Why am I rating the content of classic literature?
And who is this for?
I have been a voracious reader since high school. I discovered classic literature in ninth grade and absolutely fell in love with it. I was the kid reading War and Peace every day during study hall. I have a particular affection for works from the Victorian period, and thereabouts, but for much of my reading life, anything labeled ‘classic literature’ was fair game. For a time in early adulthood, I veered into Contemporary Romance, and quickly developed what I would classify as an addiction to it. It took a while, years in fact, but eventually I became increasingly dissatisfied with it. I didn’t want the graphic content, I didn’t like the ending, I didn’t like the trajectory of the characters, I didn’t like the themes in general and most of all I felt like I had read all the evolutions of that story a billion times. Been there, done that, boring.
It was at this time that my reading habit fell by the wayside entirely and I could think of nothing that I wanted to do more than stare at the wall. Many things sounded interesting, until it came down to doing them, and staring at the wall always won out. It was in this place of darkness, that a still small voice spoke to me. You should pray the rosary. It took a while, and a fair bit of nagging, but eventually I retrieved a little pamphlet with instructions for praying the rosary that had been stowed away in my Confirmation Bible since childhood. Jesus saved me through Mary, and a conversion experience followed. The rosary was followed by reading the Bible, then the catechism, and it led to a return to the church and the sacraments, along with an insatiable desire to learn about the faith. I had never left the church intentionally, I had just wandered away.
My return was followed by an irrefutable desire to clear out all contaminating influences. Books were trashed, ebooks deleted, home decor was revamped, I couldn’t bring myself to listen to the popular music I had enjoyed previously, I couldn’t watch the TV shows or movies I used to, and I couldn’t stand to be around people cursing and being vulgar. It all felt unbelievably filthy and I couldn’t stomach it anymore. For a time I wasn’t even sure how I had ever stomached it. It got to the point where, other than my family, I was only interested in God, the Bible, and learning about the faith. All other things were completely uninteresting. I feel God granted this removal from the world and any taste for it, to give me time to build up a solid foundation in faith formation. I am eternally grateful to Him for that great grace.
Eventually, I had the desire to branch out a bit. I did a search on the internet multiple times for Christian Classic Literature reading lists, and came up with very meager recommendations. Lots of websites will help you rate the content of contemporary literature, but there was a gaping hole when it came to the classics. If I can help one other Christian by bridging this gap, I will be happy with that. God’s people deserve to have access to media that can enrich and build up their formation in the faith, instead of constantly having to weed out bad influences and decipher where they are slyly being contaminated with the ways of the world masquerading as something innocuous or worse pretending to be something virtuous.
With the exception of a very few classic books, they were not written particularly with a Christian audience in mind or with the goal of providing formation of a religious kind, so this leads to a great deal of gray area and a significant amount of discretion. I am not qualified to discern for others what is appropriate for them, but I can provide content ratings that may help others in making their own informed decision about a particular work of classic literature. For the purposes of this project, I am going to define classic literature as any work of fiction published before the year 1980, that has enduring relevance and high artistic value. The content of said work will be rated on a number of different categories, with the goal of helping you to determine if you want to embark on that story.
Tips for New Christians:
Be Present. Be careful of tendencies toward escapism (using an entertainment to avoid state-of-life duties, family obligations or prayer time). We are called to be fully present to those in our life, and grant God His fair share of that time as well.
Stay Grounded. Be careful of developing unrealistic relationship expectations (focusing on fictitious characters in a way that disengages us from our real relationships or leads us to view our real relationships as unsatisfactory, when no relationship could live up to those standards).
Know Thyself. Be careful of any subject matter that stirs up temptations, causes agitation, restlessness, or noticeable distance from God. Know your boundaries, your ability to discern between ideologies and where you are in your Christian walk.
Use Moderation. Be careful of overconsumption and spiritual malnourishment. Literature is not a replacement for the Bible, spiritual reading and true faith formation.
Stay Clean. Avoid anything that glorifies vice, promotes immoral behavior or contains graphic material. Support clean Christian media as much as possible, so you aren’t part of the problem that is perpetuating the current media situation.
Happy Reading, and God Bless!
No comments:
Post a Comment