How Important Is a Christian Writer’s Influence?

00:00:00.000 | Pastor John, as someone who enjoys writing, I am interested to hear your

00:00:08.680 | thoughts about a writer's influence, how he or she engages a reader with the

00:00:12.760 | written word. And you rather strongly encourage writers to better appreciate

00:00:16.160 | the influence that they can have on those readers. Explain this for us,

00:00:19.080 | explain the importance of a writer's influence. I tweeted recently that if

00:00:28.760 | you're not praying that what you write influence people, is it because you don't

00:00:35.520 | believe in what you say and think it doesn't matter, or is it because you don't

00:00:39.240 | think people matter? Which means that I think it's wrong not to want

00:00:47.800 | to influence people when you write. Because Jesus or Paul said, "Let

00:00:54.960 | everything be done in love," and he said, "Do all to the glory of God." So when we're

00:01:02.800 | writing, either we're loving people or we're not. We should be loving people, and

00:01:07.120 | we're either seeking to glorify God or we're not. We should be seeking to

00:01:11.440 | glorify God. And I think the way you love people is by influencing them,

00:01:18.120 | persuading them, winning them, awakening them to delight in God above all things.

00:01:23.600 | Which means that whenever you write, you should be writing in such a way as to

00:01:29.240 | make God look better than anything else in the world, to make the path of sin

00:01:37.160 | look worse than anything else in the world, and to make the path of

00:01:41.320 | righteousness look beautiful in spite of all the difficulties that the path of

00:01:46.960 | obedience might bring. So whether you're writing fiction, or whether you're

00:01:51.280 | writing a blog, or whether you're writing a poem, or whether you're writing a book,

00:01:56.360 | a theological treatise, it seems to me that love and the glory of God dictate

00:02:04.000 | that you can't be indifferent to whether you want people to be affected by this.

00:02:08.960 | You want them to think true thoughts about God and life, and you want them to

00:02:14.920 | feel appropriate affections for God and about sin and life, and therefore writing

00:02:22.400 | is simply an extension of living. And living is to be lived for love for

00:02:27.640 | people and for the glory of God. And when you start there, then you

00:02:32.280 | think backwards into, "Okay, what does that mean for the kinds of words that I use,

00:02:36.960 | the kind of sentences I use, the paragraphs I use, the length of the things

00:02:40.920 | I use, cultural illustrations?" And you begin to think through all the

00:02:46.320 | applications for writing. But yeah, I start with the assumption that I'm on

00:02:51.440 | the planet to influence people. Pastor John, as you write, as you look at the

00:02:56.520 | screen of your computer, are you conscious of your readers in that moment

00:03:01.960 | of how you're trying to influence them?

00:03:05.640 | That's a really good question. I've heard somebody say one time, and they ask him,

00:03:13.520 | "Who does he write for?" He says, "He writes for people like him." I'm not a very good

00:03:24.520 | example of one who can crawl inside the skin of a particular age group or

00:03:32.280 | cultural segment. What I feel like God has gifted me somewhat in is being able

00:03:38.240 | to crawl inside the skin of a human. And the way I've gotten to know humans

00:03:43.320 | mainly is by knowing John Piper. My sins, my worries, my longings, I'm so

00:03:53.760 | introspectively driven on these things and so second-guessing about everything

00:03:59.440 | I do that I think I've gotten to know this human pretty well. And then I do try

00:04:07.280 | to read and watch. So I'm aware of the effects that I write, but I'm generally

00:04:16.280 | not saying this segment of people, let's say from 18 to 25, think this way.

00:04:21.600 | Therefore, I will say this. My mind just doesn't work like that. But as I'm

00:04:26.520 | writing, I do feel like if I say it this way, it's going to be off-putting. If I say

00:04:32.640 | it this way, it will be acceptable, and yet it won't have any impact. I've got to find a

00:04:38.960 | way in between off-putting and blah, no impact, that penetrates the heart. And

00:04:48.240 | so at that point, I'm thinking very hard about how I think what I write will be

00:04:53.360 | heard. It's just that I don't tend to categorize audiences. I'm probably just

00:05:00.600 | doing it intuitively because I know that if I were among, if I were writing

00:05:05.840 | explicitly for people who say hadn't never heard of Jesus, they'd

00:05:10.920 | never heard of Jesus, well, I would clearly write differently than if I were

00:05:14.800 | writing for somebody who did. So I do have a kind of generic audience

00:05:22.840 | with some presuppositions in my mind when I write, but not very good focusing

00:05:28.000 | on particular groups. So how much of your writing really results in personal

00:05:33.960 | edification then? Always. I mean, I don't ever... Writing for me is a

00:05:43.840 | devotional exercise or an intellectual exercise by which I am ever seeking to

00:05:50.440 | see what I'm saying and feel what I'm saying. And therefore it has become... This

00:05:56.800 | is why I would write quite apart from any publishing. You know, if the

00:06:00.700 | Lord said to me, "No more publishing," goodness, I wouldn't stop writing. He would

00:06:05.040 | say, "I'm not gonna let anybody read for the rest of your life, anything you

00:06:08.400 | write." Well, I wouldn't stop writing. I would just write, put it in a notebook,

00:06:12.120 | and throw it in a basket somewhere or whatever. Because writing for me has

00:06:18.360 | become a way of seeing and a way of feeling. And so my answer is, I'm

00:06:25.320 | always writing for my own edification, my own growth in knowledge, and my own

00:06:30.160 | awakening to the kinds of affections that I think one ought to have for God.

00:06:36.040 | And it's just stunning to me. I've recommended to people, if they say, "I'm

00:06:40.240 | stuck in my devotions," I just say, "Well, just write the text. Start there. Just

00:06:43.880 | write the text. And as you're writing, if you get an idea, write something else, too.

00:06:47.440 | But just write the text." Because for whatever reason, for some people, putting

00:06:53.140 | things on paper, whether with a pen or with a computer, actually causes

00:06:58.820 | thoughts to happen that you wouldn't have any other way. I generally don't

00:07:03.320 | even have it until I write it. My head is generally in such a muddle until I start

00:07:10.180 | writing. When we were talking about the pastoral implications of the historical

00:07:16.120 | Adam, when somebody asked me about that who wrote to me a few days ago,

00:07:19.560 | everything was a muddle in my head. I had no idea what I would say. And as soon as

00:07:23.880 | I started writing, eight ideas came to my mind. Because as I wrote one, I saw an

00:07:29.960 | implication, and that had to be another one. And then I saw two other

00:07:32.720 | implications and questions, I had to answer those, and that became another one.

00:07:35.600 | That wasn't happening until I put pen to paper.

00:07:40.440 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. If you have

00:07:44.680 | any questions for Pastor John, please send those to us via email. Send them to

00:07:48.280 | askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. Please include your first name and your

00:07:53.040 | hometown. You can find thousands of other resources from John Piper online at

00:07:57.320 | desiringgod.org. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.

00:08:03.080 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

How Important Is a Christian Writer’s Influence?

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