My Hillbilly Elegy Stupor

You know that hot-faced feeling you get when a dear friend lets you know that your pants have been unzipped for the past hour and everybody else was in on the little joke except for you? You feel like an absolute fool. Why didn’t somebody tell me this sooner? What does this mean for how I relate to the world now?

Sure you had a few breezy moments along the way that should have tipped you off that something was amiss, but you never imagined that you were the freak-show everybody was silently giggling about. Or maybe you did know it but didn’t want to own up to that fact.

Now that you’ve been exposed like this it changes the way you relate to the world. You feel so raw. You’d love to find some place to hide but it’s pointless now, you were the last to know the shameful secret.

That almost perfectly describes how I felt reading Hillbilly Elegy. My analogy doesn’t totally fit. This isn’t the first time that I’ve realized my “pants were unzipped”. I’ve known for awhile that some of the things I’ve experienced haven’t exactly been what you’d call normal. (I scored a pretty solid 8 on that little test JD mentioned toward the end of the book). As I read through this book I was so thankful that Vance was putting words to things that I’ve been thinking for years but wasn’t quite sure how to say.

I’ve also been thinking for a couple years now that much of what I read in ministry and counseling books are a bit out of touch. As I’ve went through the process of biblical counseling certification (still working) and slowly labored through seminary so much of what I read seems impractical when it comes to doing ministry in a culture like Vance’s. I often thought that we need a resource tailored for hillbilly counseling. The struggles are different than what you see in the inner cities and in the locale from which several of these authors write.

Don’t get me wrong the brokenness we face in hillbilly culture has a ton of things in common with urban brokenness. Sin is still the root. And the answer is still the gospel. But there is something unique about ministry “out here” and I’ve yet to read but a handful of books which even acknowledge or come close to understanding what it is like.

So I’ve been in a bit of a stupor over the past few weeks. I’m trying to process all my thoughts from reading this book. I’ve been exposed. Words have been placed upon wounds and I’m trying to figure out what it all means. Not only that, I’m seeing all of this with my pastoral eyes. His words have given me words as it relates to hillbilly ministry.

I must confess I don’t have much of a point today, except to maybe say Hillbilly Elegy is a book worth reading. I suppose I’m also hoping to share a bit about my recent writing stupor and to say prepare yourself for a week worth of article interacting with this book.