Knee jerk reactions

Do you suffer from knee jerk reactions?  When a particular subject is mentioned, do you unthinkingly respond to it in a habitual and dismissive way?

I was led to consider this topic as a result of reading a novel on Google Books. What a great resource that is! For free, you can read almost any book published before about 1923, on your tablet or laptop, and very often in the original edition. But to get to my point: for reasons I needn't go into (connected with Tolkien) I decided to read John Inglesant by J. H. Shorthouse, published in 1881. In its day it was a best seller. The author was even invited to lunch by the Prime Minister. 

You and I would never even try to write such a book today. While in outward form it’s a historical novel set in the days of Charles I and afterwards, in essence and intention it’s the tale of John Inglesant’s spiritual journey. Curiously, although he’s a Protestant and greatly attracted to the spirituality of the Little Gidding community, he’s recruited as an agent by an undercover Jesuit who’s plotting to bring England back into the Catholic fold. John spends years in Italy in the company of the religious, attends Mass, and assists at the election of a Pope, but never converts to Catholicism.

Protestant critics found flaws in the book but enjoyed the saga of scheming Papistry, never questioning its general veracity. But a writer in the Catholic Dublin Review in 1882 tore this portrayal to pieces, pointing out that it was a classic Protestant fantasy. Such a scenario could only pass muster with readers because of the centuries of anti-Catholic propaganda, typified by Fox’s Book of Martyrs, which by the nineteenth century had become part of the English person’s mental furniture, accepted as fact. As a child I often heard my mother express that same knee jerk reaction at the mention of Catholicism: negative, unthinking, and unchallengeable. She’d been brought up on that traditional propaganda. 

To give another example, we have all encountered people whose reaction, when they learn that we are Christians, can be read in their behaviour. They ‘know’ that we are narrow-minded, disapprove of pleasure, are very prudish, and so on. Knee jerk reaction.

I remember a time when preachers regularly used the Pharisees as a foil to Jesus. They could count on the knee jerk reaction of their listeners being hostile to those who were hostile to Jesus. Nobody thought of looking into what the historical Pharisees were actually like and what they believed. 

I’m not  going to list typical topics to which one or another of us has a knee jerk reaction. I can think of plenty. But that would distract you away from my point, which is that knee jerk responses, to any subject at all, are bad for us. As humans, as Christians, and as writers. 

Knee jerk responses are bad because they manifest lack of awareness, and awareness is essential for human spiritual health. They are bad because contemplation and investigation of any behaviour or belief, even if we think it’s incompatible with our faith, when conducted in the light of Christ, is beneficial. Christians have been freed from the taints of the world; ‘to the pure all things are pure’. Such exploration is beneficial because it enlarges our human sympathies, and enables us to follow Christ in his association with ‘publicans and sinners’.

And knee jerk reactions are bad for us as Christian writers. We cannot present the behaviour of our fictional or non-fictional characters in a rounded and effective way if our knowledge of life outside our Christian social circle is limited, prejudiced, or lacking in understanding.