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Hey, guys! First off, I’m pretty new here, and I’m already amazed by this awesome website!
I’ve been reading a lot of posts about writing as a Christian, about how not to bombard readers with our faith and to entertain the secular audience as well. What if we feel called to write purely Christian books instead? I personally have been greatly encouraged by reading Christian fiction, but don’t want to feel like I’m using my love of writing only for other Christians.
Any thoughts on this?
Thanks!
@audrey-caylin I suppose I’ll jump on this real quick. First of all, the main reason why you see articles around the same subject coming out at one time is because every year monthly themes are crafted and articles published in that month are written with the correlating topic, and I believe December’s theme is Religion and Spirituality. 🙂
Being called to write Christian fiction is a wonderful thing! I encourage you to follow up with what you have been called to do. The thing is, often, Christianity in fiction is not done right and instead of working it into your story as a foundation for your character’s motives, it is just preachy blasted at the reader. (And if the reader is reading your Christian book, there is a good chance they are already a Christian.) which I believe @sierra-r was getting at within her article.
Like you, I have enjoyed a great many Christian books, and I love seeing people writing good ones.
I hope my thoughts help, unfortunately, I don’t have enough time to really sit and think.
(I suppose it would be alright to have @brandon-miller called over here as well as he was the one who wrote the latest article.) 😉Theater kid. Currently depressed because I can't stop listening to sad musicals.
Hello @Audrey-Caylin! So great to have you here!
And this is an awesome discussion. It never really gets old. ‘Christian fiction’ can actually be a pretty broad category depending on your perspective and definition, but I’ll do my best to give the short answer that pretty much sums it all up for me, otherwise we’d be stuck here until we turned grey. 😛 😉
So, writing as specifically Christian and/or for a strictly Christian audience. I’m not denying that many Christians find encouragement and strength in specifically Christian literature; it’s not a selfish use of a gift at all. Encouragement is a beautiful thing, and there is a time and a place to focus solely on the simple things of faith like ‘Jesus loves you’ and ‘Christ saves’.
But we don’t have to be geniuses to recognize how the world would take such broad, seemingly shallow statements. See, so many people view Christianity as another formula; another code of laws, of behavior, with rules that have to be followed, and dues that have to be paid— just another religion. Because too often Christians (especially Christian writers) neglect to lay the foundation. If it’s all ‘Jesus loves you’ and ‘Christ died for you’— yes, those are beautiful things, but they are not the whole truth. They are the culmination; not the entire picture. And for the culmination to ring true, the foundation must also be there.
See, what is Christianity? At its core? It’s truth. And what is truth? Literally anything that is true. The entirety of human existence is truth, which makes it completely compatible with Christianity because Christianity is literally the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. To nonbelievers without a foundation, however, it is merely a series of shallow phrases like ‘Jesus loves you’ and ‘God is love’. It rings so false to them because how can God be love if reality is so terrible?
So often Christian writers ignore the foundations of Christianity, and the result is stories that ring false and shallow because they make random, unfounded statements such as God is Love that just don’t jive with the real world. Which of course leads to the assumption that Christianity is not compatible with the real world, or the true state of things, when in reality nothing could be farther from the truth, because Christianity IS truth. If that makes sense… I may have just made a wreck of that explanation. 😛So I don’t think it necessarily has to be a choice between ‘Christian lit’ and ‘secular lit’— just write truth. True Christianity can handle it. It’s strong enough to stand on its own two feet and hold its own. If you remember the foundations.
@kate-flournoy, You basically said everything I didn’t have time to write down 🙂
Theater kid. Currently depressed because I can't stop listening to sad musicals.
@Audrey-Caylin Awesome you showed up. (Though we don’t give trophies for that. I’m sure you’re fine without one.) And I have to be the first to welcome you to the bestistest place on the internet.
I know what you mean how the articles seem a little anti explicit Christianity in fiction. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the authors’ intents, but sometimes it could seem that way. From what I’ve observed though, most Christian writers have a harder time being too “preachy” than not expressing their views enough. I think that’s why the articles have been so weighted.
I’ve read some explicitly Christian fiction and I agree with you that it’s awesome stuff when it’s done well, so I encourage you to pursue that. It’s very easy to abuse Christian fiction though. One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the things that could peeve a secular audience reading a Christian book would also peeve Christian readers. There’s nothing too Christian to put in a book — that’s absurd — but it’s a fine skill to learn how to do it well.
This is actually one of my favorite topic, so if you have any questions, fire away.
And and and and and…!… Well, you’ll figure out about it soon enough. I’ll keep quiet.
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Thank you so much for all this! @Christi-Eaton and @Kate-Flournoy, you just clarified all the millions of thoughts and opinions spinning in my head. Basically, you put my feelings into coherent words like you could read my mind. 🙂
@daeus, I’m so glad to be here! (just finding this little jackpot of knowledge and wonderful people is all I need 😉 ) And I can see how people go could to the other extreme as well. I’m starting to discover that it’s a fine line to walk, writing Christian literature (because the secular audience says it’s too religious and the Christian audience says it isn’t enough. lol). Thank you for the advice and encouragement and I’m sure I’ll be back with more questions as I continue on this wonderful journey of writing for Christ 🙂@Audrey-Caylin not at all. I’m guessing this is probably something we all go through at one point or another. Glad I was in a position to help. 🙂
Look at that, I have been called! Thanks @christi-eaton for the shout out! (but Christi, you know how this works. I wrote that article forever ago! It’s not fresh on my mind. 😛 )
@Audrey-Caylin, (This might all be a little late, but maybe it will help…) so actually I haven’t been able to shake the topic out of my head… so I’ve still got some thoughts. First of all, I stand by what I said in my recent article: “There isn’t a special way to write exceptional Christian fiction. There are just good ways to write good fiction.” If you write really /really/ good fiction, people will read it. All kinds of people. Christians, Atheists, Martians, they’ll all come to read your fantastic story. None of that will happen if your fiction isn’t great, so your first step is always to write really, really good fiction.
Once you are writing great fiction, your challenge will be to show the reader that they need Christ, without telling them that directly. Instead of having the character get converted (hopefully converting your readers) you should show some specific example of Christianity solving real world problems (Christ’s love ends war, Christ’s justice ends a bloody uprising, security in Christ gives a man the willingness to defy death) and then when your readers see the real life applications of Christianity they will be converted.Oops. Basically that was just a condensed version of my article which posted yesterday… but I hope it helped. I’ve got another article posting Saturday (I think) and it might also be helpful to you so check that out when it rolls around.
Thank you for coming, @brandon-miller!
This definitely helps. I have read lots of secular books where I asked myself “why do I like this when some of it glorifies sin?” I loved how you explained everything in your article!
I’ll keep checking back for more, as this is something I want to learn more about. 🙂
@audrey-caylin I’m hoping you’ll stick around. Maybe I’ll see some of your work published here (I’m hoping at least 🙂 ) We have tons of good stuff planned for the future, isn’t that right @daeus, I see you just barely managed to keep quiet earlier 😉
And you are right @brandon-miller, I should have remembered that, but look! you managed to create quite a good and helpful response.
Theater kid. Currently depressed because I can't stop listening to sad musicals.
Can I ask what you mean by “purely Christian”? Because I know what is usually meant by “Christian fiction” and I know lots of excellent books that could never fit into that category which were nevertheless written by Christians and are good on their own merits, and I’m quite familiar with secular fiction (some of which actually isn’t half bad. . .), but if there’s a distinction between Christian fiction and purely Christian fiction I might not be getting it.
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