakner Institute thing several years ago. And I was like, oh, yeah, I should play like the songs that Beakner has influenced. And there were too many. Yeah. Like there were so many songs that I was like, oh, yeah, I wouldn't have written this song if it wasn't for Beakner and this one too. And it was a fun exercise. And then I, you know, I have done the same thing at the SCS Lewis event. I was like, oh my goodness, so many of these songs. Most of the cool lines are good ideas that I had were just lifted out of these books that I've read. But yeah, he was, I can talk about Beakner all day. But I will say again that Godric is weird. Half of it's written in Iambic pentameter. He had only five friends and one of them was a snake. Yeah. Two friends I had. Two friends. Yeah. Five friends I had and two of them snakes, something like that. It's a great opening line that near of us can remember. But a wonderful that kind of gets at the heart of what I love about Beakner is like the whole story is about this saint and his biographer is trying to write a hagiography about him. And Godric can't bear it. He was just like, no, don't make me more than I was. I was a scoundrel. And by digging in on that, he's trying to draw attention to the goodness of God the whole time. Yeah. By being honest with our weakness, it doesn't diminish us. It magnifies God, you know? And then we find who we actually are in his grace. And so, yeah, Beakner just, I don't agree with everything, obviously. I mean, that's like the thing I'll read some things and be like, yeah, I wish I could have talked to him about that. Did you read all the bed books? I hated the bed books. Yeah, I tried to. And they were the only thing that he wrote that I didn't like. Yeah. And maybe I would like them now. I'm not sure, but I just never went back to them. I read the first one and I was like, I don't think this is my thing. Yeah. What about Wendelberry? I discovered Wendelberry because of Ben Shive, our friend. Ben is like the guy that produced a lot of my records. And Ben was reading a book of his poems on the road and mentioned Jaber Crow. And for some reason, I was just in the mood to read it. And I didn't think it would be my thing. But it's one of the books that changed my life and like the Beakner thing and the CS Lewis thing. Once I find something I lock on to it and I just binge it until I run out of steam. And so I just read so much Wendelberry after Jaber Crow. And one of the nice things about Wendel is that my awakening to poetry coincided with my discovery of Wendelberry. Like I had just discovered Billy Collins who was a wonderful poet. Really funny and didn't make me feel dumb when I read him. And then not long after that read my first batch of Wendelberry poems and it was the same. It was like this is having effect on me. And I don't understand all of it, but a lot of it I do. Like I feel like I'm I don't need a PhD in poetry to be moved by this work. And so upon reflection, like after I finished Jaber Crow and I stopped crying, I was devastated by it. I'm in any gram four. So the sad or something is more I'm going to love it. And so the thing that I felt inside of me, the ache that I carried around that was it was like a a happy ache. It was in sucked. Yeah. Thank you. I recognized it as St. Sook to Erzenzook to whatever the I was like the last time I felt this way was when I read Samwise saying, Well, I'm back and I closed the order of the rings and I burst into tears and I ached. And I was like, Oh, yeah, that's the same thing. And then I thought, Oh, yeah, I felt that when I finished the great divorce and I felt though. So it was that he was getting out the same thing or or I was experiencing the same longing for Jesus and the kingdom when I finished Wendell's books and that well, you know, the funny thing about that is that I don't know that Wendell was really trying to do that specific thing. But that's what hit me. Exactly the same same sort of experience reading Barry. I can't remember what the first thing was. I think it was right around the time I was moving to Kentucky and so I started reading him. But I remember that exact same experience and it was almost like what Beakner was doing in a solitary way. Barry was doing in terms of a community. Oh, interesting. And you had that sense of membership that showing up in the essays in the poems in the short stories in the novels and it's all fitting together. But it was it was that kind of listening to our lives, I guess. I think maybe it was helpful the way that Barry would come at the same sort of community different timelines, but not in order. Yeah. So I guess it's the pinwheel. Yeah, yeah. That we would it would leave me with I mean the ending of a world lost. It just hit me really hard. And it reminded me of kind of the Linus speech in the that's Christmas special. Yeah, the way that that can sort of wreck me. That's what that. Yeah. I think with Wendell, Barry, it was like and this is the first time I'm saying this out loud. It was just occurring to me. But CS Lewis gave me a way to think about Jesus that has never left me. And