I’ve been doing a lot of writing lately.  Most of it has been stuff at home working on a few fictional plots as well as doing some research.  But it’s really got me thinking about the nature of artistic expression and the glorification of God.

Sometimes, it’s easy for Christians to slip into the mode of saying, “I’m a Christian, therefore whatever I do automatically glorifies God” and then they produce absolute trash because they have no talent whatsoever.  We’re indoctrinated in our culture to think that results don’t matter (which is false), and we’re taught that God loves us unconditionally (which is true), and we synthesize the two and figure God will love us whether we do good or whether we just slap something together and call it “art glorifying to God.”

But why should God’s love give us cause to do our worst simply because we can get away with it?  Shouldn’t it spur us on to the best possible thing we could do instead?

I have spoken with some friends before as to why I don’t write for the Christian book industry.  Frankly, it’s because I’ve found most (not all) Christian writing to be horrendous.  Either it’s based off poor theology, or it’s not even entertaining.  The best selling series of Left Behind books are one example that manages to capture both hideous theology and talent that would make a drunk Dan Brown look like Hemmingway.

The Christian writing industry wants to have all books deal with perfect people in their perfect little worlds where everything has its perfect, happy little ending.  But the real world is much, much different.  People are flawed.  They sin.  They make mistakes.  They are evil.  The secular world just isn’t going to relate to someone who actually dares to go so far as to insult his neighbor one day and then becomes guilty because he sees his fluffy little puppy dog giving him a watery-eyed stare so that he is guilted into thinking he should buy his neighbor a steak dinner to recompense him.

Christians become afraid that if they write something “too worldly” they’ll be lambasted by other Christians.  Yet they’re terrified that their books will be so spiritual the non-Christians are going to lambast them as fundamentalists.  Better to just stick with the fluffy puppies instead of risking offense. 

No, wait.  For some reason, I just don’t think it’s glorifying to God to depict the world as HeavenLite(tm).  It’s not glorifying to God to pretend that this world of sin is really basically good after all.  It’s not glorifying to depict people as folks who don’t really need God, they just need a little push in the right direction, that inwardly they just need their moral compass tweaked a little.

Real is real.  And to depict what is real requires the bad news as well as the good news.  Moral decay is real, just as God’s redemptive love is real.  Sugar pills are placeboes, not the healing pill.

For some reason, I think trying to cure the disease by meeting people where they are at is more glorifying to God than pretending that those people don’t exist and the world is already fine and dandy.