Reading Biography 6.23.2022

    Preaching is bridge-building. We build bridges between the past and present. We build bridges between cultures. We build aesthetic and intellectual bridges. We build these bridges because the Gospel includes both particularity and universality. The kingdom is both always and now, then and there, here and hereafter. The most common of commonalities linking the past, present, and future is people. 

    The Bible tells the tale of God’s work to redeem His fallen creation. Within that tale, we read of men, women, and children whose lives contributed to the unfolding of the story. Some are heroic and some are tragic. Some provide positive role models, and others behaved deplorably. 

    Understanding people and what makes them tick is essential if we are to preach Scripture in such a way that listeners learn what they hear and apply what they learn. The world is our laboratory. We are surrounded by opportunities to learn about human nature and motivation, that is, other people. And every bookstore and library contains volumes of information about exemplary and notorious people to further our understanding of the human condition. That is what biographies are for, and if you preach to other human beings, you should read biography regularly. 

    Of all the kinds of literature I have recommended this month, biography may be the most directly relevant to preaching, even more so than history. The examples and illustrations taken from historical reading can lean toward the abstract and generic. Biographies provide illustrative material that tends toward the personal and intimate. Let’s consider the kinds of helpful information a conscientious preacher can glean from regularly reading biography. My examples shall come from my reading this winter of William Manchester’s magisterial (and large) biography of Winston Churchill, The Last Lion.

Human Nature

    Winston Churchill may have been larger than life, lived in a different era, and flourished in a class-driven society, but he was also driven by what we might think of as “normal” human characteristics. 

    Churchill was always trying to please his father. Churchill was always trying to get from beneath his father’s shadow. He adored his mother, who treated him as a beloved but tiresome toy. 

    His ambition was at times untamed which led him to avoidable errors and unnecessary danger. 

    Churchill suffered, throughout his life, from what he called his “black dogs.” The current diagnosis would likely describe him as depressed. Yet he was able to master his darkest moods and continue working. 

    His stubborn resolve turned him into a great leader during World War 2. His stubborn resolve led the electorate to remove him from office shortly after the last shot was fired in Europe.

Cultural Similarity/Dissimilarity

    All cultures share certain features. Each culture also has its defining characteristics. Churchill was born to wealth. He also lived in an era when rich, British aristocrats spent money lavishly on their comforts and pleasures. It was not uncommon for Churchill to be in debt to common shopkeepers and merchants whom he depended upon to help satisfy his needs. Those he owed were not as well off as he and his indifference to their needs seems callous to us. Yet, despite all the similarities between American and British culture, this is one of stark contrast. 

    He was at the same time an ardent individualist and a party man. He served his sovereign, party, and nation. His first allegiance, however, was to himself. 

Nature/Nurture

    Like most British middle and upper-class children of his time, Churchill’s education was largely in “public” (in Britain a public school is a private school, you know two people separated by a common language…) boarding schools. This was the nature of the British system. As for nurture, Churchill’s parents provided virtually none. Like his peers, he was largely raised by his nursemaid who was the most influential nurturing presence in his life until he got married. 

    So, what or who made him what he was? Was he born to greatness? The circumstances under which he was raised made him spoiled, self-centered, churlish, and childish even into adulthood. Yet none of these seemingly stunted emotions were able to stifle him. 

Vices and Virtues

    While Churchill is famous for the way he ate, drank, and smoked his most defining vice, for we who live in the Post-Modern world, was perhaps his work ethic. He was a workaholic, and that word barely does it justice. He was a member of the House of Commons. Before his Premiership, he had served in several other ministries. He wrote constantly and would be justly famous just for his life’s written output. For leisure on his Chartwell estate, he designed and built buildings. He found laying bricks to be a relaxing way to take his mind off work. 

    About eating, drinking, and smoking. Churchill had a formal dinner every evening. He would gather a crowd of employees, chums, and government officials and have a good English meal (at which he always consumed Champaign). These meals were ostensibly for “work” and conversation. At these gatherings, there was only one speaker. Churchill himself. Likely his central defining vice was his narcissism. He was a genius in several fields and much of the drive came from the fact that he was able to focus the energy of others on his work. 

Individuality/Genius/Teamwork

    Churchill was one of the great orators of the twentieth century. This is even more remarkable in that he had a lisp. He overcame this obstacle by leveraging it and turning it into a tool. In preparing a speech he dictated his first draft. Then he revised. Then he rewrote. Then he practiced. Then he amended. Then he had the final copy drafted in “Psalm Style”, arranged on the page to enable him to follow the logic and inflection of the speech. Prior to delivery, he would pencil corrections in the margin. 

    To be a part of his team was to be in the heat of the battle and at the heart of government. It was also exhausting. He never stopped thinking, writing, and exhorting. 

    The defining characteristic of Team Churchill was that it served him. The secretaries, typists, clerks, and government subordinates functioned as an extension of his valet. The latter prepared his bath and dressed him. The former prepared his documents and dressed his speech. 

End

Many other kinds of literature incorporate biographical processes into a larger genre. My current evening pleasure reading right now is the story of the writing of a computer program. In telling that tale the author is incorporating dozens of mini-biographies as he weaves a narrative web naming programmers and executives, the dreamers, doubters, schemers, and coders who set out a decade ago to write a new PIM called Chandler. They failed and that failure makes for an interesting story of why smart people do not always succeed. 

The story could have been told with much less biographical detail. The information would have been just as accurate, but the story would have been less readable. 

Mitch Kapor is no Winston Churchill but each character in each tale extends our understanding of what it means to be human. Biography helps us with the human side of preaching. 

We are always making comparisons between people. Biographical reading gives us a bigger canvas for those comparisons. Reading biography lets us compare people from diverse backgrounds with the characters we meet in scripture and the people we interact with every single day. Those comparisons teach us that people are pretty much all the same, sharing the same motivations to one degree or another, all participating in the fall and all in need of redemption.