What do you dislike about Christian fiction stories?

My advice to you is to avoid the Narnia books after the first one. Avoid them like the plague.

Of course, don't you know anything about ALCHEMY?!- Twin clones of Ivan the Great

@Nadir: I think it works best in a Grey vs. Grey Morality setting. There are good guys and bad guys on every side, and everyone is flawed.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

@Nadir, that sounds interesting. Mind elaborating about your project?

@Night, well for one, if nothing else the movements I mentioned are unconcerned with the question of the existence of a supreme being. Feminism and Communism exist to provide solutions to real-life problems, whereas religion tends to concern itself with more otherworldly matters. This alone makes them very different.

And precisely which argument are you referring to? At no point did I say that there doesn't exist bad or preachy Feminist or Communist fiction. What I did do was point out that the example that De Marquis used to illustrate his point was flawed. He was trying to draw parallels between two very different kinds of things, religion and political ideology.

Given this, your statement about the argument you said I made not holding water is a non-sequitur.

yey

It's only a non-sequitur in your context if you willfully ignore the second sentence, which, incidentally, you have.

But then, it would also be a non-sequitur with a better level of analysis. The existence of a supreme being or lack thereof has gotten wrapped up in both belief systems; communism often denies the existence of supreme beings while many strands of modern neopaganism have strong feminist leanings and a few have suffered an outright feminist hijack. The "Christianity as a religion of female victimization" thing is more often seen in parody in the mainstream media, but it is a very real strain of thought.

The idea that religion and political ideology are different things is a difficult one to sustain in itself. Protestantism exists because Martin Luther's reform movement was adapted by the rulers of various European countries to serve their political agenda; modern Protestant strains can be easily classified based on how politically active they are. Today you will see many, many people whose political ideology is dictated or at least informed by their religious leanings on many levels of the spectrum. (I've seen some fascinating commentary, with various levels of hand-wringing depending on the source, that holds the Catholic ideals of equality in the brotherhood of the church and good works are directly responsible for the shift on gay rights in the last fifteen years. They tend to cite statistics on acceptance inside the RCC to illustrate.) Islam's great struggle in the modern era is how to cope with the fact it has lost most of the secular power it once had as both a religion and a government.

Indeed, your first assertion that religion concerns itself with "otherwordly matters" is a bald-faced lie; religion concerns itself with the same thing every other belief system does. "How shall we live?"

Nous restons ici.

No offense meant but this thread isn't to debate religion nor philosophy.

Make your hearth shine through the darkest night; let it transform hate into kindness, evil into justice, and loneliness into love.

Oh, not at all.

Basically, it's a mostly standard fantasy world, with elves and such in one country. The country is under a single Empire, which seeks to unite the people under one belief and pantheon. One race of humans, the monotheistic Christian analogues of this story, disagree with this and don't want their deity to be lobbed in as just another one of the "State-approved gods" and have started a sour little rebellion because of it, calling the other races to the same calling too. They raise the question of staying quiet vs. fighting for what you believe in (you can tell there's a lot of inspiration from the Talos conflict in Skyrim).

Then you have the country being invaded by another, completely unknown race, whose entire purpose being there is a holy mission to cause the apocalypse by the hand of their god. If they succeed, they're technically the "right" ones, but it may not be as simple as it seems.

Ah, yeah, you're right. You get to see the good and bad from both sides. I find that fiction like this paints the world a little bit too simply. The moral standards may be black and white, doesn't mean the people are.

edited 28th Mar '14 10:26:40 PM by Nadir

Working on a manga. With pictures! All feedback welcome!

Fallenlegend is right. This discussion is a tangent bordering on off-topic.

Religious war features prominently in the history of my work as well, though the question of what role religion has in a society where magic and the supernatural objectively exist is an interesting question that I plan to do a lot with.

Could you be an atheist in such a world? What would it even mean to be a god? Is a god a god simply because they can wield powerful magic? It would prompt a far closer examination of the topic than is called for in our own world, where these questions are primarily academic in nature rather than practical.

edited 29th Mar '14 12:52:15 AM by gault

yey

My two cents: make people of same group (religious or any other kind) different. Someone turns other cheek while other one calls him/her stupid for it. Someone is preachy, someone has lots of atheist and other religion friends and is ashamed by preach one. Stuff like that. Every group no matter how tight is made from different individuals.

Agreed. Christians can focus too much on the whole "we're perfect" deal, when technically we're meant to believe that our virtue is not even our own. And having only one type as your viewpoint is pretty unrealistic. Using OP's example of Avatar The Last Airbender, the characters were all colourful and had their own opinions of things. They were individuals. Even the main brother and sister were totally different from each other.

