Let's say that I'm writing a novel (because I am). To what extent would you say that my Christian faith should influence my writing, and what should that influence look like?
There seems to be a crowd that would argue that if you aren't writing to, for example, explicitly further the gospel, then what do you think you're doing? That should be the only purpose, they'd say. I think most of us could probably agree that a lot of the Christian fiction that seems born out of that thinking is less than great. Words that come to my mind with that stuff would be cheesy, corny, etc.
If your answer is something along the lines of, "do it subtly," then what does subtly look like? This is probably a tough question to answer, so I'm just throwing it out there to see how people respond.
For example, a good portion of my novel was born out of some psychological stress and poor thinking habits I've been confronting in myself over the past year. I suppose you could say that, on one level, writing the novel has been therapeutic for me, and I'm sure now that one of the reasons I think it works is precisely because of that influence.
So, how "Christian" should my book, written by a Christian, be? It's a horror, btw, if that helps to elucidate the question.
There seems to be a crowd that would argue that if you aren't writing to, for example, explicitly further the gospel, then what do you think you're doing? That should be the only purpose, they'd say. I think most of us could probably agree that a lot of the Christian fiction that seems born out of that thinking is less than great. Words that come to my mind with that stuff would be cheesy, corny, etc.
If your answer is something along the lines of, "do it subtly," then what does subtly look like? This is probably a tough question to answer, so I'm just throwing it out there to see how people respond.
For example, a good portion of my novel was born out of some psychological stress and poor thinking habits I've been confronting in myself over the past year. I suppose you could say that, on one level, writing the novel has been therapeutic for me, and I'm sure now that one of the reasons I think it works is precisely because of that influence.
So, how "Christian" should my book, written by a Christian, be? It's a horror, btw, if that helps to elucidate the question.
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