From the Study of Pastor Austin 09.28.2025
Books for children can have a powerful shaping effect on our lives. These stories lay down core truths by which young, impressionable minds begin to interpret the world. It isn’t hard to see how princess fairytales or how Star Wars’ jedi-sith mindsets shaped a generation’s thoughts about what a good life was supposed to be like and how to capture it. Especially good stories will tap into a part of the human experience and lodge themselves into our hearts as new interpretive principles. (This is yet another reason why we must saturate our minds with the whole of God’s Word, and not just with its doctrines and commands. It is the fundamental, true story.)
Last week, I finished listening to the First and Second Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling written just before the turn of the 20th century. In it are a collection of stories following various characters, the first few of which are depicted in the lighthearted Disney movie from 1967. Toward the end of the books, Mowgli, now 17yrs old, though he has lived in the jungle his whole life and has many friends and went on many adventures, feels a strange pain and longing he cannot describe. He says, “My strength is gone from me, and it is not any poison… I lie down, but I do not rest. I run the spring running, but I am not made still. I bathe, but I am not made cool. The kill sickens me, but I have no heart to fight except I kill.” What Mowgli finds is that this ache in his heart is a need to become a man. Not an adult, but a human. He must be with a people, his people, and blaze that new trail with them. No matter how long or strong the bond with the jungle peoples (the animals), there was a much stronger bond at the last.
Hearing this, it made me consider that we have all felt this at some point, and probably more than once, in our lives. It is good to long for a culture and a people which can rightly be called, “mine own.” A people among which we belong, share cultural thoughts, monuments, and practices. This people will shape and is shaped by the place they inhabit. Inscribed on every tree, street, and fountain are bonds of shared experiences from days gone by. In the Biblical story, we read that individuals, like their Creator, are designed for relationships. From the most intimate expression of a husband and wife (Gen. 2:18) to the ties of the church fellowship (Heb. 10:24-25) and national people (Rom. 9:1-5), we were made for human connection. The cultures and subcultures we create are part of God’s good plan for His image to be displayed as humans spread out and fill the earth. Somehow, each expression is going to be maintained and glorious before the Lord in heaven (Rev. 5:9). When the longing emerges, we have the choice to either return to our people like Naomi (Ruth 1:7) or fully invest in a new people like Ruth, who said, “where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16). Unless we choose the lonely road, we get to decide who we build alongside: a people who we understand and who understand us.
Yet even this natural desire can never be fully realized and echoes of the deeper longing of the Christian for his heavenly home, where those fleshly and contrary things to his new nature are banished forever and the sanctified, holy people of God are of kindred spirit before the Lamb and the throne. Though we experience a taste of this precious gift, we eagerly await that day, as all those in the faith before us have done. “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth… But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city” (Heb. 11:13, 16). Knowing this, we press into our relationships with the Lord and with one another. They have eternal impact.
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