Is God A Novelist? How Fiction Can Awaken Us To Spiritual Truth

Don't you feel guilty?" a man in the audience demanded. "For writing fiction about the Holy Bible? You might lead people astray! They might think things happened the way you say they did."

"No, I don't feel guilty," I answered, "and I'll tell you why. There are four Gospels in the Bible, each different from the others, the Gospel of John dramatically so. Each Gospel was written for a different community and each writer emphasizes what is meaningful to his listeners. In that respect the Gospels are much more like novels than strict historical accounts."

Ergo (I did not say) God sanctions fiction writing or, if the Bible is God's Holy Writ, then perhaps God is a novelist. Things had gotten out of hand. I was busy trying to pacify everyone, and thinking about the shot of whiskey I would throw back as soon as the event was over. When the crowd dispersed, my husband could not resist a parting bit of provocation.

"Have you read the novel?" He held out "The Passion of Mary Magdalen" , a book nearly as big as a Bible with a very naked Magdalen on the cover.

"No!" the man recoiled. "I never read fiction!"

I encountered hostility to fiction in other quarters as well. What I might call New Age fundamentalists eyed me balefully. They channeled Mary Magdalen or knew someone who did, and I had (once again) gotten the facts wrong. Someone recently wrote me to wanting to know if I acknowledged the historic (if esoteric) "truth" that Mary Magdalen and Mary Baker Eddy were Jesus's lovers.

"I'm a fiction writer." I gave my all-purpose response, thinking what a hell of a novel that could make.

I grew up reading C.S. Lewis' "Chronicles of Narnia," which contain elements of Christian allegory but first and foremost are riveting stories, as are Lewis's lesser known novels for adults. Reading is perhaps too mild a word. I lived in them. I dreamed them. Whenever I opened a closet door, I half expected and fully hoped to find myself in Narnia. Children (and adults) today must feel that way about the world of Harry Potter.

What good fiction does whether it's a Bible story, a fairytale, a popular children's serie, or a detective thriller (think of Stieg Larsson's Lisbet Salander) is to invite the reader to identify with a flawed human being (like us) who faces harrowing choices and odds. Discernment is not always easy, as J.R.R. Tolkien noted, "All that glitters is not gold." Heroes as diverse as King David and Frodo confront temptation and find their way back to grace. Sometimes like Jesus, (and like Harry Potter!) they must submit to death. Though many stories turn on the struggle between good and evil, fiction also makes it possible to see from the point of view of an enemy or of a person or group that is despised or misperceived.

Jesus himself taught through stories, parables that spoke to the conditions and challenged the assumptions of his listeners. The spiritual truths he gave us still compel and confound us, because he is the central character of what some call "the greatest story ever told." I was once asked why I would want to tell that story again. After pointing out that I was not telling his story but hers, I answered more seriously: Because it is a great story. And the great stories always need to be told again -- and again.

It is through such stories that we learn courage, ingenuity, honesty, endurance and compassion. If a story awakens in us those virtues then that story, fiction or fact, cannot mislead us. That story embodies truth. It is holy writ.

 

Follow Elizabeth Cunningham on Twitter: www.twitter.com/eliznmaeve

Comments

[az0th]

11:14 AM on 09/29/2011

"...In that respect the Gospels are much more like novels than strict historical accounts."

Exactly. The evangelists weren't biographers or historians in the post-enlightenment sense we understand: their statements can't be tested by reference to other historians, or to neutral events external to the gospels themselves.

'Gospels' use a unique literary style called 'midrash'. They didn't begin by spreading out all the 'facts' in order to tell an objective story. They started out with a set of theological _beliefs_ about Jesus and fitted their narratives into those beliefs, not the other way around.

In other words, they didn't start with a 'straight' version of Jesus' life and death and were somehow astonished at how it mirrored Old Testament prophecy. They started out with the _assumption_ that their story had parallels in the OT, and suspended 'truth' in order to force the gospel narratives to conform to OT prophecy. It's a technique that's the reverse of realistic.

[Joseph Schmoe]

11:06 PM on 09/27/2011

I'll take J.K. Rowling or Douglas Adams any day over the clowns who wrote The Bible.
Salman Rushdie, even.

[douglassmyth]

12:25 PM on 09/27/2011

You don't have to prove there is a god, or isn't one, as some of the above commenters appear to demand. What Ms. Cunningham is asserting is that stories, if they are well told, can also reveal truths, even if they are fiction. Many who have read Cunningham's series: the Maeve Chronicles (fourth and last one coming out in November) sense the truth in her fiction. Only a literalist would demand that they be historically true: they're historically accurate, and read as if they could be true, because they are well told, and because they reveal much about our own world, although they are set in the first century.

Her point, with which I agree, is that fiction has a truth of its own, which is different from scientific or historical truth, and it can teach, often more effectively than dry as dust "facts."

[Trydecency]

11:24 AM on 09/27/2011

It isn't necessary to believe in mythical gods or tree fairies to explain the universe. Such beliefs are very harmful to humanity, as history shows. God is merely a projection of a father figure or a tribal leader, a crutch for people who are unable to deal with simple reality. Instead of defending such childish beliefs, writers should point out the liberating nature of people taking responsibility for their own lives.

[Jelle NL]

04:06 PM on 09/26/2011

Question: Is God a Novelist? -- Answer: Let's POSTPONE the question whether or not holy books, like the Tripitaka, the Gospel or the Qur’an, are novels like "Odyssey", "Gulestan" or "War and Peace". Just start reading and later ask: What did I learn? -- Books are not "holy" or "classic" because of their origin, but because of their impact.

[whirlpool]

03:35 PM on 09/26/2011

God is not a novelist because god did not write anything. Some authors wrote about what they thought was god. The Bible is an anthology that contains some parables, a little history, some poetry, some legalism but mostly fiction. It is full of literary archetypes that appear throughout the history of literature in fiction and mythology in particular. Of course fiction and poetry can awaken us to truth of a metaphorical nature. If I want to know about god, I go to the poetry of Rilke or the fiction of Steinbeck.

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

03:13 PM on 09/26/2011

OMG, if only we could get those evangelicals worry about the problems of modernism!

[annedyth]

02:17 PM on 09/26/2011

I liked this article! And I heartily agree with the author, Good fiction can teach, too!