Reading can be a powerful experience, second only to living out adventures. Seeing them on the screen, big or little, doesn’t often do the same justice to events as does reading about them in a book.

I’ve believed this about reading for some time, and now there is a growing body of evidence, thanks to Dr. Keith Oatley and his colleagues who are studying the psychology of fiction, to validate this position.

But is it a good thing that reading affects us so strongly?

Of Dr. Oatley’s recent book on the subject, Such stuff as dreams: The psychology of fiction, his publisher (Wiley-Blackwell) explains it deals with

the transformative power of fiction to enter and engage the mind into revealing profound insights about ourselves and those around us.

Transformative power. Profound insights.

I have to ask first, transforming us from what to what?

If fiction is, as I quoted last time from the publisher’s blurb, a model for life which readers create in collaboration with writers, then it seems to me readers are being transformed by writers into whatever writers believe to be true.

This concept has powerful ramifications for both readers and writers.

For writers, it challenges the notion that we do little more than reflect the real world. Rather, we are participating in shaping it. For example, writers of children’s literature who include characters with two mommys, as if this is normative behavior, are contributing to the creation of a world in which such would be normative.

It seems to me, however, that readers must be willing collaborators. If a writer offers a look at the world which the reader knows to be untrue, any transformation seems unlikely. If, however, the writer earns the reader’s trust and presents something plausible, even if it calls into question the reader’s views, then it seems transformation is a viable option.

For readers, then, the onus is on us to determine a writer’s trustworthiness regarding truth. Too often we make the determination based on the external effects a story has on us. Did it make us laugh? Were we so engaged we neglected chores? Did the ending cause us to tear up, even weep aloud?

Those are the “good” stories we want. We’ve lived an experience that has had a physical effect on us. But what does our emotional reaction to the story have to do with truth?

I can feel deeply about something, but those emotions have little to do with actuality. Ask anyone who has had an unrequited crush. The strong romantic feelings the person held were not a true indication of an actual love relationship.

So too with fiction. A moving story does not necessarily indicate the author is conveying truth.

If a reader cannot trust his emotional response to a story, then it seems he has these options: 1) let a writer influence him no matter what; 2) choose to read books written only by writers who have a high probability of telling the truth; 3) step away from the emotion of a story and look at it intellectually to determine if the writer is offering truth.

Which brings me to the second conclusion Dr. Oatley’s publisher stated: fiction gives us profound insights about the world and ourselves. How profound can those insights be if they are formed in collaboration with a false belief?

The reader, for example, finds in The Wizard of Oz, that Dorothy has had within her all along the ability to achieve what she wants — as have the Lion, Scarecrow, and Tin Man. In collaboration with the writer, the reader concludes that she is just like the characters, that she, too, has within herself all she needs. Good-bye Wizard, good-bye magic. She has simply to believe in herself.

Is that a profound insight, or a false one? Perhaps profoundly false.

The Wizard of Oz, I might point out, would in all likelihood fall into the category of books written by writers who have a high probability of telling the truth. Why? Because it has a veneer of respectability since it addresses such important traits as courage, heart, intellect, and love of family and home.

Besides, it has the appearance of good triumphing over evil, it has the absence of a number of qualities some find offensive, and it has a character many will feel for because she is willing to learn and is willing to help others along the way.

And yet, if the reader collaborates with the writer, the insights he gains will be profoundly false.

As I see it, reading should come with a surgeon general’s warning: this activity may be hazardous to your spiritual health. Either that or the Good Housekeeping seal of approval: this activity will build your spiritual muscles.

The choice between the two is the reader’s, and it hinges on whether or not he is willing to maintain a healthy skepticism, questioning the conclusions to which the author leads him.

There’s actually a word for that ability, though for some reason it has recently fallen into disrepute in some circles. The word is discernment.

A month ago, I was deep in the woods of Michigan’s beautiful Upper Peninsula, serving my yearly stint as “camp pastor” for a group of 7th and 8th grade church kids. We (the campers, staff, counselors, and myself) had the precious opportunity to get away from it all for seven days, to a place where your cell phone can’t get a signal, but your sense of wonder at God’s eternal power and divine nature is at four bars. Look around and you’ll see evergreens, birch trees, a crystal clean lake, and a dozen quaint little cabins, each with a sentimental name like “Sunset Bay.”

And yet all the kids were talking about Harry Potter.

Okay, maybe not all of them, but it was surely a recurring theme. The final movie in the series had been released the Friday previous and a good number of the campers had seen it. Many more had plans to attend a screening upon returning home. Whether in casual conversation or in the group discussions that followed my twice-daily teaching sessions, Harry Potter was trending among Baptist youth that week. This was disconcerting to at least one adult leader, who thought that such wicked stories should not be mixed in with discussion of the Holy Scriptures—not in any way.

I shall leave that particular dead horse what little dignity he has left by not beating him further, particularly since I have not read or seen any of the books/movies in the franchise.¹ And yet, in light of this phenomenon, I couldn’t help but think back to my days as a youth pastor, and a small controversy that I’ve come to refer to as Larrygate.

Larrygate centered around the selection of Vacation Bible School curriculum at a small Baptist church in 1997. No one had heard of Harry Potter back then, but there was all kinds of buzz around VeggieTales. And VeggieTales had a brand new VBS-in-a-box within our price range, which promised to draw in the kids with its it factor and build word-of-mouth among our target demo in the neighborhood. But then our old-school Christian ed director, Vera (not quite her real name), spoke up.

“I won’t have this at my church,” she said firmly. “It’s fantasy.”

Vera was concerned that mixing the proclamation of Truth (i.e. Christ’s death and resurrection for the salvation of sinners) with far-fetched make-believe (i.e. talking/singing vegetables with a penchant for ’80s pop culture and inside jokes) would confuse the children. Her argument was a modification of the old Fundamentalist Santa Claus refutation: how can we expect the kids to go on believing in God when they realize they’ve been, in some sense, duped?

Long story short: Bob and Larry were not invited to VBS at our church that year. Not yet being a parent and not being in a position of overseeing children’s ministries at the time, I really had no dog in the fight, and thus watched it all go down with a detached amusement. I found the absurdity of Vera’s argument entertaining, if not compelling. Did she really lack any concept of genre? She always seemed to me a rather bright and capable woman, and yet this was the hill on which she chose to die. Weird.

Things would get weirder. At the same church, a few months later, I found myself in a conversation with another church leader who insisted that the stories conveyed in the parables of Our Lord really happened. That’s right, these tales (in addition to conveying spiritual meaning) were historically accurate narratives, describing actual events. If not, this man asserted, then Jesus was being dishonest and deceptive in telling them. I tried to explain the ins and outs of the parable genre, a form that was well-known to Jesus’ original audience, but my friend would have none of it. Either Jesus is a liar (and therefore not truly who he claimed to be) or the Good Samaritan, the rich fool, the wicked husbandman, and the ten virgins were as much real historical figures as Christ himself.

