Call of the Christian Author: Convey Truth in Story

You enter the Christian bookstore, surveying all the colorful spines in the novel section. Your finger glides along until a title catches your eye. You give the blurb a quick read and find an interesting concept, and so the book comes home with you. When you finally get home, you crack open the pages and begin the fresh adventure. The tension builds and then screeches to a halt, quickly dismantling the intrigue with a dense revelatory paragraph that feels forced. You brush past it since, after all, it made good points and perhaps the rest will be better. Quickly you discover that it does not. Every time the conflict tugs, the characters get a good sermon and immediately change their ways. These lessons never go deeper than the surface to reveal the root of the issue. The characters change their actions but never internalize why they even ought to do so. Thus, as you have maybe sensed while you read, they never truly learn anything. All of the messages seem targeted at you alone. You sigh and add it to the growing pile of preachy Christian narrative.

These types of books make many Christians, myself included, avoid the Christian section of the bookstore like the plague. They present characters who seem to grasp perfection in an instant, never wrestling with their sin and its consequences, or they just throw Jesus into a story that doesn’t truly explore biblical themes at all. Not all Christians authors do this though; you’ll find the gems like Andrew Peterson, S. D. Smith, Chuck Black, and of course the famous C. S. Lewis and Tolkien that masterfully convey truth through their works without compromising a story that’s entertaining to read. They did this not by ignoring biblical truths when writing, but by showing them through the themes their stories convey. Maybe theme is a ravine in the middle of your imagination whose depths you dare not tread, full of the implications English teachers seem to pull out of thin air, but theme isn’t as hard to understand as it seems. I hope that you’ll come to love theme or at least appreciate the heavy lifting it does as the backbone of every good story.

Preachy Vs. Woven Theme

The very put-down-able Christian novels may have a theme, but it’s presented through weak story—story that fails to reach the hearts of readers. Conveying theme through weak story is often referred to as “preaching”. There’s nothing wrong with preaching in most circumstances. After all, believers are called to preach the gospel to all nations (Matthew 28:19). Preaching is expository. Sermons from a pastor, Sunday school lessons, and expository books diving into Christian truths are places where preaching is acceptable and necessary. Narrative works, otherwise known as stories, are not. When a writer begins preaching in his book, he’s completely shifted gears into the realm of exposition. That’s why it’s often so jarring and almost deceptive. You picked up a story and got a sermon instead! Preaching is telling your work’s theme instead of letting it speak for itself. It breaks the prestigious “show, don’t tell” rule of writing. If you’ve done your job right, you shouldn’t have to shout your theme from the rooftops.

Aspiring writers of story must understand (and skillfully respect) the distinctions of expository and narrative. Expository writing explicitly explains how and why, while narrative exposes what, leaving how and why hidden away for readers to discover. Robbing readers of this discovery leaves them deeply disappointed and skimming (or even completely ignoring) the contrived lectures in discovery’s place. What was Lucy doing when she discovered Narnia in the wardrobe (C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe)? Narrative: how and why are implied through cause and effect. My first question could be rephrased as “How did Lucy discover Narnia?”, but the story doesn’t start with Lucy in Narnia and give a long exposé as to how she got there. It first shows Lucy exploring the house with her siblings, wandering into the wardrobe, finding there’s no back but instead a whole new snow-covered world; no other explanations needed (C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe).

Theme works in the same way, though on a larger scale. You get to show truth through what your characters believe, what their beliefs cause them to do, and what effects acting on their beliefs create. Readers are smart; they don’t need to be spoon-fed every answer. Let them work for the rich treasure of your theme.

The Bible’s narrative books (and even the symbolically rich elements of its expository books) wonderfully illustrates how to show, instead of tell, truth through true stories. The people of Israel grew tired of God’s provision of manna for their food and craved meat instead (Numbers 11:4-6). They were so dissatisfied with God’s miraculous bread from heaven that they wanted to go back to their slavery in Egypt in the name of cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic (Numbers 11:5)! Despite their ingratitude, the Lord provides the meat that the Israelites’ craved. He sent them quail in droves, enough that they were gathering quail all day, all night, and all the next day (Numbers 11:31-32). Then, the Lord punished those who grumbled about meat by striking them with a plague (Numbers 11:33). So many died because of the plague that they called the place Kibroth-hattaavah, which means graves of craving (Numbers 11:34). One of the things I think of is, “Boy, I really shouldn’t be complaining.” Did the story ever say don’t complain? No, but it’s rather clearthrough cause and effectthat God is not fond of whiners.

Wielding Theme Like a Champ

So how can you masterfully show your theme through cause and effect? It’s simpler than you’d think. Story is all about a character or characters overcoming some sort of conflict. Without those two elements, you’ve got no story. Naturally, your character is going to approach (or maybe run from) the conflict differently based on their beliefs. This is how theme is implicit. You as the writer need to know exactly how your character believes since it makes your story believable, but readers only need to see glimpses of it. This storytelling technique is called an experiment in living. Your characters live out what they believe through their actions. This is their cause.

A king with a terrible temper is going to lock a peasant that confronts in the dungeon, not get down on his knees and acknowledge the error of his ways. The readers can see that the king has this temper just from his tendency to lash out and rashly imprison people that upset him. In the moment, the readers don’t need to know the root of the king’s anger, but the writer does. Maybe the king’s been taking care of his infant child into the wee hours of the night and is running on zero sleep. Does the reader care that this doesn’t exactly excuse the king from taking responsibility? No, they want to see how he handles his baby enough to get some sleep and if he’ll actually release the peasant for wrongfully imprisoning him. Bam! See how I snuck the theme in there? The king has a choice: cling to his pretty valid excuse and dismiss the peasant secretly or actually recognize he’s in the wrong and apologize. Every action of the king—and your characters—should be driven by some underlying truth that will help him overcome the conflict; the story is built off what happens when they refuse to accept that truth.

Let’s say the king doesn’t want to embarrass himself and keeps the peasant in the dungeon. What repercussion would lead the reader to believe that the king can’t avoid taking responsibility? Well, you could strike him with a plague like God struck the Israelites, but that doesn’t exactly force the king to take responsibility in your story. However, the people could rise up in an outrage fueled by the peasant's imprisonment. The king’s probably been neglecting them too for a while, but that was the last straw. Who cares about his sleep deprivation? He can’t just lock people away for no reason. This is where effect comes in. It should be reasonable in the context of your story. You can’t bomb your Hallmark-style romance character’s house just because he lied, though that effect might fit perfectly into a spy thriller. The point is it’s got to make sense. If it doesn’t, it’ll throw your readers just as badly as preaching does. The second thing to remember is to base the effect around the truth you want to convey. It might make sense to blow up your character’s house in your spy thriller because the villain loves bombs, but what does that help your character learn about lying unless his lie is what led to their house getting bombed? So yes, make something horrible happen to your character because they won’t accept your theme, not just to make something terrible happen.

Sum Up

And there you have it. With a little practiceyou’llbe a master of showing theme through cause and effect. Dive deep into your character’s beliefs to discover how you can uproot them enough to change. People don’t change without struggle; neither do character s (or rather they shouldn’t ). Let your readers unpack your theme from the constant problems rejecting the truth cause s and eventually the success of accepting it (unless you’re writing a cautionary tale where the character fails to accept the truth and reaps the terrible consequences). Attentive reader s will sniff out the truth you’ve left for them . All you have to do is master cause and effect.