then Beakner, I think of him as a comforting writer. Yeah. He gave me a way to think about my faith and my story. And then Wendell, Barry, helps me think about how I live. Yeah. How I actually live this out in a practical way. Not just in community with my family and my church and my neighbors, but with the frogs that live in the pond and the trees that come to the feeder and the plants that are growing in the front yard. You know, when I finish a Wendell, Barry book, I end up with concrete changes in the way that I go about my days. Yeah. First time I ever met him. I remember thinking he's just like one of the deacons at my home church, except that we're talking about Milton and Shakespeare and so forth. But he had that really familiar sort of demeanor. Yes. The guys who were taking up the offering. Oh, yeah. That's great. I wouldn't. Yeah. When we met him, I was so prepared for him to be just a grump. Yeah, I was too. And he wasn't. He was so friendly and kind and cheerful. Yeah. And we both wrote those essays for the tribute around his birthday. And the thrust of mine was this. He was a cheerful person. And people don't get that if they're just reading his interviews or his books or whatever. But I bumped into him like maybe a year later. I don't know at a conference that he was speaking at. And I was like, Mr. Barry, my name is Andrew. You probably don't remember me, but I was at your house last year. And he goes, was I nice? And I said, yes, sir, you were very nice. And he said, well, good. And it clapped me on the back and walked away. So he had zero memory when I was at his house. And this would have been in 2009. So 2010, maybe right after smartphones that come out. Oh, wow. And my iPhone started ringing. And I just said, I don't even know what to do that. And he just said, well, we're all centers. Just stayed with me ever since. Good. You know, I before I came here, speaking of things that would greatly disappoint Mr. Barry, I went into chat GPT and Claude. Oh, wow, AI program. And I asked the question, what do you suppose would be the desert island authors from Russell Moore and Andrew Pierce? And with mine, it said, Wendell Berry, Frederick Beakner, CS Lewis, Thomas Merton, Walker Percy. Wow. Dead on. Wow. For yours, it said, Wendell Berry, Frederick Beakner, GK Chesterton, NU gene Peterson. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And I wonder how accurate yours was. It's, it's not terribly far off. I don't, it was CS Lewis on the list. Yeah. Okay. Oh, it was on your list. Yeah. Yeah. Chesterton's funny because I haven't read a ton of Chesterton's books. Yeah. Orthodoxy was one of my favorite books, even though I don't really understand any of it, but it had a powerful effect on me. Yeah. And I've read, you know, the man who was Thursday and quite a few of the father brown stories. But I don't, he's hit her miss for me. I think I just like his personality. I like who he was. Yeah. And then Eugene Peterson, that's interesting that it said that. I was surprised by that one too. I have, I got to spend a couple of a little bit of time with Eugene and just admire him so much. You know, his long obedience in the same direction. The book is great, but the title is even better. I think just reading the title, I felt the compass shift in my heart a little bit toward the kingdom. And I think, yeah, he, he modeled the kind of life that I would want to live. Like a very Wendell Berry vision of how to be a pastor. Yeah, but I haven't read a ton of his books. I've read some of them, but I wouldn't put him on my, I mean, I, yeah, chat GP. He doesn't know anything. It's wrong. I'm trying to think who I would add to that. Marjorie Kenan Rawlings, at least the yearling and parts of Cross Creek would be on the list. And then my goodness, who else? Well, and my list was Marilyn Robinson's one. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. I loved Gilead and haven't read the rest of those novels. I should. Okay. Yeah. People tell me that I should aim to her essays are hard for me. Really? I love her essay. I feel like my brain is just not wired to under follow her in her essays. She's so academic to me. Have you read her Genesis commentary? No, I have her. You should. Okay. Yeah. I'll check it out. I was telling someone about this the other day. Do you remember when Netflix was new and you would get mailed to DVDs? I kind of missed those days. Yeah. In some ways. But like, you know, you would go and fill up your queue with the three movies you could have at a time or whatever. And then you would have to wait a week or two. It would show up in the mail and they'd send you the next one when you remember that whole. Yeah. So I remember reading an article by somebody about how often they would get the disc in the mail, but they had put in their queue a month ago. And wonder what they were thinking. Like, why did I put the, I don't want to watch this movie really. And the point was there's the movie watcher you think of yourself as and then there's the movie watcher. You actually are. Yeah. And like, I want to think of myself as the guy who watches