Of course it occurred to me that his logic was swinging to the same absurd extreme as Vera’s had the summer before. And yet, neither of them were unintelligent people. Were I to begin a sermon with the words, “Once upon a time,” they would recognize immediately that I was making use of the fairy tale form as a sermon illustration, in order to help convey spiritual Truth. I doubt either of them would accuse me of deceiving or confusing anyone. Their world has always made room for this genre, and so they find no stumbling block when it is employed. Just like Jesus’ original audience knew at once that his parables were inventive stories meant to illustrate a spiritual principle (many of them already-famous parables given new twists by Jesus). And just like kids know instinctively that cartoon characters aren’t real, even while they might communicate very real (and important) concepts, like fire prevention or, say, the importance of telling the truth.

If the genre is comfortable, it gets a pass. I think we all find allegory rather nonthreatening—hence the lack of furor surrounding Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, a gripping tale of an exciting journey which did not (and could not) happen literally, as such. And yet, Bunyan is rarely called out for confusing or deceiving the masses. Because allegory is nice and neat. Maybe that’s why we try and allegorize the parables, even when it tends to confuse them. (Try making sense of Augustine’s explanation of the Good Samaritan.) It may also explain why Lewis’s Narnia books (despite Lewis’s insistence that they are not allegories) are so widely accepted, even in circles where the Harry Potter books are fit to be burned for their depictions of magic (and Lewis’s other fictional works—for example, his Space Trilogy—are never discussed). And yet, as it has been pointed out so frequently of late, the magic of Narnia was depicted as having effects in our world.

Maybe that’s where the trouble begins: when the genre becomes, in any way, complex—when a story takes place in our world, and yet the only way we can find “biblical value” is to try and allegorize it. This has raised some eyebrows even in the world of “Christian Fiction.” The Oath by Frank Peretti (which I rather like, despite some pretty rough reviews) is perhaps the purest example. If the dragon creature, being sin itself, is a metaphor, then why are people putting their faith in Jesus within the framework of the story and finding salvation from non-metaphorical sin? Is it an allegory or not? If not, where do we file it? If a story is too complex to be categorized in a black-and-white Realistic Narrative / Allegorical Illustration dichotomy, can anything good come out of it? (Spoiler alert: Vera says no.)

Much of Stephen Lawhead’s work is similarly slippery and difficult to categorize, a problem which has reportedly vexed Zondervan to no end. In the end, even his Celtic Crusades series bears the word “Fantasy” on the spine, despite containing no elements that a Bible-believing reader would find outside of the realm of possibility.² What makes it fantasy, then? That it didn’t really happen?

In that sense, I suppose all fiction is speculative, as it initially takes place in the author’s fantasy and involves the creation of worlds populated with people who do not exist. My latest book, 42 Months Dry: A Tale of Gods and Gunplay is a loose retelling of the story of Elijah the prophet, with a different genre (urban noir), setting, time period (present day-ish), etc. While Elijah was a real, historical figure who really did miracles and served God as a prophet (primarily during the reign of King Ahab), these events did not happen “that way,” and so I can only guess that there is a school of thought that would call me dishonest and even deceptive. And yet, my intended audience is as familiar with the conventions involved as a First Century Jew would be familiar with the parable. And, at any rate, everything from the cover design to the marketing copy to the Library of Congress category tells the reader what to expect.

Our God is clearly not against using a given genre (according to its own rules) to convey Truth. In addition to parable, we see lament, epistle, psalm, proverb, royal genealogy, and apocalyptic literature within the canon, to name just a few. God isn’t using borrowed capital in these cases. These things are already God’s and, in turn, he found each to be the best genre through which to inspire his eternal and perfect Word so that finite and flawed humans could grasp it.

Today, of course, the canon is closed. But we are still made in God’s image, and we continue to find and convey Truth through any number of genres, including many that did not exist when the Bible was being assembled. The question at the core of both Larrygate and Harrygate is this: which post-biblical genres should be considered entirely off limits and unable to convey Truth, either directly or indirectly? Action/suspense? Fantasy? Sci-fi? Snark-laden comedy? Anime? CGI slapstick? Graphic novel?

Let me return to the subject of VeggieTales, as it provides a simple case study. Now, I’m of the opinion that a heaping helping of Dare-to-be-a-Daniel-style Law (even with a God-made-you-special-and-loves-you-very-much dessert) is not the best way to communicate the Truth of the Scriptures to our children, and certainly no replacement for the Gospel. But my critique does not extend to the medium or the genre. VeggieTales creators Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki were pioneers in their field (a relatively rare thing in Christian circles these days), and are masters of what they do. Whether or not it’s the right message, the message is not lost in the “fantasy” as Vera feared. Because five-year-olds know that vegetables aren’t sentient; they just like the jokes, the characters, and the neat, gift-wrapped morals. My 13-year-old campers were well-aware that wizards aren’t real, but the Harry Potter epic gives them a test canvas on which to work out some of the biblical metanarrative against an alternate real world. And, deep down, we all know that we’re drawn to the world of good and evil, angels and demons, four-headed creatures, celestial cities, dragons, prophets, priests, miracles, magic, and wonder because of something that God placed within us—something that knows for a fact that there’s a world beyond our wildest dreams awaiting us on the other side of the veil.

It would be dishonest not to explore it.

 Footnotes

1. I mean no disrespect here to those who have been so passionately discussing the topic, only that I have nothing to add. In fact, if you will indulge me the McGuffin of the new Harry Potter movie, I shall focus on fiction that presents itself as Christian, avoiding the question of whether “secular” speculative fiction can be edifying as well … although I will tip my hand by saying that I believe any three stories in Machine of Death contain more spiritual insight than your average three Christian novels.
2. With the exception of portraying Pelagius as a misunderstood orthodox theologian, persecuted for purely political reasons.

Zach Bartels is a pastor, an author, and an award-winning Bible teacher. He currently serves a church in Lansing, Michigan, where he lives with his wife Erin and their son. He holds degrees from Cornerstone University and Grand Rapids Theological Seminary.

Zach enjoys film, fine cigars, gourmet coffee, reading, writing, and chopping down altars to Baal. His books include 42 Months Dry and two satires (written with Ted Kluck), Younger, Restlessler, Reformeder and Kinda Christianity, which peaked at #2 in the Religious Humor category on Amazon. He is presently writing a thriller, involving demon possession, undercover Jesuit agents, a hard-nosed detective, and a televangelist with really white teeth.

You can find more information and follow Zach’s blog at www.pastorzach.com.

If you as a Christian fiction writer have ever thought something like: I’m tired of Christians sucking up bad stories, and wouldn’t it be better if we all just wrote for non-Christians …

Or: Christians’ stories need to stop the religious jargon; it’s subtlety that matters most! …

Or even something like: the Church already has the Gospel, so we should put our greatest efforts into missional strategies to reach those outside Christianity with better fiction that will meet people where they are and finally show them what real Christianity is …

… Then this series is for you, and me, and any others who are still exploring these issues.

Yet what I’m don’t say — or mean to say, in part 1 or here — is anything like the following:

• Every Christian novelist should give up writing for secular audiences and instead write only for Christians as I hope to do. That would be an overcorrection in reverse.
• Overt messages matter more than craft and Christianity that’s implicit in the very medium of Story. Not at all. I suggest that both showing and telling can make great stories. My hope is not to rebut too much of the “showing is just as good as telling” argument, but to balance out potential overstatements of that. Some authors may choose to explore the Gospel more overtly, while not compromising their craft with smeared-on stale religious sauces that can’t make up for a story’s lack of “meat.”
• My enjoyment of more-“overt” stories matters more than others’ preference for subtler fiction. Not at all. Yet I acknowledge it could sound like that. I do assume you are already familiar with arguments that Christians should mainly write more-subtle stories and that those are usually better than novels that are overtly Christian.

