Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look, and an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

About a third of the Bible could be described as poetry, including Job, Psalms, Proverbs, and the Song of Solomon.

Today on Breakpoint, Dr. Glenn Sunshine offers an encouragement for Christians to engage with poetry,

especially during the season

of Advent. Here's Dr. Sunshine.

Poetry is important to God. The longest book in the Bible is a book of poems, and

the prophetic books are full of poetry as well. Throughout history, cultures around the world

recognized poetry is an important art form and the highest use of language.

Modern America is the exception. We are a left-brained analytical culture that tends to see only the

literal meaning of things. Metaphor, symbolism, and poetry are foreign to our ways of thinking,

and so we don't tend to read or appreciate poetry. This is too bad because good poetry

helps to see the world around us in new and fresh ways, to get past the film of familiarity,

as poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge put it, and to see things as they really are. Because of this,

poetry surrounding Advent and Christmas is a particularly valuable way to get past both the

commercialization of the holiday and the sometimes too familiar and sentimental images we have

of the Nativity.

But in view of our lack of understanding of poetry, it helps to have a guide.

This is where Malcolm Gite comes in.

Gite is a poet, an Anglican priest, a chaplain at Gerton College, Cambridge,

and a rocket roller. He is particularly interested in the intersection between religion and the arts,

a theme we see in his books and sonnets. This makes him a brilliant guide to poetry, particularly

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