1. Peter Rust says:

    Well articulated, Stephen, thank you.

    When I first started writing, I thought that I really wanted to put the “full gospel” in every story. It took me a few years to understand how theme works in quality fiction – how it naturally comes out of the heart, thoughts and passions of the writer and how it is better discovered and cultivated than forced. If I’m growing in the Lord and in my study of scripture, the right kinds of themes — not necessarily the “full gospel”, but gospel themes, will emerge in my writing in a natural way that doesn’t feel forced.

    I am still passionate about glorifying the Lord with fiction, but my passion is more directed towards ensuring that I’m continually growing and learning myself and toward cultivating themes that are naturally emerging, rather than forcing the same kind of template onto all of my writing.

    Though at first glance this may not seem as effective as the “reach the lost at all cost” approach, in my opinion it ends up being more effective and results in better fiction for the enjoyment of Christians and non-Christians alike.

    • I thought that I really wanted to put the “full gospel” in every story.

      When not even the Bible’s books do this, I wonder why Christians think other stories must. 🙂

    • notleia says:

      With all the repetition of the word “forced,” it helped me formulate an idea. Perhaps a lot of the problems with Christian fiction (or fiction as a whole, but I find it more noticeable in Christian fiction) can be summed up in forcedness. Forced theme, forced dialog, forced conflict/plot, forced plot resolution, all that jazz. Literature has, especially in the last decade or so, preferred verisimilitude over idealization, and the cheap-n-easy version of “reality” is Grit(R), for pretty much the same reasons that pessimistic news gets better ratings than optimistic news.
      And there’s a topic for somebody’s next article.

  2. Galadriel says:

    Exactly. We have to look at the rational behind each motivation, or risk falling into error.

  3. Stephen’s description of proselytization-obsessive Christianity as a pyramid scheme hits the guilt-trippage on the head. Yes, people are more important than things, and the lost won’t care about art once they’ve been eternally severed from the hope of God’s grace. But was Christ not the Son of God for the first thirty years of His life on Earth? Did He accomplish nothing of value during that time? Did He only begin glorifying His Father after presenting Himself to John at the Jordan? Was His carpentry business somehow a cop-out from more crucial tasks, an excuse to fly under the radar so He didn’t have to “win souls”? Did the Creator of the Universe procrastinate His duty?

    Are you kidding me?

    Not only is it shortsighted for Christians to focus exclusively on evangelization, it’s totally unsustainable. The fact that missionaries can’t do squat without relying on the generosity of their brothers and sisters who work hard in the “secular world” should tell us something. It should indicate to us that there’s no such thing as the “secular world.” It’s a myth. The reality is that the God Who created everything is perfectly capable of being glorified through anything. Can I glorify God by repairing a car with excellence? Of course I can. Do I have to somehow “preach the gospel” through auto maintenance in order for it to “count” on the Grand Exalted Ledger of Good Deeds Done for God? Of course not! So why do Christians assume the value of “godly” storytelling can only be quantified through a tally of Sinner’s Prayers prayed by the time the house lights fade back up? Such expectations are stifling, onerous, and completely ridiculous. They hamstring the storyteller and hobble the story. If your story demands a Christ-figure, then by all means write a Christ-figure. But write him because the story demands it, not because “godliness” demands it! Anything else is, as Stephen’s pointed out, pure legalism.

    To take a stand with those traditional objectivists reviled and dismissed by my college English courses, true art requires three elements: truth, goodness, and beauty. And yes, Christ Himself embodies all three. But if we write about Christ without putting Him in context, if we extol His victory without describing His opposition, if we praise His accomplishments without confronting the circumstances which made them necessary, in the long run we’ll only succeed in diminishing His perceived stature. That’s why “grit” is often valuable, even essential. Of course, if it becomes an end in itself and not merely a means to Christ-glorification, it’ll invariably degenerate into just another form of sensationalistic sentimentality — a pity-party for the human race or sadistic renouncement thereof.

    Christ is the center. In Him all things hold together. Including art. Including story. After all, He invented them.

    • Amen, brother. Well said. My biggest concern about writing “traditional” Christian fiction is that if we aren’t careful, we end up promoting the goodness and sincerity of religious human beings, rather than of focusing on the grace of God to sinners. We write stories about nice people doing good things and learning to be even better people with God’s help, battling briefly with temptation before repenting and overcoming it, standing bravely against evil attacks that come from outside rather than from within, and in doing so, we set up “role models” for an idealized and sanctified humanity to which we should all aspire.

      But this kind of “wholesome fiction” is miles removed from the candid portrayals of human weakness and failure that we find in the Bible, where even the greatest heroes of faith committed some grave sins and made wrong decisions that had repercussions for generations of their descendants to come. God’s greatness is shown in the big picture of His sovereignty and providence and mercy despite all human failure, not by holding up human beings as godly examples.

      I believe true wholesomeness and holiness in a story is not found in the incidental details of what the characters do or don’t do / say / think along the way, but the ultimate message that a book delivers to the reader. We could write a story in which everyone behaves like angels and the tone is bright and uplifting, but the ultimate message is damnably false; we could write a story about human beings in a hideous state of sin which shows the emptiness of life without God and makes the reader long for His salvation. Sadly, I fear that the current CBA market is more likely to publish the former than the latter.

      • Yes. Theme trumps content every time.

        For myself as a writer, maintaining balance between a character’s specific flaws and general likability means treading a fine line. Both are necessary. None of us want to read about an unsympathetic embarrassment to the human race. Our egos usually prevent us from relating to anyone presented in a negative light. But flaws — deep-seated flaws, not just superficial problems — are part of what infuse characters with complexity and realism. So how do I engineer flawed characters whom I still respect and root for? I have to empathize with them. I have to know exactly why they do what they do, and I have to fully comprehend how such actions seem right, logical, or worthwhile to them at the time. After all, Christ sympathizes with my weaknesses (Heb. 4:15). How can I treat my own creations with any less respect?

What do you think?