Logic, arguments, and prose are vital forms of communication. But so are poems, stories, and all sorts of artistic expressions. And the arts can play powerful roles in both our spiritual growth and our outreach. Glen Scrivener of Speak Life shares his insights about this undervalued and underused resource for our lives.

Podcast Resources:

• 3-2-1: The Story of God, the World and You by Glen Scrivener
• The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener
• Our previous podcast with Glen
• A New Name: Grace And Healing For Anorexia by Emma Scrivener
• A New Day: Moving On From Hunger, Anxiety, Control, Shame, Anger And Despair by Emma Scrivener

Transcript

Welcome to Questions That Matter. This is a podcast of the C.S. Lewis Institute, and I'm your host, Randy Newman. And today my conversation partner is Glen Scrivener, a friend and we've worked together on a couple of conferences, and Glen is an author, a speaker, an evangelist, the director of Speak Life, a ministry we’re going to talk a bunch about in this podcast. And we’re going to talk about the way the arts play a part in our spiritual formation and in our outreach. Glen, welcome back to Questions That Matter.

So glad to be back.

Yeah. A repeat customer, so to speak. Well, when you were here before, we talked a lot about your book, The Air We Breathe, and I so highly recommend it. We're going to put a link in the show notes about it. It talks about the fact that the very world we live in and all the values that we hold dear have been shaped by Christianity, whether people acknowledge that or not, whether people know that or not.

But I want to explore another aspect of things you and I have talked about. And this ministry that you lead, Speak Life, involves the arts a great deal. People come, and they learn about how to make film and how to be better at their art. Tell us about Speak Life and the mission and vision of Speak Life and how that fits in with what we're talking about.

Well, we believe that what you love you share, and I think that works at a level of social media. In social media, things go viral because what people like they hit the share button or the retweet button and out it goes to their circles, and then there are ripple effects out to the world, but that is kind of the way mission works as well, that when Jesus tells eleven guys, “Go and make disciples of all nations,” it ripples out from those guys and then their contacts and then their contacts. And really mission happens from the overflow. It happens from the overflow of the heart. Jesus says, in Matthew 12:34, “From the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” And then, as you flow over to the next person, they fill up and overflow to the next person and to the next person and to the next person.

And Speak Life is really a ministry that seeks to capture hearts. It seeks to capture the hearts of the church, first of all, that we might fill Christians with the good news of Jesus and fill them to overflowing, so that Christians will share that great love of Jesus with others. So we've always had a massive view of the heart, of the imagination, of the affections, and of the way people are captivated by the truth. We don't just assent to truths. We fall in love with the truth. We are compelled by the truth. We are drawn to the truth. Because you can't really speak of the truth without speaking of goodness and beauty at the same time. And so Speak Life is always trying to raise the banner of Jesus in ways that paint Him in biblical colors, in truthful colors, in good colors, and in beautiful colors.

Oh, man! I love that. So how do you do that through Speak Life toward the church? Let's start there. Before we go to outreach. What are some ways you're trying to engage the hearts, the affections, the imaginations of Christians?

I think we were first on people’s radars when we started doing seasonal videos about Christmas and Easter and Halloween and Remembrance Day, which is like Veterans’ Day in the States. And I've always been a bit of a poet, and so putting poetry with some music behind it and captivating imagery, these videos, they did well. I first did a video back in 2011 about the King James Bible and its impact on the English language. And I just identified 100 phrases that have passed into common parlance in English, and I put them into rhyming couplets in three minutes, and away we went, and we had a video.

As anyone can do.