That's an interesting question. I'm going with a kind of Mages Association. It may seem that mages would be the ones who'd be more spiritual, but they're more or less the equivalent of scientists in fantasy in my case. I think magic and the supernatural existing without a doubt in a fantasy world makes it pretty much legit. It's the fact that the deities supposed to govern these forces are not observable that gets people worked up, which I think is true to a certain large extent in the real world as well. Atheists are still possible in a magical fantasy world because they can always just attribute magic to merely an extension of the physical world - without a deity as its source.

A world filled with magic and fantastic species is just their real world. The guys over there'd be wondering how we ever got through history not living with the stuff they did, having foregone fireballs and oliphaunt mounts for guns and tanks.

edited 29th Mar '14 3:39:22 AM by Nadir

Working on a manga. With pictures! All feedback welcome!

If I can add my opinion, it was probably said already, but it's imperative to avoid the white and black morality. For that matter, if any of those from the black end of the scale end up converted, they cannot be just simply pardoned for what they did. If, say, a murderer serving the bad guys finally breaks down and asks for forgiveness some of the "white" guys should be openly against an idea. Even if he gets a pardon, he shouldn't be suddenly found as trustworthy.

It might be also interesting to introduce not only a bad guy from "whites", but also a good one from "blacks", as in: someone who's simply a decent person that doesn't accept the beliefs of whites for most various of reasons, like arguably Gaius Petronius, for one example.

How do lizards fly?

Having just read the first post and skipped through reading the rest, I'll say this:

If I'm not mistaken, it was Madeline L' Engle who said "Bad art is bad theology."

Most "Christian" fiction these days is both. "Christian" whether it is official market-publishing stuff or even freebie for fun stuff like fan fiction, seems to fall into a "brand" mentality. "This is our BRAND. This is our TRIBE. These are our POLITICS." And the "Christian" brand - at least in modern times usually equates to "American Evangelical with right-leaning politics." It tends to be more concerned with preaching a message of "believe the right way, do the right things, blah, blah, blah, sermon, lesson" than in you know, being fiction, being ART.

I actually get the distinct feeling from the subset that controls the "Christian TM" brand not of people who are unimaginative, but people who have imaginations bent toward fear. It's an attitude of "No, we cannot be raw and real and show humans as humans really behave, we have to create Role Models. We must give the Moral Alternative. This push for squeaky clean heroes and situations strikes people as bland, and hokey - not unlike looking up some of the old deep in the Comics Code superhero comics where the superbeings are baking pies and playing baseball instead of punching Hitler in the face.

On the extreme other end of it, there seems to be "Christian" characters who get justified ("because they are forgiven") for absolutely everything. I've read about half of the "Left Behind" series, long ago before getting bored with it. If you want to see what most sane people think of that series, go to this beautiful, beautiful blog:http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/ (The blog belongs to a Christian, by the way... one who HATES LB and spends time dissecting every reason why). In LB... a lot of people cannot feel like the protagonists are in any way, "heroes." They're fatalistic, they turn down opportunities to help people. THE WORLD LITERALLY IS GOING TO HELL ALL AROUND THEM and all they care about is the next prophecy-fulfillment, the classy technology they're using, or making sure the newest convert to their party knows she's still a slut. I kind of got bored reading the series (which I stuck with as long as I did back when I was a good little conservo mostly for the explosions and gore - because I like explosions and Scenery Gorn ), because the writers have obviously been living in their little Evangelical bubble for so long that they don't seem to know how most humans and their emotions really work.

In short, both the squeeky and the "edgy" levels of modern Christian fiction tend to fall into a push to "teach lessons" rather than really let go and let the art happen. I mean, I'm the kind of writer who knows that I'm not completely in control my my work. The characters take the helm sometimes. Sometimes the plot starts steering itself. Most writers who are writing for a "brand," any brand, seem to feel a need to control, a fear of the plot asking questions and coming up with answers that may be off-the-script.

Additionally, with the Evangelical-brand dominating, there doesn't seem to be room for much else. I like to put spiritual themes in my fiction, but my themes tend to "ask questions rather than give answers." If I even so much as hint at something like "subjective Heaven" or "universal redemption" and other things, I, as a marginal-Christian / off-kilterist believe in/like to speculate on in a story I'd even think of sending to a literary agent who handles a lot of Christian fiction, I know it will be rejected. So I don't go for the Christian market. I go secular all the way, even as I fear some of the secular market might be offended at the borderline spiritual-stuff inherent in my fantasy. (A friend once compared me to L'Engle. I love him forever).

