Christian writers: food for thought
So this is a topic I’ve been wrestling with sharing for a year and a half now because I didn’t want it to seem like I was enforcing a personal conviction upon people, but the more I thought about this, the more it became clear that this may not be a personal conviction at all. So this is why I’m sharing the story behind why I write the way I do. First, here are the things I avoid writing:
Creating worlds not set on Earth where God is either an allegory, not an allegory, or not mentioned at all.
Creating inhuman beings that aren’t the ones that God created, like aliens, mermaids, etc.
Power systems that don’t say God provided the power.
These three things are something that I’ve actually written in the past when I was trying to see how I could incorporate God in my work. After all, writers like C.S. Lewis and Tolkien did it, and other people online said it was okay too, so I followed the crowd. But as I wrote these stories, something felt so very off. So off I couldn’t ignore it.
I would think deeply about the mortality of the fantasy creatures I created. They weren’t human, which means they weren’t made from the dust of the earth, so they couldn’t die like a human (Genesis 2:7, Ecclesiastes 3:20). They weren’t spiritual beings, so that meant they weren’t immortal in that way. If they did somehow die, which wouldn’t make sense because death comes from the sin of Adam and affects only beings made from the earth: animals and humans (Romans 8:20–22), would they just cease to exist? But that conflicted with the fact that God has never made living beings, no matter how evil, cease to exist (Matthew 25:46). I also wrestled with the fact that they couldn’t become like Christ because only humans who come from Adam can become like Him (1 Corinthians 15:22), so that meant I couldn’t show the growth that comes from being in Christ. That tied into the world not set on Earth.
Was I implying God made a different Adam and Eve situation somewhere? Even though that made no sense at all because Adam was the first man (1 Corinthians 15:45, Romans 5:12), and when looking at the Bible, we see that everything is Earth-centric. God will even be dwelling with man on Earth in eternity (Revelation 21:1–3). So I couldn’t reconcile that with a world set in the far reaches of the galaxy or in a whole different dimension. I also didn’t like calling God by another name, either. I wondered how people would know that my story was about God? How could my story give God the glory and honor if people didn’t even know it was about Him?
And when it came to the power systems, any power that isn’t from God never comes from a neutral source, so that would mean I’d be promoting sorcery (Deuteronomy 18:10–12). I also thought about the real-world editing going on. People who want to alter what marriage really is, what gender really is, what life really is, who God really is, and much more. It’s clearly wrong to change what God made when that change is because we don’t like or aren’t satisfied with what God created, so why would it be any different in a fictional world?
So with a lot of this in mind, I went back to the drawing board. That led me to a blog post that said to just have God be God, even in a fantasy setting, and that’s when everything started to click.
I created Neverafter, an enchanted hidden side of Earth, fueled by and made by the one true God. In it, I can honor what He made and showcase His amazing, impossible abilities like making cotton candy fields, blue moons, and clouds that can actually be walked upon. This way, I can give God glory through the natural and the supernatural. I don’t have to put God’s abilities in a box or pretend they don’t exist. I can unleash what I imagine eternity will be like: a world where God can show us His impossible miracles daily.
And through the vessels that God made, humans, I can show how He grants impossible powers to His children that allow them to sprout wings to be like a fairy, and change legs to a fish tail to be like a mermaid, and still stay fully human. That way, my characters can be sanctified, and they can be an example of how God fully equips us to do His will. Also, the Christians in this enchanted earth worship God, not a false god that is supposedly God with a different name.
By doing things this way, I’ve made something that complements God’s creation instead of something that is so far removed from what He made that it takes the glory away from Him. And that’s something that I don’t want to ever do. I want to exercise my dominion over Earth respectfully (Genesis 1:28), and that can only be done by making sure, even in my imagination, my ideas are submitted to Him (2 Corinthians 10:5).
You might be saying that this is crazy because it’s just a story. But for someone in Christ, someone who is truly of God, it’s never just a story. Those who claim God’s name are called toward a higher purpose. Our gifts, our talents, must be used to point people to Christ and build up the body of Christ (1 Peter 4:10–11, 1 Corinthians 12:7, 1 Corinthians 14:12). They aren’t tools for the glory of man; they are tools for glorifying God. And God made an amazing world and gave us amazing things that we can use as a canvas for what we make for Him, not for our ego or the world, Him.
With all of that said, you may disagree with my conclusions, and I may be wrong; I’m not God after all, but what I’m not wrong about is telling you to glorify God as much as you can with your God-given gifts (1 Corinthians 10:31, Colossians 3:23–24). So my questions to you are:
Are you making work that honors God, or is it honoring yourself?
Are you thinking about the legacy you are leaving behind through your work?
What do the changes you’ve made to God’s creation in your work point to? You or God?
Do you care about what God thinks about what you make at all?
Do you care more about the temporary accolades than the eternal ones?
If any of those answers point more toward the world than Him, repent and pray to God. He will guide you to exactly what you need to be writing and doing because He wants to get the glory through you, and He wants you to be like Christ.
