Fools In Love
“We are all fools in love” - Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice
Culturally seen as a cutesy, girl-flick, Pride & Prejudice is a cultural powerhouse for rom-coms, romance, drama, and pop heart-break everywhere.
There are not many girls who haven’t heard of “Mr. Darcy.” Or perhaps wished, even regretted, that they dated one!
Of all Jane Austen’s works, Pride and Prejudice is the most famous. There are over 100 spin-offs made of this story, 461 books on the topics and… there are, in fact, about 6 million gossipy conversations in the same vein going on around the world right now! (See reference P.A.R.R.G. - the Pastor’s Always Right Research Group ;)
And though our culture sees these chick-flicks as “fools in love,” we know from scripture that the Love of God makes us fools in order to become wise. As we begin to see ourselves the way He sees us (1 Cor 3:18 & 1 John 4:18 add links), we actually get closer to God, being seen-through, humbled, and fulfilled in the Love of our Father (John 16:27 add link).
And actually, Jane Austen would agree!
Austen was revolutionary in her time, she wrote about convicting characters in a culture rife with religious hypocrisy, pioneered women authorship, and….
Jane Austen was herself a strong believer:
In a biographical sketch of his sister, Austen’s brother Henry added this note: “One trait only remains…[that] makes all others unimportant. [Jane] was thoroughly religious and devout, fearful of giving offense to God, and incapable of feeling it towards any fellow creature. On serious subjects she was well-instructed, both by reading and meditation, and her opinions accorded strictly with those of our established church.”
So Austen was not only deeply merciful but also rich in Christian faith.
In a letter Austen wrote to a friend in 1814 she confided, “I am by no means convinced that we ought not all of us to be evangelicals and I am at least persuaded that they who are so from reason and feeling must be happiest and safest.”
That double negative (“by no means convinced that we ought not all”) means a positive conviction regarding evangelical faith and personal encounter with Jesus.
In a time of conflict between the established orthodoxy of the day (the Anglican Church of England) against the passionate, experience-driven Evangelicals (the newfangled young’uns of her day), Austen remained orthodox, but she believed and valued a personal living relationship with Jesus through conversion experience.
And she affirms that those who chose Jesus, as the evangelicals of her day did, loving Him from both reason (mind) and feeling (heart), must be the happiest and safest of all who believe in God. May this be so again, in our Evangelical churches today!
She wrote, too, that Benjamin West’s famous painting, Christ Rejected, “has gratified me much more, & indeed is the first representation of our Savior which ever at all contented me.”
Austen’s passion for Jesus undergirds her works, and Pride & Prejudice in particular shows His transformative power on display in the struggle and growth of her characters as they attempt to love each other.
We all struggle to love.
And while Pride & Prejudice invites us to refine our hearts and our assumptions in the furnace of relational love, it also contains the transformative secrets of God’s refining Love for us too.
This Sunday, as we study the film, Pride & Prejudice (2005), may our hearts be open to seeing and hearing the One who loves us into the truth of our hearts, showing that we really are “all fools in love.”
See you Sunday!
Pastor Dave
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Read three beautiful, handwritten prayers of Jane Austen:
CS Lewis loved Jane Austen!? Huh!? - Check out a brief video sharing notes from Lewis’ own copy of Pride & Prejudice held at the Wade Center at Wheaton College.
Watch an Interview about Jane Austen as a Christian and profound moral philosopher in the Victorian Era - In this thought-provoking clip from Into The Truth, Haley Stewart joins host Pierpalo Finaoldi to reveal the deeper moral and spiritual layers in Austen's seemingly genteel novels. Far from being frivolous tales of tea parties and matchmaking, Austen’s stories serve as profound meditations on human nature, virtue, and the moral choices that shape our lives.
Create a watch party for Pride & Prejudice (2005):
Gather with friends in your home or online to watch Pride & Prejudice (2005). Have fun. Ask questions. Converse afterwards. But begin with a prayer asking the Holy Spirit to speak to you specifically during the film, and be prepared to notice HIs nudges.
1 BONUS POINT: If you ask someone from a different generation what they think about Pride & Prejudice (2005).
2 BONUS POINTS: if you invite someone from a different generation to your watch party with you!