by Kathleen Childs
"I just had my long-held assumptions about someone shattered in a brief moment. I'm wondering if every person I pass has similar depths, and if there's any way to avoid the mistake of judging them so shallowly that I'm shocked when they show their true complexity." — Brandon Sanderson, Bands of Mourning.
Kathleen’s copies of Book One and Book Three of The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson
I discovered the author Brandon Sanderson my junior year of high school. In hindsight I’d known about him for a while, as I had multiple friends recommend a couple of his series to me, but I’d ignored them. It took my best friend, of now ten years, revealing that her favorite book of all time was Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson for me to actually pick up one of his books. It was love at first sentence. His eloquent storytelling never left a dull moment, and I was brought into a world of beautiful writing that I had previously thought impossible. The themes I found playing out in his writing were magnificent and struck a chord inside of me. I was hooked. I needed more of his writing; thus I found his magnum opus: The Stormlight Archives.
The Stormlight Archives is currently a four book series of gargantuan page counts. It details the lives and thoughts of multiple key players as the world of Roshar comes to what appears to be a climactic end. Sanderson drives his story through beautifully written prose that forms characters who are unique and broken and human. Each book in the series thus far has focused on a different character’s specific journey as they deal with and overcome past trauma and how that affects them as they move forward. We are allowed to intimately know the characters we are following, while also learning to invest in the events happening around them—this style of character driven plot fascinated me.
At the time of reading these books I was coming out of three years of depression and was struggling to relate to and invest in the people I had blown off for many years. One of the things that I began to realize was that for basically my entire life I had failed to grasp one simple truth: the inherent complexity of every human. It is easy to forget I’m not the only person on the planet.
Our tendency, or at least mine, is to think that all of the people around me are just robots who power off when I’m not in the room. I forget that the person sharing the studio with me also has a life after work. She has a family I haven’t met and problems I’ve never even seen. She has joys and fears and loves and hates that I may never know. Her thoughts in her head are just as complicated and convoluted as mine. But it's not just her—it’s everyone I could ever interact with.
The random man I pass on the street, the woman bagging my groceries, my parents, everyone. Even with the reminder of seeing people every day, how easy it is to forget that God has created everyone to be His image bearer and each is uniquely and wonderfully made. Sanderson's The Stormlight Archives, as well as his other writings, was one of the final blows of the hammer to nail this truth into my head.
Kathleen’s copy of Book Four of The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson
The first book in the series, The Way of Kings, focuses on Kaladin Stormblessed. He isn’t the only character we follow but we get a much more in depth character study of him. We watch as he starts overcoming prejudices and learns to trust in himself and hope again. We see his story from childhood to adulthood. By the end of the book we know him in a very intimate way and have learned to sympathize with his problems and ideals.
The truly interesting bit begins when we start Book Two, Words of Radiance, and realize that Kaladin is no longer the focus character. He remains a key character and has a significant number of chapters dedicated to his perspective, but the focus of the book is a character named Shallan Davar. Sanderson introduces her in the first book, following her viewpoint a few times, but in Words of Radiance her importance is emphasized. We get to know her in the same intimate way that we got to know Kaladin in Book One. It produces a new perspective and gives us a whole new realm of understanding of her decisions and the events happening in the world of Roshar.
The focus character shifts again in Book Three, Oathbringer, and again in Book Four, Rhythm of War. The continual shift in character forces readers to view the story from a variety of perspectives, leading us to love and respect those characters in an intimate way and making sure we fully understand their differing perspectives. It drives home that everyone has a life and a story that I know nothing about. I don’t know what past events are influencing the decisions people are making right now. I don’t know what has colored the lenses that they are seeing the world through. Reading these wonderful books opened my eyes to the complexity of humanity.
Once I realize and accept this complexity in humans, I am forced to examine God and recognize that the complexity of a human is nothing in comparison to how complex He is. He created everything and He can fully comprehend me, fully comprehend my roommates, and even fully comprehend the nine other girls living in my house. Not only that, He fully knows and understands every single person on the planet, all at the same time. I struggle to remember the complexity of the person standing right next to me, but God doesn’t even bat an eye at being able to intimately understand all 7.7 billion people on the planet. He is so vast and infinite that we can barely hope to start to understand a sliver of Him.
Yet He has let us have just that: a sliver, found in the person next to me, marred and clouded though it may be by sin. In every person I will ever interact with—from the small child to the wizened old woman—there is a sliver of our Majestic Creator peeking out through their unique complexity. Every day I try to remind myself of this simple truth, and Brandon Sanderson’s writing has played a huge role in helping me understand it.
After graduating from Rosslyn Academy in Nairobi, Kenya, Kathleen moved to Louisville to serve with Love Thy Neighborhood for a year with Sojourn Arts. In the Fall she hopes to attend North Greenville University to study Production Design. As an artist, Kathleen loves creating detailed graphite portraits and playing with paint.
You can view her work by following her on Instagram @step.one.art.
This post is part of an ongoing series where we ask artists and arts professionals to share a piece of artwork that has significantly impacted their formation as a Christian.