What about a Progressive Christian who doesn't think the scripture means what so many people think it means for LGBTQ people in modern times who wants to write a story about a Christian heroine who saves her people from dragons and happens to be a lesbian? A person writing something like this, likewise, is going to have to maybe tone down the spiritual stuff and go secular or self-publish.

Furthermore, I think there might be some of a "taking that the audience will be there for granted" into account for some of this stuff. Again, it's presented as the Moral Alternative. Positive religious characters, particularly devoutly Christian ones, are rare in mainstream film and television (and sometimes, even when they do show up, some of the more straight-laced don't particularly want to see space pirates curse in Chinese just because the preacher on their spaceship is a pretty cool guy). So, there's this very specific market that's hungry for stuff that honors them, but the fact that it's always been sizable means some people get lazy in their work. - I've been watching the "Bible Games" segments of The Angry Video Game Nerd and there's no more perfect illustration: Videogames made by people who obviously didn't give a dip about creating good gameplay, who mostly made mods of existing games and slapped some Bible trivia on it. It's like Wisdom Tree games was all "This is a guaranteed sell for those parents who are so scared of giving their kids those violent, secular videogames. Wolfienstien Goat-Mod Go!

So, there are what I think are the numerous problems with Christian fiction. If you wish to "write Christian" and avoid them, my advice to you is to not be afraid of Art. Let God be an untamed lion in regards to inspiration. Let your work ask questions. Don't try to fit it into a box and obsess over teaching all the "right" lessons. Get in touch with your emotions and the emotions of others - talk to people who don't share your worldview and get to know what and how they really think so that you might write for them, too, not just your own tiny circle, or God-forbid, pun definitely intended, for a market (that I expect to see die writhing) in my lifetime.

In which I attempt to be a writer.

Relevant: where-did-good-christian-fiction-go? "...If you look at the general best-selling fiction of today, it is often riddled with violence, inaccurate depictions of love, sex and cynicism. It’s not necessarily realist fiction but sensationalist, meager, sentimental and anxious. That is not to say Christian authors should put forth happy-go-lucky, positive and encouraging fiction, but good fiction. Fiction that is true. Fiction that reveals to its readers things they never knew about the world, themselves and their Creator."

edited 30th Mar '14 12:47:12 PM by demarquis

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

I get the overall feeling is that the "bad Christian fiction" of today is more a result of a general current problem of today where shallow literature sells more than good literature in many cases (of course, that isn't a rule set in stone, but it's a thing), and the good Christian fiction is buried underneath all the madness, madness and stupidity.

Because if we look at the past, many classics could be today labeled as "Christian fiction": The Divine Comedy could be considered an example, in that while it does criticize many members of the church, it still folows an overall set of "Christian themes" (like Heaven, as far as I remember, being an actually very pleasant place or the running theme of sin and compassion), so it's clear the concept of Christian fiction is not inherently bad.

I've also read a pretty entertaining book called "Angels and Soldiers" about a bunch of angels recruiting a bunch of teenagers with attitude to wage a Heavenly war against evil spirits. Would that be considered Christian fiction? Because it was pretty good.

edited 30th Mar '14 1:03:25 PM by Gaon

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

Gotta agree with some points there. I wouldn't say it boils down to the writers being lazy because the Christian readers are already on their side (and neither are you - I'm just pointing this out), but I think it could've formed a large part of some writers' mindsets.

That link ain't workin' for me. :[ But I agree with your points. There's so much Hollywood-esque stuff these days that it's easy for people to just eat it up and be satisfied. I think Christians have been pretty under-represented, and the ones that do break it into the mainstream are either too... well in a way, "safe", or can go the path of Left Behind as stated above. Our values have been reduced to stereotypes in the eyes of many people as simple religious elitism and angry moral guardians, when it's really quite far from what it's meant to be.

As said above, they're not really letting the work ask the big questions, things that many people want to know. I think it's been swept under the carpet simply because even if the writers knew the answers, presenting it is another challenge in itself. They'd rather play it safe rather than explore the implications, and I feel that makes for a big loss. Going deeper into issues like these gets into the core of humanity itself: why we believe what we believe in, and the question of "Why are we here? What is our ultimate destiny? What is my destiny?"

I think that because of the Christian fiction today, many people in turn get a bad picture of Christianity itself, and the blame goes on the source material, rather than poor representation. With the things that are going on today, people want answers to the big questions in life more than ever. I can't guarantee we the writers can give the answers, but we can't even begin to explore it if we don't even ask the questions.

