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Okay, so I really like to analyze books when I read them— and not just books either. Any kind of story. And lately I’ve been trying to figure out how so many of the old classical authors managed to not only fit Christianity into their stories, but actually portray it well and without shoving it down the reader’s throat.
Here are a few things I’ve noticed— feel free to add your observations to the list. 🙂#1: The existence of God is a given. Now this one sounds like an absolute no-brainer, but when you think about it it really isn’t. I mean, how easy would it be to assume the person reading your book is a staunch atheist and just dump all the evidence for God’s existence off on them? Very easy.
The thing is, when a reader picks up a piece of fiction, they’re looking for a story. If they want a treatise on the existence of God, they can go pick one up at the library.
A presented idea is much more readily accepted in a work of fiction if it is presupposed by the writer to be true.
If each character accepts the existence of God as a matter of fact, the reader is going to be much more likely to do so as well.
‘But my villains are evil!’ you say. ‘They can’t believe in God!’ Yes they can— ‘even the demons believe, and tremble!’ Just because they believe in God does not make them Christians. Let’s look at it like this— say a villain encounters a great many setbacks in a short period of time. Then we see him leaning his head in his hands and groaning that God is punishing him, or that God is against him, or something like that. It doesn’t have to bring him to repentance— it doesn’t have to mean any more to him than an exasperated complaint. But since he obviously believes it, we as the reader are immediately going to be able to see very clearly that God is indeed punishing him— and naturally assume God exists to be able to do so!And here’s a thought that’s a spinoff of that thought. It’s generally better to focus on one message per book. If you’re going to bring an atheist character to salvation, you probably need two books or a series of books. Why? Because if you try to tackle both God’s existence and God’s salvation in the same book, you’re going to end up more than a little crowded.
Use one book to establish one point— and if you want to go full spectrum, write as many books to the series as you have points. This will allow you to fully explore as many concepts as you want to without rushing your character’s conversion.#2: Prayer is realistic. When I pray— just spur of the moment ‘God, I need your help!’— I generally don’t fold my hands and kneel, or even sometimes don’t close my eyes. Nor do I always open with ‘Dear Lord’ and close with ‘In Jesus’ name, amen.’ I don’t try to articulate myself coherently or use perfect grammar. In fact I’m sure a recorded prayer would be absolute nonsense to anyone but God. The thing is, when someone cries out to God in desperate need, they don’t go with all those formalities. They don’t try to express themselves with politeness or coherence. They need Him, and that is all they know.
I’m just saying, prayer in stories shouldn’t be picture perfect. It’s not realistic.Whew! That was a really long post. 😛
What are your thoughts?
And here’s a thought that’s a spinoff of that thought. It’s generally better to focus on one message per book. If you’re going to bring an atheist character to salvation, you probably need two books or a series of books. Why? Because if you try to tackle both God’s existence and God’s salvation in the same book, you’re going to end up more than a little crowded.
Use one book to establish one point— and if you want to go full spectrum, write as many books to the series as you have points. This will allow you to fully explore as many concepts as you want to without rushing your character’s conversion.I love that! I wish there were more allegories that the character din’t change book one.
@kate-flournoy I agree 100% with all those three points. Incredibly true, incredibly simple. So far, I think I’ve done pretty well with keeping to these three rules, but I could see myself doing the more than one message thing if I’m not careful. Now it is possible for that one lesson to have many repercussions. For instance, if your character is saved, he might learn at that point to forgive, to stop looking to himself as the solution to his problems, and many other lessons, but they are all a domino affect from that one character development.
Since we have no disagreements to argue about, let’s see if we can pursue this subject a little deeper. We can talk about christianity in writing in general, but let’s also focus specifically on gospel centric stories. Let’s think about how to present the gospel through story telling in such a way that a non-believer will not merely excuse it, but actually enjoy it – that even if they are not saved by the truth presented, they will be attracted to it and will want to read your next book.
