This begins in a rather silly place, but bear with me. When we went on vacation to the beach in September and I was slathering on the sunscreen and noting the amount of tan I was getting each day through walking and spending the morning at the water, I realized something. I’d grown up in a family with a pool and who took tanning seriously. It was something we did, goals we set. My mom and sister still sit out in the sun just to get a tan, as do my nieces. There’s nothing wrong with that (morally, I’m not talking about risks of skin cancer)…but it’s not something I do anymore. Which is fine.

But occasionally I feel like I have to apologize to them for it, or make excuses for why I don’t. I don’t have time… or My skin type is prone to skin cancer, I need to be careful.

But…WHY? Why do I feel that way? Maybe in part it’s because people will say “Oh, you look so nice with a little color in your cheeks!” or maybe it’s because sometimes people follow it up with, “You know, if you just spend 30 minutes outside a day, you could keep that tan all summer.” But I think mostly it’s because sometime in my childhood, I identified it as good. Which meant it was something to strive toward. Something to seek. Something…virtuous.

Of course, when I state it so baldly, it’s obviously not. Looking a certain way has nothing to do with virtue. Neither does having a beautifully decorated home or regularly washing your car or exercising daily or adhering to a particular diet. These things are perhaps vanity, perhaps pride, perhaps discipline, perhaps health-seeking. But they are not moral questions in and of themselves. They are not by nature virtuous or unvirtuous (though our pursuit of them could be). And because they’re silly examples, they’re the perfect entry point to asking myself a deeper question:

What else have I mistaken as a virtue that isn’t? What do I pursue, thinking it a Good, when it as best a “good,” but most likely just a thing? Where do I have my eyes fixed on the earthly where they should be fixed on the heavenly?

The whole tanning thing started the question, but some other “things” I’ve found are:

Reading. I love it, and I can get a lot of good out of it. But it does not make me better than non-readers, morally speaking. My son learns just as much from YouTube videos as I do from books. Being a book-lover is part of my identity…but it is not a virtue.

Being outdoorsy. We live in a beautiful area with lots of mountains and forests, and I spent a lot of time outside as a kid, as did my husband. But enjoying the outdoors is not a virtue. I am not sinning when I sit inside instead, even on beautiful days. I always appreciate the beauty of God’s world…but I can’t always be out in it. My work is almost entirely indoors.

Holding particular political views. In this divided climate, I hear so many people equating belonging to a particular political party or holding to a certain political view as “right” and “good” and even “Godly.” But the truth is that Jesus never once encouraged people to engage in politics or take political sides. He invites us to keep our eyes on the Kingdom of God instead of the kingdoms of men.

I’m sure there are many other places that I need to separate “enjoyable” or “worthwhile” from truly VIRTUOUS, and it’s something I’ve begun keeping an eye out for. Because plenty of things really are worthwhile and can enrich our lives and our faith…but if we apply that “virtuous” label to them, then we think they’re good for everyone, because virtues ARE. But these things are NOT on that level. They can be good, yes…but they are not required for all. They can be good without being virtuous.

Is there anything in your life that you’ve mistaken for a virtue when really it’s a simple lower-case-g good?

When a family is made up of a novelist wife and her publisher/filmmaker husband, there are a lot of conversations in the house about story–what makes them powerful, what makes them fail. What makes them lasting, what makes them forgettable.

A few weeks ago as David and I were chatting about some books and films we were reading and watching, we were musing about what the problem was with a certain one, and David said, “I think it’s that it just gives us the answer. The writers didn’t set out to explore a topic–they set out to give a canned answer. But that’s too easy, and ‘too easy’ doesn’t ever ring true. That’s why it’s a fail.”

Over the decades, I have heard Christian fiction called “preachy” soooooo many times–by fellow Christians. At first this puzzled me. I mean, I would get it if non-believers were turned off by any faith message and called it “preachy.” But fellow Christians? Why would they toss a book aside in disgust because it was “preachy”? They like preaching! They go every week for a dose of it, right? LOL.

Then I began to really pay attention to what stories earned that label and why. Sometimes it was that there were literally sermons in the novels that weren’t really necessary…but that was rare. Sometimes it was that a character seriously preached at another character…but that wasn’t always it.

Many times–perhaps even most times–it was exactly the thing my husband pointed out in our conversation. It was that the whole book seemed to be just handing us an answer–a pat, cliche, easy answer.

