Christian Fiction and Theology

Last Monday, Mike Duran posted on Novel Rocket about having sound theology in Christian Fiction. It’s a thought provoking article that I’ve been mulling since. I can appreciate what he says, but at the same time, I have some reservations with his conclusion.

If Christian Fiction is going to continue to be different from mainstream fiction, then it needs to have a notable difference. To me, this difference should be the over abundance of bonnets and horse drawn carriages and sad lack of spaceships and science. To me, this should, above all, be sound theology.

Duran posits that no Biblical character’s life fully represents sound theology. He then cites King David, Jonah, Rahab, Judas, Sampson, and Peter as examples. But when I look at that list, I see a list of people who absolutely demonstrate sound theology in their lives. Can you take a snapshot of their life at any one point in time and get sin? Absolutely. But if you take another snapshot, you find repentance. Another reveals grace. Yet another reveals a return to God and renewed vigor for His kingdom, with the potential for great personal loss. This is sound theology – at least the only kind that matters in my mind. Do Christians (real or fictional) live in a manner that is worthy of their calling? Do we confess our sin? Do we repent? Do we seek to build our relationship with the Father, despite difficulty? (Even if the answer to the last is only sometimes – that goes back to confession and repentance.)

Should we expect a complete and final version of every theological point in our fiction? No, that’s mildly ridiculous. We haven’t all come to agree on that ourselves in two thousand years of the Church, why would our fictional characters suddenly have all the answers? But the indisputable precepts of theology – Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures. He was buried, raised, and ascended where He sits at the right hand of God. And if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us those sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. – those need to be there. They don’t have to be an overt alter call. They shouldn’t be sterile, plastic people who never have trouble and smile while singing tra-la-la all the day long (and I’ll admit, there are too many of those in Christian fiction). But they should be real people, trying to live out real faith and real theology in the middle of a real world with real problems. Will they mess up? Sure. But the difference between what a Christian does with sin and what a non-Christian does with it? That’s sound theology.