“If you have been ordained to write, woe to you if you put everything else first.” ~ Sherwood WirtI was reading the Passages section of Christianity Today last night and came across the following notation:
Died >> Sherwood Eliot Wirt, Christian journalist and author, on November 8 in Seattle. ‘Woody Wirt’ was a longtime associate of Billy Graham and founding editor of Decision magazine.
He was also an author of 28 books, including one that in 1983 pretty much changed my life. That book was You Can Tell the World, subtitled New Directions for Christian Writers.
Wirt had been, among other things, a journalist. One great feature of being a journalist is getting the opportunity to throw a lot of questions at some fairly significant people. Wirt, for example, had encounters with heavies such as H. G. Wells and Albert Einstein. He also did C. S. Lewis’ last interview.
In the interview with Lewis he asked, "Will you tell young writers something about style?" Lewis said, "Style? Say exactly what you mean, and when you have said it, be sure you have said exactly that. That is style."
Wirt’s style was direct. His hefty serving of advice for young writers, with no mincing, had me hooked from the first punch. My frame of mind was such that Wirt's advice had the authority of the word of God. This was not just another book for me. At that time I truly felt writing to be a calling. I had "failed" as a missionary and my interpersonal skills and circumstances did not suit me for pastoral work. During a weeklong vacation at a private cabin in Portage, Wisconsin, I had an epiphanal moment in which, for me, writing became a calling.
My first published article six years earlier resulted in letters from three continents thanking me for what I had written. Only five hundred words, but these letters claimed their lives were changed. I experienced first hand the power of the written word.
I was only too aware of my limitations and lack of experience. Thus, when I picked up Wirt's book, I knew he was dead on. His message resonated because he passionately believed that what he was saying needed to be said. If we're to produce great work, we must know what great work looks like. The only way is to be a reader of great works.
“Darwin’s Origin of Species, Marx’ and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, Kierkegaard’s attacks on Hegel, Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street, Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Kafka’s The Trial, Camus’ The Plague and others.
“These books, the most influential of our time, deal primarily with the scientific challenge and loss of meaning in a mechanistic society. There has been no Christian work written since the novels of Dostoevsky that can honestly be said to match them in boldness, in documentation, in breadth and scope, in vision, in appeal to the human spirit, or in grasp of truth. C.S. Lewis is the only Christian entry in the field. The opportunities are wide open, and there is plenty of room at the top.”
A little further along, Wirt again urged serious young writers to read the classics. “The author of the 70’s who will really influence his day will be a person who knows the English language and the writers who have mastered it. Journalism courses are no substitute for a grasp of Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, John Milton, John Bunyan, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, Robert Browning, or even Ernest Hemingway. To live in the twentieth century and to understand it, one must also know Soren Kierkegaard, Karl Marx, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. There is no easy way to master such men; if we haven’t read them, sooner or later our bluff will be called. And may I add that there is very little God can do with a lazy Christian writer.”
“Darwin’s Origin of Species, Marx’ and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, Kierkegaard’s attacks on Hegel, Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street, Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Kafka’s The Trial, Camus’ The Plague and others.
“These books, the most influential of our time, deal primarily with the scientific challenge and loss of meaning in a mechanistic society. There has been no Christian work written since the novels of Dostoevsky that can honestly be said to match them in boldness, in documentation, in breadth and scope, in vision, in appeal to the human spirit, or in grasp of truth. C.S. Lewis is the only Christian entry in the field. The opportunities are wide open, and there is plenty of room at the top.”
A little further along, Wirt again urged serious young writers to read the classics. “The author of the 70’s who will really influence his day will be a person who knows the English language and the writers who have mastered it. Journalism courses are no substitute for a grasp of Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, John Milton, John Bunyan, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, Robert Browning, or even Ernest Hemingway. To live in the twentieth century and to understand it, one must also know Soren Kierkegaard, Karl Marx, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. There is no easy way to master such men; if we haven’t read them, sooner or later our bluff will be called. And may I add that there is very little God can do with a lazy Christian writer.”I'd been given my marching orders. With this admonition I was pushed into the literature, listening to classics while painting apartments, while commuting, whenever I was not able to sit at a typewriter and pour myself out. I considered myself a serious young writer, and took these admonitions to heart. For better or for worse, though I may not have significantly changed the world, the skills I developed help me provide for my family. And the rest of my story is as yet unwritten...
One takeaway from Wirt's book bears repeating: If you want to change the world, and I earnestly desired it, you begin by changing yourself.
As for Mr. Wirt, thank you for helping light my torch that I might in some small way give light to another generation of young writers seeking to hold back tomorrow's darkness with courage and truth.
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