Editorial: Wisdom needed more than book challenges

NOTE: This editorial contains references to sexual violence.

Twenty years ago, Leonard Sweet told me over lunch: High schoolers don’t need more information; they need wisdom. Availability and access to information is not the problem; what to do with it is.

I was finishing seminary, and he was suggesting I become a high school teacher. As a church historian, philosopher, theologian, pastor and author of numerous books, Sweet had my ear. But I didn’t become a high school teacher.

Twenty years on, information is even more accessible, and high schoolers still need to know what to do with it; they still need wisdom. But wisdom may be taking a back seat to controversy over books.

When the government gets involved in book challenges—as State Rep. Matt Krause and Gov. Greg Abbott have done—wisdom tells us to be wary.

Two ironies of current book challenges

Current book challenges across the country are ironic in at least two ways. While adults are challenging books in public school libraries, many children and nearly all youth carry mobile devices provided by those same parents or guardians. Adults challenge one source of information while giving nearly free rein to a more problematic source.

Sweet’s point about information is pertinent here. Students might watch as every book containing any sexual or racial reference is withdrawn from their school library, but they’re more likely to watch far more tantalizing displays of the same material on their mobile devices.

Students have no problem accessing information about sex, sexual orientation, race, racism, violence and more, and we don’t seem able or willing to curtail that access. What we can and must be willing to do is instill wisdom in our children and youth for what information they are taking in.

A second irony of current book challenges involves the fact many challengers are Bible-believing, Bible-carrying Christians. The Bible they base their lives on includes content no less alarming than the books they want pulled from school library shelves.

Often lewd and abusive sex, horrific violence, vile racism and more—it’s all there in the Bible, that library of books we put in a child’s hand at church, that scandalous library we send home with children without much instruction on what to do if they stumble across two daughters getting their father drunk to have sex with him, the incestuous rape of Tamar, or the gang rape and butchering of a concubine. (Lord, don’t let them ask us what a “concubine” is.)

If book challengers and lawmakers ever determine cogent criteria for determining what books are permissible in school libraries, it’s reasonable to assume the Bible shouldn’t make the cut.

What would we do—some suggest we should ask, “What will we do?”—if the fervor over books like Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, which contains sexual and racial content, burned equally hot against the Bible? It may not come as a surprise that it’s already happened. The Bible was on the same challenge list as The Bluest Eye and many other books in Keller Independent School District.

Responding to problematic books

The world and its books are full of problematic and troubling stories. We need a better response to these stories than culling the books containing them. Such censorship is a tricky business. It’s too easy to draw the line in the wrong place.

If culling books is our best response, we will have no room to protest when Jesus’ resurrection triumph isn’t enough to keep stories of his brutal execution on library shelves. Said another way: Censorship can boomerang.

I’m not suggesting there aren’t any books in school libraries that shouldn’t be challenged. I know firsthand that there are books worthy of questioning. How we engage such challenges requires wisdom, the kind not always on display within fervent social and political moments.

Our kids started in a small school district with one library to serve elementary, middle school and high school students. When my son was in elementary school, he brought home a troubling graphic novel—a detective story with chapters illustrating in an almost educative way sexual abuse, murder and suicide, among other scenes elementary-aged children don’t need to ingest.

I met with the elementary principal and librarian. They were a bit embarrassed that the pastor and regular volunteer at the school brought this book to their attention. They decided—without my suggestion or direction—to remove the book. Wisdom might have separated the libraries like they had been in previous years.

I understand and appreciate some parental concern about what kids are encountering in school libraries. The book my son brought home wasn’t meant for him. Nevertheless, he was able to check it out, making our efforts at safeguarding his media intake seem like little more than a charade.

I also understand the scenes in the book are not exactly the same thing as narratives about gay, lesbian or transgender people; accusations and descriptions of systemic racism; or the Holocaust. That book’s content doesn’t confront the reader with socially relevant and politically problematic ethical questions. Wisdom questions the wholesale exclusion of such books.

Also, it was one book. Book challenges underway across the country involve hundreds of books. At that scale, wisdom tells us there is more going on than limiting access to objectionable material. Wisdom tells us to be wary.

In the end, wisdom

At the end of all the politics and publicity around book challenges, plenty of books will remain on the shelves that are just as problematic as whatever books are removed. In the middle of all the hubbub, will we have equipped our children and youth with the wisdom needed for reading the books that are left?

But that question assumes books are the only places our kids encounter the stories that trouble us. In reality, troubling stories are being lived out in the lives of our kids’ friends, families, neighbors and often in our kids’ lives themselves. Wisdom is needed for the true reach of our world’s ills.

Curating what our children and youth read isn’t the same as teaching them wisdom. Sweet was right. We need to give more attention to wisdom.

Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at eric.black@baptiststandard.com or on Twitter at @EricBlackBSP. The views expressed are those solely of the author.