Finally, when I make references to “overt Christian fiction” or “specific grace themes,” I do not mean the superficial stuff that I and most readers here already dislike. While I do believe most modern Christian fiction is beset (along with Gnostic notions about Story itself) more by a lack of truly Christian themes than an overindulgence of them, I also recognize that bad “preachiness” persists. What I have in mind are authors who genuinely, naturally love Christ and His truth, who are unafraid to write with Christian characters, church settings, doctrine exploration, and what-if questions that flesh out or simulate in a story-world (or a mental “holodeck,” as Rebecca Miller said) the specific claims of Scripture and its Gospel narrative.

As stardf29, a friend and cyber-acquaintance of mine, summarized on Aug. 15:

There are definitely books about people becoming Christians, and books that show Christian truths without explicitly mentioning Christianity, but I wish there were more books that were actually about Christians themselves, and how they live their lives. (emphasis added)

I have a feeling he’s not the only one wishing this, from either inside or outside the Church.

That said, here are two more reasons why novelists may write with overt Christian themes.

3. We should avoid “the Gospel is only for non-Christians” lie. Christians need “simulations” of God’s truth at least as much as nonbelievers.

Much poor Christian fiction results from even worse Christian teaching that got its start, or a regrettable boost, in the revivalist “Second Great Awakening” days of the early 19th century.

Another one from Spurgeon.org's "Emergent Motivational Posters." (Works equally well for mean megachurch cattle-herding whippersnappers.)

Whatever the positive results of this movement (we do know God can use anything to echo His Word and save someone, including a secular story!), it also brought many wrong notions to Christianity. Such myths persist in Christians’ minds, and their novels, likely because they infest many churches. Example: the megachurch leader who stated flatly that he didn’t care about the existing Christians in his church because the leader’s goal was mainly to get non-Christians into the church; so those wanting more should quit whining and just work harder. Along with, ah, demonstrating a lack of love for his “partners” in that Christian megachurch business, two false beliefs spawned that leader’s proclamation:

• Once you get “saved,” you are safe. All your growth is now taken care of; you can automatically flesh out the results in your life, and spiritually feed yourself. I don’t need to bother with you. You also don’t need “simulations” of truth in real life.
• Christianity as a pyramid scheme. And you can only get closer to the top if you “save” more people and get them under you. Nothing to do beyond reproducing!

Nonsense. Christians do not believe in Christ simply as a means to get other people saved (who in turn get other people saved, who get other people, who then get others …), but to enjoy forever through worship the One Who saved them. Everything else is a means to that greatest end. Love is a means. Obedience is a means. Any possession of material goods, or lack thereof, is a means. Overt evangelism is only another means. Also a means: our novels.

Moreover, a Christian never goes beyond the Gospel. Plenty of ink has been spilled on that particular truth. Nor are Christians “safe” and thus dispensable once they are touching base. Fleshly temptations, assumptions leading to ignorance, lack of joy — all can tag them.

So Christians need time in the “holodeck” of vicarious experience to see how their faith may play out in reality. Doctrine and nonfiction can tell how this works. Only fiction can show it.

Moreover, who says such overt simulations would not make superbly authentic and original story material that even non-Christians may enjoy? How many secular readers pick up the latest “Edgy” Christian novel that turns out only to echo yet another version of a Salvation Allegory™ or “subtle” call to conversion, and instead say: “Enough of this already; what do Christians actually do after they get converted and they’re on the other side, living life?”

4. Authors reacting only to legalists’ rejections doesn’t help Christians genuinely confused about stories, who need love and reassurances.

In the conversation after part 1, many readers helped me to consider how to communicate better the core assumption I have that apparently informs my thoughts on all this.

It’s very likely my discussion here has been limited through my own hope to craft stories that themselves, secondarily, will serve as catalysts for helping Christians change their views on Story altogether. I have in mind both “it’s just entertainment” types who ignore bad and good stories, and the “fiction is at best useless and at worst violations of the Ninth Commandment” sorts of believers. They need great stories too.

That’s my hope. It may not be yours. But in case it is — don’t feel guilty. You may have a spiritual gift and/or vocation that the Church desperately needs: loving, creative novelists who soak up God’s deep truths out of delight for Him, and in turn allow His grace to radiate from them and win the trust even of those who formerly saw no use in storytelling.

I think that can only happen when such Christians writers understand and apply two truths:

1. The genuinely hateful, stubborn church folks who base their piety on laws (Biblical or made-up) and not the joy in Christ to which obedience is merely a means, need more than rebuttals or story anyway. Whether they are real Christians or not, the solution is the same: love, and persuasions to repent and embrace the true Gospel.
2. Without God’s work in our hearts, to save and sanctify us, we are all legalists. This sin is common to all. In this life, we’ll never grow out of it. We’ll always fight to recall we didn’t earn our salvation one bit. Yes, we need to “preach the Gospel to ourselves.”

Tomorrow, guest writer Zach Bartels describes two very well-meaning Christians who totally missed the point of fiction. Ugh. Yet Kaci’s recent article also seems a good reminder for us:

It’s a harsh reality that we’re very hesitant to make war with our own sin, and far too often we’re blinded by our own self-centeredness.

If I’m brutally honest, I’m forced to admit it’s easier for me to love these wayward, stiff-necked characters [in a novel] than real people. It’s easier for me to smile and think “Someday [they’ll change]” in the middle of a novel than to pull my head out of the pages, look around, and realize that Jesus loved the Pharisees, too.

And if you’re a true Christian, God loved you also. Sinners and legalists at heart. Haters of Him. He reached down and saved us from our enslavements to self. That should reduce us to tears. And it should make some of us want to reach out in love with our stories to all of our Christian family — including even those who still raise their eyebrows and genuinely repeat old, pious, or Gnostic myths like I only want “useful” stories, or, isn’t fiction just like lying?

How that may be done, then, remains for a later article, likely next Thursday: Stories for Christians: the new ‘watchful dragons.’

Finally, though: has this article helped add clarity? If you’re a writer, have you also considered some of the assumptions I’ve also had about “better” novels, as repeated above? What do you think your callings or readers could be? To what sorts of people do you already feel drawn to show God’s love and truth in your non-writing life, and what spiritual gifts might God have given you to practice in your church? How do they also affect your stories?

A hawk notices something strange on the ground as she flies over the prairie on her morning hunt…

“Howard? Whatever are you doing down there?”

“Learning to fly, Ma.”

“But I pushed you out of the nest just last week. You took a nasty bump on the head from a tree limb on the way down, but you made a magnificent recovery.”

“I was doing it all wrong. I know better now.”

“What do you mean?”

“As I was fluttering around, checking out my wings, I met some new friends, and they introduced me to Da Rulez.”

“The rules? What sort of rules?”

“No, no…not ‘the rules,’ Da Rulez. For flying.”

