Chest Building
By Anthony Casperson
10-11-25

This week led me down a path of seemingly disconnected subjects that culminated in a theological contemplation. And I felt like it might be worth sharing.

It began last Saturday when I watched a YouTube video about writing. The presenter’s perspective was that a primary reason behind terrible writing in recent days has been because of education’s shift away from phonics as the main methodology of teaching children how to read. Instead, numerous institutions have, for years, been teaching something referred to as “critical literacy.”

A swift and broad stroke about this methodology is that it’s critical theory applied to reading. The purpose being for readers to discern the “ideologies presented in the text,” rather than what the actual text is saying. And with understandings in mind of power structures—as delineated by the educators or similar “experts”—the reader is supposedly able to analyze messages that promote “prejudiced power relationships” that could go unnoticed in an author’s words.

Essentially, readers are taught to feel their way through the text, typically by looking for trigger words—called “generative words/themes”—that prove the supposedly hidden power structure in the work. And because of the necessity of an authoritative voice to define the meaning for the generative words/themes, readers are taught from a young age to only look at how the words make them feel rather than thinking purposefully about the words on the page.

They’re being taught to engage their emotional understanding of the passage rather than logically considering the actual word of the author. The consideration of what the generative words/themes mean is left for someone else to think about.

Now, while I’m not going to go into the finer details of the presenter’s point—because my intent with this blog is different than her video’s—one example in a study she cited left me so flabbergasted that I had to consider her broader point. The study had English literature majors read through a work of Charles Dickens and translate the text into modern language. But an overwhelming number of the English literature majors failed to perform this task as asked.

However, one student in particular won the award for most shocking failure. They were to read and translate a description of a university Lord Chancellor looking out a window at the terrible weather during the fall semester—the time of year being called “Michaelmas Term,” as was common during Dickens’s day. The weather was so bad that Dickens joked about seeing a sauropod wading down the street.

And how did this English literature major translate the passage? They said that two characters—Michaelmas and the Lord Chancellor—were walking along the street and met a strange creature.

My only response was “What?!”

There was a failure to communicate because the reader wasn’t engaging with the text, but rather skimming it for the generative words/themes. They weren’t looking for the meaning of what the author wrote, but rather trying to utilize the methodology taught to them. And when the power structure method failed—because no authority figure had provided a description of how to read this text—the student was unable to process the words that were literally in front of them.

(As an aside, this makes me wonder how much worse things will get when a PDF reader’s AI says that the 5-page chapter that I wrote is a “long passage,” and asks if I want it summarized. That’s just transferring the role of “expert” to another outside source. But this isn’t a point I want to get into right now either.)

I sat with these thoughts for a few days, after which I was reminded of another subject. It seemed disconnected at first, but contemplating it caused me to consider a connection with the previous YouTube video.

The words of C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man were brought back to my mind, specifically his words about “men without chests.” The general flow of his argument—which he borrowed from Plato—was that people are made up of both logic and base appetite/instinct, but it’s when we use both in conjunction with one another that leads us to true virtue. We have both a reasoning mind and an emotional gut, but we need the chest between them in order to create “emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments.”

Without the chest’s role as liaison between “cerebral man and visceral man,” we find ourselves abandoning one side in favor of the other, even as we believe ourselves to be perfectly fine in the process. Lewis points to this absurdity of the chest’s atrophy by comparing it to castrating a horse and then telling it to be fruitful and multiply. That’s kinda impossible now.

But some might be asking what the connection is between these two above subjects. How does the video about critical literacy relate to atrophied chests?

While Lewis speaks to a prevalence in his day of relativists leaning in the direction of the head’s reason, it seems to me that relativism today has led people into the opposite direction. Many have traded in logic and reasoning for visceral gut reactions. They get triggered by words and ideas that they say are just struggles for power, and then yell and scream as if volume equals truthfulness.

And they end up allowing outside “experts” to think for them and define how to feel about it.

The problem of relativism that Lewis wrote against still exists today. We still have people without chests. But we’ve switched which side is its focus. We’ve gone from inflated heads to bloated guts, all the while the chest remains atrophied.

