Is Christianity Mysterious?
A reflection based on Chesterton's Orthodoxy and mystery novels
Do you love mysteries? I grew up on Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys; they were among some of the first chapter books I read. I bought the CD-rom Nancy Drew games—which also featured the Hardy Boys—and watched every Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys movie and TV show I could find. In high school, I went to my best friend’s house every Tuesday to watch BBC’s Sherlock Holmes before we went to youth group. Now, I read Kate Morton’s romantic, historical mysteries whenever my mother-in-law finds them at the used bookstore.
Mysteries are captivating. They’re intriguing. They keep us turning the pages because they get us invested in the story, and convince us that we could figure out such a mystery—before they yank out the massive plot twist and completely up-root everything we thought we understood up to that point. As we flip through the pages, we watch the amateur sleuth unravel the truth and give us all the satisfying answers we had waited for.
If mystery novels do anything, they barely dust off the reality of how complicated mysteries are and how much sweat goes into uncovering them. When I was in elementary school, I dug up two halves of an old key in my backyard and set out to solve the mystery of where they came from and what treasure laid behind the door they once locked. Back then, I believed I could be the next Nancy Drew.
But today? I’m still baffled (months later) as to how my brand new can-opener disappeared off the counter by the sink and still hasn’t shown up. My husband believes one of our toddlers somehow flushed it down the toilet. I’m still not convinced. Times like this also do well to convince me I could never write a good mystery novel either.
Mysteries are work, and solving and creating them with good story-telling are both acquired skills, not for the faint of heart.
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