Life, faith, truth, though…those aren’t easy. They’re complicated. They’re involved. They’re DEEP. So shouldn’t our stories about them be too?

When I enrolled at St. John’s College (The Great Books School), I remember the first day of science lab. Our tutor (professor) said that the goal of the class was not to learn facts. The goal of the class was to learn how to ask good questions. In many ways this is the main goal of the entire St. John’s education. When it was put into words like that, though, I know very well I frowned and looked over at the students next to me. Learn how to ask questions? What was this guy talking about? We ALL know how to ask questions!

Half an hour later, I realized I didn’t. My education had never taught me that. My education had simply taught me how to absorb facts and spit them back out on a test. Not how to discover. Not how to explore a topic. The example from that first lab class was this: go outside. Sit in front of something growing. Now start describing it. We began with, “It’s a tree.” To which our tutor replied, “Is it? How do you know? How do you know it isn’t a bush instead? Or an herb?” And so on it went, not just in that class, but through four years of classes on all subjects. We learned that answers are only part of learning. Just as important, if not more important, are the questions that lead us there, and that lead us onward. To the next discovery. The next Truth. The next good question.

And the stories that really resonate do the same thing–they don’t just lay out a quick, easy answer to some topic that the author wanted to hammer on. No, no. Good stories–whether non- or fiction, book or film or article–ask questions. They make us ask questions. Good questions. DEEP questions. They invite us to ponder, to view a subject from a perspective we’ve never considered before. They make us sit back and go “Huh. Wow.” They open our minds and our hearts to new possibilities.

That’s the magic of story. More, it’s the importance of questions.

Try it in your own conversations or studies sometime, I dare you–it’s so much fun, and so enlightening! Instead of a Bible study being all about the presentation of facts, start with an “opening question,” like we did in each class at St. John’s. And then explore it. See where it takes you. See what amazing thing the Lord reveals through delving past the accepted and expected, past the pat and easy answers. See what depths you discover. And see how much closer you draw to Him and how much richer the world looks when you do.

We are a storytelling people. It only takes a look at modern society to see the truth of it. Our advertisements, our movies, our books, our games…we love them and are persuaded by them not because they tell us facts or make promises. We are persuaded and enchanted when they tell us a story we can believe in.

I love this about humanity. I love that story often matters more than a mere recitation of fact. That is, after all, what I make my living on–telling YOU stories that will show a bit of God’s truth through my fictional words. I love it because I recognize how powerful such things are in my own life, my own heart. A history book that just presents a list of facts? Forget about it. But one that tells me about the lives–the stories–of the people who lived…those stay with me. They teach me. They help me to understand situations and cultures and people unlike me. It’s why I began Seeing the Story, it’s why I’m a novelist.

But there’s another side to being a storytelling people too–there’s a dangerous side. Have you ever paused to think about that?

The term today is “anecdotal evidence,” which probably makes most scientist cringe, LOL. But it’s something we put a LOT of stock in. Because they’re stories. Stories about people we know, or who are known by people we know, or on down the line. Anecdotal evidence comes in compelling packages and can never be disproven, because it exists only in the realm of story, really. Track down the actual person, and you may find facts quite different from the anecdote you heard (we all know that “telephone” game, right?)

I came across this years ago when I was doing research for The Reluctant Duchess. I needed a character to think she had miscarried a child. She fell a few days before. Could this cause a miscarriage? When I looked it up, I was shocked to see that doctors say, “No. Highly unlikely.” At least for the kind of fall I was talking about. But that’s not what I’d heard over the years. How could that be? Well, because there are anecdotes of women falling and then miscarrying. Surely it was linked! But was it? The sad truth is that a certain percentage of pregnancies end in miscarriage. And it’s also true that a certain percentage of people trip and fall every day. There’s going to be overlap there, but that doesn’t necessitate cause.

But a hurting heart doesn’t care about statistics. A hurting heart wants a reason. And so we seek them. We latch hold of whatever makes most sense to us. And we tout it as truth.

This can be so dangerous though. This can lead so quickly to “Mary and I got in an argument, and she scowled at my garden, and the next day it withered! She’s a witch!”

We may shake our head at witch trials in the literal sense today, but there’s a reason they’re part of our history–it’s because they’re so indicative of our natures. We tell ourselves stories…and we believe them. We act on them. We teach them as truth. And if scientific evidence ever dares to disagree, which do we believe?

The one with the most compelling story.