Along this subject of christianity in writing, I have a couple points:
1. Christianity is a story, not a fact that you add to one. The bible is the greatest story ever. We could summarize it as a book that tells of God’s work in man. Our books will be improved when, whether clearly or in a less obvious way, they reflect this same principal. What I think we sometimes mess up in our stories is that we don’t think of our stories in the same way we do life. Most christians, whatever their beliefs about predestination, believe in some form of providence. They believe that God is at work in the lives of men and that in one way or another, He orchestrates events in our lives for our growth. In writing, I think we miss out sometimes on the providence aspect of things. We might give our protagonist a good goal, an enemy, and then develop our plot. We might then say to ourselves, “Wait a minute, I’m starting to like this guy, I’d better make sure he is a christian. Hmm, maybe I can make fit in a lesson on forgiveness.” We seem to think that events in the character’s life have no meaning and we must add meaning. Nothing could be farther from the truth! Every event has purpose and the reader needs to sense it has purpose. I’ll make a reference to TLOTR here. Didn’t you get the sense from that book that Frodo’s life wasn’t merely an unusual set of coincidences? Wasn’t there a hidden sense that his life had some deep awesome purpose? I don’t think this type of writing is so much conscious as just how you view life in the first place. What if Tolkien had an allegorical gospel message in his story? Wouldn’t we jump on it (in the good sense)? Now what if we did the same thing and had the plain gospel message? I think it would still work. It would work because it would naturally flow from the set of events in the story. Those events had purpose. When we get to the conclusion, we can say, “This is it!” It would be a point sure, but it would also be a story. It would have meaning because the whole story has meaning.2. You can often tell if a lesson shouldn’t be in your story by asking yourself and others if your story would be ruined by taking it out. If we’ve written a smashing adventure about trusting God and then we take out the trusting God part and we still have a smashing adventure, we’ve done something wrong. Now I don’t mean to say that you need clear a christian moral to make your story worth reading. Some of the best stories are non christian stories which have morals very very similar to christian ones. They are lies, but they are the best type of lies because they are 99% truth. They are better than stories with less christian morals precisely because they borrow more christian elements. What I am saying is that if your moral springs organically from the story like it should, you will know because removing the moral will noticeably damage the story. It does not need to ruin it, but it will damage it.
3. It is best never to communicate your character’s beliefs (christian or non-christian), but to let them express those views themselves through conversation.
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The existence of God is a given. Now this one sounds like an absolute no-brainer, but when you think about it it really isn’t. I mean, how easy would it be to assume the person reading your book is a staunch atheist and just dump all the evidence for God’s existence off on them? Very easy.
The thing is, when a reader picks up a piece of fiction, they’re looking for a story. If they want a treatise on the existence of God, they can go pick one up at the library.Great topic, @kate-flournoy! In the book series I’m reading right now, I was actually noticing the same thing: the author assumes there is a God (the “Maker” in the series).
And I definitely agree about not shoving Christianity down people’s throats. I think that people get annoyed when we do this. For example, I watched part of this one Christian movie once. It was a horrible movie…and one of the main reasons it was horrible was that the makers of the movie put in so much preaching that it wasn’t even enjoyable to watch. And I know the movie-makers probably had great intentions and everything. But if people don’t want to hear something, they certainly won’t listen. We need to make sure we’re not forcing Christianity on people. If we put too much Christianity in our books, a lot of people will put the book down. And how will we reach people for Christ then?
Sorry, I just kind of put all my thoughts out there. 😛
Excellent thoughts, @Daeus! And yes @gretald, what you said was completely true. @Daeus covered that a little in his reply— Christianity, and Christian themes and messages, shouldn’t just be slipped or fitted in and hoped to be gotten away with. You shouldn’t say ‘Oh boy I have this really cool story! Oh… yeah, I’d better put some element of Christianity in it by the way.’
The Christianity of your story should be woven irrevocably into the fabric of it— a strong, sure, guiding presence that gives the whole story meaning. 🙂I love the Frodo example, @Daeus. 😀 It reminded me of one of my favorite LotR quotes— I don’t remember exactly where it was in the book, but I’m pretty sure Gandalf said it: ‘Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, in which case you also [Frodo] were meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.’