“But there aren’t any rules…er…Rulez…for flying.”

“That’s what I thought, but my friends opened up this whole new world for me. I never realized flying was so complicated. It all starts with your diet. Whole grains, clear liquids, plenty of vegetables. That’s Rulez 1: ‘Quality feed, quality flight.'”

“Howard, we’re raptors. We eat meat. It’s all I ever fed you after you hatched. Of course, I had to pre-digest it at first, but before long, you were wolfing it down like a veteran. Rabbit, squirrel, lamb…”

“Hold on. That wasn’t texturized vegetable protein? I think I’m gonna be sick. I can’t believe you did that to me, Ma. No wonder I can’t fly right.”

“Why are you hopping around like that?”

“Oh, that’s Rulez 2: ‘Altitude is absurd.’ Staying near the ground keeps you close to navigational references and prevents hypoxia. If I want to master flight, I have to work on my hop and glide.”

“You’ll never catch a squirrel that way. He’ll hear you coming a mile off. We’re built to soar on the wind…we spread our wings and let it waft us high into the sky, then we swoop down out of the sun onto our unsuspecting prey without a sound. They never know what hits them.”

“Why would I want to catch a squirrel? Ick. I told you, Rulez 1 says…”

“Yes, yes, I know. How many of these ‘Rulez’ are there?”

“962. I’m only on Rulez 25: ‘Birds of a feather flock together.’ I’m having trouble finding a flock, though. My friends’ flock is full up, and everybody around here is really suspicious of strangers. If I could just find some way to straighten my beak or whiten my feathers a little, I might fit in better.”

“Hawks hunt alone, Howard. I can barely stand to work within a half-mile of your father, and we’re as much in love as the day we shared our first mouse. I think these friends of yours are a bad influence. Where do they live?”

“In that little house on the other side of the hill. The one with the gravel yard and the wire fence.”

“Son, those are chickens. They know absolutely nothing about flying, but they’re very tasty. I think they’re trying to keep you grounded.”

“Tasty? Ma, what are you, some kind of monster? They’re my friends! They understand me. They gave me Da Rulez. When I finish all 962, they said I’ll be able to fly as nature intended, and then they’ll teach me how to lay an egg!”

“An egg. Bless their corn-pickin’ little hearts. Come here, featherbrain.”

“Ma! Ouch! That hurts! Don’t you ever trim your nails? That’s Rulez 7, by the way: ‘Talons are tacky.’ Where are you taking me?”

“Almost there. Now, grab hold of that branch.”

“Whoa, we must be a mile in the air. This can’t be safe.”

“It’s not that high, and it isn’t supposed to be safe. I didn’t raise you to be a chicken, Howard. Now…fly!”

“Hey! Aaack! I’m falling!”

“Spread your wings, Howard. Let the wind do the work for you.”

“This isn’t in Da Rulez, Ma!”

“There’s only one rule for flying: ‘Spread your wings, or you’re going to die.'”

“All right, all right! But I’m telling you…wow. I’m…I’m flying. This is amazing! I’d forgotten what it felt like.”

“You’re doing fine. Tilt a bit to the right. There’s a nice thermal developing above that flat rock on the ridge.”

“Oooh. This feels nice. I could float like this forever.”

“I’m sorry I had to kick you out of the nest again, Howard, but it was the only way to remind you what real flying is all about.”

“I like it. It makes me feel all free and adventurous. And hungry. There wasn’t much texturized vegetable protein hanging from the bushes.”

“Follow me. There’s a nice little restaurant on the other side of the hill. It’s time I introduced you to poulet tartare.”

The best books take readers to new places

Stories matter. Any reader can tell you this. We cry because a beloved old yeller dog, which never actually existed, dies. We laugh at the pig’s tail applied to the imaginary greedy Dudley Dursley. We cheer when the fictitious Aslan returns alive.

Clearly stories affect us in powerful ways. We skip meals and stay awake late at night. We “forget to breathe” and find our muscles coiled tight until our heroine is out of danger, at least for now.

Such physical effects indicate that all this pretend is very real. But how can this be?

At long last, scientists are beginning to take note and study the power of fiction. One of those leading the way is Keith Oatley, professor emeritus in the Department of Human Development and Applied Psychology at the University of Toronto. He and his colleagues devised a way to measure the effects of literature on the human psyche. In summary

the central assumption Oatley developed to frame their research [is this]: “When people are reading literary fiction, they’re creating in their mind a simulation of experience. It’s a simulation that’s cognitive as well as emotional….” (“Toronto scientists determine that fiction can change personalities” By Natalie Samson, accessed August 12, 2011 – emphasis mine)

In essence, it seems, these scientists are saying we readers have our own little holodecks in our minds, and consequently we mentally experience the stories we read. And that changes us.

At least that’s the hypothesis.

The Black and the horses he sired took me into new worlds

I get that. Growing up, I was a huge fan of the Walter Farley books (The Black Stallion, The Black Stallion Returns, The Black Stallion and Satan, The Black Stallion’s Filly, and many more, my favorite being The Black Stallion Mystery). Somewhere during that reading phase, I decided I wanted a horse. I knew I’d bond with a horse and that I could ride like the wind.

At that point, however, I’d done nothing with horses except ride an old nag at summer camp where we walked our mounts behind a guide for an hour.

I never did own a horse, but my confidence around them did not wane, despite my own lack of experience. You see, I didn’t feel inexperienced.

Years later when I visited a friend who did own a horse and we went riding, the particular mount I was on tried a clever trick to unseat me. My friend was somewhat amazed that I didn’t end up sprawled in the dirt.

Some time later I did a “rent-a-horse” ride in Colorado. After several return visits, the guide let me take my horse out on my own. Again I had the experience of a horse trying to deposit me on the ground, this one by rearing.

No problem. After all, I’d experienced much worse from the Black. Oh, wait. No, that wasn’t actually me. That was a character in a book. But it felt like me.

It felt as if those experiences had become part of my acquired knowledge. Not in a conscious way, to be sure, but as I look back, I find it easy to believe that I wasn’t fearful and didn’t overreact in the real life circumstances because of the simulated experiences of my childhood.

How many other experiences have I lived through behind the eyes of the characters in books I’ve loved? And how have those changed me?

Oatley, whose scholarly work Such Stuff As Dreams: The psychology of fiction (Wiley-Blackwell) is now available in North America, and his fellow scientists developed experiments to “examine what Oatley calls the ‘big five personality traits’ – extroversion, emotional stability, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness” (ibid).

I don’t know about those particulars, but here’s what Oatley’s publisher says:

Oatley richly illustrates how fiction represents, at its core, a model that readers construct in collaboration with the writer. This waking dream enables us to see ourselves, others, and the everyday world more clearly.

Yes, fiction matters, with readers and writers collaborating. And the end result is clearer vision.

Always? Or can fiction lead us to believe something about ourselves and the everyday world that is not true? Now that’s something else to explore.

