How Ivan's Death Gave Me Life

The Power of Story to Speak Truth

About eleven years ago I decided it was time for me to pursue a Ph.D. My options were limited by my inability to simply pack up and go wherever I might wish. I was (and am) a husband and father and providing for my family was my first priority. Such being the case, I began to look at Ph.D. programs that could be done at a distance.

At that point in my life I was serving as an associate pastor at a church in Arizona. I had completed a bachelor’s degree in Religion and Apologetics, and a masters in Biblical Studies. I was zealous for theology and philosophy and I read virtually nothing else. Though it is true that we were homeschooling our kids at that time in the classical approach, which meant my wife and kids were reading many classic works of literature, I was very narrow in my own reading. I was convinced that the most important things were theology and philosophy because those were the things which pursued truth. Fiction was merely a distraction from more important things. Fine for kids, perhaps, but not what I should spend my time on as a grown adult and especially not as a pastor.

Naturally, then, I looked first at various programs in theology, philosophy, and apologetics. I considered a program in Apologetics at Liberty University pretty strongly for a while. I toyed with applying to Southern Evangelical Seminary for their Ph.D in Philosophy program. By some complete cosmic accident (read the sarcasm) I found Faulkner University’s Ph.D. in Humanities program. In addition to being a completely distance option I liked that it was regionally accredited and I liked that it was a university rather than a seminary. So, I reached out to the then head of program, Dr. Woods, and I asked for more information. We talked about it for some time and I eventually asked him whether I might be able to pursue some apologetics topic for my dissertation in this context. I thought perhaps I could do something related to the apologetical work of C. S. Lewis. He said I could likely do that (though that’s not what I did in the end) and so I decided to go for it.

The program was a “Great Books” program. I knew it would stretch me and make me read quite a few things out of the norm for me. The historical literature I was good with. That seemed relevant to both Bible and Church history. Mathematical and Scientific reasoning…that was going to be tough, but I’d try my best and get through it as a necessary evil. Literature… well, if I had to, but why? I decided I would put up with it as a means to an end that really mattered.

My very first class in the program was a “Humane Letters” class. I’ll admit to you that the first couple of books we read didn’t do much for me at the time. We read one of Ray Bradbury’s books, Dandelion Wine, and we read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. To my discredit, I didn’t care about either of those books at all. They did nothing for me. They bored me (which was my fault). But one of the books we read hit very different, namely, The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy.

It floored me. It was the most powerful thing I had ever read. As Ivan lay there dying, I sat there coming to life.

The story begins at Ivan’s funeral. A young man, up and coming in the world, attends Ivan’s funeral out of a sense of obligation, but also as a means to shake the right hands and be around the right sort of people. Then the story backtracks to when Ivan was just like that young man, before everything in his life fell apart. I won’t ruin it for you. That he dies is literally in the title, so I promise I have not ruined it for you. The story is all about what he learns between the time when he was just like the young man who came to his funeral and the time he actually died. It is a short but powerful story which makes you ask yourself one very important question: “What really matters in this life?”

In truth, the story wrestles with the same things I had been wrestling with as a theologian and philosopher in a discursive sort of way. Even so, it wrestled with that question in a way more masterfully than any lecture, or argument, or mere assertion of theological truth had ever been able to get across to me before. I knew and believed that this life was supposed to be about glorifying God and enjoying him forever, but I had never stood by a man who lay dying as he realized he had pursued all the wrong things and whose life was now coming to an end.

The result of that story’s impact on my thinking was so profound that it literally changed a foundational belief I’d held onto. I had to confess the sin of thinking that didacticism is the best (and only real) means of teaching and learning things that matter. I had to repent of the very dead and wooden view which kept me from being able to understand many truths on a deeper and more experiential level than I ever had before. Story was a vehicle for communicating the very same things I already cared about, but it could do it in a way that would leave a deeper and more indelible impression upon my soul than mere didactic teaching ever could.

What a fool I had been. I, who had read the Gospels so many times, failed to take account of one of the reasons why Jesus always told people parables. I who had read of Nathan confronting David for his sins with Bathsheba, never really considered why he first told David a story. Though I had read the Bible over and over I hadn’t seen that the most compelling thing about the biblical faith wasn’t any individual doctrine therein (as critically important as all those doctrines may be), but that the Bible forms one story, a story that tells us what everything means and why it matters. It has history and drama and poetry and song and it is the grandest story ever told. The Christians faith would still be true if the Bible only contained epistle like teaching, but it would not be nearly as compelling if that were the whole of it. But I hadn’t thought of the Bible as first and foremost a story. It is the true story.

After The Death of Ivan Illyich I couldn’t help but think of the power of story. Now I needed more stories in my life. Not because fiction had replaced the value of theology and philosophy, but because it augmented their power and gave them new domains to explore and conquer.

I had read some of C. S. Lewis’ apologetics work (as indicated above), but I had yet to read any of his fiction at that point. Having been so affected now, I bought a boxed set of The Chronicles of Narnia and I put almost everything else aside while I read them straight through (thank God I knew the right way to read them). I read them all in just a few days and I was wrecked by their power and beauty and the way they made me love Jesus more. I even felt compelled to write a poem after reading them (seriously).

I don’t mean to be overly dramatic, but I really do mean it when I say that I felt like the old me had died and a new me had risen. I was not the same man I was. I had died with Ivan and come out of that experience as a new person. It was not as important as my having died with Christ and being raised with him to everlasting life, of course, but I thank God for his grace which led me to abandon my arrogant and prideful view that fictional stories don’t matter. It was a qualitative change for the better and, by God’s grace, I truly believe that I now understand the Bible and theology and philosophy better because I have become a reader of great literature. I love Jesus more and understand his teaching better because I have become a reader of Tolstoy, Lewis, Tolkien, Dickens, Austen, Lowry, and many others like them.

It’s my hope that, if you are like I was, that you too will die in this way and start again. Maybe read The Death of Ivan Illyich, maybe read Narnia as an adult, maybe read an old Fairy Tale from the Grimm brothers, but definitely consider taking off your blinders which are keeping you from seeing how truth, goodness, and beauty are communicated in different and often deeper ways than lecture or exposition often can. After taking a trip through an old wardrobe you might just find, coming back to your theology and philosophy books, that you suddenly understand more and better than you used to.

I don’t claim to be a great wit when it comes to writing poetry, but the following is what I wrote after finishing Narnia for the first time. I cried while I wrote it. True story.

She stands silently and weeps

as now below the ground her family sleeps.

Slowly the crowd trickles away

above her, in the wind, low branches sway.

Long she stands there thinking of times past

how years ago she played with her siblings last.

Of other worlds they would often speak

a belief she’d once had now grown weak.

Slowly she made her way back to her room

quietly considering her own eventual doom.

There in hotel bed she lay

wishing to hear someone say,

“There is more dear Susan than what you now know,

there is a place where golden apples grow.

There your family waits for you

on the lawn of that garden’s dew.”

“Is there still room for me?” she said aloud

she shed deep tears and her head she bowed.

And as she cried for God to hear

there came a lion’s roar so near!