If you know
me, you know that I have a deep and abiding disdain for Christian fiction as
peddled by stores such as Lifeway (*shudder*). If it is
labeled “Christian Fiction” or, as the secular bookstores like to call it,
“Inspirational Fiction,” I would rather burn it than let it take up space on my
bookshelf. It is trash in a pretty wrapper. Well, I will be magnanimous, most
of it is.
This wasn’t
always so. Think of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dorothy Sayers, Flannery
O’Connor, and my absolute favorite, the ever-engaging G.K. Chesterton. All
Christians, all fantastic writers. Maybe it was the time in which they lived,
but they could WRITE, and they could develop characters. Dorothy Sayer’s most
famous character, the brilliant and well-dressed Lord Peter Death Bredon
Wimsey, is a skeptic. He never “becomes a Christian.” He isn’t supposed to. But
we love him anyway. No Christian writer nowadays would write such a character.
If you love a character, you must save him. But it is far more in line with his
character that he not be saved. And that hurts not a little.
Trust the
Narrative. People wonder why there is evil in the world, but very callously
speaking, it wouldn’t make a very good story if there wasn’t. But can’t we
trust the Narrative to come out right in the end? Can’t we trust the Narrator?
Part 1 came out all right. Part 2 is shaping up to be even better.
If you know
me, you will also know that at this moment two of my favorite writers are Joss
Whedon (a TV/film writer) and Neil Gaiman (a novel/short-story/graphic
novel/TV/movie writer). Whedon is a self-proclaimed atheist. The Jewish Scientologist
Gaiman, if he is not an atheist, is at least agnostic. Why is it that they
write better stories than any modern Christian writer that I’ve come across?
(And that is not a full-fledged recommendation; Gaiman’s books are in the adult
section for a reason) Whedon even writes
“Christian” better than Christians do, if that makes any sense. His stories
often shout out Truth, albeit muffled and inaudible. But the gold is there,
under the tarnish. Whedon writes “Christian” so well because he is compelled by
the narrative. The True Christian as a character is awesomely compelling,
though many non-Christians (especially in Hollywood) fail to acknowledge that.
But so is the tortured soul, the bad guy who does “good,” almost unwillingly.
What makes that unregenerated soul do good? That’s something that the Christian
author rarely explores. They write the bad character to move the narrative
along and then dispose of him in a righteous way at the end.
Along
similar lines, why is it that God must be absent (for all practical purposes)
from stories for them to be compelling or believable, or not sickeningly
affected?
Maybe God is
too big for a story written by man. Maybe He should always be in the background
and rarely in the forefront, excepting, perhaps, in a dream. If He were to
appear in a story, all would be resolved. That wouldn’t make for much of a
story.
But then
again, He showed up in His own story, and boy, was THAT compelling!
I’m still
working it all out. Chesterton says that a Christian should be able to deeply
contemplate sin and sickness and suffering in a way that non-Christians cannot,
because the Christian doesn’t (or oughtn’t) get lost in it. The Christian keeps
a fast hold on the rope that leads out of the darkness and doesn’t let it
swallow him whole.
