All writing communicates certain qualities. Good writing causes the mind to question. It attracts attention through beautiful words and imagery. It invites the reader inward.
Bad writing accomplishes the opposite. The mind wanders off, if it pays attention at all. The writing glares with passive verbs, stock plot lines, and overdone or underdone characters. It repels the reader from the work.
Such a differentiation might not matter to all writers, but it should be of utmost importance to the believing writer. The believing writer never writes for herself alone but for God and others. Her words ring with excellence and her craft resounds with an attention toward refinement and continual learning.
Such a concern is not a trivial matter. How a believing writer delivers words affects public perception and reputation. A poorly written piece of fiction makes Christianity the laughingstock of the library and the publishing world. It could even cause readers to misunderstand what, exactly, the gospel is. An editorial filled with typos, faulty logic, and diatribe convinces no one of the worthiness of the believer’s viewpoint on controversial matters like marriage, racial inequality, and gender.
No, words must be employed carefully. Christian writing should stand with other great works of the literary world, not be relegated to some dusty corner for weak plot structures, awful metaphors, and refusals to grapple with reality. It should prompt readers to think about what’s beyond the tangible. It should declare, “There’s more to life than this!”
The fact that Christian writing far too often fails to draw people toward Christ is discouraging but not without hope. Hope remains. Believing writers can and should write better. They should study good writing and emulate it. They should meet with other writers and workshop their words.
These writers should pursue excellence because excellence is the standard. God calls his children to glorify him in all that they do, and for writers, that glorification looks a whole lot like hard work. It demands that writers avoid the typical plot line and try something new. It requires them to find concrete verbs and nouns to describe the abstract. Hard work asks writers to give more and more of themselves so that the words put God, and not the writer, on full display.
The hard work pays off. Writers like Tozer, Lewis, O’Connor, L’Engle, Tolkien, and David Brooks demonstrate that faith doesn’t have to be added to a work like sprinkles on top of a cupcake but can be deeply integrated. Faith like that? It welcomes readers to see the world from a lens they might not have considered before, the lens of faith and hope in the One who created and cares for this world and its people.
Image: Neil Conway (Creative Commons)