The Best Books

I really appreciated this opinion article by Betsy VanDenBerghe about the power of literature when searching for spiritual truths. She wrote, “Good fiction, unlike online scrolling, is accredited with developing empathy and transmitting important life lessons to the reader without the potential damage of first-hand experience. In other words, you learn the cost of meddling from Jane Austen’s Emma without actually messing up your own friends’ lives. Or you pick up on the hazards of overestimating your genius from George Eliot’s Casaubon without wasting your life on an irrelevant ‘masterpiece.’” I wholeheartedly agree that there is enormous value in good literature, and that the profound effect it can have on us cannot be matched by the likes of social media or other transitory online content. The Lord has told us in modern revelation: “And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:118). I am convinced that those “best books” include the great works of literature in which fictional characters and their experiences have so much to teach us and help us to feel. Indeed, one study has shown that literature has the ability to increase empathy if the reader is “emotionally transported into the story.” The best literature leaves us better people.  

Indeed, the Savior Himself has given at least an implicit stamp of approval on fictional stories in telling so many parables when He was in mortality. What was important was that the message of the story be applied personally to those hearing the parable. For example, once He told the chief priests and elders of the people this story in Jerusalem at a time when they were seeking His own death: “There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country: And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it. And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise. But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.” He then asked His audience this question: “When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen?” These wicked Jewish rulers, perhaps not yet realizing the implication for themselves, immediately responded as we all might if truly engaged in the story: “He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons.” They could understand through this parable the just reward that awaited those who so brutally treated others. Then as Jesus continued speaking, these men who were plotting His death, “perceived that he spake of them” (Matthew 21:33-41, 45). He had taught them in one of the most powerful ways possible: helping them see themselves in the story of another.  

One of the most powerful stories I have read is Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. While I have forgotten many details of the story, and I still remember the feeling I had over 25 years ago as I finished the book, alone in my basement bedroom. I was deeply moved by Jean Valjean’s story, and especially the great sacrifices he made at the end of his life in pursuit of happiness for his adopted daughter Cosette’s life. I saw in his example (and in the Bishop’s who at the beginning of the story changed the course of Valjean’s life) what real selfless love looks like. In similitude of the Savior, he risked his life in the barricades and then carried the wounded Marius through the sewers. This both saved the young man’s life and allowed him to ultimately marry Cosette and take her away from Valjean (hence causing him to in essence lose what he loved most). And he did it solely for their happiness and without revealing his selfless act to them. I don’t know if the story indeed helped me to have more love for others, but reflecting on it now inspires me to try harder to have the kind of love he showed. VanDenBerghe ended her article with an invitation that I echo to “[seek] out good stories in the quest for spiritual truth. If the shallowness of social media, YouTube and TikTok can rob a generation of attention span and faith, then a return to great stories, ‘the ones that really mattered,’ in the words of Tolkien, might help us all to regain both.”