Blogger: Etta Wilson
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I’m still thinking about all those junior high students in the “Letters to Authors” contest I was judging last week –I’ve blogged a bit about their responses on gender and race. Today I’m wondering what they believe. What is their faith stance in our increasingly secular society? So much of teaching and setting an example about faith is left to parents, but when kids reach to junior high, they start that trek toward independence which often means they look to their peers and teachers and what they read and see for direction. For some kids, it’s a time to rebel against what parents teach.
Out of the total 75 letters I read, two had explicit Christian content. Perhaps a better criterion would be the content of the books, speeches, and poems they selected. If a kid reads A Wrinkle in Time by Madelyn L’Engle or the “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. (both of whom we know as Christian authors), is that child more inclined toward a Christian faith response to life?
I think these questions are important for authors of adult books, not only because they indicate something about the next generation of adult readers but also because they challenge us to think of the relation between our faith and our creativity. This morning I read a snippet in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way Every Day which she begins with, “Creativity requires faith.” She’s writing about faith in one’s self, but it’s encouraging no matter how we take it.
How do we weave our faith into our writing without slamming readers in the face? Junior high students aren’t the only ones who resist being told what to believe. Kids growing up need some answers, and maybe we adults do too.
Great post! The concept of faith-infused writing reminds me of Madeliene L’Engle’s response to a college senior who asked her about being a Christian writer. “I told her that if she is truly and deeply a Christian, what she writes is going to be Christian, whether she mentions Jesus or not. And if she is not, in the most profound sense, Christian, then what she writes is not going to be Christian, no matter how many times she invokes the name of the Lord.” (from Walking on Water)
I once had a 5th grader memorize King’s “I have a dream” speech (yeah, the whole thing) and hold three different audiences spell-bound. Everybody around her was edified, and kids in the audience watched their parents and teachers cry. I’m less excited about “A Wrinkle in Time.” It may quote a handful of verses, but each time they are presented to imply something the verse didn’t mean in the original. It also manages to score on every major point of gnosticism. I’d rather a story not touch on spirituality than touch it in misleading ways.
See? This is what you people do. You ask these questions about topics I’m passionate about and tempt me to jump in with a thousand-word comment.
I’m not getting sucked in, Etta. 🙂
I did blog on this topic yesterday, kind of–on preaching in fiction and telling the truth while we lie. So, fortunately for you, I have spent my passion and don’t have to repeat it all here.
But I will throw out one quick thought. I’m sure we’ve all heard it, but it bears repeating: Telling is preaching and showing is allowing the reader to draw his own conclusions.
In Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Paterson got across her theology just fine. She didn’t tell readers what to conclude but she showed the smart, loving character believing one thing and the stupid, obnoxious six-year-old, spouting out a hateful-sounding statement, “If you don’t believe the Bible, God is going to damn you to hell.”
Because she picked that character to say that in her obnoxious and hateful voice, the reader is pretty much forced to say, “No way is God going to damn anyone to hell because she believes Jesus’ life and death and resurrection is a pretty story but not a literally true story. No way would God damn Leslie to hell. She’s so sweet and wonderful. If anyone deserves to be damned to hell, it’s the obnoxious, intolerant, Bible-thumping little sister.”
It was very effective. Most Christians don’t even realize that the book preaches against a God who will judge people for what they believe about the Son. That’s how skillfully she planted her message.
ACK! I’ve done it again.
I’m crawling back into my corner now.
Wonderful post. I’ve been a Christian and student of the Bible for more than 40 years. I hope that it’s so well integrated into who I am that it naturally bleeds through everything I write–whether I mention the name of Jesus or not.
I pray as I write & revise that the characters in my PBs don’t stand on soapboxes or pulpits, but that their struggles and choices reveal the truths of God’s Word, the truths that I hope my readers absorb from the stories.
I hope. But I also plan and pray and work hard to create story “veils” through which the readers can peek into the truths behind them.
Samantha, you’ve reached into my favorite book by M. L’Engle–Walking on Water. For my taste, she is better at writing about Christians who write than she is in writing books for middle-graders. But I have the same feeling about C.S. Lewis’s work. Part of it is that I’m sort of nuts and bolts and not much on fantasy, in spite of feeling that imagination is so critical to good fiction.
Etta
Brian, what a great idea! I wonder how many other adult teachers have kids memorize King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. I hear it was composed in short order like Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, but I haven’t verified that.
Etta
I also pray over my work as I write and revise.
Since Biblical Christianity is my “worldview” surely it shows in how my characters react to various situations.
For years I had no idea Ms. L’engle was a “Christian” writer, not until I came across “The Glorious Impossible”, which I purchased on the spot and still enjoy perusing to this day. 🙂
Great food for thought today Ms. Etta! As always!
I agree with Samantha (and with Madeleine L’Engle) that writing as a Christian comes out of who we are. To avoid showing a gnostic gospel, I need to be thoroughly grounded in Scripture myself, so that my story comes out of an authentically Christian worldview, not merely ‘nice’ civic religion. The trick then is to leave it without explaining even at the risk of some readers missing my point. (I talked to one woman who loved the Chronicles of Narnia but never picked up that Lewis was a Christian!) If I want to spell it all out, I should write non-fiction.
I don’t agree with everything Madeleine L’Engle wrote, but she always makes me think.