1. Lisa says:

    Oh, yes. Thank you so much for throwing a spotlight on this weakness found in much of Christian fiction. I knew the portrayal of Christians often bugged me, but you are right, too often the portrayal of non-Christians is ALSO shallow and not realistic. Love this:  “It’s the Christian-fiction equivalent of a reversed redshirt: instead of dying early just to show how drastic the danger is, the made-up non-Christian exists just to show how wonderful Jesus is. ”

    Come on, people, we can do better than that, right?

     

  2. notleia says:

    This reminded me of something I read from an atheist blogger who told a story about how a budding writer friend of hers pretty much copy-pasted her and her then-husband into a play and then used the God-mode of authorship to “fix” their lives according to how Budding Writer thought they should be (Link: https://rolltodisbelieve.wordpress.com/2015/03/29/why-im-going-to-spend-a-week-ripping-gods-not-dead-to-pieces/).

    I think most of us know a “fixer” like that who may or may not have an outlet into writing, and it’s pretty creepy to consider what tiny little box they would shove us into, if they could, for our own “good,” especially if they think Jesus would back them up on what they thought was our “good.” Insert CS Lewis quote about how run-of-the-mill corrupt leadership could be sated, even if only temporarily, but a dictator hell-bent on correcting and cleansing the peasantry is relentless.

What do you think?