And yet, and yet…

When I was in seminary, I took a job at Half Price Books. All new employees at the store had to work the Romance session. Thus I spent my first months at the store stocking, evaluating, and selling Romance novels.

This was a new experience for me as I have never read or interacted with any kind of romance books. I know it’s a real shocker that I’m not into books that have super-stylized dudes with long hair and hairless chests riding on a horse on the cover. Nor am I attracted to novels with titles like A Rake’s Mistress or The Pirate King’s Wish, A Thousand Years of Passion and so on. (If there are actually novels with those names, my apologies.)

The reason the store would make employees work in that section to begin wasn’t because of the topic, but rather because of the volume. There was no section that received the base volume of books like the Romance section. Every day we would receive hundreds of Romance books and they would fly off the shelves. And the authors would seemingly put out four or five books a year.

This is where I learned much about the practice of ghostwriters. While it was not possible to produce that many published books in such a short time frames (though I suspected there was some kind of trashy romance “mad lib” worksheet they might have used), these books would nevertheless appear. A veritable tidal wave of trashy literature.

In a world that is slowly being overwhelmed by AI-created content, it reminds me how often we are happy to replace quality with quantity. We move from articulate novels to graphic novels, from just one chip to a whole bag and a cup of ice cream, from satisfaction in front of a fireplace in your home to doomscrolling for 5 hours fretting over world economy.

Romance novels are repugnant to me because of their fakeness. They are like the empty carbs of the literary world. You can consume as many of them as you want and they’ll maybe taste good at the time, but they’ll leave you empty.

So much of what we pursue in the world tastes good because of the ease of consumption, but in the end leaves you empty.

And before you think I’m speaking just of vice, think again. We spend so much of our lives glutting ourselves on the good because we don’t want to take the effort to craft the best. We avoid the awkward conversations that bring relational growth and settle for emojis. We avoid crafting meals that would taste good and be good for us and make a bunch of dirty dishes and instead hit a fast food place so we can throw the trash away. We avoid creating something unique that risks rejection and instead let a machine make it for us.

So much of the sin in our lives reflects the verse in the book of James paraphrased: “If you know the good you should do and don’t do it, that is sin for you.” We hoard and gluttonize on the good, trashing the best, and wonder why we live without satisfaction.

Friend, it may be time in your life to set aside the Romance novel and read a good book that’s difficult to read. It may be time to stop binging on fast food and slow down to make something yourself. It may be time to stop leaning on all your tools and technology and stuff to provide your worth, and to create something. It may be time to stop trying to indirectly collect dating profiles and have a real human conversation with a romantic interest. It may be time to stop wasting resources on the good, so you can invest in the best.

Your mind is worth more than the writing of ghosts.

Signs and wonders, y’all.

¹⁷ So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. James 4:17