art films and like whatever, but really I just want to watch three of me goes again. You know, I do like art good movies, but I love that dichotomy. Somebody recognized something that I'm like, I know that feeling. And I'm like, I was rearranging the books in here a month or two ago. And I realized that most of the books I've read in the past few years have been Eric Larson, the historian, journalist guy, and David Graham who wrote Killers the Flower Moon. And I think of myself as a guy who sits around reading British authors and fantasy novels or whatever. And I was like, actually, I'm reading books about Arctic exploration and whatever. So it's funny. There's like the cool version of like who I wish I was and and am really those were foundational books to me, but I read way broadly. And did you ever read Alan Jacobs is the pleasures of reading in an age of distraction. It was a great, great title where he talks about how good it is to read broadly and go to the library. And you've got 10 books or however many you can check out. Just wander through. You don't have to finish them all. Yeah. Just pull out what strikes your fancy and he hates book lists. You know, the 50 books you must read before today, because it sucks the joy out of discovery. And so while I definitely would think of the desert island authors like we're talking about, I would be so sad to not have all the other random stuff that I enjoy just as much. It probably isn't shaping my heart in the same way, but I'm enjoying it. What about the Bible? We normally, at the end of this show, ask people, what are your five biblical books you would take to a desert island? I remember hearing you ask Steve Custett on interview and he freaked out. I was like, man, I hope Russell never asked me that question. The Psalms for sure. Yeah. I really love the gospel of John because it's so kind of weird and poetic. And Isaiah, also the poetry and Isaiah just astonishes me. He had never ending supply of metaphors and love Jeremiah, because I'm in any gram four. And one more revelation. Yeah, which revelations taken me a while to warm up to when I was at church camp as a kid, I read revelation. It was terrified and rededicated my life that night, you know, because of the whatever. But now I see it like the sermon this past Sunday was on revelation on the last chapters of revelation. And I was crying. The vision it casts is so beautiful. Again, it gave me the same feeling as J. Bacrow and Lord of the Rings. Only it was like literally true. Yeah. I taught the revelation this year, and I think it kept me sane. Oh, I read your essay about that. You really do think it. Yeah. It's kind of Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks for letting us have a fantastic session. I could go on for days. Andrew Peterson, thanks again. We'll be right back with a question from a listener after this break. Hey there. I'm Clarissa Mall, producer and moderator of Christianity Today's flagship news podcast, The Bulletin. Join Russell Moore, Mike Cosper and me each week as we discuss breaking news and current events that matter to you. Every Tuesday and Friday, you'll enjoy wise, measured, deeply Christian conversation about the people, events, and issues that are shaping our world. Find us on Apple podcasts or Spotify and join our bulletin community. Well, we have a new segment here on the show. Listeners send in a lot of questions about things that they're grappling with in their lives. And so at the end of most episodes, I'm going to be joined by our producer Leslie Thompson to talk about some of those questions. And so if you have one, be sure to send it to us at [email protected] and it might even end up here on a future episode. Leslie, thanks for being with us. Well, I'm so glad to be here and I'm so excited to go through these listener questions and hear your thoughts. So here's today's question. This came from a listener. A parent is watching her child go through a difficult and complicated divorce. She says, we're seeking your counsel on how to be in relationship with our adult daughter under very unique circumstances. She is a professing Christian who had an extramarital affair and divorced her Christian husband with the planned intent to marry the man with whom she had the affair. She claimed to be repentant even while continuing the affair. She believes she's making this situation right by divorcing her husband and marrying her lover despite the fact that her husband has been open to reconciliation. She feels assured of God's forgiveness and acceptance of her. We want to honor the Lord in how we're handling the situation. How do we respond? We love her dearly and pray for her daily. That is understandably a tough situation for a number of reasons. I mean, one of them is you're grieved to see your child making even when your child is adult. I think sometimes people don't understand that you have a lot more direct control when you have a child in your house and sometimes for parents there's kind of an added grief because there's a powerlessness that comes after they're grown and they're making their own