Well, I've always written poetry. I’ve always loved it and it just…. As I was thinking about how to convey the impact of the Bible, it just came out in poetry. I'm a big believer that creativity is not about you start with the world and you start with the bridge that you're going to build and then you figure out a methodology. For me, creativity is always about starting with what is true about Jesus, dwelling on Him in your heart, and then whatever overflows, I guess that's the medium. And whoever it connects with, I guess that is who your art was always going to connect with. I think we get things backwards when we try and start with the audience, and then we reverse engineer what kind of medium will reach that particular audience, and then it becomes very artificial, I think. And so, as I was meditating on scripture and its effects on the world and as I just happened to write down a whole bunch of phrases that have passed into common parlance, it just came out of me. “God forbid the powers that be forgetting the begetting of the KJV. It's put words in our mouth for 400 years, turned the world upside down, so here's my three cheers. As a sign of the times I'll sing its praises, shout from the rooftops 100 phrases. Miserable comforters may cast aspersions. I'll do this in remembrance of the Authorized Version.” And away it went.

And the video did really well. And I think Christians were… I think they were impacted by it and the turn of phrase, and if you had asked me at the time why people liked it, I probably would have had quite a dismissive view of the effect of poetry on people. I think I would have said, “Well, the human mind likes patterns, and so it's a psychological trick. I've hacked people's psychology by putting it in rhyming couplets, and I think a few years ago-

By the way, that’s an amazingly unpoetic explanation of your art form.

I know! Isn’t it?

The poet turns dusty philosopher on us.

Exactly.

Okay.

It’s my knack.

Well, something tells me people like poetry for other reasons. So where have you landed? Why do you think poetry grabs us the way it does?

Well, if you read the Bible, you'll notice that it is just poetic from first to last. Isaiah—or Isaiah. See, I'm contextualizing for the Americans here. In Isaiah the prophet. That's the evangelist that I am, Randy. In Isaiah the prophet, it's 80% poetry, which is just a stunning thing to think, isn’t it? When you think of the problems in his day and the absolute dissolution of the people of God, their idolatry, the exile that was just smashing into them, and Nebuchadnezzar… You know, first the Assyrians come, and then the Babylonians come, but the people of God are more of an enemy than any Babylonian army ever is, and the filth and the putridness of idolatry, and how does Isaiah fight it? With poetry. It was just chapter after chapter after chapter of poetry. And when you look at scripture, you see how, in a sense,  prose is like stones, but poetry is like gemstones. It's words that are glorified, words that are raised up to a different level of polish and of beauty, really. It’s words beautified. And when you have a theology of what the Word can do. I mean the Word can create heaven and earth. What can our words do? Our words can build worlds, and they do build worlds. And investing in words and raising them up to glorious stature that God has for them is not a brain hack. It’s not a way…  it’s a helpful mnemonic that people find memorable. It is to use words most according to their true nature, which is to build a world that people might inhabit, that they can look around and see things afresh. That’s what words are meant to do. And we should invest in that, I would say.

Boy, oh, boy, oh, boy. Now, of course, I'm a teaching fellow. That's the title they've given me at the C.S. Lewis Institute, so the teacher can't resist saying, “But we do like prose. Prose is good.”

Yes.

Paul's didactic letters were not poetry. They were prose. And that's very, very important in God's word. But it is astonishing how much poetry there is in the Bible and where those poems, or that poetry, shows up.

For example, it's amazing how much the book of Job is poetic. Pretty much all of it except for a little bit of a prose intro and a little bit of a prose conclusion at the end. Not even a conclusion, a final statement. But what does that do? The poetry of Job doesn't just convey intellectual facts about the nature of suffering. In fact, if that's its purpose, it's not really very good at it. But it arrests the emotions. It grabs a hold and stimulates our emotions, so that the poetry helps us feel, I believe, a righteous kind of indignation and anger at those three stupid friends who keep saying foolish things. If you just said, “And then these friends came along and said this,” you’d go, “Oh, okay. I got that,” but it goes on and on and on in the poetry, and you just want to say,  “Oh, please stop talking.” And then when Job expresses his pain in poetry, you have to grab tissues. You start crying. It’s like, “Oh, this pain is so deep,” and that's the purpose of the book. Not to answer intellectual questions. It does answer some intellectual questions, but far more it stimulates the emotions. Anyway, I'm sorry, I'm doing more talking. It's supposed to be the other around. You’re the guest. But-