There’s not a lot about Middle-earth’s religious system in LotR itself, but in some of Tolkien’s other books he did about Middle-earth (The Silmarillion, specifically) it becomes very clear that Middle-earth’s religion is almost perfectly based on Christianity.So yes. I completely agree with your thoughts.
Another thing is, there should be room for error. If you convert a character, he or she is not realistically going to start spouting deep, one-hundred-percent-perfect theology to everyone who will listen. Not even going and witnessing to other people, or even reaching out to them to share. It depends a lot on the personality of the character, but most, I think, would want to mull over their newly found treasure and make sure they understood it at least tolerably well before they went spreading peace and goodwill all over the place.
But see, some literary conversions are just too complete. It’s almost like the person died and an angel took his place, and while ideally speaking that’s what Christianity is, the converted person is still after all a human. There will be mistakes. There will be relapses. It’s not realistic otherwise.And I wouldn’t even say it’s always completely necessary for the character to come to the to the correct conclusion about all his theological mistakes. Let me explain. Let’s lift an example from the Count of Monte Cristo. You know that book, right @Daeus? 😉 😛
Anyway, Edmond leaves Paris after his vengeance still believing in his heart that he was an instrument of Divine punishment. And yes, he used nothing but the wickedness of his enemies to bring them down, but that’s not the point. The point is, though he was outwardly acting the impartial and disinterested judge, in his heart he was seeking personal vengeance, and he never really repented of that. Or more correctly, he was never really very honest with himself about that in the first place. He saw how he had punished the wicked and was glad, without taking himself to task for the hatred he had borne them as he tore them down.
Now I as a reader saw that clearly— I saw beyond a doubt that it was the wrong attitude. But it didn’t detract from the message. It showed me Edmond’s flawed humanity without sacrificing the clarity of that message.Hopefully that made some kind of sense. 😛
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OK, just wanted to do that. On to business.Doesn’t Gandalf have some great quotes?
Most people from what I sense have a post conversion high – I mean, they were dead and now they’re alive, so I can’t blame them. But after that, I think they’re more inclined to listen and doubt their own judgment, which actually isn’t always the best thing – but yeah.
You know, I have heard of The Count of Monte Cristo – funny how we have that in common, isn’t it? Well, life is pretty funny in general if you ask me. From what I remember though, Edmond did eventually come to the conclusion that he could not play God. He never forgave, but I think he repented, though not of his hate, at least of trying to play God. Its incredibly sad and emotionalizing. You just absolutely love this guy and then when the story ends, he’s still only a quarter of the way to where you want him. But I think the ending is what send chills down your spine, for that little line reminds us that there may be more in store even for him – “Wait and hope”.
I’m going to try to scratch up some more ideas on this tomorrow, but for now …
ADIOS!!!
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Wow. Gone for a day and I get to come back to this beauty. Seriously, we’ve got some great stuff in this topic already, guys. I might have to keep this open as a reference for my WIP. 😛
The realistic prayer thing is really something I watch myself carefully for. It’s never really a “fold your hands, get on your knees and reverently close your eyes as a beam of holy light envelops you” thing. As @kate-flournoy said, it’s always more spur-of-the-moment. Especially in adventure stories.
Some of my favorite portrayals of the points here are in the Peleg Chronicles… again… sorry, it had to come up. BUT THAT’S MOSTLY THE REASON I LIKE IT. The realism of everyone’s faith is totally awesome.
The moment that impressed me was that a character who didn’t pray when he needed help was ashamed about not doing it sooner when he remembered. I mean, it’s so true! We don’t always remember to pray. Why should our characters? It’s just something I’ve never seen and it gave me a bit different perspective.
And that’s one character, Fergus. The other, McDougal, is on the other end of the scale. He mentions God at every available opportunity and prays only slightly less often, but it’s in his character and the awkwardness it creates is shown.
End point probably being: Put as much christian behavior as you can, but don’t drop the ball on keeping things realistic and in character.Absolutely @writefury! And the point is not so much ‘put as much Christian behavior as you can’ as it is ‘write your story inside out with Christianity at the center, and the Christian behavior will follow.’ It will flow naturally and realistically and characteristically into the story if it is the heart of the story.