decisions. That's really hard. There's probably also a love for the son-in-law that's good and commendable and you want to be faithful to Christ in what Christ has taught. So here are a couple things I would say keep in mind. One of them is you're not going to be able to fix this situation. I don't know if you have the same temptation that I have but one of the things I have to grapple with is the temptation to go in with my older children and fix something the way I might if they were little. And this is too big for you to fix. You can't do that. You also should keep in mind and I'm not saying this is the case with you but it's a case with a lot of people where you've kind of got two things going on at once. You've got the situation here with your family and then you've got the sense of what does this say about me and sometimes that could be so subtle you don't recognize that it's there. And I would say if that's the case liberate yourself from that second part because it doesn't say anything about you and you're not going to be able to be really fully engaged if you're worried about that and about what this looks like to some real or imagined group of people who are overlooking it. When it comes to the situation I think that the danger is always am I communicating something that's confusing from what I can read into what you're asking that's a lot of what you're wondering. Am I approving of my daughter's decision by carrying on a kind of more or less normal life with her? And I don't think you are. The discipline that is given in scripture, a 1 Corinthians chapter 5 for instance, somebody who is immorally acting in the church steps into discipline speaking with a word of warning from Christ. That's given to the church but it's not given to any one of us individually is not given to parents. So your job is not at this point to come in and to correct her spiritually or to sort of sort through. Are you really a Christian or not a Christian or are you really repentant or not repentant? That's not the role that you're in right now. So what you have to ask is, okay, first of all am I being confusing with what I'm communicating here and I don't think you are. It seems to me like she knows what you think about her decision. She's deciding to do it anyway. So you're not being confusing there. And I think that you're maintaining then a relationship with her doesn't fall into that category. You also have to then ask what is the specific burden that is being put upon me? So when you think about the way it becomes really overused and cliche to talk about boundaries but there's a reason why that's the case because we do need strong boundaries with people so that you don't have there's no obligation for you as a parent to take in a child who is demanding of you something that you shouldn't give. It doesn't sound to me low like that's what is being demanded here. And so what I would do is to say what you have said at the front end, then do your best to love your daughter and that means showing kindness to this new husband. That's not a betrayal of Jesus. There's not a betrayal of the ex-Son-in-law and it's not sending a message to them. Oh, I think this is now great. It's instead giving some time and space for genuine repentance to happen. There are a lot of people, I mean just think about any of us, a lot of times the way conviction of sin happens. Somebody tells us something, I think you're making a mistake here. We kind of ponder it and a lot of times what we do is try to redirect ourselves around that and hide from it and then something happens where we start to reconsider and to say, "I wonder if dad was right or I wonder if mom was right or wonder if my friend was right." And then you have that kind of prodigal son coming to oneself and having a place to return home to. Do the best that you can to try to guard that. And you're going to make mistakes in every direction here we all do. Give yourself grace with that and be ready to let the spirit work. That's good. That's a good question and a hard question. If you've got a question, send it to us at [email protected] about anything that you're grappling with. I'll do my best to answer it, maybe even here on a future episode. We will see you next week with more conversations and questions here on the russelmore show. If this episode meant something to you, share it with a friend and leave a review of the show wherever you listen. It helps others mind the show. Until next time, remember the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not. The darkness will not. The darkness cannot overcome it. This is russelmore onward. The russelmore show is a production of Christianity Today. It's produced by Leslie Thompson. Clarissa Mole is the executive producer and the associate producer is Mackenzie Hill. This episode was mixed and mastered by Gavin Morris with video production by Sam Cedar. Eric Petrick and Mike Cosmer are the executive producers of CT Media Podcasts and Matt Stevens is senior producer. Thank you to John Gara for allowing us to use his song "Citizens as Our Theme." Thanks for listening. [BLANK_AUDIO]