To the arrogant I say, ‘Boast no more,’
    and to the wicked, ‘Do not lift up your horns.
Do not lift your horns against heaven;
    do not speak so defiantly.’”

• Psalm 75:4-5

This is what the Lord says:
“Let not the wise boast of their wisdom
    or the strong boast of their strength
    or the rich boast of their riches,
but let the one who boasts boast about this:
    that they have the understanding to know me,
that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness,
    justice and righteousness on earth,
    for in these I delight,”
declares the Lord.

• Jeremiah 9:23-24

I am a foreigner to my own family,
    a stranger to my own mother’s children;
for zeal for your house consumes me,
    and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.

• Psalm 69:8-9

SPOILER ALERT WARNING

If you intend to read this book, the following may give away the mystery

Not really, as the quote is from the investigation phase.

“To her, the beauty of an ordered life was more than a mere phrase; it was a dogma to be preached, a cult to be practised with passion and concentration   And Mrs. Farren was a very beautiful woman, if you liked that style of thing, with her oval face and large grey eyes and those thick masses of copper-coloured hair, parted in the middle and rolled in a great knot on the nape of the neck. …
“But she was the kind of woman who, if once she set out to radiate sweetness and light, would be obstinate in her mission. He studied the rather full, sulky mouth and narrow, determined forehead. It was the face of a woman who would see only what she wished to see – who would think that one could abolish evils from the world by pretending that they were not there. Such things, for instance, as jealousy or criticism of herself. …”

• Dorothy L. Sayers, The Five Red Herrings

“Sayers was asked to write a play in verse for the 1937 Canterbury Festival. The theme for that year was ‘artists and craftsmen,’ and her drama tells the story of William of Sens, an architect who led the rebuilding after a major part of the cathedral was destroyed by fire in 1174. The title comes from Psalm 69:9, ‘For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up,’ a reference to the architect’s arrogance that causes his crippling plunge from a scaffold. Although bed-ridden, he refuses to give up the work to another architect until confronted by the archangel Michael in a dream.”

• Carole Vanderhoof, The Gospel in Dorothy L Sayers

Boilerplate

In this mini-series, I will fulfill a promise.  Some time ago, published 14 January 2025, I wrote a brief synopsis of the book, Subversive by Crystal Downing.  The post is called A Subversive Christian.  In that book, I talked about the three books in the photo above.  And I especially wanted to do a mini-series on the book on the right, The Gospel in Dorothey L. Sayers.

Note that the title uses the preposition “in.”  Dorothy L. Sayers did not write a fifth gospel.  She did not write as if inspired directly by God.  The canon of Scripture is complete.

But in stating what this is not, then what is it?  All Christians have the Holy Spirit within them, guiding them.  When being a Christian is something you have inside you and through you, then your life will reflect that.  This book is how you can see various aspects of the Christian life in the works of Dorothy L. Sayers, mystery novels, plays, letters, and essays.

After the Introduction, it starts with Whose Body?  The editor’s attribute of a Christian that she focuses on is “Conscience.” Whose Body? is her first detective fiction novel featuring her main character, Lord Peter Wimsey.  Then in Death Must Advertise, we find Lord Peter has a couple of middle names.  His full name is Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey.

But we will stay in the Introduction for more than a week.  There are at least a half dozen quotes just in the introduction that look interesting.  I am not in a hurry to speed through this book.  I was not in a hurry to start it with me being over a year since I promised to make it into a mini-series.

But I would hope people could read my short stories and see the gospel being acted out in the characters in my fictional stories.  Deviled Yeggs grew up in a family of safe crackers, robbing from others.  He set out as a policeman, and then homicide detective, to redeem the family name but learning each person must have Christ redeem them individually.  Deviled’s wife, Trinity Naomi Tesla (TNT) Yeggs, was nicknamed “Nitroglycerin” (Glyce for short) by her parents because she was explosive when shaken.  But she found calm and peace in her husband’s arms, and eventually she found the same comfort and peace in the arms of Jesus as she faced “shaky” experiences.

