Men who do not read good fiction will struggle greatly to understand others. They will think mainly propositionally and mechanically treat others, expecting them to engage in a particular way; reading them through encyclopedic lenses.
Good fictional works allow men to see tenderness as a virtue, the good life to be explored, and relationships to be developed within a paradigm of grace and wonder.
Too often, the hardest men to counsel are those who are theologically well-read but fictionally deficient. They assert themselves over their families with brute dogmatism and fail to embrace the good story of each child or spouse.