Steve Rzasa was born and raised in South Jersey, and fell in love with books — especially science fiction novels and historical volumes — at an early age. He and his wife Carrie have two boys and live in Buffalo, Wyoming. A former community newspaper reporter and editor, and current librarian, Steve’s first novels in The Face of the Deep series, The Word Reclaimed and The Word Unleashed, were published by Marcher Lord Press. A third novel set in the same story-world — Broken Sight: A Rescue Ops Mission — will release later this year. This week Speculative Faith editor E. Stephen Burnett caught up with Steve to ask about his career, writing and world-craft.

ESB: First, everyone else likely knows how to say your last name; so far, I don’t!

Steve Rzasa: It’s pronounced “Ra-zah.” And don’t worry, you’re not the first person to ask that question. As far as I have researched, it’s of Polish origin – specifically from the southeastern corner of Poland that’s belonged to countless kingdoms and empires over the past century. My great-grandfather Frank (Franzicek in his native tongue) emigrated to Pennsylvania in the early 1900s.

ESB: Thanks for that. Now, let’s put this above the fold: your new novel, set in the same world of The Word Reclaimed and The Word Unleashed (with Marcher Lord Press), releases soon. Want to discuss some about the new book?

Steve: Sure. This pending third novel is tentatively titled Broken Sight: A Rescue Ops Mission. If you stop by my website, www.steverzasa.com, you’ll find a short story I penned back in 2009 called Rescued. This tale, which came in second place for the Anthanatos Christian Writing contest, introduces Lt. Brian Gaudette of the Rescue Corps – a group analogous to today’s Coast Guard. Broken Sight follows Brian’s new command and crew about two years after the conclusion of The Word Unleashed, as the newly renamed Rescue Operations expands into its law enforcement role. Brian, meanwhile, is dealing with a likely divorce, an insubordinate ex-pirate for a first officer, and something else he’s never faced – religious freedom.

So, this novel chronologically follows my previous two, but is a new adventure in its own right. Expect some of my favorite secondary characters to make important appearances, however.

ESB: Unlike many Christian spec-fic authors, it seems, you have a background in community journalism. (Same here, by the way.) How did that come about? Also, how might your writing nonfiction in small-town settings — city council meetings, small businesses, and ribbon-cuttings, am I right? — have informed your writing fiction in large-universe settings?

Steve: You are correct, Stephen. I worked for eight years in newspapers, as a reporter, assistant editor and finally as an editor for one year. Reporting gave me the training to talk with others, a real task for me since I was naturally shy to start. It also taught me that people don’t speak in polished paragraphs – they stutter, “uh” and “um” a lot, and generally don’t make sense about a quarter of the time. I think that helped tremendously as I worked on character dialogue. And covering all those aforementioned aspects of small-town life helped me see just how complex even the day-to-day of a small community could be. Translating that feel to a galaxy was quite a challenge, and I drew on those experiences to fill in the gaps, so to speak.

ESB: Many Christians who get into trying to write visionary stories seem to veer toward fantasy, taking after the Patron Saints, Lewis and Tolkien, who started the modern Christian fantasy (and fantasy altogether!) genres. Science fiction, though, seems to have a different worldview ancestor — secular humanism (despite some politically conservative overtones; as discussed here). What have you enjoyed about science fiction as a genre, and how do you believe Christian readers and writers can “redeem” sci-fi elements for God’s glory and Kingdom?

Steve: Let’s get the confession out in the open – I am a devoted adherent to space opera. That’s the sect of sci-fi that’s always drawn me. There’s just something fantastic about these gleaming starships that whisk you to any corner of the universe, whether it’s off to an exotic world on a mission of exploration, or into the heart of enemy space to defeat the evil empire. I think I also admired the optimism of sci-fi that said yes, we can survive beyond this troubled and rapidly changing century-and-a-half on Earth.

Now, of course, that tenet of sci-fi is based on man’s effort – which we know is fallible. What I see now is Christian sci-fi writers who are redeeming this genre by injecting their own view that it is God who rules over this universe and loves his human children – even when we fail and come crying to his Son. And I also like reading sci-fi in which the main characters are Christians! Years of wonderful stories marred by people who harbor a disdain or even hatred for God puts a serious crimp in your desire to try new sci-fi books. But I think that the newest crop of authors – especially my cohorts Kerry Nietz and Kirk Outerbridge at Marcher Lord Press – are taking the genre in exciting new directions.

ESB: A big topic here this week is what Christian authors should read (I’d apply this also to readers who love spec-fic). That has included reading contemporary stories, secular fiction, and last year your fellow Marcher Lord, Marc Schooley, had said fiction writers must read doctrine and nonfiction. What do you think? What have you read, and what sorts of books have you considered getting into?

Steve: I agree wholeheartedly with Marc – I would only generalize by saying writers should read every kind of book, fiction or otherwise. Within the last year, I’ve read Holmes on the Range by Steve Hockensmith (detective work by two cowboy brothers in 1892 Montana), Priceless by Robert Wittman (an ex-FBI agent’s bio on art crime), Understanding Four Views of the Lord’s Supper (self-explanatory, I hope), and the graphic novel Serenity: Those Left Behind (Browncoats unite!). There are many tips and tools we as writers can pick up from each other, even in reading nonfiction work. And history informs my own plots and ideas greatly. One of the easiest ways to come up with a story idea is to take historical events and change key facts and locations.

As for doctrine, well, I come from a varied theological background – raised Roman Catholic, grumpily agnostic in college before a conversion moment that led into an Assemblies of God Church, then seven years with fundamentalist (their own description, not a pejorative) Baptists before joining a Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod). The Catholicism aside – let’s call that cultural Christianity since it was the church my parents attended – I’ve tended not to dwell much on the minutia of doctrine, save for the basics of the Trinity and salvation by grace. I think that varied experience with different Christians instilled in me a desire to learn all I could about different denominations – and that’s why I try to emphasis the brotherhood of Christianity in my writing.

ESB: Want to overview your journey to publication? How did you market your novels, what challenges did you face, and how did you become a Marcher Lord?

Steve: I came up for the idea for The Face of the Deep (the series name for the two novels) back around 2003. It took about five years of writing to get about a third of the way done on this one book, which at the time was called Commissioned. Being a reporter, writing was often the last thing I felt like doing when I got home from work – I didn’t even want to look at a keyboard. But a, shall we say, forced change in employment got me into another career path – libraries – that not only exposed me to more books but also gave back the desire to write when not at work. Suffice it to say that nine months after I lost my job and started working at our local county library, I finished Commissioned.

Then came the query letter,  the submissions, the rejections. I’m thankful that this phase only lasted about five months. During that time I happened upon the website for the fledgling Marcher Lord Press, and was intrigued by Jeff Gerke’s ideas. He read my submission after it was recommended to him – read more of that backstory here – and eventually offered me a contract in July 2009.

Of course, my book was far too long – like 170,000 words. And that’s where the real work began.

ESB: Somehow I was not surprised to learn that you originally intended your first two novels to be a single book. During the editing process, how did the decision to split them come about, and how did you feel regarding the change?

Steve: Funny – when Jeff asked me to cut the book in half, I was mortified. For maybe a minute or two. Then I said, “OK, either I cut it in half and get two books published, or I don’t and maybe don’t get published.” No-brainer there!

Finding a place to cut was easy. Making the alterations – the massive edits, the additions and subtractions, the finessing of the rough manuscript into something halfway readable – that was the great lesson. And I’m indebted to Jeff for showing me the ropes in such a swift manner.