I also think that a lot of Christian fiction (I speak ignorantly though) has pretty limited scope of only including the Christians, which is fine for a church newsletter or a really Christian-aimed book, but not for the rest of the world, who are left with not much. It's usually an adaptation of a Bible story, or a story of "Okay, we're the Christians, and we're gonna survive this." And I'm not saying those things are bad at all, but man - we don't really live in a vacuum. There's the whole world out there. What about their views, their perspective?

We believe that God created the world, but we're writing the whole world beyond us as a gigantic Elephant in the Living Room in favour of our little corner of Salvation. Things need to change.

And you can tell by my passionate wall-of-text posts so far, that I intend to be a contributor to that change. *sunglasses*

End of rant.

edited 30th Mar '14 2:31:09 PM by Nadir

Working on a manga. With pictures! All feedback welcome!

I would like to add to this. While a combination of youth and becoming weary of the world has shifted me from "Christian" to "agnostic, leaning towards deist", I still have a place in my heart for the teachings.

Bluntly, you want a good "Christian" story? Make a story with Christian themes. Redemption's always good, as is overcoming death by learning to accept that death is inevitable. One I haven't seen, really, is conversion through example, showing people to the light by being an example of what it should be. Resisting temptation, too.

If I was making a Christian fantasy story, though, I'd make it more confusing than just "There's God, and there's the Devil. Both have beings who work for them, end of line." More than that, I'd show the seductive appeal of ruling in hell, at least on the surface. As Mage the Awakening puts it, power attracts darkness, darkness attracts power. I'd also show that a thinker is required for real faith, because faith requires belief [i]with[/i] admittance you could be completely wrong. Ignorance is cowardice, not virtue.

Say, the whole plot is kicked off by a demon who has never known Heaven getting sick of Hell, only staying there because that's all he knows. Cue someone showing him pity...

What rises must fall, what falls may rise again.

Welp, I studied to write Christian Fiction in college.

1. Do your freaking research 2. don't be boring 3. Characters need depth 4. if you feel the need to write about a dull small town, at least give me a good sense of place 5. if you "aren't allowed" to have particular elements (violence, sex, swearing, married people holding separate bank accounts), don't even bother trying to write a story that requires them 6. have a non-christian beta reader if you'd like to appeal to non-Christians. Don't use Christian lingo.

Speaking as a someone who was born and raised as a Christian for 20 years.

Christian fiction are (most times) so, so, so, boring.

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

What I dislike it that they make all Christians look bad by association.

It's the reason there are so many stories where God Is Evil, and people Rage Against the Heavens.

Also got me thinking on something.

One Strip! One Strip!

If it's not too off-topic, I'm actually quite curious when the OP mentioned Avatar's effectiveness of communicating it's Buddhism-themed influences? How did they execute it? Is it because they weaved it into the world, and have great characters to boot?

Working on a manga. With pictures! All feedback welcome!

More or less.

"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."

From what few I've read, my biggest problem is the absolutely cardboard villains. The badguys are inevitably evil because they're not Christian ... and that's it. No depth, no exploration of why they would turn their back on it, not even self-justification for their actions. They either get killed easily ^note because "the pure fight with the strength of a hundred men" or similar nonsense or get insta-redemption and forgiven everything because the main character prays for them ^note thereby ignoring all of the very real harm they caused in pursuit of their villainy and never being even required to atone for it.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

No. God Is Evil is mostly due to how he is portrait in one work of fiction, The Bible. If a character drowns babies, punishes people for stuff others did and thinks women are second class humans, you can't be surprised if people see that character as evil.

That is totally not unnecessary, remember I asked no religion bashing. Your opinions are precious but the correct forum for those is the "on topic forum". This thread focus on literature not religion debates.

edited 1st Apr '14 12:03:03 PM by fallenlegend

Make your hearth shine through the darkest night; let it transform hate into kindness, evil into justice, and loneliness into love.

Indeed. This thread is "What do you not like about Christian Literature?" not "What do you not like about Christianity?" If your answer to the first question is "It's Christian.", you have nothing to contribute to this conversation.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I probably shouldn't have created the opening truthfully. It wasn't my intention, but I mentioned God Is Evil here in the first place.

Most of the advice here is good. I would like to add something....

But I can't think of any thing beyond the fact that I don't like it when the christians come off as Holier Than Thou. It's just been done already in fiction quite a bit. That's something to be avoided, unless your making a point of showing why it's wrong.

One Strip! One Strip!