Speak God’s Wonders—In His World and in His Word
Seasonable joyousness, honey sweetness, golden fitness, gracious saltiness—such are the descriptions of speech commended in the Bible.
To make an apt answer is a joy to a man, and a word in season, how good it is! (Proverbs 15:23)
The wise of heart is called discerning, and sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness. (Proverbs 16:21)
A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver. (Proverbs 25:11)
Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt. (Colossians 4:6)
Of course, there are many other descriptions of good speech, such as truth (Ephesians 4:15), clarity (Colossians 4:4), boldness (Ephesians 6:20), sincerity (2 Corinthians 2:17), in the name of the Lord Jesus (Colossians 3:17). But our focus in this book has been on joyful, honey-like, strikingly fitting, language that is "seasonsed with salt." I have called the mental, emotional, prayerful, God-dependent, self-humbling, Christ-exalting exertion it takes to find and express these words poetic effort.
The aim has not been to suggest that all Christians write poems (though I suspect we all will someday). Poetic effort is not the effort to write poems. Poetic effort is the effort to see and savor and speak the wonder—the divine glory—that is present everywhere in the world God made, in the history God guides, and in the Word God inspired.
THE CENTRAL FOCUS OF THIS BOOK
The particular focus we have circled back to frequently is the insight that the effort to say beautifully is a way of also seeing beauty. By beautifully, I don’t mean flowery or ostentatious or ornate or showy or elevated. I mean illuminating, well-timed, penetrating, creative, fresh, imaginative, striking, awakening, provocative—while not being trite, clichéd, clever, cute, silly, obtrusive, awkward, puerile, faddish, corny, or boring. The very fact that so many words exist to describe poorly chosen words shows how common they are. I am pleading for us to do better.
So the central point of this book—saying beautifully is a way of seeing beauty—doesn’t mean let’s all create poems or let’s all be artsy. It means that as you try to find words that seem worthy of the worth of what you have seen, the worth of what you have seen becomes clearer and deeper. That’s the point.
The point is to waken us to go beyond the common awareness that using worthy words helps others feel the worth of what we have seen. Everybody knows that. It is a crucial and wise insight. And love surely leads us to it. But I am going beyond that. Or under that. Or before it. The point of this book has been that finding worthy words for worthy discoveries not only helps others feel their worth but also helps us feel the worth of our own discoveries. Groping for awakening words in the darkness of our own dullness can suddenly flip a switch and shed light all around what it is that we are trying to describe—and feel. Taking hold of a fresh word for old truth can become a fresh grasp of the truth itself. Telling of beauty in new words becomes a way of tasting more of the beauty itself.
GEORGE HERBERT
George Herbert and C. S. Lewis virtually said this point explicitly. Why did Herbert labor to find extraordinary words and unprecedented ways of describing the glories of the love of Christ?
[Poetry] is no office, art, or news,
Nor the Exchange, or busie Hall;
But it is that which while I use
I am with Thee. . . .1
The very effort to find the words for Christ brought him closer to Christ. It opened the treasure chest of redeeming love. Yes, his poems illumine us. But first they illumined Herbert. He did not merely find the sweetness of Christ and then create words so we could taste. No. The creating of the words was part of finding the sweetness. He tasted Christ by means of the poetic effort to tell well.
GEORGE WHITEFIELD
George Whitefield wrote little and preached almost ceaselessly—sometimes as much at sixty hours in a week. He did not reflect theoretically on his way of speaking. But from what he said, and what others experienced, we know that his verbal and theatrical poetic effort was a way of feeling and heralding the greatest realities in the world. This story is worth repeating:
I’ll tell you a story [Whitefield said]. One day the Archbishop . . . said to Butterton [a famous actor] . . . “Pray inform me Mr. Butterton, what is the reason you actors on stage can affect your congregations with speaking of things imaginary, as if they were real, while we in church speak of things real, which our congregations only receive as if they were imaginary?” “Why my Lord,” says Butterton, “the reason is very plain. We actors on stage speak of things imaginary, as if they were real and you in the pulpit speak of things real as if they were imaginary.” Therefore, I will bawl [shout loudly], I will not be a velvet-mouthed preacher!2
We may readily admit that in one sense Whitefield was “acting” as he preached. That is, he was taking the part of the characters in the drama of his sermons and pouring all his energy—his poetic effort—into making their parts real. And this poetic effort was not only for his listeners but for himself. The key words in the story above are “as if.” “We actors on stage speak of things imaginary, as if they were real and you in the pulpit speak of things real as if they were imaginary.” Whitefield resolved to do neither. He would speak of things real as if they were real, because they are real. This “as if” is what I mean by poetic effort. It gropes not for words to make the unreal real but for words to see and savor and speak the real as real. The true as true. The glorious as glorious. The horrible as horrible. The tender as tender. The tough as tough. The joyful as joyful. And reaching for a voice that matches the truth—this is my point—wakens the speaker as well as the hearer.
C. S. LEWIS
C. S. Lewis came to faith in Christ by learning that this world, for all its wonders and joys, is not what his heart was finally made for. All the joys of nature and literature were pointing to something—“something other and outer.” God had revealed himself in terms of what he was not. The world and everything in it was a creative language pointing to the real thing. Which also meant that the realness of the world could only be known, in its true depth and beauty, by those who know that it is not everything.
Only Supernaturalists really see Nature. You must go a little way from her, and then turn round, and look back. Then at last the true landscape will become visible. You must have tasted, however briefly, the pure water from beyond the world before you can be distinctly conscious of the hot, salty tang of Nature’s current.3
So to truly know God, we must attend to what he has made—the world, the written Word, the flesh of the incarnate Son. And to know what he has made, we must attend to God. From this, Lewis drew out his understanding of myth and story and metaphor and poetry—and poetic effort. He saw that one can speak deeply and truly of God and this world only by reaching for the terms of the other—God in terms of the world, the world in terms of God. The world is not what it is without God, and God is not known for who he is except through the world. But this implied something else. Lewis also saw that one can see the world and God deeply and truly only by reaching for the terms of the other. We don’t just speak the world and God truly by stretching for the words outside the world and outside God, but we also see the world and God that way. We would not see them for what they are if we did not try to think them and speak them in the terms of the other.
Thus Lewis provides us with a deeper foundation for the point of this book. Saying beautifully as way of seeing beauty—saying surprisingly and imaginatively, speaking in terms of “the other”—is rooted in the fact that God and nature are “other” from each other. Nature is not what it is apart from “the other” (God), and God is not known for what he is apart from “the other” (the world he made). This foundational truth trickles all the way down to our everyday speech. The words “just as” and “like” and “as if” are echoes of this foundational truth. We see more of what is when we describe it in terms of what it is not.
BENEDICTION
May the Lord Jesus himself protect us from self-exalting, Christ-obscuring eloquence. But may he grant us a humble, Christ-exalting poetic habit of speaking his wonders—from the simplest in his world to the greatest in his Word—in words of seasonable joyousness, honey sweetness, golden fitness, and gracious saltiness. May he do it so that we ourselves might first taste, then tell.
1 George Herbert, “The Quidditie” in Helen Wilcox, ed., The English Poems of George Herbert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 254.
2 Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), 239–40.
3 C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 67.