“Girls aren’t very good at keeping maps in their brains,” said Edmund.
“That’s because we’ve got something in them,” replied Lucy.
Reading those lines from C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia is like eavesdropping on a conversation between bickering siblings that is typical in any culture across the world.
Lewis’s books captivate readers across countries and generations because they speak universal truth with beauty, wit, and warmth. For instance, at my children’s decidedly secular school, teachers celebrate Lewis and study him as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Narnia captures hearts with its vivid portrayal of sacrifice, redemption, and the triumph of good over evil.
Through exceptional yet simple storytelling, Lewis conveys his faith without spelling it out. He immerses his readers in a fantasy world where they stumble onto objective truth while empathising with the protagonists in the story.
Learn From Christian Writers
In an essay for The New York Times, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s To Be Said,” Lewis wrote, “Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to.
An obligation to feel can freeze feelings . . . But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency?”
Jesus’s parables resonated with the crowds that followed him.
By shifting theology from the staid pews of the church into the imaginary world of Narnia, Lewis conveys the “real potency” of the kingdom. His allegories conjure up emotions in a way that plain prose simply cannot.
As compared to C. S. Lewis, his friend and fellow professor at Oxford, J. R. R. Tolkien, seems to compartmentalise his faith and his fantasy writing in two clearly distinct categories. Readers of Tolkien’s iconic Lord of the Rings would likely be surprised to know that his faith informed his writing.
While Lord of the Rings does not read as a biblical allegory, scholars believe that Tolkien’s faith peeks through the story. As Tolkien himself shared in an interview, “I am a Christian and of course what I write will be from that essential viewpoint.”
Perhaps it is a little like the story of Esther in the Old Testament where there is no reference to God. But divine fingerprints are visible through the unfolding of events and the providence that is woven through the story.
Looking to Jesus
When it comes to storytelling, our role models are not just classic writers like Lewis and Tolkien but Jesus himself. He spoke powerful truths using everyday illustrations with which his listeners were familiar: farming, fishing, weddings, and tending to sheep, among others.
Jesus’s parables resonated with the crowds that followed him. They continue to unearth inexhaustible treasures that reveal the character of God and the condition of our hearts.
Being a Christian author does not mean you have to write faith-based or biblical content.
The image of the Jewish father who broke all customs by picking up his garment to run toward his prodigal son makes us marvel at God’s mercy. Consider the enormous debt of the unmerciful servant. It causes us to ponder on the scandal of grace. Or the door shutting with a thud on the five virgins without oil in their lamps. Think of how it warns us to be ready when the Bridegroom returns.
These stories lead us into vivid spaces, cause us to engage with different characters, and compel us to dive deeper into our hearts—while pointing to objective, inerrant, and eternal truth.
“Sub-creating” is an Act of Worship
As a Christian content creator, I have never considered how I could share the truth by appealing to the reader’s imagination. I always presumed that as a non-fiction writer, creative or imaginative writing simply was not my genre. But this is not about fiction versus non-fiction writing.
It is about Christian writers letting our hearts be so enthralled by the gospel that we convey the story with passion, tamed only by clarity in communication. Also, it is about being so keenly empathetic to the reader that we speak truth with dazzling beauty. We want to rescue the truth from what Lewis refers to as the paralysis of obligatory feelings.
As writers, God wants us to to be in the world but not of it.
If you are a Christian who writes fiction or fantasy, you may grapple with the question of how you can meld your faith and your craft when your work is not explicitly Christian.
But being a Christian author does not mean you have to write faith-based or biblical content.
In fact, Tolkien believed the highest calling of the Christian artist was to be a “sub-creator”—to create what he described as “secondary worlds” rather than limiting oneself to the “primary world” in which we live.
As image-bearers of God who are imbued with creativity, “sub-creating” is an act of worship.
Glorifying God, in Everything
Our primary calling is to glorify God in whatever we do, whether by eating, drinking, or writing stories which may not include Christian references but express a Christian worldview.
Recently, a friend of mine, a Christian writer in India, who is currently crafting her first romance novel shared her project with me. I could not help but cheer her on. Some may call it a “secular” endeavour. But I have little doubt that while the story she writes may not be explicitly Christian, it will be redemptive, beautiful, and sacred in its narrative arc and language.
As writers, God wants us to be in the world but not of it. This mission includes embracing genres, which are sometimes broken and sullied, to create redemptive stories that reveal compelling truth.
In a letter to a fan a few years before his death, Tolkien wrote that if there is any element of sanctity in an author’s work, this sanctity “does not come from him but through him.”
As Christian writers, our calling is to recognise that the light does not come from us. It simply shines through us. May we capture the imagination and attention of our readers through the sanctity and beauty of our creative gifts.
