There’s nothing I hate more than writing. You probably wouldn’t know it if you saw how much time I spend doing it.
But that’s exactly why I hate it. It doesn’t come natural to me. AT ALL! It’s a tedious life-sucking task that requires a great deal from me.
And yet I HAVE to do!
In the dark days of World War II, the U.S. government commissioned a series of documentaries called Why We Fight to fortify soldiers for the task that lay ahead. It may not be World War II but writing is my fight. Here are four reasons why I do it.
I write to teach.
In the movie Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddell says, “God made me fast and when I run I feel His pleasure.” Now replace the word “fast” with “teacher and “run” with “teach” you’ll know how I feel about teaching. There’s NOTHING I feel more delight in doing than communicating God’s word to people.
But teaching requires students and that’s where I have a problem. I don’t make a living teaching and I only occasionally get the opportunity to speak. Writing becomes my means to release the overwhelming compulsion building in me.
I write to learn.
Teaching and learning for me go hand in hand. The great Roman philosopher Seneca noted that “while we teach, we learn.” When I teach through writing I get to wrestle with a subject and in the process I become more intimately aquinted with it.
I write to clarify.
Writing allows for editing. Some ideas seem great inside my head but they lack clarity when expressed. I think Winnie-the-Pooh said it best,
When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.
Writing offers me the chance to see those confused thoughts and fix them before anyone has the chance to misunderstand.
I write to remember.
“The palest ink is stronger than the best memory” says a Chinese proverb. Spoken words are easily forgotten but the written word endures. I’ve said and thought many good things over the years but the ones I’m most likely to remember are the ones I’ve logged here in this blog.
