Into the Fire

If you've followed this blog recently, you've noticed I've done a fair amount of posts on the restrictions placed on some CBA fiction. Largely these restrictions seem to be a result of promoting "clean and chaste" literature catering to a specific market of readers. Stretching some genres beyond this restrictive labeling has worked for thrillers, some murder mysteries, and a few contemporary literary novels. Not so in romance. And this is a direct result of the audience CBA fiction has cultivated. This rigid mindset and restrictive standard will not permit stories that dare to capture deeper looks at romance, love, and sex in Christian fiction.

We've talked here about the content of non-graphic sexual issues and the use of some words being outlawed in Christian fiction. We've discussed the very loud and demonstratively critical outrage from some CBA faithful readers who are "offended" at even a hint of impropriety by a Christian author and/or publisher if certain words they deem ungodly appear in a story they're reading.

Lost in all of this hoopla, cacaphony, and some holier-than-thou pronouncements is the core of the author's heart in writing the story with the characters involved. In order to present a viable novel, a story where the individuals on the page register as real, almost touchable, an author has to get inside their skin and portray them from the inside out. It can be chilling, thrilling, disgusting, tender, obscene, boisterous, giddy, hopeless, or hopeful. And myriad other characteristics. If done well, the reader will invest their time and energy to travel along the road of life with this group of make-believe people, making them friends, enemies, or acquaintances.

It's no secret that an author's investment is radically different – but eventually the same – as the reader's. We must create the personas, get to know them as much as they can be known, and share them with the reader. In the end we read the story from the reader's perspective – with our own acquired preferences of course. And our preferences and our directives in constructing these characters and situations come from a reader's heart that evolved into a writer's call to create stories using the best of what we've been given and have learned along the way.

When the argument digresses into what's "wholesome" and what "should" be included in Christian stories, the heart of the author is ignored. It's assumed by critics that an author shouldn't go beyond skin deep in their creation and manifestation of making characters and plots set in diverse circumstances since only "some" things line up with their (the critic's) theology.

This conflict repeats itself frequently and no doubt will not be concluded or resolved anytime soon. The truly important factor is for authors to tell their stories looking at and constructing meaningful characters from the inside out. To see and portray them as God sees each one of us.

Father, you look at me from the inside out. You know the dark areas and urge me to look to you for help in fixing them. Please help me to show the real facets of the human character and condition in the stories you give me to tell. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.