Even when not writing about Jesus directly, the Good News (Gospel) appears in many ways in what a Christian writes.  Let’s enjoy this journey with possibly my favorite author (outside the Bible with C.S. Lewis in a tie with her), Dorothy L. Sayers.

Discussion

Dorothy L Sayers paints a picture in these two paragraphs of a woman that I have known many of.  A dutiful wife who would do anything to protect the family name, although she married into the family.  In Gone with the Wind, Scarlett O’Hara was the heir to Tara, but she was ruthless in her defense of her family’s plantation.

When I was growing up, there was probably a “Scarlett O’Hara” on more than half the hills in the county.  The small farmers were losing their farms, equipment too expensive to manage a small acreage crop, but there was still the land.  It had to be preserved for the family.  While the farmer took on an hourly wage, the wife either worked also or she schemed.  Okay, scheming sounds illegal, but penny pinching and making pint jars of fruit preserves to sell at the farmer’s market were the usual things.

There is nothing wrong with taking pride in the work that you do.  We should glorify God in everything that we do, and that includes baking a pie or roasting a turkey.

But it is what God gives us that allows us to do those things.  How did Ms. Sayers describe the woman that Lord Peter interviewed?  She saw what she wanted to see.  When our pride in what we do or have possession of becomes all-consuming, we tend to worship that instead of God.  We see nothing else other than our own fantasy.  Even what we are so proud of is a fantasy within our delusions that we are wonderful.

And when we get to that point in our delusions, it takes a great deal of power to break through our defenses.  God can do it, if we let Him.

But, if we are happy in the pride we have and we can see only what we want to see, would we will let God “rattle our tree?”

As for the book, an artist was found dead at the base of a cliff in Scotland.  His easel was found at the top of the cliff.  Accidental death was the easy solution, but not for Lord Peter.  Lord Peter Wimsey goes into the small artist community and finds that there are five other artists and none of them like the deceased that much.

The title of the book is The Five Red Herrings.  A red herring is a misleading clue, a mystery genre idiom.  But if one of the artists killed the man, the other four artists would be the red herrings.  Either the title is wrong or there are more suspects than just the five artists.  I am thinking six suspects, the murderer and five red herrings.  Now, that wasn’t much of a spoiler at all, but it was a head scratcher for Lord Peter.  A couple of suspects?  Fine, no problem.  But six?  Now, there’s the rub.

In the second quote above, the book’s author introduces a dialogue from a play that was written by Dorothy L Sayers.  The famed architect is confronted by the archangel Michael.  The architect must stay at his task so that God’s house can be restored.  Certainly, an archangel could understand.  It was God’s house they were talking about.  But Michael persists until the architect repents of his pride and lets another architect finish the project.

It was not a matter of personal pride, but a matter of corporate pride.  But I heard of a company, known for not doing anything if there was not a safe solution for the task.  During construction of a massive project, they never had a missed workday accident.  The project was huge, thousands of workers taking over five years to complete the project.

Oh, how they bragged about the safe completion of the task, but they fail to mention that a crane inspector was on the crane haunches when someone on the ground level began to operate the crane. The inspector screamed, but he was not heard until the crane had pinned him against a concrete wall.  His body was crushed.  The man was rushed to the hospital and placed in a full body cast.  An ambulance, with nurses attending the patient, came to the construction site every day so that the man could direct movements of the crane from his hospital bed.  This is a true story, eerily similar to the play by Dorothy L Sayers.  The pride was corporate pride, and their reputation would be tainted if anyone knew the truth.

Closing Prayer

Father, guide me.  We take pride in the work that we do, but if we boast of it, we are trying to steal Your glory.  You gave us the strength to do the task.  You gave us the drive and motivation in which to do it.  You gave us the passion in which to do it well.  Help us to know from whence comes our strength.  And forgive us for being boastful about our family name, our property, or even our reputation, anything given to us and not borne from our labors.  While we might have something to do with it, often those things are handed to us.  When that happens, it is not a reason to boast, but a reason to be humble.  We cannot boast about what we have and did not earn.  But You gave us those things.  It is our responsibility to use them for Your glory, not ours.
In Thy Name I pray.
Amen

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.