ESB: You said here that one of your goals is to remind readers of the hope of redemption. I’m curious also what unique, specific spiritual themes underlie the stories of The Face of the Deep — perhaps some that aren’t in other novels?

Steve: Well, I can’t speak as to whether they are in other novels or not. But my major theme is that, as the Bible says, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” I hope my books show that by describing how a simple book – through the power of God’s Holy Spirit, of course – can profoundly alter a person’s life.

ESB: Also, I am curious about one element of The Face of the Deep series — the story-world’s mode of interstellar travel. One would think they had all been used up by now,  but I can’t recall a previous fiction parallel to sundoors. How did you come up with the concept, and what inspired or motivated its creation?

Steve: Ah, the sundoors. Also known as tract shifts. You’re the first to ask me that one. Well, I confess there’s a lot of “handwavium” at work here. When I was deciding on a good interstellar transport system, I ruled out warp drive and hyperspace as too easy – you know, jumping to light speed at the last second to avoid the baddies. But I really liked the Alderson system used in The Mote In God’s Eye and the gates in Babylon 5.  So I took bits of both and some of my own ideas to cobble together this notion of gravitational distortions close to stars that actually form connections with other star systems. One well-placed quantum singularity later, and poof – thirty light-years traversed in a wink.

I mostly decided on that system as a way to keep space battles and pursuits tied to the “geography” of solar space.

ESB: Finally, let’s imagine God gives you great power, with great responsibility, for a day. You’re able to change one to three characteristics of current Christian fiction, including readers, authors, or publishers. What might you do with it?

Steve: Nice Spidey reference. Peter Parker is proud, I think … seriously, though, I would likely change these three things:

1. Readers would see the merit of sci-fi as much as they see the merit in historical romance.
2. Authors would stop worrying about how they can best attract “secular” or non-Christian readers to their work and just write what they want to write the way they want to write it.
3. Publishers would be willing to take more risks, to diversify their offerings to hungry readers, and not be so concerned about the bottom line that good fiction is lost.

ESB: Thanks much for your time, Steve, and I’m sure many of us anticipate your forthcoming fiction. Godspeed to you and yours!

Steve: Thank you, Stephen, for the opportunity to address a new audience.  And keep up the good work here at Speculative Faith.

Lately Speculative Faith seems to have been emphasizing recommended to-do lists, not just for Christian visionary fiction readers, but specifically for Christian visionary fiction writers.

Last week, guest author Matt Mikalatos reminded us that visionary authors should also write contemporary fiction. On Tuesday, Fred Warren added three reasons to write secular fiction. Last year, also, author Marc Schooley reminded us that all Christians, including fiction authors, should frequently delve deep into nonfiction, particularly Bible doctrine and theology.

While Spec-Faith’s mission is to offer blog columns, Library resources, and (soon) FAQ articles for visionary readers and writers, this what-writers-should-read-and-write topic is important.

So if you’re a Christian visionary writer, come on up into the secret treehouse club. We’ll pull the rope ladder up after us. Yet if you’re only a fiction reader, not a writer, keep reading anyway, because this matters for us all. And I may have some I-hope-grace-minded ranting to do.

First off: none of this applies to you writers who do have callings to read or write contemporary fiction. And from what I know of many friends here, including Fred Warren, they seem to have unique gifts for writing secular fiction. God does call different people to different jobs: here a butcher, there a baker, over there a church candlestick-maker. The Apostle Paul was clear in 1 Cor. 12: don’t take the “eye” lightly if you’re an “ear,” and definitely don’t think that because you don’t have the job or spiritual gifts of someone else, you aren’t a vital member of Christ’s Body!

Yet if the whole body — of novelists in the Church — were writing contemporary fiction and only urging others to do the same, where would be the sense of visionary fiction?

And if the whole body of Christian novelists were writing for the Secular Market and promoting this, where would be the sense of fiction for other Christians?

Again, some Christians should be writing for secular audiences. I’m writing this series not to fault their endorsements of writing for secular audiences, but to add balance. Whether it’s about more-overt missionary work or writing new novels, it seems the loudest voices at present talk most about storming secular mission fields, cities, countries and publishers — without equal reminders that existing Christians also desperately need truth and truthful, wondrous stories.

But we need authors in all these fields, not pushing primarily into one or the other.

One gift is not less than another. The Body needs us all as its diverse, Spirit-gifted organs.

Here, then, I’ll give reasons why the Church needs authors writing fiction for Christians.

1. We may have a glut of common-grace-endorsing visionary stories.

When it comes to false dichotomies between “secular” and “sacred,” or “the world” and “God’s Kingdom,” I’m fully on the side of those who dislike accidental Gnosticism and fire off Biblical truths that God is redeeming not just human souls, but the whole physical universe. Even now, under the corruption of sin, this world is in fact a Christian world. It is destined to become the physical and wondrous New Heavens and New Earth (Rev. 21), under Jesus Christ’s kingship.

Therefore a Christian writer need not feel constrained to believing he must write about only specific religious themes or Faith Crises or spiritual things in order to write a “Christian story.”

To think otherwise not only falls into Gnosticism, but ignores the Biblical teaching that God’s Spirit gives His people various gifts to glorify Him, both within the Church and outside it. And I doubt the gift lists in Paul’s epistles are exhaustive or limited only to clearly “churchy” gifts.

Also, because God gives “common grace” gifts to non-Christians, and even evil people know how to do good things (Matthew 7: 9-11), we would do well to learn from their talents and excellence.

Secular writers may unwittingly be foot soldiers for the truth, and we do need them. Yet a Christian novelist could write truth injected with super-serum.

That said, I would go on to ask: don’t we already have a surplus of authors, artists, filmmakers and more, giving us “common grace”-style echoes of truth in general markets? So if even the (presumably) non-Christian producers and writers of superhero films like Thor and Captain America can echo themes of true heroism and sacrifice and true love and respect for men and women, why should all or most Christians feel they need to join that particular cultural chorus?

Could not some of us instead say, “Well, thank God a lot of that is taken care of!”, and then feel free to explore in our stories the particular grace truths of the Gospel? So far, such truths are being overlooked in both secular storytelling and Christian fiction. That has left a vacuum. And both Christians and non-Christians may want to explore these depths.

Plenty of bands already crowd the stage to perform the warm-up acts. But all the “songs” about God’s general revelation — how God reminds us about His wonders in sunsets, secular stories that echo good and evil, and vaguer reflections of Hope and Goodness in the World — can only go so far. Again, perhaps some Christians should join that chorus; that is their task, and it matches their unique gifts. Yet the true Star of the show has arrived. So let us remember that …

2. Only Christians can best explore God’s specific Gospel in stories.

From Spurgeon.org's "Emergent Motivational Posters"

If — because this is a Christian world in which God give common-grace gifts to sinners — secular writers are echoing general truths in their stories, and Christians also want to echo general truth in their stories — who’s left to explore in fiction the specific story of the Bible?

And if everyone writes for a “secular” audience, who is left to challenge and exhort the Church?

Author Steve Rzasa — who is coincidentally our guest author tomorrow — put it this way:

I can’t help but wonder if “secular” writers sit around talking about whether they should try writing religious/Christian fiction. Oh wait — they don’t need to, because Christians already read secular work.