I think it was @reaganramm who said something like ‘our writing should be an overflow of our walk with God.’ And as far as I can tell, that’s spot on. 🙂@Daeus, yes! Gandalf has so many great quotes. My favorite is probably “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” 🙂
@writefury: Great thoughts! Honestly, I forget to pray. A lot. And that’s not how it should be. But a lot of times, that’s the way people are; they need help, and suddenly they remember that there’s a loving God in Heaven, who wants so much to help them. God’s love and forgiveness blows me away! 🙂“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” ~ Matthew 7:7-8
And @kate-flournoy, I love this:
And the point is not so much ‘put as much Christian behavior as you can’ as it is ‘write your story inside out with Christianity at the center, and the Christian behavior will follow.’ It will flow naturally and realistically and characteristically into the story if it is the heart of the story.
And the point is not so much ‘put as much Christian behavior as you can’ as it is ‘write your story inside out with Christianity at the center, and the Christian behavior will follow.’ It will flow naturally and realistically and characteristically into the story if it is the heart of the story.
Exactly. I probably would have worded it better if I wasn’t so tired when I wrote it. 😛
Well then I forgive you. 😉 😛
And yes @Daeus, Gandalf does have some absolutely fantastic quotes. And I totally know what you mean about Edmond— and that line ‘wait and hope’… oh man, just thinking about it makes me tear up and get shivers. 😛 It was the perfect way to end the story.
I like this discussion. A lot!
@kate-flourney Your points are fantastic and simple. Wonderful observations. It does seem like the writers of classics wrote their books as an overflow of their life as Reagan stated it. (Ben Hur and Little Women are examples of that)
I especially liked your point that The existence of God is a given. If we go into our stories with the idea that because we are Christians we have to “fit” God and His truths into the book it’s going to come across as forced and unrealistic. And what kind of view will that give our readers of our life in Christ? That we just “fit” God into our life whenever it’s convenient and comfortable?But rather it should be to ‘write your story inside out with Christianity at the center, and the Christian behavior will follow.’ It will flow naturally and realistically and characteristically into the story if it is the heart of the story. Well said! Christ is now our life. He is now what drives us onward, He is the heartbeat of our life. And so well should it be the heart of our stories.
That was probably a bit of a repeat of what ya’ll already said, but I got excited! 🙂
So a question… Have you ever written a scene where your character read the Bible? I’m working on a scene now where my protagonist hasn’t read her Bible for a long time and finally after a few humbling situations is convicted to begin faithfully reading it again, like her mother had taught and exampled to her.
What would you do to make those kind of scenes natural? Would you show them sitting down and include a bit of Scripture in the book? Or would you have them mention it to someone (say a mentor) in conversation?https://rolenahatfield.com/
Alright, and we’re back with some more ideas.
I’m now going to cover the topic of clichéd sinners and bad foreshadowing. Unfortunately, I think even very good christian writers often mess up on this. Let’s make sure we don’t do that.
Clichéd sinners. These guys are often unbelievable. You can’t connect with them. Sometimes they’re just big balls of evil for no apparent reason, or not a strong enough reason, and even worse, they’re made to seem entirely unlikeable. Not only is this not real, it will leave people who have similar problems feeling like the author was beating up on them (and despite his intentions, he was). This is not the only type though. There is also the wishy washy type. These are the type that have huge doubts about what they believe. When someone presents them with the truth, they’re immediately like, “Oh, I never thought of that before. I have nothing to say. You must be right.” I mean really? Who’s like that? Sure there are people like this guy in Japan who went, “These gods we worship obviously aren’t really. There is obviously one great God but I can’t seem to find out about him here, so I’m gonna go to america.” He did and basically became converted as soon as he heard the gospel. He was like, “That’s it! That’s what I came to find out about.” Yes, there are a few of those people, but not many and that is not what I’m talking about anyway. That guy was given the grace to see the obvious. He sought after it. I’m talking about those characters who have no defenses. Who don’t put up a fight. Sometimes in christian books or movies, there will be one of these characters and I will think to myself, “Now really, if I were him/her, I would be making some pretty decent counter arguments. I would go down fighting. I wouldn’t easily accept a worldview entirely contrary my nature even if I had nothing to say.” Now yes, some people can be convinced that they were wrong fairly quickly, but they’ll always put up some amount of a fight. And think of it this way, a simple man will not feel ripped off by a difficult conversion, but an intellectual will be spouting off arguments and will feel like he is being presented with a cheap argument if someone goes, “Wow, I never thought of that. You must be right.” Now it’s not like you need to have this huge debate filled with all sorts of huge philosophical thoughts and complicated scientific stuff. In fact, please don’t. God says man is without excuse, so why do we think we have to prove anything? A little bit of evidence can do a lot to help, but really, reality is simple. It is clear there is a God, it is clear we have sinned against Him, it is clear that Jesus rose from the dead. That’s all you really need, but don’t think that just because a pagan is asked where his god came from that he is going to freak out and have an existential crisis.
