Lois Lowry & the task of re-imagining Christianity


     Do you remember what it was like to be a teenager?  To be full of idealism, dreams and a (slightly) arrogant attitude of “I know better”?  Some people never “outgrow” these dangerous yet invaluable tendencies.  In her Giver quartet, Lois Lowry[1]’s protagonists are all either about to enter or are beginning their teen years.  Also, they all find themselves at odds with the communities of which they are a part.  They are all compelled to “rebel” against the received wisdom of the “elders” and the “rules” of their respective communities and sometimes, even run away.  Lowry’s protagonists all desire and imagine a better future, one that will break with the oppressive nature of their present experience as well as the long-standing “traditions” of their communities which, they come to realize, are not conducive to human flourishing.  In this way, Lowry’s young heroes resemble prophets and apostles – i.e. they dare to critique the status quo and in so doing, become “messengers” of a new way of being human.  First individually, and then together, they fight to create a society where love, justice, compassion and solidarity become daily realities.  Just like the first apostles of Jesus of Nazareth who founded counter-imperial communities of disciples all across the first-century Roman empire.

     You may never have thought of God as a rebel.  And yet, this is precisely how the Bible presents the Creator; once mankind had revolted against him, he set into motion his patient plan of sabotage[2], of counter-revolution against the powers of darkness – both heavenly and human – that had arrayed themselves against him in a futile attempt to rob him of the cosmos he had created.  The Bible tells “an old fantastic tale”[3] of a strange God who launches a strange revolution – in person – to liberate his enemy-occupied world.  Christianity calls this divine rebellion the Incarnation, and has always existed to recruit ever more people into the fight of their lives,[4] which will permit them to finally taste true joy.[5]

     You see, it’s a cosmic joke.[6]  The essence of comedy is the coming together of opposites, the juxtaposition of incongruous things.  The central claim of Christianity is that God became human.[7]  This is indeed mysterious, and is perhaps made more so by the countless and contradictory ways that the Church has attempted to understand and explain how it happened.  Indeed, if you have to explain a joke, something has gone wrong.  Apologetics aims to help people “get it”.[8]  As G.K. Chesterton perceived (followed by Lewis), the incarnation of God requires a “hypostatic union” of categories previously believed to be mutually exclusive[9] – namely, mythology and history, fiction and fact.[10]

     This introduction to imaginative apologetics might, at first blush, strike the reader as a bit…unorthodox.  That is perhaps fitting, since none of the heroic and exemplary defenders of the faith that have blazed this imaginative trail were…(professional) theologians.  If the reader is now calling to mind the Inklings club which flourished in 1930s—1940s Oxford, they may be aware that its members were mostly literary types, people who were used to, well, imagining things and hence writing in various genres (other than philosophical prose).[11]  Indeed, I will advance an (implicit) argument in this introduction that what the Inklings were doing (and what their heroes had done) was something more akin to what the New Testament writers were up to as they grasped for language with which to describe the events concerning Jesus and their repercussions.[12]  All this to say that the NT itself, when read in its first-century context[13], is an indispensable resource for the imaginative apologist.

     Also, I follow Richard Conrad, OP, who understands apologetics “as the whole business of explaining the Christian faith attractively…that welcomes home all that is valid in [people’s insights and instincts], but also challenges them as appropriate”.[14]  In sum, in this introduction, I have attempted to exemplify an approach whereby the Bible itself, as well as the apologetic/evangelistic task, can be re-imagined so that something of the turning-inside-out-of-worldview quality that characterized Paul’s proclamation may be reflected in our current endeavours to share and defend our faith in Jesus and that the first-century gospel which “laid a depth-charge under classical culture”[15] may be “detonated” afresh in our own society, which often seems hell-bent on revolution, but often without knowing which cause merits its rebellious energies.


[1] Born in 1937.

[3] Chesterton, G.K. Orthodoxy (with Annotations & Guided Reading by Trevin Wax), Nashville: B&H Academic, 2022 [1908], p. 199.

[4] Which will be conducted in the paradoxical way of Jesus and Paul (cf. 2 Cor. 10.4).

[5] Cf. Chesterton, G.K. Orthodoxy (with Annotations & Guided Reading by Trevin Wax), Nashville: B&H Academic, 2022 [1908], pp. 207-32.

[6] Cf. The Everlasting Man: A Guide to G.K. Chesterton’s Masterpiece (Introduction, Notes, and Commentary by Dale Ahlquist), Elk Grove Village: Word on Fire, 2024 [1925], pp. 461-67.

[7] Barron, Robert, Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith, New York: Image Books, 2011, p. 9, riffing on Chesterton.

[8] There is indeed something uncanny about how Jesus continues to haunt our western culture; cf. Holland, Tom, ed. Revolutionary: Who was Jesus?  Why does he still Matter? London: SPCK, 2020.

[9] Though the biblical worldview seems to “expect” the incarnation – the creation of the cosmos according to the blueprint of an Ancient Near Eastern temple (cf. Gn. 1; Jn. 1); humans created in the “image of God”; Yahweh dwelling in his temple in Jerusalem; the Spirit of God “possessing” prophets; the Wisdom of God – the heavenly “assistant” during creation (cf. Prov. 8) – being given to certain people; the Word of God bringing all things into existence and finally coming “to dwell among us”… cf. Hays, Richard B. Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, Waco: Baylor University Press, 2016; N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996.

[10] Cf. Markos, Louis, Apologetics for the 21st Century, Wheaton: Crossway, 2010, pp. 87-88.

[11] Cf. Ibid, pp. 237-38.

[12] Regarding the Evangelists, inventing a new literary genre as they did so (though perhaps we could say that the canonical Gospels have but put a twist on the ancient genre of bioi); cf. Harrisville, Roy A. Fracture: The Cross as Irreconcilable in the Language and Thought of the Biblical Writers, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006; cf. also the works of Richard Burridge on the question of the genre of the Gospels.

[13] Cf. Richard A. Horsley, ed. In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance, Louisville: WJK, 2008.

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