Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson on Leif Enger's Apocalypse & What Matters at the End of the World? (Reading to Make Sense of the World)
Good Faith
Good Faith
4.8 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2026
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Refusing Despair Amidst Cultural Darkness
What does it look like to cheerfully refuse a collapsing culture without giving in to cynicism, fear, or despair? Host Curtis Chang and Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson—Fletcher Jones Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University— dive into Leif Enger's I Cheerfully Refuse, exploring why great novels still matter, how Christians can resist ideations of apocalypse with joy, and what faith-filled fiction reveals about beauty, truth, and survival in dark times. This conversation is for listeners hungry for cultural commentary,hopeful resistance, and deeper ways of reading the world through faith.
01:28 - Challenges of Reading Contemporary Novels
06:03 - The Meaning Behind the Title "I Cheerfully Refuse"
07:47 - Lessons for Dark Times
10:02 - The Enduring Power of Books vs. New Media
12:16 - Cultivating Fruitful Practices in Dark Times
14:36 - Living as a Cheerful Refuser Today
15:02 - Is the Christian Worldview True Reality Or A Bubble?
17:04 - What Is Enger's Idea of True humanity?
18:19 - Recommendations for Similar Books and Authors
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Mentioned In This Episode:
Leif Enger's I Cheerfully Refuse
Leif Enger's Peace Like a River
Leif Enger's Virgil Wander
Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451
Claude Acho's Reading Black Books
Eugene Vodolazkin's Laurus
Rumor Godden's In This House of Brede
Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
More About Christopher Beha
Jessica Hooton Wilson's The Scandal of Holiness
More From Jessica Hooten Wilson:
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The Good Faith Podcast is a production of a 501(c)(3) nonpartisan organization that does not engage in any political campaign activity to support or oppose any candidate for public office. Any views and opinions expressed by any guests on this program are solely those of the individuals and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Good Faith.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Good Faith podcast. I'm your host, Curtis Chang. The Good Faith podcast is a production of redeeming Babel, a nonpartisan 501C3 nonprofit. And the Good Faith podcast is a production of Redeeming Babel, a nonpartisan 501C3 nonprofit. |
| 0:24.0 | And the good faith is where followers of Jesus help each other make sense of the world. |
| 0:29.4 | And this is a series that we call reading to make sense of the world. |
| 0:34.4 | Even though we're a podcast, we also deeply believe that an important way that we |
| 0:39.6 | interpret the world is by reading books. In an era dominated by the consumption of videos and |
| 0:46.3 | scrolling of short articles, we would do well to remind ourselves that from the composition |
| 0:52.4 | of the Bible onward, books have always been God's |
| 0:56.9 | gift to his people. That's why I'm excited to welcome Jessica Houdin-Wilson, who is the Fletcher |
| 1:03.4 | Jones Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University and the author of numerous books herself. |
| 1:09.4 | Jessica is a regular guest of good faith who comes on here to help all of us read with discernment. |
| 1:16.4 | So Jessica, welcome back to the Good Faith podcast. |
| 1:19.5 | Thank you for having me. |
| 1:20.9 | I love being here. |
| 1:22.3 | All right. |
| 1:23.1 | Well, I do too. |
| 1:24.3 | So let's just get started. |
| 1:25.8 | What book are you recommending this time? |
| 1:28.9 | So I recently read a contemporary novel. And what I find most difficult, at least for the reading life of many people, is they don't know how to read contemporary novels because they don't waste their time. And I'm going to be honest, I spent most of the |
| 1:44.4 | summer, I think I tried seven or eight novels maybe, and I would read like a little bit. I'm like, |
| 1:50.0 | this is horrible. I'm not going to waste my time. You know, I really want to know, like, what should |
| 1:55.8 | I really be reading so that I don't just like waste myself on contemporary fiction. |
| 2:01.8 | So the one I picked as Laf Angers, I cheerfully refuse. |
... |
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