Why I Write

I write because I believe it is my calling.

Dear reader,

Please forgive me. It’s been two weeks since my last Friday newsletter, the first one in fact. When I formulated the plan of trying to write something everything Friday I was being idealistic, with no sermon writing or heavy homework on my plate at the time. Oh how short-term my memory is, when life seems easy, maybe it’s time to take on another task? Ha! Well, here we are. 

I thought for this week’s newsletter, I would talk about writing, and some reasons for my desire to even write at all.

A memory came to my mind recently of a young me working on what I was planning to be a novel, one among many in a series of novels. The ideas and contents for those novels are fuzzy in my mind. I’m sure it was convoluted with ideas and characters without a real coherent story line. I’m just guessing—I was likely under the age of ten at the time, so it’s hard to remember clearly since it was like fifteen years ago. I planned out a long series of novels, tracing the character’s lives and story development, but I probably didn’t even make it through the first chapter, as has been typical of my writing journey over the years. 

As I grew up, into my teen years, I began writing scripts and producing short videos. At my parents’ house are boxes filled with half-written scripts and stories, and even theological meanderings from my late teens. My laptop, phone, Google drive, and notebooks around my office are all filled with ideas, half-baked ideas, almost-written drafts of things I hope to publish, and scribblings for papers I have written over the last few years.  

I have always loved to write (and have learned, recently, that editing my writing is much, much harder!). I write because I have always enjoyed writing, as I am sure you can tell. Putting pen to paper is honestly thrilling, when an idea flows onto that blank page, after fighting off the writer’s block, and the thought are turned into words and sentences and paragraphs and an argument, and, if all goes well, a cohesive story or essay.

I write because I like to think. I write because I think. I think because I write. Sermons, essays, and teachings sessions all involve writing, and thus all involve thinking. Over the years, I have found that my thinking becomes clearer when I write out my thoughts, see how they flow together, and work to make the ideas intelligible. Clarity of mind is important, and because of all the tasks and constant flow of ideas barraging my mind, sitting down and writing out my thoughts has been immensely beneficial. I write with hopes of being a better thinker, and thus, a better teacher and preacher.

I write because I enjoy being creative. Ideas are fun. Tinkering around with biblical ideas with a pen and paper is fun. There’s a whole world to be discovered in the Bible, with all sorts of genres, symbols, metaphors, characters with a range of emotions, settings unknown to our own, weird stories that are hard to make sense of, and so on. Take for instance, Jesus walking on water, and think about how many times water appears throughout the Bible. In Genesis 1, the Spirit of God hovered over the water. Ah! Jesus hovers over the water like the dove-like Spirit, who tamed the chaotic waters. Or, recall Peter falling into the water. Like Peter, Jonah, the unfaithful prophet was thrust into the water and consumed by a huge fish, but was saved by God. Jesus lifts Peter up from the water, and chastises his disciples for their lack of faith when he and Peter enter into the boat. This second example may be a bit of a stretch, but, nonetheless, there’s something delightful about even attempting to write about a possible connection because of similar themes, symbols, and metaphors, even if in the end the connection doesn’t work at all, or is a bit hazy. The joy is in trying to make the connection clearer and make sense at all.

At a different level, playing around with characters I’ve created is fun. When I wrote fictional stories, like my novel that never materialized, or my film scripts, the joy was in creating the characters, and the ridiculous adventures they would have, or the sad situations they would experience. Having the opportunity to conjure up characters and settings within my own head was absolutely amazing! I could do anything I wanted with them, like own a pizza shop and fake their own death as a prank; the take-over of Canada by a power hungry prime minister; and the story of talking animals in a Second World War-like setting—a short-story still in progress! (I don’t really do any creative writing at all anymore, sadly. I suppose I need to change that.)

I write because I want to learn how to write. This may seem to be a contradiction. But I have learned writing is difficult, because it takes great skill to take words and string them together in a beautiful, coherent, but not clunky (see what I did there), sentence. I like writing, and, at the same time, I know that I can improve, so, when I conjure up the courage, I write in hopes of becoming a better writer—which is part of the reason I’m trying to do this Friday newsletter.

I write because God has given me the ability and desire to write. Looking back at my life, and seeing how much I have enjoyed writing, and now endeavouring to write about theological things, I believe God has given me the skills and inclination toward writing. Throughout my master’s program my dreams of what it will mean for me to be a writer have evolved to the point where I want to write for the sake of the life and health of the church, whether that be in academic or devotional writing. In other words, I don’t really care about writing the next great scholarly breakthrough—that rarely happens anyways, and I love the church too much to even try to do something like that. One of my primary goals as a writer is to write in order to help God’s people understand the Bible more, to dig deeper into the mind of God, and to help folks interpret the Bible for themselves.

I write, therefore, because I believe it is my calling.