No. I agree entirely. And you mentioned about Paul. I mean, what's fascinating about Paul in the epistles is sometimes he grabs for poetry, and so he will use song, for instance, in Philippians 2, inserted. But even when he's being at his most didactic…. I usually do this exercise in groups of people, and I say to people, “So where is the gospel laid out most systematically, so that you've just got the absolute kernel of truth right there? Where is the most prosaic book of the Bible?” And people will say Romans. That’s where you go to see the gospel of God unpacked. And then I'll say, “And if you were to pick a chapter where the heart of the cross, the heart of the good news is proclaimed, where would you go?” And people always say Romans 3, and I was like, “Well, which particular paragraph will you go in Romans 3?” They’ll go Romans 3, verse 21, and then I take them to Romans 3:21, and I say, “Okay. Here is Paul at his most prosaic. This is teaching that is at its most didactic, and he begins with… you can go to verse 23, ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’ He takes you to the archery range because sin as falling short is a term that's taken from archery. You've got a target. You fall short of it. So first you're at the archery range, and then verse 24, ‘And are justified freely by His grace.’ Where has he taken you now? He's taken you to the law court, right? Where you've got the not guilty verdict. You’ve been declared righteous. ‘Justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.’ Where is he taking you now? He's just taken you to the slave market, where your shackles have been taken off you, the payment has been made, and you're now liberated, you're free, and then he says, ‘God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of His blood.’ Where is he taking you now? He's taking you to the temple, where the Lord has climbed off his throne, put Himself on the altar, and died as a propitiatory sacrifice for your sins, and you're like, ‘Oh, my goodness!’ You’ve got whiplash going from the archery range to the law court, to the slave market, to the temple.” And this is the most didactic, prosaic, that Paul ever is. And he cannot help but use analogies and just immerse you in little word picture after little word picture after little word picture.

And this is the way we tick. This is the way language works. This is the way evangelism should be. It should not simply be the offering of one truth after another. It should be the creation of worlds through your words, that you immerse people in this other universe. And you say, “Look around. This is what real life really is.” And that's what I think evangelism is.

Mm, man! And, you know, I'm pretty sure I've said this a whole bunch of times on this podcast, but this is what people say is the qualitative difference, the massive qualitative difference, between C.S. Lewis’s evangelism in Mere Christianity and almost every other evangelistic book that's ever been put together, in that Lewis, in dozens and dozens and dozens of these analogies of… not just that this argument is true, and he has lots of that for sure, but, “If this argument is true, here's what it would feel like.” And he just sprinkles all of his writings with images that, you know, becoming a Christian is like turning full speed astern. It's like statues becoming real, live creatures. It's like someone falling down on their sword. It’s falling at the feet of your captor. And on and on and on with these mental images, so that people grasp the truth of it with their affections and their emotions before their intellect or at the same moment as their intellect. And you're right, we've made it very much propositional. “Listen, I have four truths to tell you. They’re all true. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Now, do you agree with all of them?”

And again, I have to be careful. We're not saying that the intellect is unvaluable or not used by God. Of course it is. Jesus spoke words. He drew upon logic and argument to make His points. But we've made it solely that. Anyway, I'm sorry I'm preaching. Tell us about Speak Life. What kind of activities do you do in your ministry to train people to be artists and filmmakers and poets for the advance of the gospel?