Contrary to the myth that most people would get Christianity only if they heard or saw it done better, and without hypocrisy!, many nonbelievers already know the message of Christianity. But they do not care for it. Nor would they explore in a novel the natural results of the Gospel worldview. All they can give is messages about Hope and Love and Faith and perhaps Sacrifice. That’s great, if compared with the opposite “values.” And those messages do help, coming from non-Christians and Christians who are so gifted. But only Christian storytellers can take Biblical truths further and deeper and do more than simply recite them — they can apply and explore them, fleshing them out realistically in ways that only fiction can do and mere recitation cannot.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

— 1 Corinthians 2: 14-16

Coming on Thursday: let’s not accidentally endorse “the Gospel is only for nonbelievers” myth, or neglect sincere Christians who’ve simply only heard legalistic discernment cautions, or else make up an imaginary secular audience that would love us if we only wrote better stories.

Broken Cisterns
Before I start, let me say that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a purely good hero or a purely evil villain. Some people are naturally benevolent or malicious, for whatever reason. And that’s okay. I like clearly defined battlelines. I’m not the type to think that just because I understand what led you to an action makes that action okay. That argument, in fact, usually irritates me.

But I do have a confession. Some of my favorite characters are my characters who refuse to love me. I’m not talking about the broken down, victimized ones that are easily pitied (empathetic, anyway), but the bullheaded wretch who refuses to bow the head to anyone, who knows God and openly rejects him; the girl who insists she’s entitled to a place in Heaven (one of the elders’ thrones in the judgment hall, of course); the man who traded his soul for power and wealth; the Christian who loves God but whose temper and unwillingness to forgive overrides anything the Spirit might say. There’s a pagan girl who knows her Bible better than most seminary students and a king who allows a general to keep his slaves in hopes of winning the man’s soul.

This is the group James meant when he wrote “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!” (James 2:19 ESV) Before you start to pity them, remember, even the Accuser believes that God exists, but he neither acknowledges him as God nor gives him thanks. Even Satan knows that God is the ultimate power and authority, and that he is judge, jury, and executioner. He knows. He’s seen the sapphire throne and the seraphim and cherubim — rumor has it he might have been one once. He’s seen more miracles than we ever will; he’s watched millions of souls return to their maker; he saw a teenage girl give birth to the Three-in-One. He saw the Christ become a man. He saw everything Jesus did. He watched Jesus die. He saw Jesus alive from the graves. He knows, better than any of us, that Jesus is coming back on horseback with a sword in hand and royal robes covering the scars on his back. He saw the Spirit unleash at Pentecost and can quote more Scripture than anyone short of Jesus himself. He’s watched martyrs and theologians, engaged in spiritual warfare, and been to his share of Bible studies and church services. He could probably preach on any given topic and send seminary students in a tailspin.

The greatest church brat of all Christendom is Satan.

Kindness
James’ point isn’t to be legalistic. This is Jesus’ kid half-brother, the guy who didn’t believe Big Brother was who he said hew as until Jesus made a personal appearance post-Resurrection. (I tell you, I can only imagine that conversation. But Scripture didn’t record it, which makes me think it was a very, very personal conversation that’s none of our business.) So I don’t think that’s his point.

I think his point is very much one Jesus himself made, and one the prophets warn Israel against repeatedly: Knowing the truth and rejecting or ignoring it is a far more dangerous place to be than simple ignorance of the truth. Jesus said, “You search the Scriptures in vain thinking that in them you’ll find life; but you will not come to me of whom the Scriptures speak” (John 5).

Here’s the mystery to me: Adam and Eve saw God. They had a relationship with our Father that I can’t fathom. It wasn’t ‘oops.’ It wasn’t fear someone might hurt them. Adam knew for a fact God knocked him out, took a rib, and made a woman. That was God’s gift to him. Adam didn’t just wake up to a ready-made creation with a garden. He got to watch God create something. He was king of the world, and Eve was his queen.

And Satan tricked them both.

Anyone ever taken a good look at Hebrews 11 lately? You want to know who’s in there? You had a guy who deliberately broke every vow he made, womanizing riddlemasters, warriors hiding behind women, pagans, idolators, liars, thieves, abusers, abuse enablers, men who endangered the people they were supposed to protect, strong-willed, prideful people; and people who married pagans.

You’re getting the point. Probably one of the most perplexing ones to me is Peter’s characterization of Lot as ‘righteous’ and full of sorrow over the evil in Sodom and Gomorrah. But don’t overlook the phrase the writer used to describe this pack of moral failures. It’s in parentheses and easy to miss.

God called them “men of whom the world was not worthy” (v.38).

But don’t miss this: These men and women knew better, with the possible exception of Rahab the harlot.

I’m not missing the rest of the text. James and John both had plenty of words for people who spoke one way and acted another, and their words were sharp arrows meant to pierce the heart. Paul certainly had plenty of warning. Jesus issued woes on Jerusalem that both Matthew and Luke recorded. Through the prophets over centuries God begged Israel to return, constantly warned them that mixing lip-service to him while bent knee to false gods was going to get them killed.

“Come, now, let us reason together.”
“Return to me, and I’ll return to you.”
“My wrath lasts only a split-second, but my mercy is forever.”
“These cisterns you’re digging can’t hold water. You’ll die of dehydration.”
“I fed you manna to teach you to look to me as your sustainer.”
“I’ve tried and tried again, but you wouldn’t come to me.”

You know, it’s easy to pity and/or overlook the ignorant person who doesn’t realize they’re offending you, easy to be patient with the man or woman who’s never set foot in the door of a church. Much more difficult, though, is the one who knows the truth and refuses to submit to it. They’re also the hardest to get through to, because you can’t make a case they don’t already know.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that the greatest sins are not external, but internal. And I think anyone who’s been in church awhile–we church brats–know that. You might not catch us sleeping around or compulsively lying, but you’ll soon see the deep, poison-riddled roots.

Pride.
Gossip.
Hate.
Envy.
Contempt (lovingly concealed under a self-righteous mood of ‘righteous indignation’).
Greed.
Lusts of the flesh, eyes, and pride of life.
Divided hearts.
Unbelief.
Lackluster love for God.
Idolatry.

You’ve seen it. I’ve done it. It’s a harsh reality that we’re very hesitant to make war with our own sin, and far too often we’re blinded by our own self-centeredness.

If I’m brutally honest, I’m forced to admit it’s easier for me to love these wayward, stiff-necked characters than real people. It’s easier for me to smile and think “Someday” in the middle of a novel than to pull my head out of the pages, look around, and realize that Jesus loved the Pharisees, too. But, you know, I think he had to be sterner with them because they couldn’t understand anything less.

I remember sitting in church one day, a few years ago, and breaking down in tears during a sermon. That just don’t happen much. Pastor Matt was preaching from Matthew 23 (it may have been during the Luke series, as it had the cross-reference). It’s a passage we usually use to indict hypocrites and legalists.

I’m crying again.

I read the end of Matthew 23 and suddenly the rest of the room vanished. I looked up from my Bible (notebook & pen in hand) toward the ceiling and said, “Even me?”

