The Crusades controversy this article and its prequel address is a local one, confined to certain circles of online Reformed people, not really a matter of concern for the wider culture or for those wise enough to exist beyond the periphery of Internet Drama. The reality it points to, however, is of concern to us all. People understand the world via stories, and as authors we must grapple with this reality. What stories are shaping worldviews? How do our stories shape worldviews? For that reason, let us consider this real-world example, both how the complexities of the story affect its outworking and how best to respond to its problems.

The Results

The Crusades undoubtedly have much that is noble within their story. Whether or not you consider them a defensive war- I’m on the fence, pending further research-, it would be foolishness and counterproductive to deny this fact. The problem is that the story which makes the Crusades appealing, the story of men defending their culture, religion, and civilization from barbarian forces,¹ that story is incomplete. The indulgences, the church-state entanglement, the brutality, the dehumanization, all of these are also part of the history of the Crusades and cannot be entirely removed. A lie can be told, but contrary to the postmodern delusion, the truth will out.

This truth, when it comes out, will come out in many as a recognition and a repudiation, but in some the first story of the Crusades will be a bridge into accepting and embracing the unsavory elements thereof, moving them from defending their homes to endorsing the evils of ecclesiocracy,² indulgences, or genocide (racial or religious). The story can serve too as an excuse for those already inclined to the end-state evils. Because the story-as-lauded does not properly consider the full complexity of the history and does not properly acknowledge or condemn the evils attendant to what it praises, it blurs lines and inches men towards temptation.

Extricating from the Story

As I presented last time, though, people don’t set aside stories because of analytical problems. Stories are defeated by stories. In order to dislodge the Crusades, though, if that is our goal (it’s not, not quite), we would need to find another, more fitting story. Crucially, this story must fit the niche that the Crusade story fills- defense of hearth and holiness- else the replacement just won’t work. Even if analysis were sufficient, I’ll note, this would be the proper course, because analytically destroying the Crusade story would leave the appetite for it untouched, ripe for another story to enter the breach. Thankfully for such an endeavor, history has a lot of candidates for the replacement. We can go to the Reformation, with the English Civil War or the Huguenot’s struggles or (much messier) the Thirty Year’s War. We can go to the later stages of Islam’s armed advance, talk about the Siege of Vienna or the Battle of Lepanto.³ Both of these (and depending on your perspective, particularly the second) speak of a civilizational struggle with the barbarian at the gate, a struggle to defend that which makes a man’s homeland beloved and distinct.

Why, though, must we choose a story with similar themes? It comes down to three factors: emotion, valuation, and trust. First, certain emotions are bound to the story and bind the story to its lovers. Unless the new story strikes similar notes, it cannot speak to the desires that rendered the old story desirable. Second, stories present worldviews,⁴ and as part of that they assign moral and emotional value to different parts of that world. The new story must speak to those values, or the old story will be kept alive, will still have its niche. Third, the vector by which stories and worldviews are communicated is interpersonal, and if the receiver does not trust the intention and understanding of the giver, that communication will fall flat. In other words, unless the new story demonstrates that its promulgator understands the beauty of the old story, those who love that old story will refuse to listen, proper data analysis or not.

All History is Complex, Though

The historically fascinated among us have doubtless seen another problem. All those stories I mentioned? They have complexities and ugly parts too. Lepanto and Vienna were both heavily Catholic endeavors, on the Christian side, the English Civil War was full of power plays, and The Thirty Years’ War would have trouble being messier than it was.⁵ From another angle, too, it seems strange to effectively curtail our understanding of history, to forget all the good parts of an era like the Crusades because of their complexity, a complexity that exists in all human works. Even the best mission’s work organization, when you dig deep enough, turns out to have issues and blind-spots and errors fit to tar and feather the entire affair.⁶ The path of Complete Purity, which discards anything tainted by the slightest issues (or even just the pet issues of the judge, as White⁷ seems a little prone to doing), that path has been tried before. Its most famous and most virulent incarnation nowadays is Critical Theory, but historically any group that intentionally forgets where it came from is doomed (this is the downfall of parts of American Evangelicalism).

We must recognize that the world is a complex place. Good and evil are present in every story. In some, the good predominates, in others the evil. Even in the best stories, though, how much the good predominates depends heavily on what angle you take and how far in you zoom. World War Two is the most morally uncomplicated war America’s had since 1812 (unless I’m forgetting something), but it must be remembered that the Holocaust’s legal justification came partly from American courts in the 1920s and 30s (forced sterilization, Jacobson, Korematsu, etc.). In history, good and evil is never mixed chemically- an action is either right or wrong, never both- but it is always mixed mechanically- the story is composed of a messy slurry of good actions and bad ones. Worse, because of the complexity of the topic and the difficulty of getting all the information and the impossibility of literally reading the participant’s minds, we’re making judgements in the dark (or at least the dusk).

