As I type the title of the post today, it makes me wonder why Jennifer Donnelly named her book A Northern Light. I didn’t see much light in the book.

Oh, it’s a gorgeously written book. Maybe the best I’ve ever read. This woman has a voice like you won’t believe. Even when she’s being shocking and crude you can’t help but admire her voice. It’s perfect.

As I read I couldn’t help wondering, as I often do, at the God who bestows such lavish gifts on men. And so often he bestows them on men who don’t thank him or even recognize the Giver.

Jennifer Donnelly is not friendly toward the God of the Bible, I don’t think. Her main character wonders if perhaps that God is a fantasy made up by men to keep women chained to their beds, their stoves, and their plows. She swats at the Bible and Christians in the story, as frequently as they appear. She sees Christians as no better than men who use and abuse girls. The only difference between the two is that there are at least some good men in the story. There are no good Christians.

And so A Northern Light made me sad. Here’s a book written by one of the most brilliant writers I’ve ever read and it’s faithless and hopeless and ugly and false. It’s deep and moving and there is so much truth wrapped up in it that it will surely affect its readers. And yet it will lead them to false conclusions. It leaves us with no hope. In the end, the character chooses a path that will lead to her destruction.

The author thinks, no doubt, that she has given her character wonderful growth. Throughout the book the girl is struggling–looking for the right path. In the end, she chooses what the author has been leading her toward–liberation. She walks away from her family to pursue her dreams. Three cheers for women everywhere!

But the author has failed to understand that self-sacrifice is the only thing that liberates. That in losing your life you find it. She has completely misunderstood the Bible and the loving God found therein.

So I started the book envying the writer because, oh, how I would love to be so wealthily endowed that I could write with such beauty and grace and raw power, and I ended the book seeing that riches here and now are not as important as the final end of a man. Or a woman. (Psalm 73)

And what’s more, the assurance of future riches–that inheritance incorruptible, kept in heaven for us–gives joy and liberation now.

What Donnelly’s adorable character needed was to learn to submit. Only then would she have found fulfillment. Because it’s what we are made for. We are made to submit to God and to each other. And we can never be happy when we are fighting against that purpose.

It would be like a bird, created to soar above the world, to ride the currents with ease and joy, insisting upon walking everywhere. What a sad, sorry thing that would be.