Discerning Christian fiction, & a book review
By Elizabeth Prata
I love to read. With the New Year and all the ‘Reading Challenges’ that emerged in January as people make decisions back at the start of the year, I’d decided to go back to reading for pleasure. This is an activity that had fallen by the wayside as I got busier, and my eyes grew more tired at night. Aging. It’s not for sissies, lol.
I do need more often to shop my own shelves rather than buying more books! But I’m weak, lol. If I am of a mind to read fiction, I usually stick with the same novelists I’d read before (Grisham, Charles Martin, Will Thomas, and the like). When I find one author I like I tend to read more of their books, because the first one was ‘safe’ so I figure subsequent works have a higher likelihood of being be ‘safe’ too.
A while ago I had read The Rain, a self-published work by Chris Skates and Dan Tankersley. It is a fictionalized recounting of the Biblical Flood. There is a lot of ink in the Bible about the lead-up to the flood, the flood itself, and the aftermath. The authors didn’t have a lot of holes to fill. But still, dialog must be constructed, extra-biblical characters created, and some gaps must be filled by imagination. I thought they did a great job. I enjoyed the book.
That’s why I was disappointed in their sequel, The Tower. To be sure, there is little ink in the Bible about the Tower of Babel. Only 245 words, I’ve heard. So the authors had to invent more. Theirs IS a book of fiction. So I get it. I am not quibbling about filling gaps in a fictionalized biblical story.
But two things bothered me about the book. Full disclosure: I read very little of it. First, the modern language. In The Rain, the dialog, while imagined, was of a tone that seemed old timey. It wasn’t stilted, but the authors kept modern words and idioms out of the characters’ conversations. They didn’t put idioms into the characters’ mouths that a person would say today. As a reader visualizing any scene in The Rain, I could picture the characters saying what they said.
In The Tower, the idioms, words, tone, and language were very modern. It was jarring. As an author, what you want to do is create a bubble for the reader to relax into. It’s a delicate bubble, but if you can hold the reader’s attention, they will descend into your world and stay IN the bubble. You don’t want to jar the reader out of your constructed reverie and become distracted. A distracted reader stops reading. This is what I learned in journalism class. You do not want to do anything to break that bubble.
In addition to modern language in The Rain that jogged me out of the bubble I was trying to stay inside of, the authors needed an editor. Badly. It was a self-published book as mentioned, and often than means not employing a skilled or professional editor, or even a copy editor. Copy editors check copy for wrong words, punctuation, mechanical errors in the text.
The authors used wrong words several times in the few pages I read. For example, gig for did. Site for sight, twice. Ugh. There is nothing that gets me more irritated than wrong homophones, unless it’s spelling errors. So this book had issues with the text itself. That, combined with the issues of language, meant I couldn’t read in relaxed fashion, I kept being booted out of 2300BC. I quit reading won’t pick the book up again.
If you would like information on the Tower of Babel from a credible Bible-based ministry, here is Answers in Genesis’ answer to the question, “When was the Tower of Babel Built?“
Some people object to fictionalizing stories from the Bible. Can we fictionalize biblical stories by recounting them and filling in gaps with our own imagined characters or situations? Hmmm, yes and no.
The most important point is, have you read enough of the Bible, OT and NT, to be familiar with what SHOULD be presented in a work of fiction based on a biblical story? If you’re reading a fiction book about Rachel, have you first read and are familiar with the actual Rachel of the Old Testament? If not, then you are at risk of accepting the author’s version of a true biblical person.
I thought The Rain did a good job of sticking to the biblical concepts. Though I personally have not read The Chronicles of Narnia, people tell me CS Lewis did a credible job with creating a biblical allegory that mirrored biblical concepts. As did John Bunyan in The Pilgrim’s Progress. The television series The Chosen did not do a good job of gap-filling, but twisted the Bible to suit man’s desire to diminish Jesus and hide attributes He has which make man uncomfortable.
The problem with fictionalizing, or making plausible leaps where the Bible is silent, is that very thing- our flesh gets in the way.
And our flesh has an agenda. So does satan.
So in a way, Christian fiction books are the most unsafe books of all. Take the book The Shack, for instance. This was a runaway bestseller back in 2007-2008 and onward. It was sold in Christian bookstores as a Christian book. Its author, William Paul Young, wrote about a man who was staggering under heavy grief due to the kidnapping and death of his little daughter, her death had occurred in a derelict shack.
