Into the Fire

It’s back. Wait. It never left. We’ve walked around it so often, it’s become just another fixture we ignore—it’s easier that way. However, every now and then the room gets cramped and we stub a toe over the darn thing, and then it dawns on us that we can’t really expect to overlook this giant inconvenience forever. So which elephant is it, you ask? Which thing is it that no one really wants to address this time?

It is the CBA mindset and the publishers who feed it. Call me slow, but up until the last handful of novels I’ve read, I didn’t see this. I mean I addressed it peripherally in my posts on the “average” readers, but these latest novels slammed it home: Christian publishing doesn’t really believe most of their primary customers have much intelligence.

You know I believe every kind of reader who is a Christian deserves a novel to read. Literary styles, thrillers, men’s and women’s fiction, contemporary, romance, adventure, historical, mystery, cozy mystery, suspense, chick lit, prairie romance/Amish/Mennonite, fantasy, speculative, sci-fi, horror, medical, legal, young adult, and whatever else you can think of. However, when a well known publisher produces a work of fiction which demonstrates a definite lack of writing skills, it brings the author, the agent, the editor, and the publisher under suspicion. Why? Because it reveals the target audience for this novel is considered incapable of reading and recognizing quality writing. Why? They must be too dumb or uneducated. Now this might not be a conscious thought or at least not one they freely admit at their meetings, but the evidence is in the product.

Now everyone who owns, runs, or participates in any capacity in a business knows that business has to turn a profit to stay in existence. Just a fact. Most businesses want to build up a clientele and keep them, hopefully adding to their numbers by customer recommendations, fair prices, great customer service, supply and demand of needed products. But every now and then in a good business, someone gets greedy. Be it the bosses or the unions or a single employee, the desire for more overrules the desire to practice and provide good business sense and products. This country just reaped the results of Franklin Raines’, Chris Dodd’s, and Barney Frank’s greed to name the foremost culprits of the mortgage disaster.

Sometimes a business misses an opportunity and sometimes a business capitalizes on one they think will net them some big profit numbers. A few times a Christian owned and operated business must pass on something that a secular business can use without qualms. There simply must be standards for a business to be considered sound. When greed and deception enter into the mix, something invariably goes wrong and if consumers are involved, there is now distrust where there was once favor and respect.

The Christian publishing business missed an opportunity with The Shack by William P. Young. When it was clear the novel was surpassing every possible expectation, Hachette Book Group picked it up, and although latecomers to the success party, they’ve done a lot of promotion for the book. The industry as a whole passed on the book because it wasn’t written particularly well—not up to their standards was the word “on the street”. And it’s true—about it not being written particularly well. The “standards” part is not such a truth, especially in light of the novels I’ve just read. Guess what these recent novels do have in common? Authors with impressive credentials (code for platform)—not in writing novels but in education, business, and ministries.

Now here’s where another Christian publisher got on board for the money, and in the process they dropped my respect factor for them below the bottom rung of my measurement ladder. Thomas Nelson published The Faith of Barack Obama by the same author who wrote The Faith of George W. Bush. There’s no question the non-fiction work is well-written and there are disclaimers in the book for when Barack’s confessions don’t line up with his actions and other professions in his campaign. So what? You don’t get to choose what part of faith you believe and support when you become a Christian. Barack Obama’s stance on abortion is absolutely intolerable. He has stated he would deny treatment to a baby who has survived a botched abortion because it would interfere with the mother’s objective to have the abortion, that determining when life begins “is above his pay grade”. Yet, here is a book which exalts his “faith” produced by a Christian publisher who looked at the market before the election and said, “We’re in!” It’s one thing to say your belief system as a Christian determines your actions. It’s another thing to really live by it.

So . . . the elephant in the room is the variable in standards of CBA publishing. Some excellent novels have come out of CBA publishing, but some poorly written novels have as well. All who were sought refused The Shack “because of the inferior writing” and missed out on a bestseller. They’ve produced other novels with inferior writing which have not become bestsellers. Thomas Nelson produces a book which will clearly be supported by those who are of the Democrat party, Christians and otherwise, while claiming that the author has no intention of voting for Barack Obama because of Obama’s “principles” which don’t support the so-called faith he professes within the pages of this book. This is called a sellout—and not in the sense of being out of a product.

The elephant remains. Somebody’s got to feed it.

Father, you love us all. You don’t love our despicable sins. You are the author of life. Convict our hearts of sinful ways and thoughts. Forgive us, Lord Jesus. You bore our punishment. Forgive me. Holy Spirit, bring our awareness of evil to the forefront of our minds and help us to resist the enemy in the Name of Jesus, Amen.