Why do we write?

This morning, I participated in the celebratory brunch for all seniors in the Literature, Journalism, and Modern Languages department. I shared a table with Dean, Dustin, Jo, Rose, and Lauren and her family.

During the end, Jordyn read portions of an essay she had written in Dr. Hill's class about how God healed people in Malawi through a team of missionaries. She also talked about how God used her essay to minister to various people around the country, and she thanked the department for pushing her to write.

Her story kind of answered a question I raised during my devotional, earlier in the brunch. The passage was Luke 24:13-35, the story about the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and I shared a little bit about how my time at PLNU has been similar to the disciples' journey. In classes, with professors, friends, and at church, I have been asking questions about Jesus. Like the disciples, many of these questions have been about Jesus' resurrection, questions like "Do I really believe Jesus rose from the dead?" and "How is my being a writer a response to Jesus' resurrection?"

For some reason, when I write assignments for my writing classes, I feel like I have to try my hardest to impress the professor, or to impress the whole world which I imagine may one day read this short story or essay. So I end up writing about a boy on a trolley who sits next to a man with a wasp growing on his stomach underneath his sweater. Or about a boy failing to find a piece of cake to give a girl he likes. Such stories are fun to write and read, at least for a while, but they don't have much lasting significance or substance. Part of the reason why I write these kinds of stories is because I'm still exploring the depths of writing, still seeing where the story and characters will lead me. But I think another part of it is because I have a mindset that my end goal in writing is to become published or famous, to set my works beside William Faulkner's or Robert Frost's.

But I was reminded today that maybe the end goal of writing is to build up, encourage, edify, feed the body of Christ. That seems to have been the goal for the writers of the epistles and the gospels, and even the Scriptures before the New Testament. As Paul writes to Timothy, "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the [person] of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."

Could Paul's description of the purpose of all Scripture also be a reason why Christians write?