A Christian Worldview of God, Day 3

I really enjoyed the Landon Snow tour we finished up yesterday. We had a great group of bloggers, and if you haven’t yet had a chance to read their posts, I encourage you to spend some of your down time over the weekend reading what they had to say.

Loving tours as I do and enjoying this one as much as any, I am still happy to get back to the topic of the day. As I said a week ago, this subject is my true passion and why I write fiction. The problem with Christian fiction in the latter part of the Twentieth Century, one of them anyway, was its intention to evangelize. Meaning, essentially, the stories intended to show someone being introduced to God and in the end entering into a relationship with Him. Not that evangelizing is a problem. Just that it made the stories repetitious and “agenda driven.” And because they showed God in one dimension.

Last Friday I posed this question:

What would it be like to focus on something besides meeting God?

I think fiction published by Evangelical Christian Publishing Association (ECPA) houses in these early years of the Twenty-first Century have been trying to answer that question. However, I think most authors have taken the tack of expanding subject matter rather than deepening the depiction of God.

Let’s show Christian characters struggling to do right for example. A worthy endeavor.

Or I’ll show a Christian character whose life, not his words, attracts someone—not to convert, but to show interest in God—leading the reader to believe there is hope for change. Again, a worthy endeavor.

But is that all we’ve got? I tend to think this last type in particular still has a one-dimensional God. He is still the rescuer, but just not so overt.

In the former, He still loves His own and will even discipline them, which shows another side of His character. A step in the right direction.

Maybe I’m spoiled as a fantasy writer. It seems to me the genre allows for so much more in depicting God.

What are contemporary or historical writers left with in showing the Unseen? Basically they must show God by showing how He affects others, by what others say about Him, by the actions others attribute to Him, by what others do who claim to follow Him. Anything else?

It’s not an easy row to hoe.