We'll get into training in a minute, because one of the things we do really connects with what you've just said about these images and these analogies, these pictures that we give. Because a massive thing that we're doing at Speak Life at the moment is called 321. It was my first evangelistic book back in 2014, and it exists as a whole bunch of videos, and it exists as courses that churches can run, but we're really wanting to make it an online experience where people can picture what it is to be in Christ. And so every episode of the eight episodes begins with me saying, “Picture this.” And the first analogy is, “Picture this: A woman wakes up on a space station with no idea how she got there and no memory of her life before.” And you’re like, “Oh, okay. And then what happens?” “Well, she meets this other guy, she meets this other girl, and they all have these arguments about what is the nature of the space station. And then a rescuer arrives. And that changes the conversation on the ship.” And of course that's an analogy for what life is like on planet Earth. Here we are. We don't know why we're here We have no memory of life before. And then the rescuer arrives. And whatever you make of the rescuer, He certainly changes the conversation, doesn't he? And that's sort of my way of introducing Jesus into the conversation. But every single episode is, “Picture this,” “Picture this,” “Picture this,” and so it's a way of absorbing people into the Christian story, into the gospel. And 321 stands for the threeness of God, that is the Trinity, the twoness of the world, we are split between Adam and Christ, and then the oneness of you, we were born one with Adam, be one with Jesus.

But, as you take people on this journey, you're immersing people in story after story. And we would love it to be… I mean, you know, it can never match Mere Christianity. But we would love it to be a Mere Christianity for the 21st century. And therefore, since Mere Christianity began as radio broadcasts, we feel like a Mere Christianity for the 21st century needs to take advantage of the media that people are consuming and the ways that people are understanding things these days. And so it's this sort of online experience that people can have as they journey through that.

So that's one massive thing. We would love to see this go very far and wide as the most shareable Christianity 101 that we can come up with, anyway. And so that's 321 as a thing that's out there. People can check that out at speaklife.org.uk. We're going to soft launch it in September, but people can test the prototypes even now and give us feedback on how they're finding that journey.

Great! Good, good. Good. Well, keep going about… So you have these programs where people actually come to you there in the UK for a week or much longer. And tell us about those programs.

Yeah, so we've got The Foundry, which is our training program, and we want to forge evangelists and evangelistic resources together. So we love to have people in the room together, where we can study together, we can go on mission together, and we can create resources that bless the church and reach the world. So there's a Year Out program, and you can come to us as like a student, and people coming out of school or coming out of college, it’s mainly designed for people at that life stage, although we've had people who are married with children in their thirties come and do the Year Out program. But they can come to us for ten months. We’re on the south coast of England. It's called the Sunshine Coast, Randy, but everything is relative. I'll warn your listeners right now. Everything is relative. But relative to the rest of the UK, we are on the Sunshine Coast.

So it’s not the Sunshine Coast of Australia?

It's not.

No. When they say the Sunshine Coast, they’re not joking. Okay. But yours is-

No. You can hear your skin audibly crackling there. But-

Yeah. Yours is the Sunshine Coast where the sun shines for two or three days in a row.

Yeah, I know.

Maybe.

It’s a scorcher. I'll have you know, Randy. It's 21 degrees Celsius here, which I don't know. What’s that? Kind of like mid 70s or something? It's a scorcher, an absolute scorcher, Randy.

Well, I’m in Austin, Texas, where it's 102, and it's going to be that until the rest of time. So, okay, we can't talk about the weather.

Yeah, yeah. So people can come, people can come to the Sunshine Coast and spend ten months with us. And if you love evangelism, you love creativity, and you love theology, we're at the intersection of evangelism, creativity, theology. And you can come to us for ten months. Or if you just want to come to us for a week, you can go to speaklife.org.uk, and there are various intensive weeks, where we do all that great stuff, but we try to cram it into five days and give people a little taste of Speak Life, and then hopefully they can go away inspired and bless others with it.

I love it. That's great! How many people are there when it's the one-week thing, or the five-day thing?

Not very many. So in the premises where we are we've got quite a large studio space where I'm speaking to you from now, but we've basically got only one other room that is about this size, so about thirty people. About thirty people in the room together, going deep with the Bible, thinking hard about creativity, and thinking how to get it out there to reach the nations.

