One of the hardest admissions we face is to say to God or someone who knows us, “I have sinned.” Few like admitting it. Even fewer will do something about it.
And it’s no wonder. Too often in Christian churches and circles, everyone avoids the image of a sinner in favor of a perfect saint. Sins transform into human faults in an effort to rationalize soul-destroying errors. The saved fear confessing what God already knows: I’ve failed, I’ve messed up, I’ve sinned.
It is this image of “we’ve got it together” that we all want to project because we fear that admitting the truth will mean we aren’t as saved as we claim to be. Afraid of backsliding, or losing holiness, or others knowing the truth and thinking less of us, we pay more attention to making the image pure and clean than we do our lives, and in so doing, hide our sins. Sometimes, even from ourselves.
Having come from an evangelical group, I have first hand knowledge of this tendency. Regular revivals brought an evangelist who occasionally would preach a salvation message. Was that for me? The saved? Nah. I’m not like that sinner over there. I’m forgiven; I don’t need to deal with what God has said would sever me from Him, others, and His creation. But in truth? We should all have gone forward at the altar call and asked forgiveness for the wrongs we’d done.
Most of the time, the denomination I was a part of put on a happy face and did their best to cover up problems, scandals, or anything that would make the group appear anything but shiny and clean. And individual Christians followed suit.
It’s no wonder that among Christian fiction, the trend is also to create protagonists who rarely, if ever, sin. As authors, if we write characters who sin, we’re afraid people won’t think we’re Christian either. To protect our image, we use such Christian fiction to create true fantasy worlds where we and the readers can live vicariously through the perfect Christian protagonist. Such a world rivals even the wildest fantasy novels and is pure escapism–in a negative way.
St. Seraphim of Sarov, a Russian monk in the later part of the nineteenth century, said, “Save yourself, and thousands around you will be saved.” He didn’t literally mean to save yourself as in “apart from the grace of Christ.” He was talking about dealing with your own sins, though His grace. And in so doing, you would naturally become an example to those around you. They would see the gospel lived out in front of their eyes as God’s grace overcame your sins. Many a person has been saved by the simple testimony of a saint who remained faithful to Christ even when fed to the lions, or through various tortures by evil emperors and dictators. But even more when they see the change in a person transformed by God’s grace. That’s when the light shines from the housetops.
“But I’m already saved,” I can hear someone saying. Great. Now, what is God’s grace doing in your life now? None of us are perfect in how we conduct ourselves, no not one. There is always room for improvement. If you’re not allowing the light of God to shine in your dark places, and His grace to work in you to clean it up, people around you will fail to see the gospel lived out before their eyes.
The most powerful presentation of the gospel is to experience it through the life of another, to know the reality of sin, and experience through God’s grace, someone overcoming it. There are plenty of sermons to preach to us about repentance, but our stories should help the reader to experience that redemption, and through that, find their own.
But the only way that will happen is if we write characters who sin. Even Christians sin. Destructive sin. So should our characters, whether Christian or not. If they don’t, we rob our readers of the chance to experience repentance and redemption themselves–instead, enabling them to continue the facade that “I’m like this perfect Christian character.” No, to transform the reader, people’s heroes need to be those who overcome their own mistakes, blunders, and yes, sins. If your protagonist never struggles to overcome their sins, then neither will your reader.
Such Christian writers are increasing. Let’s hope there are readers who can get past judging characters who sin and the authors that write them, and let the reality of the gospel on display deal with the reality of their need to rest in real forgiveness and growth in grace day by day. Only in this way will the real power of the gospel be felt, both by the reader, and by others around that reader. And it might do the author some good as well.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
R. L. Copple writes fiction and science fiction, from flash to novels. Aside from his flash and short stories appearing in several magazines, he has written a novella and several novels, of which two have been published: Infinite Realities
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Hey thanks for this. I'm a recovering biblical studies student – writing fiction. I know I've paused and thought very hard about what I'm writing and if I would be embarrassed for people to see my flawed characters. I'm getting ready to start on a novel that pokes fun at Christianity from the inside and I'm hoping to capture the flaws and the beauty of real people. Thanks!
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As always, Rick, you display the wisdom of Solomon.
[...] That is, I’m a guest blogger at the blog, “Grasping For the Wind.” I wrote an article titled “A Little More Sin, Please.” Check it out. [...]
Thanks for commenting, Cid. You should find plenty to poke at, and hopefully in a redemptive way.
Steve Taylor the singer did a good job with that.
And apparently, Scott, I've moved up a good bit to get Solomon's position. Does that make me king now?
Insightful comments. Thanks for the encouragement to write “real” characters.
Actually, I think that we should right high-standard, role model characters that challenge readers to rise to that level. As someone who has loved reading for my whole life and is in the beginning stages of writing stories and books, I have always been more motivated to read books where the characters aren't all hopelessly flawed, and can strongly inspire me to be something more. Books where the protagonists (and all the characters for the that matter) start off and remain merely “striving” or “looking up” to a higher standard…well, I've often found them to be pretty bland and even overly predictable at times. I do enjoy novels where the character(s) start off quite flawed and improve to that higher standard, however. I get a lot more out of stories that show a possiblity to better myself rather than those where everyone is constantly demonstrating some form of wickedness – especially the ones (mostly in children's stories I uses to read) have characters becoming comfortable in their sin….
Anyways…I hope I haven't rambled too much….:D
Good points, Ian. I too don't want to read about flawed characters that remain flawed. Rather, I want to see them overcome those flaws and show the power of God's grace. But certainly not to show sin just to show sin.
It's a balancing act as well, because if the protagonist is all yuck, it will be hard to cheer him/her on. Hard to relate. Each of us has our strong points and weak points, and real characters should be the same. It's in how we deal with our weaknesses that shows our greatest strength, and often our ability to rely upon God. “In my weakness, He is strong.” For some reason, those are the stories that interest me and it reflects in my writing, generally. There are always exception.
Thanks for the comments.
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