My Religion and My Banned Books

good morning hank it's tuesday so lately my books especially looking for alaska and turtles all the way down have been removed from libraries and schools in the u.s due to their purported obscenity i've talked about book betting before and i don't want to talk about it directly today instead i want to talk about what i think books do and why i write them so half my life ago i worked as a student chaplain at a children's hospital and while there i saw much of what i consider obscene i saw children die i saw parents terrified not just about whether their kids would survive emergency surgery but also about how they would ever pay for the accompanying medical bills i saw things i don't care to repeat all of it obscene but the fact that i was a chaplain often surprises people who are familiar with me or my work i think it surprises many evangelical christians because they don't understand why a fellow christian would intentionally pollute the minds of young people with books that include premarital sex and alcohol abuse and of course it also surprises many people who aren't religious because they're like why would a seemingly thoughtful person believe that every sunday all around the world bad wine suddenly turns into god's blood now i don't generally talk much about my personal beliefs online because you know this is the internet and i don't wanna but i continue to find religion a helpful approach to the ancient conversation about how to live as a person in a world full of other people that said one of the first things i learned as a chaplain is that it's not about me and it's definitely not about my beliefs right because like if somebody drowning in an ocean of grief said to me that their loved one had no afterlife it was not my job to question that and if somebody told me that their loved one was now in heaven it wasn't my job to question that either my job was to listen to really listen i wasn't there to solve or fix their pain which could not be solved or fixed i was there to hear their pain and acknowledge it as my supervisor often told me don't just do something stand there and that is what i have tried to do with my work i have tried to write books that don't just do something they stand there i believe that by just standing there without judgment stories can proclaim the full humanity of their characters and in doing so can help us to see the humanity within ourselves but just as importantly stories also invite us into other lives they help each of us to understand the richness and complexity of people who aren't like us and in that sense i kind of understand book banning because i think books are a threat to many contemporary power structures because many of those power structures want us to see other people especially marginalized people whether they're marginalized because of race or sexuality or gender identity or mental illness or whatever power structures want us to see those people as less than fully human and so i would argue that if great books have an agenda it is not a liberal agenda or a gay agenda or a christian agenda it is a humanizing agenda a mission to recognize and acknowledge the human value in ourselves and others so hank in my faith tradition we are called in the gospel of matthew not just to treat our friends or our neighbors as we ourselves would want to be treated or to treat people with similar value systems as we ourselves would want to be treated we are called to treat all others as we would want to be treated to me that does not mean deciding on someone else's behalf what books they should be allowed to read nor does it mean hiding from high school students the realities of the human condition both sexual and otherwise to me what it means is working to make space so that others all others can be treated both by individuals and by society with the same rights dignity and respect that i would want for me or for my family and i think efforts to restrict stories are often efforts to restrict empathy that's not in keeping with my faith but more importantly i don't think it's in keeping with a functioning society hank i'll see you on friday

Channel: vlogbrothers

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Id: MrS-46e59V4

Length: 3min 56sec (236 seconds)

Published: Tue May 03 2022