Now, I’m a storyteller–I am not a scientist. So my natural inclination is always to go with the stories. But I’ve had to teach myself over the years to check that impulse when it comes to certain things. Health, medicine, technology, just to name a few. Because though I can tell a great story about how all the computers in the house rebelled at the same time and come up with a really great conspiracy theory as to why…let’s be realistic. It’s just a coincidence. Me telling stories about how software corporations are out to get me is not helpful, LOL.

Which then makes me ask the same about other stories I tell, other stories I hear. Are they true…or just compelling? Do they have actual fact behind them? Do they agree with documented studies, if it’s a field that has such things? If not, then I need to favor fact above anecdote.

Because trust me, I know the power of words, of story. And that’s why I know how important it is to use them wisely.

Have you ever been convinced by a story just because it’s compelling, only later to learn it’s totally untrue? Are there any cases of anecdotal evidence floating around your world today that you need to investigate more closely? I hope we can remind each other to do that. Because loving stories is one thing–but we need to be careful we’re loving the right ones. The ones that speak of Truth.

A little throwback post today…Talking about the mismatched Original Post Published June 2, 2016.

When I got married, I filled out a registry. A wish list. It had on it all the things one would expect–dishes and cookware, sheets and towels.

All of them, sets. Matching.

Off-white plates with flowers around the edges. Matching cups. A set of cutlery. Glasses that complemented. Things designed carefully to look good beside each other. That wore a uniform. That were all the same in their perfection.

Over the years, plates and bowls and glasses have gotten broken. Cutlery has, somehow or another, vanished. This piece and that piece have been lent out and forgotten. Over the years, our collection of dishes has been subtracted from and added to.

Now it’s a hodgepodge. It’s a mixture. A motley array of mismatched this-and-that.

And I love it.

I’ve heard before (though I don’t honestly remember from whom) the statement, “I just want dishes that match!” At the time, I commiserated. This seems like a good thing, you know?

But when I pause to think about it . . . which coffee cup is my favorite? The Disney mug I bought for myself when I was 14. The one that has no match. Is part of no set. The one that’s unique. It fits my hand, and I like how much it holds. I’ve even caught myself, when in a rental house for vacation or in my church kitchen, always seeking out a mug that’s different. That won’t be confused with anyone else’s. That’s unique and inviting.

Still, I was somewhat surprised when my kids, a couple years ago, began the following conversation:

Rowyn: “Can I have that spoon instead of this one? That one’s my favorite.”
Xoe: “Really? I don’t have a favorite spoon. But I have a favorite fork. It’s the one with the stars on it.”
Rowyn: “You can have that one. I like the little one with the flowers.”

I smiled as I heard them talking oh-so-seriously about which of the mismatched cutlery they preferred. Why?

Because they both favored the unique pieces. The one-of-a-kind ones. Yes, that’s part of it.

But also because only then did I realize that their favorites were my least favorites. That the ones that don’t please me aesthetically for one reason or another, they find beautiful.

And that this is something I never would have learned in this particular way if all my silverware still matched.

When we’re surrounded by the same, we’re not given the chance to find our preferences. When we have only that perfect set, there isn’t room for individuality. When everything matches, nothing stands out. Not that there’s anything wrong with a matching set of dishes, LOL. It’s certainly a handy way to buy something you need.

But there’s something so beautiful in the mismatched. There’s something freeing. Something encouraging.

Because I don’t know about you, but I don’t quite fit in a set. Right? We’re all a little different. A little off. A little bigger or smaller or cracked. We’re different colors. Different shapes.

And that’s how we’re supposed to be. Because different people find different things beautiful. We have different needs. My favorite will not be yours, necessarily. And that’s good. That’s right. We all appreciate different facets of this beautiful world. For different reasons that invite us in different ways.

God didn’t create much of anything in neat, orderly sets. He created a wild profusion of beauty. He created the this-and-that. The hodgepodge. Mismatched. Mountains and valleys, rivers and seas, deserts and rain forests. And He declared it good.

I’ll probably never have a matching set of dishes again, much less cutlery or glasses. And you know what?

It’s good.

I want to talk today about where risks and faith meet. And how we walk the line between “foolish for Christ” and just foolish. I’m not saying I have all the answers on where that line is…but I am saying we all need to ask the questions, and I think I’ve seen a good indicator of what those questions should be.