One day the man received a handwritten note in his mailbox to go to the same shack. Reluctant but curious, he goes, and there he ‘meets’ Jesus and the Holy Spirit in addition to being greeted by ‘God.’ It turns out that according to Young’s presentation of the Trinity, God is a woman, as is the Holy Spirit. The book goes on to present discussions between the persons of the Trinity and the man, regarding sin, evil, salvation, judgment, and other doctrines. The book teaches that sin is its own judgment and there is no other, that hell exists to purge away unbelief (not punish for sin), that there is universal reconciliation, among other aberrant, non-biblical doctrines.
Many credible leaders in the faith negatively reviewed the book. I reviewed it negatively also. A common rebuttal to our negative view of the book was, “Lighten up. It’s only fiction!” Or, “It’s only a novel!”
Dear reader, novels teach an author’s point of view, either subtly or overtly. It’s no different for Christian novels. Novels with Christian themes use narrative to teach. We must all be Bereans and check to see that these things in the ‘Christian’ book are so, in whatever form the doctrines are coming to us. Doctrine is taught in songs, poems, sermons, lessons, theological books…and fiction.
Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr. serves as president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Mohler offers thoughts on the missing art of evangelical discernment as encapsulated by evangelical response to The Shack. He wrote:
“In evaluating the book, it must be kept in mind that The Shack is a work of fiction. But it is also a sustained theological argument, and this simply cannot be denied. Any number of notable novels and works of literature have contained aberrant theology, and even heresy. The crucial question is whether the aberrant doctrines are features of the story or the message of the work. When it comes to The Shack, the really troubling fact is that so many readers are drawn to the theological message of the book, and fail to see how it conflicts with the Bible at so many crucial points.” [underline mine]
In that article, we see that Christian fiction is deliberately used to bring heretical ideas to the masses and worse, popularize them. Christian reader, beware! It’s not “just fiction”! Simply because a book is listed as Christian fiction does not mean we can let down our guard. We need to put up higher guards!
“When we think about the role of reading in our spiritual formation, we generally think of non-fiction books that help us understand scripture and theology, but fiction powerfully shapes the ways in which we think faithfully about God and the world.” C. Christopher Smith
Fiction is storytelling. Christian fiction walks a thin line between green pastures of heaven and boiling hot lava, in that the story an author is telling is based on the Bible but the Bible is not fiction. It’s history; true, and real. It’s dangerous to tinker with God’s word, yet stories must be told. CS Lewis did it well with Screwtape Letters and Bunyan with Pilgrim’s Progress. William Paul Young did it badly with The Shack, Dallas Jenkins with The Chosen.
Be discerning. The worst Christian fiction often popularizes heresy. The best Christian fiction prompts a reader to run to the Bible to absorb more truth. It also glorifies God.
Dr. Mohler said that even Christian fiction is a work of sustained theological argument. Let’s compare two books to see how this fleshes out: Elmer Gantry and The Shack.
One of my favorite books is Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis. It tells the story of a false convert who rose to fame and celebrity pastor status, all the while not being a believer in any sense. The Bible tells us that this will happen, it’s a biblical concept. The message of the book was to illustrate how this can happen, not to promote that hypocrisy is to be accepted. The sustained theological argument of Elmer Gantry is that hypocrisy happens in religion and it is always bad. It wasn’t promoting hypocrisy or apostasy as good. Meanwhile, the sustained theological argument in The Shack is that God does not punish sin and everyone will eventually be reconciled to God.
We must be Bereans and test every theological argument that we absorb. If this sounds like a lot of work, it is. Paul repeatedly advised his readers to be vigilant. (For example, 1 Corinthians 16:13). We are on a battlefield in a war, and we don’t only hear the cannons booming, but we must be alert for snipers, too. When it comes to accepting things not of the Lord, it all matters. Christian books are never “just fiction.”
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Further Reading
Discerning Christian Fiction, 3-part series
The “dangers” of Christian fiction. Good article.
How Can I be Discerning about Books? Michelle Lesley
CS Lewis, The Space Trilogy, Christian science fiction, a trio of words you don’t see often.
The Rain, Skates & Tankersley book. See what you think
Pilgrim’s Progress: (book free online)