I'm very excited to tell you about a new resource we’re working on at the C.S. Lewis Institute. It's going to be a series of relatively short articles that answer challenging questions to the Christian faith, so less than a thousand words, which is like the front and back of one piece of paper, maybe even less than that. Of questions like, “Why does a good God allow evil and suffering?” and, “Isn’t Jesus just like all the other religious people?” and, “Aren’t all religions the same?” and the questions that people are likely to ask us if we get into some really good, deep conversations with them. And it's going to be a growing resource. There'll be a new topic and piece of paper, basically, for you to read and share with nonbelievers. So check it out. If it's not already, it will be at cslewisinstitute.org/resources-category/challengingquestions. Or, if that's just crazy, go to cslewisinstitute.org and search for questions. I sure hope that'll help. Thanks.

You know, this touches on that, when Paul was preaching in Acts 17, he quoted poets who were known to the people that he was speaking to. So his message, generally speaking, was a very alien and foreign message to them. They thought he was kind of crazy or making stuff up or inventing things. They called him a babbler. They said, “Tell us these strange ideas you're having.” But in the midst of that, he quoted their poets. And he was implying that their poets, that they did receive and they believed, were saying the same thing, or at least pointing in the same direction.

It seems to me that's also a big part of appreciating the arts, of looking to the art that's being created in our world today, the songs people are singing, the movies that they're watching, the shows that they're streaming, and even the things written and created by non-Christians and point to the pointers in those works of art. Can you speak to that a little bit? Are there are there some songs or movies or things like that, that you can say to a non-Christian friend, “Have you ever read that book?” or, “Did you ever see that? You know what it makes me think about,” and go from there?

Yeah. Yeah. As you were speaking, it just reminded me of a song I'm constantly thinking about, which is Arcade Fire, “Creature Comfort,” and the chorus just absolutely nails modern society. He talks about there’s a boy who looks in the mirror and then there’s a girl who looks in the mirror, and when it gets to the chorus, you hear what it is that they're praying, and it's just fascinating. In such a few amount of words, and this is what lyricism, this is what poetry allows, you can compress truth, and you can sort of foreshorten the horizons that normally separate different ideas, and you can say, “This is that,” but in such an economy of expression. You can talk about how a boy and a girl are looking in a mirror and they're praying. And instantly you think, “Well, who are they praying to?” Well, they're kind of praying to themselves. And even as they look in the mirror, and the chorus says they're praying, “God make me famous. If you can't, just make it painless.” And it's just the ultimate rock and roll line: “God make me famous. If you can't, just make it painless.”

And I give lectures about how we live nowadays in our fame/shame culture. And I kind of break down how other cultures have been, honor versus shame cultures, and some cultures have been guilt versus innocence cultures, and some cultures have been power versus powerless cultures. And how we’re this hybrid culture in which we want to be famous, and we don't feel guilt anymore. We feel shame. And I could give you an hour's lecture on that, but Arcade Fire could just sing it to you in a line. “God, make me famous. If you can't, just make it painless.” And you say that to people, and they're just there. They understand what you're talking about. It captures something absolutely true about the human condition. I think we've got to have that knowledge of common grace that is out there. We are living in Jesus' universe.

And I sometimes use the analogy of: Imagine if you had grown up in the Old Testament tabernacle and somehow all you had ever known was the holy place in the Old Testament tabernacle, and you'd never been outside. What would you assume? You’d go to the seven-fold lamp stand, and you might think, “Oh, that's a trident.” Or you'd go to the table of the bread of the presence, and you might think, “Oh, it's a ping pong table.” Or you'll see the cherubim woven into the curtains, and you'll think, “Oh, they're Pokemon, or they're monsters of some kind.” And you can't do anything but use the raw materials of the tabernacle that is surrounding you. And you need a priest to come in and say, “Oh, no. The seven-fold lamp stand is a bit like the Spirit, and the bread is like Christ.” And you need somebody to come and teach you the true meaning of it. But you are always using the raw materials of the tabernacle.