Inculcation: From Milk to Meat

So, moving from a worse story to a better one (which may be necessary, depending on your view of the Crusades) is only a stop-gap. The real solution, in sum, is maturity. The real solution is to cultivate in people a comprehension of history and humanity as a patchwork of partially comprehended complexity, filled with beauty and ugliness both. A simplistic view of history is the bread-and-butter of ideology, from Marxism to liberalism to Critical Theory to Neo-Conservativism to Neo-Liberalism to libertarianism to anarchism to (some forms of) conservativism. A healthy society and a healthy individual needs to view the world with more subtlety and less confusion. We must see the world as a complex mesh of different forces, some moral, some immoral, some simply providential and not innately moral at all (like earthquakes and plant growth), and we must simultaneously see all these in light of the pure goodness of God, the immense evil of any sin. The first is complexity, the second simplicity, and only by uniting these does history become properly usable, properly beautiful, because the story adheres to His story.⁸ Then, having seen all this, we must teach others to see it and learn from them in turn where their vision excels ours.

If a popular story is a false one, built on a bad understanding of reality, that’s a problem, but the solution isn’t demolition. First, such a situation requires understanding and even sympathy; we must understand why that false story became beloved. Second, we must address it appropriately, demonstrating clear understanding of its truly desirable elements- for the Crusades, the story of defending a civilization from the barbarian. This step may take the path of trying to modify the story as it is, turn it towards those desirable elements, or it may be turning the narrative towards a better story, or it may be a combination of both. Third and most importantly, the effort must not stop there. The final step is to point to the simultaneous complexity and simplicity of history. Here, the good and evil alike must be stated, weighed, and accounted for; here the stark divide between good and evil in nature must be recognized; here the fact that even the best of deeds has evil attached to it must be grappled with. The world may start as a sentence, but it must be turned into a paragraph, a short story, a novel, and an epic.

What This Means for Authors of Fiction

Our stories can have this passion-shaping force, this power of worldview. Most, of course, will touch upon only small parts of the psyche, but many can testify how certain works- The Lord of the Rings, 1984, Narnia, Pilgrim’s Progress– influenced them deeply. In light of this power of fiction and taking lessons from reality, we must take care to present a true view of the world and a view which promotes the spiritual health of our readers. This does not mean de-complicating our stories. We have no need to simplify the world into stereotypes and purities. That would all too often be a lie to reality’s true nature, and for any work dealing with difficult matters and hard topics, it will almost inevitably come across as artificial and disingenuous. More, it’ll be a lying, deceptive ugliness, for all its shine and shimmer.

Instead, our stories should reflect the glorious complexity of reality, even if their complexity is always (because of size and our finitude) so much less than that which they reflect. We should have men who do both good and evil, movements which have moral reasons connected to economic to political to personal to petty. We should be willing to show how a war may be just and yet beneath it lies a whole web of personal intrigue, spite, and ambition which caused it in the first place, so that it never need have happened if the defender had not been so foolish or so sinful. We should be willing to set out a good cause with flawed adherent, even evil ones, and evil causes which by some wrinkle of the situation have admirable proponents. In the end, though, we must show a world which has this final simplicity: God is the judge, and by His character is all good delineated from all bad.

God bless.

Footnotes

1 – Terming the Muslims barbarians is not entirely inaccurate. While possessed of science commensurate to Europe’s if not in places better and engaged in the various luxuries of civilization (material and philosophical), the fact remains that Islam’s culture was and is so alien to Christendom as to be a barbaric force upon it. Note too that complex social structures and relationships are not unique to ‘civilization’; the Mongols, the Huns, and the Vandals all had these. What defines barbarism in this framework is its destruction of instantiated Christianity, combined with general moral dereliction.

2 – Church ruling the state. I use this term rather than ‘theocracy’ because ‘theocracy’ is ‘rule by God directly’, only partially existent at any point in history (under Moses) and not possible at the current date. The state ruling the church, incidentally, is usually termed ‘Erastianism’. 

3 – Chesterton’s Lepanto is my favorite poem, despite its dubious doctrine.

4 – Check out this article.

5 – The whole affair was a huge mess of political, social, economic, moral, religious, and class issues, to name just a few factors. Suffice it to say that Protestantism benefitted much from the power-mongering of various princes, as did Catholicism, without true belief in the hearts of said princes.

6 – I speak with no particular group in mind, simply the awareness that people are sinful. An example of something which might tarnish an evangelism-endeavor without being garishly sinful is mete: consider a myopia, somewhat justified by circumstance and specialization, which forgets that cultural and political-military achievements are of great value.

7 – See last week’s article if you’re confused by the reference.

8 – See this article series for discussion of what ‘His story’ means.