Hemingway

“I live in a vacuum that is as lonely as a radio tube when the batteries are dead, and there is no current to plug into.” that’s what Ernest Hemingway said of his life. How could that be? He was known for his tough-guy image and globe-trotting pilgrimages to exotic places. He was a big-game hunter, a bullfighter, a man who could drink the best of them under the table. He was married four times and lived his life seemingly without moral restraint or conscience. But on a sunny Sunday morning in Idaho, he pulverized his head with a shotgun blast.

But there was another side to Ernest Hemingway that you may not know. He grew up in an evangelical Christian home. His grandparents were missionaries and his father was a devoted churchman and a friend of none other than D. L. Moody, the great evangelist. His family conformed to the strictest codes of Christianity and, as a boy, he was active in his church.

But something didn’t ring true for Hemingway. While he seemed to embrace all that he encountered, there was a hollow ring in his soul. It came bubbling out when he went away to WW1 as a war correspondent and observed the death and despair that only war can bring. His ritualized faith failed him. He soured on God and rejected the religion he once had.