I believe that the reason for this switch is because the ideology of relativism—mixed with the ideology of critical theory—has asserted its place in our culture. It’s taught many among us to organize a trained habit of looking for delineated power structures, which we’re told should cause us to feel a certain way. The way that suits those to whom we’ve allocated our thinking.

We feel the world around us, rather than thinking for ourselves. We read all of it in the way that others taught us to think, rather than looking into the words, themes, and subjects with our own eyes. We see Michaelmas Term as a character in the story, instead of a phrase for a fall semester in 1800’s England.

But, if we look at the truth about being people with chests—especially followers of Jesus with chests—this methodology isn’t the way we should go. It is likely to lead to false doctrine. It trades God’s word as primary source of knowledge for the methodologies of godless humans. It replaces the Holy Spirit’s guidance, which is meant to aid our own reasoning, for the despotism of “experts” who only ever think about power. (Their own, most of all.)

When Paul wrote to his young protégé Timothy, in the first epistle bearing the young pastor’s name, the Apostle spoke about dealing with false teaching that promotes rage and defiant argumentation. It wouldn’t be difficult to consider what Paul would think about teachings that cause people to yell and scream with max volumed guts.

As a matter of fact, Paul writes in 1 Timothy 1:3 that he’d left Timothy in Ephesus for the purpose of charging certain persons to refrain from teaching false doctrines. Specifically, those false doctrines that came in the form of endless genealogies and useless speculation. Again, imagine what he’d think about people who endlessly search for hidden meanings in texts that have nothing to do with what they’re looking for.

Paul speaks of false teachings as the things that don’t edify the economy of faith in God. They’re thoughts and ideas that fail to build up the work of God in this world.

Because of this explanation from the Apostle, we can expand out false doctrine to also include endless discussions of power structures and ideologies that we’re taught to perceive in an author’s words. If it doesn’t build up the people of God to be more godly, then it’s not true doctrine from God. If it relies on others to delineate generative words/themes for us, instead of being able to see it for ourselves, then it’s not the godly way. If it forces us into either too much mind or too much gut, but not enough chest, then it’s not something we should focus on.

And yes, this includes words taught by bible scholars and teachers—including this very blog here. Go look at the word of God for yourselves. Don’t accept my words just because I’m taking the role of “expert” here. I can be wrong. And I welcome feedback describing the part of God’s word that proves anything in which I’m wrong.

I’m more than willing to accept such corrections because of what Paul says in verse 5. The goal of every good and godly teacher is selfless love—the betterment of others—that comes from a pure heart, a moral conscience that benefits others, and an un-hypocritical faith. If teachers don’t seek the ways of God for the betterment of those they’re teaching—while also seeking to live up to that standard—then they’re not worth listening to.

False teachers prove their hypocrisy when you present truth that denies their point. They’re only interested in spewing their own thoughts rather than learning.

Paul addresses this in verse 7. He says that certain persons wish to be teachers, but have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. They make confident assertions on subjects that have nothing to do with what they’re saying.

In the end, false teachers promote things that are contrary to sound doctrine. And I’ll just let Paul’s words do the talking here about what those false-teacher-promoted things are before I move on to my conclusion:

“[U]nderstanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine” (1 Timothy 1:9-10, ESV).

We followers of Jesus should learn good teaching. We should seek it out from wise teachers, but more importantly, also look into the words for ourselves. The point of reading and digging into God’s word isn’t for us to skim and feel our way through it. Rather we should wrestle with it and let it change us. The word should cause us to become more holy, as God is holy.

Followers of Jesus should be people with chests. Not focused too much on the rational mind, nor on the emotional gut. But rather use them in conjunction with one another in order to work with God as he creates a life organized by trained habit for stable sentiments.

Let’s seek true doctrine from God. From his word, which we read with an eye to his meaning. We’ll only discover useless speculations if we read with an eye on generative themes/words—false doctrine that does nothing to grow our faith in God.

And growth in a pure heart, a moral conscience that benefits others, and an un-hypocritical faith is our goal.