My pastor and mentor, Larry, grimaced at me back in my early twenties. “Why do you like those scary movies and books? They’re disturbing, violent, and weird.”
I grinned at him. “Have you read the Bible?”
God got a hold of my life at the age of fourteen, and I dove in with everything I had, learning, growing. I couldn’t get enough.
I also loved speculative fiction. I read and watched horror, sci-fi, fantasy, superheroes, all of it. Novels, movies, stacks of comic books. I consumed it all.
Now, I love all kinds of stories, but I always felt drawn to the weird and dark ones. Today, as a pastor and author of epic and urban fantasy, I have studied writing, literature, and scripture, and I understand why.
The best of sci-fi and fantasy (even horror) does the same as all great literature – makes commentary on the human condition. Whether it was Verne with the Time Machine or Tolkien with the Lord of the Rings, these stories connect and endure because of universal questions of identity, humanity, or good and evil. Oh, there may be spaceships or dragons or serial killers, but at the heart, they tell us something about ourselves.
As I told my mentor, there are disturbing parts of the Bible that I didn’t learn about in Sunday School. Judah has sex with his daughter in law, who he thinks is a prostitute, and then she gets pregnant with a kid God used in Jesus’ lineage. And in Judges! We would love to forget the Levite who allows his concubine to get raped, and then when she dies, he cuts her into twelve pieces to motivate the other eleven tribes to go to war with the Tribe of Benjamin.
I could go on with stories from David or Lamentations and even the New Testament. They express an important truth. Life is sometimes tragic and violent and disturbing. Is God good in those moments? Can God redeem those stories and the people within them? He can and does. Christian literature, whatever the genre, should show the tragedy and the redemption.
C.S. Lewis said, “Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”
Jesus spoke in parables, stories to teach a point. Often, however, those stories only confused people. His disciples begged him to stop speaking in parables and rejoiced when he spoke clearly (John 16:29). Jesus didn’t speak in parables to fully express the truth but to start a conversation, to hide the truth and see who would dig further than a story into the God telling the Story. (Matthew 13:10-17)
Not to mention, God is a creative God. His people should be the most creative. Speculative fiction gives us new worlds, future technology, and impossible creatures. Sounds like our Father.
And here is where writing speculative fiction, at its best, comes in. Yes, it can entertain, but it should use that wild imagination to begin spiritual conversations. Who better than pastors and Christians to be creative and tell the types of stories that engage the culture?
Tips for Christian authors as they write speculative fiction:
- Learn the language. Like any missionary, know your audience. Read and learn to love the best of speculative fiction. Find your favorites and watch for themes and universal emotions.
- Be creative. Don’t copy other writers. Pray and wait for those original ideas that make people say, “I never thought of it that way before.”
- Kill your fears. Connect with human fears and flaws in your story. The best way to do this? Find what your greatest fear is, and write a story that kills that fear with the truth of faith, hope, and love.
- Be redemptive. It is more common to have stories in our culture from an amoral, nihilistic worldview. But if we believe we are created in the image of God, people long for stories of redemption, hope, and moral good. Tell those stories. And be ready for the conversation.
Peace.
MB Mooney has traveled and ministered all over the world. He writes fantasy and non-fiction, works for #CoffeeThatMatters, and pastors a church where he lives in Suwanee, GA with his amazing wife and three great kids.