He smiled and put his arm around me. “Even you,” he said.

Never forget who has your heart strings.

Sovereign
All of that said, I play in the gray with characters a lot. I’ll let their theology stand unquestioned. I’ll leave the rebellious Christian kid in his rebellion; refrain from forcing repentance. But the thing is, there’s design, even in their rebellion. I know how I made these characters. I know what it takes to get their heart strings. But sometimes, allowing a character to choose a side just doesn’t do. You’ve seen it. Two armies at war, a third section desiring neutrality – the second middle guy throws in with one or the other, it’s over.

So sometimes, I don’t burn off the flaws. Sometimes, I leave them there, forever the thing that both creates friction between us and the thing that keeps them from leaving me completely.

Don’t get me wrong. Most of the time, we don’t like indecisive characters. I certainly don’t. But, played right, the character who doesn’t pick a side has, in fact, decided. He’s the wildcard, the guy you can’t predict. He might help the hero. He might drive a spear through the hero’s heart.

Who really knows?

Well, let’s be honest. I do. I might not immediately, but eventually, I will. It might not happen in that particular story, but it’ll happen, ultimately. I know whose heart I have and whose I don’t. It’s not always who you think.

I know who they are.

I know where they are.

I’ve seen them.

I’ve heard them.

I know. Everything.

And I’m here.

Note: This is a slightly-edited excerpt from a very fine post by last week’s guest contributor, Mike Mikalatos, entitled, “Five Reasons You Should Write Contemporary Fiction.” It occurred to me that with a few minor adjustments, Mike’s suggestions could be addressed more broadly to writers of Christian fiction, encouraging them to improve their writing by venturing into secular venues from time to time. I’ve listed only three points because by then you’ll have the idea and will be able to complete the exercise yourself, if you wish. Trying to spin humor from Mike’s work is like spreading peanut butter on peanut butter, but fortunately, this was one of his more serious pieces. Do read the original.

I love speculative Christian fiction. The first movie I remember seeing (at about age three or four) was the movie Them Ben Hur. I had a Darth Vader Charlton Heston poster looming over my bed, and glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth a miniature chariot on my bedside table. The first short story I ever wrote (in high school 4th grade) was about a guy who invented time travel went to New Guinea as a missionary, but neglected to take into account the movement of the Earth in his calculations culture of cannibalism, and found himself floating in Earth orbit a stew pot when he (successfully) tested his time machine went looking for a lost tribe all by himself. For some reason unclear to me today, he had an Irish a Canadian accent, I suppose in an attempt to make him interesting.

However, my favorite writing professor in college, Percival Everett Everett Percival, refused to let us turn in speculative Christian fiction for our assignments. No fantasy angels. No science fiction Last Days persecutions. No slipstream spiritual warfare or cyberpunk demonic possession or alternate histories sanctified historical romances. Contemporary Secular fiction or nothing. I remember one of my classmates defying him and turning in a fantasy an angel story. He returned it to her and said, “No dragons halos, harps, or flaming swords.” (As I recall her next story was set in modern day on Earth but had a girl with a dragon an angel tattoo … I bet she wishes she had run flown with that now!) I gave him a vampire missionary story once and he called me into his office, stood up, and let it slip from his hands into the waste basket stew pot waste basket.

I was surprised to discover one day, reading some of my professor’s published stories, that he occasionally wrote speculative Christian fiction. I confronted him (of course! Because I was in college! And I needed more drama in my life to confirm his orthodoxy!), and he laughed at me and said something to the effect of, “So?” He went on to explain to me that I needed to be able to write “real life” secular fiction before I would be able to write convincing speculative Christian fiction. The more I thought about it, and the more I practiced it, I realized he was right. So, here are five three ways that writing contemporary secular fiction will strengthen your speculative Christian fiction:

1) It will make your stories more compelling.

It’s easy in speculative Christian fiction to distract people with the special effects. If you have a mutated alligator demon chasing your hero through a museum an abandoned church, it’s simple to keep people turning the pages. Whole novels can be written with stock characters who have no reflection in real life. You can get away with it. In fact, people the choir may applaud you for the great “spiritually-uplifting” ride. And if you’re able to pull that off in your fiction, it’s no mean feat great accomplishment. But if you can take that same ability and also bring in meaningful, moving character moments that cause your readers to reflect on their lives and the world around them, you’ve taken it up a notch and people are going to remember your work as more than a getaway from a fifty-foot lizard demon.

2) It will keep you from cheating.

When you’re writing speculative Christian fiction and someone asks you a question about a character’s motivation, it’s tempting to say, “Well, that’s just the way things are done in Faerie Land Christians are.” Yeah, but why are the faeries Christians stealing children from the humans reciting Bible verses instead of hiding behind rocks when the One World Government soldiers shoot at them? “Oh, that’s just something they do.” And what do they do with the children happens when they get shot? “Um. I don’t know. Hide them away where they never grow old the status of nominal Christians during the Tribulation is problematical.” And this is because? “Faeries are capricious Bible scholars disagree on this issue.”

That’s cheating. Any time you say, “That’s the way aliens think Christians are,” or “It’s different in the future Tribulation,” you’re cheating your reader. We don’t want mysterious, unknowable motivations. They can be alien Christian motivations. They can be strange moral motivations. They can even be hidden motivations. But at some point you have to reveal why the Morlocks One World soldiers are serving the Eloi shooting the Christians, and why the Eloi sleep inside Christians stand around in plain sight and get shot.

Imagine, now, that you were writing literary secular fiction and in your story you had a group of people who went around stealing babies. There’s no way you could get away with saying, “Well, that’s just what this group of people does” because we all know that people don’t do something horrible like that for no reason. “Real life” Secular fiction shows the holes more readily when an author is being lazy or cheating on character motivation relying on Christian cultural assumptions, and learning to shore up those holes will help you in your character development and your world building communicate credibly with people outside the Christian community.

3) It will keep your reader better engaged in the story.

Let’s be honest, even books that are basically showcasing some world-building (Dune Narnia comes to mind) are, at the core of it, about the people. Dune Narnia without Paul Maud’dib the Pevensies would be a lousy story. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is essentially an epic filled with stock characters from epics with really two three exceptions … the hobbits and Gollum and Tom Bombadil. Many of the memorable scenes of the books, of course, come from those characters.

Now, it’s pretty easy to keep people entertained with stories allegorical fantasies about messiahs and furry animals saving the world. But what if you could do the same thing with a story about a man and a woman watching a television show together and wondering, without ever saying it, whether their marriage was going to work out or if it might be over? If you can hold attention with that story, I guarantee your next speculative Christian story will be better. Because that same couple will realize, of course, that their strange infant is actually a changeling left by the faeries autistic, and when they journey into Faerie to save seek God’s help for their daughter in prayer, they’ll also be discovering whether their marriage will survive. The reader will have a lot more to hold on to and to care about.

3a. The people who need Christian fiction the most aren’t hanging out at Christian bookstores.

3b. You may find you write better Christian fiction when you stop trying to write Christian fiction.

Apologies, Mike, for mangling stealing plagiarizing exploiting re-imagining your article. I’m a lousy, good-for-nothing, lazy hack great admirer of your work.