Anything Else

Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”: make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers “Please will you do my job for me.” (C.S. Lewis)

Lewis helps us to recognize a lot of modern Christian songwriting for what it is: laziness. No doubt, many of these songs are vast improvements on the Bliss and Crosby cliché-mill. Certainly, it’s a breath of fresh air to be singing about the faith without a constant nautical theme: waves, anchors, lighthouses and ships ahoy. And any serious Christian will be thankful for an injection of sound theological ideas into the gelatinous world of evangelical conviction.

With all that said, I find Lewis’ sentiment played out before me in not a few modern songs. These songs seem to try to gather as many superlative adjectives as possible that will fit the metre of the song. These are then piled on top of one another, and the result is a rapid-fire of high-concentrate adjectives. The resulting lyrics are something like: “Indescribable majesty, incomparable glory, unbounded mercy, immeasurable beauty…You’re the highest, greatest, most wonderful, most awesome”—you get the idea.

Yet for all this, the effect is palpably flat. Instead of soaring into the heights of praising God as the ultimate Being, one sings these super-hero adjectives with a sense of dull oughtness: yes, I should feel God’s surpassing value, but I don’t. Perhaps if I keep singing these superlatives with sincerity, I will.

It’s one of a writer’s worst nightmares: a serious error in a published text. All writers make mistakes—an occasional typo, a transposed date, the conflation of two similar individuals or events. This is part of the reason for outside readers and editors—to alert the author to the presence of accidental errors that would tarnish an otherwise cogent argument or a compelling story. Editors are often in the shadows but should not be overlooked, for they have saved many a writer from needless embarrassment.

What about a published work that is filled with factual errors? To be sure, some works are by their very nature prone to more errors than others. Works of an encyclopedic nature, especially if only one author does the writing, are bound to contain some factual infelicities. Works of history are especially susceptible. Dates can be tricky to keep straight, particularly when the author is recounting multiple story lines that intersect or overlap. The facts may be vague or may (and often do) vary from one primary source to another. Attention to detail may make the difference between a first-rate history and a mediocre presentation; even then, factual errors may slip through the editorial process. I recently wrote an essay about Squire Boone, brother to the famous frontiersman Daniel Boone. Squire has long been considered the first Baptist preacher in the state of Kentucky. I am convinced that not only was Squire not a preacher—he wasn’t even a Baptist! Yet I can point to literally dozens of sources that list him as a Baptist minister. The error seems to have crept into the Boone history because Squire Jr. (Daniel’s father was also named Squire) has been confused in the historical record with his nephew, a third Boone named Squire who was, in fact, a Baptist minister in Kentucky. A whole historical tradition has been perpetuated for 150 years that Squire Boone, Jr. was a Baptist minister, but this seems highly unlikely. Because it is easy to perpetuate error in the writing of history, it is incumbent upon the writer to work tirelessly to ensure accuracy of factual detail. Failure to do so may result in disgrace and even pecuniary loss.