And the truth is, our friends and family have grown up inside a tabernacle, a giant multimedia presentation of the glory of Christ. It's called reality. It's Planet Earth. And they can do nothing but use the raw materials of this world. And sometimes they'll pick up something that is preaching to them of the Spirit, and they'll think it's a trident. And they need someone to come along and just sort of redirect them. But they will stumble upon all sorts of truths. And sometimes they will name those truths more clearly and more plainly and more beautifully than a Christian ever has. And where they do that, we need to do what Paul did in the Areopagus and says, “As your own poets have said, ‘God make me famous. If you can't, just make it painless.’”

You know, as you’re quoting that line, I think of how C.S. Lewis said that, when we use imagery and the imagination, we can sneak past watchful dragons.

Right.

And when people hear that song, or that line, it gets through, and it awakens in them a pain and a desire that, if it was a frontal presentation, if you said, “You know, it's actually very few people in the world who are going to be famous,” they would go, “Yes, I know.” “And so we shouldn't get our expectations that we're all going to be famous.” “Yes, I agree.” “And if you're not famous, we get accepted. It's not all that painful.” “Yeah, you're right.” But no, it didn't get through, not the way that song does, of, “I'd really like to be one of the people who are famous. I think that's why I'm having a podcast.” Just kidding. I'm only kidding. I'm only partially kidding. No, no-

But that’s what a story does as well.

I’m sorry?

That’s what a story does as well. Because as soon as you're imagining the girl in the mirror, saying, “God make me famous,” suddenly you're externalizing the problem, and you're an audience member watching someone else, and you can identify the foolishness of that person when you're an audience member. Normally, we are that girl.

Yeah. That’s right.

Normally, we are so invested in that character.

We put ourselves right in there.

When you tell a story, you're asking people to clear off center stage, sit in the audience for a little while, and watch. And even as they're watching, they’re watching themselves, and so that's the genius of Nathan to David, isn’t it? “I'm going to tell you a story about a man with a little ewe lamb,” and David is going to shut up and listen for a bit. And it's brilliant. But the thing that dethrones David is a storyteller. A storyteller just says, “Shut up and listen. You're not in charge right now, David. I'm creating a world, and you have to be an audience member at this point.” And then David could only see himself because of the story, and the story enables him to sit in the audience and have a perspective on things which we rarely have. So that's another great thing about creativity.

So a big chunk of today's podcast is like an appeal. It's a call for people with gifts for creating artistic works to really pursue that. Because our world really needs it. Our world reads art and poetry and song and film and stories that really point in good directions, to the good and the true and the beautiful, and that's what we want to see more and more of, just like—and by the way, I'm not required to mention C.S. Lewis so much, but come on, we're talking about art, and if I can't mention him now, I don't know when. So there is this story that C.S. Lewis and Tolkien were chatting, and they were talking about the kinds of books that were being written, and they didn't like them because they were ugly. And they pointed to death and pointlessness and meaninglessness and not joy and goodness. And Lewis said to Tolkien, “We’ll just have to write those stories ourselves.” And every time I think about that story, I pray, “May it be that God would raise up hundreds, thousands of Christians who would say, ‘Yes, I want to write those stories or produce those films and write those poems.’”

Yeah. And, as I said before, I think the way to do that is not to figure out, “Oh, there are these brain hacks called creativity, and let's see if we can leverage that, and let's build a bridge, and what's the medium that's really working with the kids these days? I know. If Arcade Fire is singing a song, why don't I mimic their kind of alternative rock, and we'll call ourselves Arcade Holy Fire and….” Whatever. Christians are always doing that sort of thing.

But what you and I, I think, are saying is, “Go deep with Jesus. Go deep with the scriptures that are already.” It's a book full of song lyrics already. It's a book full of poetry already. It’s a book full of parables and stories and apocalyptic and all these. Go deep into the scriptures, let it nourish your soul, and then, from the overflow of the heart, out comes the creativity into the world, and it might end up as a pop song, but it might end up as… I don't know, a mosaic. It might end up as a ballet. Who knows what it is, but you certainly have permission to overflow in creative ways out there into the world, to be what Tolkien said is a sub-creator. You’re made in image of the Creator to be a sub-creator.

