Faith, politics and young adult literature

The Christian who seeks to live his faith through political action conceived as service, may not adhere, without going against his own beliefs, to ideological systems which oppose – radically or substantially – his Faith and his perception of man.  Therefore it is not licit to act in favor of the Marxist ideology with its atheistic materialism, its dialectic of violence, and the way in which that ideology understands individual freedom within collectivity.  This same ideology denies any transcendence of man or of his personal and collective history.  Neither may a Christian support that liberal ideology which claims to exalt individual liberty, removing from it any limitations, stimulating it to seek exclusively personal interest and power.  At the same time it considers social solidarity as the more or less automatic consequence of individual initiatives, and not indeed as the primary end and cause of the value of social organization.

Pope Paul VI

I didn’t expect to be discussing Pope Paul VI, collectivism, the truth about the human person and the blessings of human sexuality with my 12 year old son this March.  Then again, I didn’t expect to find a jewel among the mountains of distopian young adult novels that he loves to read at the moment.

The book which we read together over spring break was called The Giver by Lois Lowry.  That’s right, the Lois Lowry who kept us in stitches over Gooney Bird Green and brought me through adolescence with the antics of Anastasia won a Newberry for what I would argue is the MOST IMPORTANT BOOK THAT YOU WILL READ WITH YOUR CHILDREN.  If you are like me, you missed this book because it was published in the mid 90s, when you were too old to be reading YA and too young to be interested in these books for your children.  You’ll see the giver on all sorts of school reading lists and you’ll think it’s just another book encouraging young people to overthrow authority, shake off traditions and be free.  This is a much more thoughtful treatment of this issue.

The Giver has the perfect distopian set up, now so familiar to our teens, so they will be hooked right away.  It’s a world that’s a little too perfect, a world without diversity or color, a world in which you are assigned your perfect job, in which language is carefully manipulated in which…wait for it…

• babies are born from mothers, cared for by nurturers, and assigned to families by the government
• imperfect babies disappear
• the elderly live in special homes where they are lovingly cared for by staff members, and at the right time they, too, disappear

and, here’s the one that really got me,

• at puberty, you begin to take a pill which removes all sexual desire

Now, as a parent, there is at least a part of you that wants your child to take that pill, right?  At least for a little while? And maybe that part goes hand in hand with the part of you that is accidentally giving them the impression that sex is bad?

But of course we don’t want to just show them Pleasantville and teach them that individual freedom and color come back into the world when teenagers start making out.

Lowry gives us something so much better to talk about when we talk about freedom.  The central image of the book, the idea that cuts through the grey, utilitarian world which has so many sad similarities to our own is a family, at Christmas, sitting by the fire, with children and grandparents and colored lights.

This is the possibility for which the hero will risk his life.

There is so much more here, about love and pain, about truth and lies in government, about the things that we ignore because we do not want to see them.  There is order in this world Lowry has created, it is distopia masking itself as utopia, and that is what makes it riveting and so very important.  The order feels safe and secure, and the advantages to this way of life are obvious, too, so there are no easy answers.  When we chose our own spouses, for example, some of us make terrible choices.  When we chose our professions, we might wind up with too many lawyers and not enough nurses.  Are there ways in a free to society to solve these problems?  Bad parents who are not ready for more children might have more children.  Some people will take more than their fair share.  These are the issues that our teens might be beginning to think about as they look at the world more critically.  You want to be in on their thinking, and sharing this book will give you a door.