Faith, by nature, both starts from logic and then defies it. We can reason our way to many aspects of faith, and we can certainly talk intelligently about it. But there does come a point where logic says “play it safe,” and faith says, “take a risk and trust God.” This is a crucial part of true faith—that letting go of our own understanding and flinging ourselves into the arms of Christ. He will ask each of us to do that at some point, or at many points. Honestly, I believe the more we do it, the more He invites us to do it. The more He’ll stretch out His hand and say, “Okay, good…now follow me here too.”

But I’ve never read where Christ asked the disciples, or the apostles asked the early church, to trust in Him for their own convenience. I’ve never seen where He instructs us to assume God will make everything okay so that we can go out and seek our own will. No. He says we’ll be okay when we’re seeking His will. And “okay” may not mean what we think it does. It may not mean security or health or wealth as the world defines it. It merely means that whatever we have—be it plenty or nothing, be it pain or joy, be it health or illness—He will make us able to face it. That’s what that “I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me” verse is about. Facing, living with, living through any circumstance.

And God’s will for the Church is clear: serve others. Sacrifice for them. Take risks to show them His love.

When the servants of the medieval church went out into plague-ridden Europe, it was not for their own pleasure. They weren’t doing what they wanted to do–they were going out to risk their own lives to serve those who needed it. Their top and perhaps only priority was to visit the sick and do what they could to relieve their suffering. They took great risks to accomplish this. Sometimes God protected them. Sometimes He didn’t. But they went out knowing that if they lived, it was to serve another day, and if they died, it meant being with Him.

We hear amazing stories of missionaries who have seemingly super-human immunities as they serve God in the bush…and just as many stories of missionaries who die or nearly die in that same service. We have stories of people overcoming all odds in service to Him, and stories of people who give up the fight on earth to go on to reign in heaven. This is our reality, friends—faith comes with risks, and sometimes the rewards are earthly, but other times they’re heavenly. The question, though, is this: WHY are we taking the risks? Is it to serve Him? To love others? To relieve their suffering?

Or is it for our own convenience and pleasure?

I’m going to get pointed, and this is where I’m going to offend some of you. I’m sorry if I cause offense—but if you have an emotional reaction to what I’m about to say, please, please do this. Ask yourself why. Why are your emotions tangled up in this? I’ll talk about why mine were, and why I decided to reevaluate them. If you’re reading this later, here’s some context—I’m writing this in the summer of 2021, during a new height of the Covid pandemic. Infection rates are at an all-time high, mask mandates are coming back, vaccines are available but widely eschewed by the faith community. I’m not going to talk about vaccines or their safety, masks or their effectiveness. What I’m going to talk about is how the prevailing stance by the American church is affecting our ability to proclaim Christ.

Let me tell you my personal story. When mask mandates started appearing in 2020, I thought they were stupid. I went out looking up articles that debunked their effectiveness (even though I only found 1 for every 100 saying they were effective). I avoided Maryland, where they were required, and did my shopping in West Virginia, where they weren’t (I live on the border, so this isn’t actually going out of my way, LOL). I laughed about it. I didn’t care. I was convinced I was right simply because I wanted it to be true. I did what I wanted … then I saw a plea from a good friend of mine with immunodeficiency. A plea to think of people like her—people who always have to live with such care, but who cannot even step foot outside her house now as long as other people are being careless. And I was struck.

My stance was all about me. My convenience, my inclinations, what I wanted. My stance had nothing at all to do with my friend or the millions of people in similar situations. Ouch. I wasn’t loving my neighbor. I was only loving myself. I was thinking about whether I got sick…not about whether I was responsible for getting someone else sick.

And that isn’t okay.

Then came the hard question: why? Why was I so determined that my want be right and their statistics be wrong? I had no good answer. So I just asked God to give me eyes to see them and a heart to love them above my own comfort. I tried to think about how I would feel if I was the one who passed Covid to someone who died from it, when I could have prevented it with a few simple steps. And I realized that this is a very simple way of loving my neighbor. Protecting them from me, even when they aren’t protecting themselves.

Then my son was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. This doesn’t put him at a higher risk to catch any illness, but what it does mean is that ANY illness—even the ones that healthy people just get over in 3 days—could land him in the hospital. That was when Mama Bear Mode really kicked in and I started noticing people’s actions. And what I noticed really saddened me. That the “world,” those with no faith to speak of, were doing all in their power to keep my child safe…but the Church, who should be thinking first and foremost of others, were the last to do so and only did it under duress. So many were where I’d been at the start but hadn’t yet had that moment of conscience. Not ALL, of course. But when I opened social media or listened to quite a lot of friends, that’s all I was hearing. What they wanted. What risks they deemed acceptable to themselves.