Yes.

Certainly do not stifle that. Let it loose.

Yeah. And here's a crazy thought: Maybe a whole lot of people can create these kinds of works of art, and they won't get famous. They won't sell millions. They'll share it with their church or their family, and it'll touch the lives of two or three people, but it'll touch them in a way that will be really powerful and transformative. I'm thinking about a poem that a friend wrote thirty, forty years ago, and he shared it with me. It's never got published anywhere. I don't know if more than five people ever saw this poem. But it's one of the most helpful, soothing poems I've ever read, and I go back to it every so often and just go, “Yes.” So he wasn't famous. He never sold a poem. But that kind of poetic language touched me in ways that again a direct argument couldn't.

Yeah. And Tolkien wrote “Leaf by Niggle” for exactly this reason. There’s an artist, and he's going to paint a giant tree, and he only ends up painting a leaf, but in eternity he's shown the fullness of what that might be. And if we've got an eternal kind of… yeah. If we've got an eternal outlook, then there's plenty of people you can show your poem to in eternity, and there will be plenty of people blessed. So yeah, let's have that grander vision. Yeah.

Now isn’t that a fun image? “I'm going to show my poetry to people in eternity, and because it's heaven, they're going to be kind to me.” They’re not going to say, “Get away from me.” Okay-

Hopefully, we can do some revisions, but yeah.

Well, I'll have a lot of time. So I don't want to stop without at least mentioning your wife, Emma. She’s also a poet? Am I correct? And she has written some books?

She’s an author and writer. Yeah.

And can you tell us a little bit about her ministry and her books? Because I know that, when I've heard you speak, you always mention her and about her books. Just give us a little flavor, and we'll make it a tease, and hopefully we can have her as a guest sometime.

Yeah. Oh, you ought to. Yeah, no. She is the real writer in the family. She wrote A New Name a few years ago as a memoir. She survived life-threatening anorexia a couple of times in her life, once as a teenager and then again in our early marriage, and she writes absolutely beautifully and harrowingly about that, and people really feel understood when they read this book. Even if you've never struggled with eating in your life. She basically talks about addiction, and she basically talks about the human heart and the way we keep on returning to poison as though it's our healing and the way we cut ourselves off and shrink down, and it's the number one evangelistic book I give away because the way she describes how Jesus met her in the midst of that is just the most beautiful writing. It’s captivating, and it tells her story. And then she followed up with another couple of books, including A New Day, which is a beautiful pastoral theology of how you walk with someone through struggle and sorrow and with resurrection hope. So that's beautiful, and she's continuing to write and speak.

Our youngest has just started at school, and so she's got a bit more time, and she's starting to work on some new writing projects, but I'm not sure if I'm able to disclose what they are at the moment.

Okay.

Maybe. She'll probably tell you, Randy, but she won't tell me.

Okay. Good. Good, good. Well, I'd love to explore that and have her as a guest, because I know that lots of people can be helped by that.

Well, Glen, it's been great to reconnect. I'm going to draw this to a close. Any last thoughts you want to make sure that you get in there about the arts and poetry and story that hasn't been said yet?

I will give you one quote that we're always quoting here at Speak Live. So Ashley Null was a biographer of Thomas Cranmer, who was the author of the Book of Common Prayer and the great Archbishop of Canterbury during the Reformation. The summary of his anthropology is, “What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.” And it's that way around. It's a very Pauline biblical anthropology really. “What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.” And I think that gives us all the reason in the world to try to captivate hearts.

Well said. That’s great, that's great. Thanks so much. To our listeners, check out our show notes, where we've got some links to resources about Speak Life and about Glen's books and some videos. Please also visit our website, cslewisinstitute.org, where we aim to pursue discipleship of the heart and mind. And we hope that all these resources, and this podcast included, will help you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.

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