Often times, clichéd sinners are converted. When this is the case, we can often see it coming. Actually, even when the characters are very real and believable, we can sometimes see it coming. This leads to my second point.
Should we be able to see a conversion coming? Personally I think no, at least not in most cases. Here is why. It’s like if we’re sitting in a movie theatre watching a movie and one of the main characters falls off a cliff and the movie suddenly stops and this guy comes up on the screen and says, “Don’t worry ladies and gentlemen. While it appears that this guy is really going to die, what actually happens is that right before he is about to hit the ground, another guy in a jetpack swoops down and saves him.” There goes all our worry about the guy. We can now watch him fall almost to his death with hardly any of that awful quivering feeling in the guts. We’ll be rather indifferent to the dramatic music and horrifying scene. Why? Because we know that there is relief in the end. That is the wrong type of foreshadowing. Good foreshadowing tells the reader, “Hey reader, it’s me, the author. Hey listen up, something bigs about to happen – really big, and its gonna put my protagonist through a lot of trouble and I’m not going to tell you how it all ends. I could have the protagonist come out on bottom you know.I can do that if I want to. Hey, you know, you’d better keep reading so you can figure out what happens.” Good foreshadowing takes the intensity of the scene and gets it started before that scene even happens. Not so when we know someone is going to be converted. If it’s a real believable guy or girl with relatable passions and clear humanness, the reader is going to be dying for him or her to turn out good. Whenever your reader is dying for something, you’ve got their attention. Now what happens when your reader know the character is going to be converted? They go, “Oh hew, so it’s all going to end well. You know, that’s really nice. I like that ending. In fact, since that is obviously what is going to happen, why worry about reading it anyway? I’ve got a million other things to do. Goodbye book.” “Goodbye book” is never what you want your reader to say unless they’re experiencing emotional turbulence because they just read the last sentence and it was so good they wish it could just keep going on and one, but there is just something so powerful about the fact that it did end and that it ended in that way, that they are totally overcome by this strange mixture of sorrow and thrilling exhilaration.
My thoughts. Have another emoji set. ??????????
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@rolena-hatfield (In goofy western slang) I luuuuuuve Bin-Herr!
How I would approach the bible situation is to think how her reading the bible will effect on her in more than one way. The first way is obvious – the words she reads are training her, but there could be an influence entirely outside of the words she reads. Maybe there could be a friend of hers who doesn’t really mind her reading the bible when there’s time. This friend might convince her that there is more important things to be done. The girl might give in and go do whatever it is, but then find how real and powerful the words of God are. How in everything she is doing, she sees that they stand up and say, “This is truth and this is error. This is not meaningless. God claims this as His own and this is what He thinks about it.” She could eventually come to the point where she just needs to read it and can’t stop.
Now that is just one way of doing it, there are many others. But what we see, is it’s not just the bible changing people (what about the people who don’t believe the bible?), it’s actually developing the plot and we show how the bible has power. At first, the bible seems to stand in the way. By casting it off, the protagonist seems at first stronger. Eventually however, we see by example that it actually made her weaker. I like to think through all situations like this. Whether I am trying to make a point or not, I think, “How can I get the very most out of what I plan to have happen? How can it improve the plot, the character, other characters, the theme, the setting?”
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