Why did my fellow Christians not love my son? Not love my friend? Not love the millions of people at higher risk than them? Why were my fellow Christians chanting “my rights” above “our love through Christ”? Why were we more concerned with our convenience than in how it destroyed Christ in the eyes of that scared and hurting world? Because it does, my friends. They are afraid. They see a monster wanting to devour them, and they don’t see us fighting it. When mask mandates changed to “don’t wear them if you’re vaccinated, keep wearing them if you aren’t,” I heard countless Christians say, “How will they know? It’s my risk, I’ll take it.”

The world saw that. The world was horrified. Because the world said, “It’s not about the risk to YOU. It’s about the risk you pose to everyone else.” And they’re not wrong. We are the ones supposed to be more concerned for them than ourselves. We’re supposed to be the ones taking risks to help—not to hurt.

The world should not look at us and see people willing to risk THEIR lives for OUR comfort. They should look at us and see people willing to risk OUR lives for THEIR souls.

This is not what I see when I look around at a lot of the church today. More importantly, it’s not what the world is seeing either. I was not showing them I was a risk-taker-for-Christ last year when I laughed and went looking for facts to back up what I wanted to be true; I was only showing them that I was selfish and didn’t care whether I got them sick. That’s something I regret. Something of which I’ve repented. Something I work hard to avoid now.

I am not a fan of “safetyism”—when we try so hard to protect people, especially our children, that we hinder their emotional and mental growth and make them risk-averse (this word is used in an amazing book I talked about in this post). But there is a line. There are risks to take and risks it’s better to avoid, and the real trick is figuring out where that line is. This is why we shouldn’t put our kids in a bubble, but we DO teach them to wash their hands. (Did you know that the first doctor to ask people to wash their hands when they came into his ward was FIRED for his audacity? The hospital board thought he was infringing on the rights of the employees. How dare he!) This is why we don’t say “never get in a car, people die in car accidents!” but we DO wear seat belts. Doing those small actions doesn’t mean we’re faithless—it means we’re smart and focused on true risk-taking. That’s just safety, not “safetyism.”

So where is the line in this situation? That’s what each of us have to decide, and certainly there are good, valid reasons to have avoided what’s a risk to you and yours. I’d never say there isn’t. The question I hope we all ask ourselves, though, is whether where we draw the line affects our ability to work for Christ.

We know that the world will always call us foolish, yes—foolish because our faith values eternal good above earthly good. But we do NOT want to be seen the kind of foolish that results in harm for ourselves or others. Let people call us fools for rushing to the rescue of dying souls even when it means risking our lives. Not for risking those souls for our own benefit. And here’s the tricky part—it isn’t just about our own opinion, not when it comes to serving others. How are THEY seeing your decisions? And how does that impact their view of Christianity?

I want to be able to serve others. Therefore I will do whatever I can to put THEM above ME. This is a lesson I learned from seeing my friend trapped at home and suffering for more than a year. This is a lesson I learned sitting in the PICU of a children’s hospital with my son and being told they would see us again, because he’d get sick, and that’s what happens. This is a lesson I learned when I looked out at the world and saw a Church ruled by fear—fear of government, fear of losing their rights, fear of losing power. And I saw a world ruled by bitterness toward us for putting them at risk. I am not afraid of sickness, I am not afraid of death—for me. But I should not be the cause of it in others just because I’m stubborn and focused on what I want instead of what they need.

This is the lesson I have learned through all of this. This is the journey I’ve taken from “what I want to be true” to “how my opinions on what’s true affect my ability to serve others for Christ.” Maybe your journey has been different, maybe you arrived at different conclusions, even. But in my house, our rule has become, “We will not take risks with this disease just for our own entertainment—shopping, visiting, birthday parties and so on. But we WILL take risks where necessary to serve God and do what he’s called us to do.” We take what safety measures we can, we do what is possible to protect not only our son but everyone else. And then we trust.

We don’t have to agree on our every stance on this stuff. But we DO all have to ask ourselves the same questions. Are we concerned with US…or with THEM? Because if the risks we take are only for our own convenience and comfort, then there is no glory in that in the eyes of God. Faith and risk are only aligned when they involve reaching others for Him.

Where do risk and faith meet? In service to Him. And ONLY in service to Him.