People despise ‘preachy’ stories. ‘Christian’ books (the genre, including its endemic heresy and superficiality) get a bad rap for putting the message so far ahead of the story that the story might as well not be there, for writing bad sermons veiled in just enough clichés to stay in the fiction section¹. Modern Hollywood, meanwhile, has seemingly made it a mission to push an agenda with every story they put out, mixing it with a dollop of (occasionally enjoyable) visual stimulation, using story as a garnish rather than a foundation. As a result, many complaints have been made; among these, one particular longing has been expressed: the desire for a story with no message. This desire is nonsense (as we’ll see in a moment), but it is a response to a legitimate issue, to a very real imbalance between theology (which is what ‘Christian’ books and Hollywood movies are both pushing as their message, when we get down to brass tacks) and story (what they’re both ostensibly trying to sell, at least in theory). What, then, is the right relationship between the story and the theology, the narrative and the theme, the internals of the story and its reflexive impact² upon the world? As will become clear, this isn’t the right question to ask.

First, let’s set aside the possibility of a story without a message. Stories by their very nature ooze theology. Stories show us a world, and in showing us that world, they imply or say something about the nature of our world. In every place where the story is not intentionally different from our world, it present a thesis, because in every place where it does not intentionally differ, it implies its world corresponds to ours. A story which uses logical progression implies that our world lives in logical progression, and a story which posits dragons does not imply our world contains dragons³. Thus, even the purest action flick, full of the most mindless ideas, presents a worldview, if not a particularly thoughtful one. Theology, meanwhile, encompasses worldview; your view of God determines your view of the world (Rom. 1:18-23). Thus, if a story presents a worldview, it implies a causative view of God, a theology. Because stories present worldviews, they imply theologies. You can’t avoid message in a story; all you can do is neglect to know what message you’re putting in.

Since a story must have some theological through-put, the question becomes one of which comes first, the story or the theology. Unfortunately, the answer really isn’t as clear cut as ‘Choose Option A, Discard Option B.’ After all, if we go for the inverse of the ‘no message’ solution (‘no story’), we don’t have a story, the purest form of absurdity, given that writing a story was the original goal. If we wanted to write non-narrative theology, we’d just write a commentary or a book on systematic theology. The gradient between the two extremes, though, is vast, and it doesn’t even encompass all of the options. The following are a few of the more plausible choices:

• Enough story to convey the theology and no more
• Enough theology to keep the story from accidentally conveying bad theology
• Story with the intent of conveying a specific theological truth
• Story with the side-effect of conveying a specific theological truth

Before I discard all of these ostensible options as answers to the wrong question, though, let’s consider the difference between the theology of books like Calvin’s Institutes and that of stories (like The Hidden Hand⁴). The first type presents primarily propositional truth; the second deals more often in applied theology. Books of theology, in other words, speak towards the mind through the mind, digressing sometimes to the heart only as a secondary method. Stories, meanwhile, present theology as lived out in a world which is, ideally, theologically correspondent to our own; they teach by example, through vicarious experience. This difference will become important in a moment.

Because we know that the elements are respectively integral and consequent, the question is really, ‘How do we make these two elements coincide most beneficially for our overall purpose?’ (That purpose being to ‘glorify God and enjoy him forever’⁵). How do we make the best stories? How do we teach theology most effectively? Remember the above paragraph about story’s approach to truth. We don’t have a chicken-or-egg situation here; neither one needs to come first. They are cooperative, not adversarial. The story and the message need to come together in harmony.

When they are imbalanced, the imbalance hurts both: bad stories make bad themes (theology), and bad themes make bad stories. A poorly constructed story, no matter how correct it is in its propositional assertions, presents a false view of reality. Your stereotypical ‘Christian’ movie might get the theology right (for a change), but too often the theology inhabits a world utterly divorced from reality, lacking in nuance, human complexity⁶, and possibly even coherence. The applied theology, in other words, is very badly applied; the story’s vicarious experience is so far diverged from reality as to be misleading. Very often the justification for this failure is the propositional truth the story was supposed to convey, but that justification is absurd. The story paid lip service to truths, yes, but failed to carry them out. God’s truth, after all, is pervasive, and a story which presents the propositions but fails to apply them is on the same path as a pastor who preaches beautifully on Exodus 20, then spends the cheque so earned on hookers and blow. In plain terms, it’s hypocrisy, doctrine without practice⁷.

Bad theology, meanwhile, has a degenerative effect on story. Don’t get me wrong; pagan man can create impressive art. Stories like Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, and The Tell-Tale Heart⁸ were written by unregenerate men. Even Hawthorne’s hatred of God’s law, as seen in The Scarlet Letter, did not destroy its artistry (any more than the propositional truth some ‘Christian’ movies contain is defiled by their artistic poverty). Can it truly be argued, though, that these stories (or at least, the stories their authors would have written instead) would not be improved by a closer correspondence to the law of God, on a moral and an artistic level? Surely a decrease in the story’s lies regarding God is always a benefit to its artistry.

In a more modern context, bad theology has had a marked impact on modern storytelling. Nowadays, heroes are all too often praised for doing evil, villains derided for doing good. In one recent TV show⁹, for instance, the heroes are implicitly praised (by the narrative) for attempting to murder an ally who has done them no harm, whose worst crime at the time was looking bad on camera. Unfortunately, the moral compass of the story did not permit this moral turpitude to be condemned, and the story became lesser as a result (albeit it had no very high position even before the incident).

The author’s goal, therefore, should be to write a story wherein the theme supports the story, where the story creates the theme by a demonstration of applied theology. Stories like The Hobbit are a masterclass in this. While hardly overt, the moral question of greed for power and for wealth is a perpetual specter in the story, worked out in different ways and with different endings by the varying characters, from Smaug to Thorin to Thranduil to Bilbo himself. The story does not bend to fit an artificial theme into itself; instead, it works out theology in all its lineaments. The end result is a story full of wisdom, which teaches as a story should: by example. It’s a goal we can all strive towards, in our lives as well as our stories.

God bless.

Footnotes

1 – To be honest, I expect a good number of them merit the ‘fiction’ designation for their theology more than their story.

2 – Check out this article for a fuller understanding of what I mean by ‘reflexive impact’. Go to this paragraph for the direct reference

3 – Some stories do actually posit the reality of dragons, generally by using ‘dragon’ to refer to what pop science terms ‘dinosaurs’. Others posit dragons only in a theological, symbolic sense, as per Revelation 12. The point, however, should be clear enough, given out current dearth of giant, flying, fire-breathing reptiles.

4 – The Hidden Hand by E.D.E.N. Southworth is an excellent novel first published in 1859, set in pre-Civil War Virginia. It’s been re-published by Lamplighter Publishing and can be found here.

5 – Citation: The Westminster Shorter Catechism here, question one.

6 – Sonder (Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, page 20): “The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own….”

7 – In other words, orthodoxy without orthopraxy, a surefire recipe for a dead church.

8 – Melville, Hawthorne, and Poe respectively (and in descending order of length).

9 – Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I haven’t watched it and never intend to, but I have reviewed several in-depth analyses. The ‘attempted murder’ in the story lies not in the intent of the characters but in the fact that they exercise lethal force, demonstrating that, despite not having a positive desire to kill, they have no qualms about doing so. I find the term is justified, but an argument could be made for the much less snappy condemnation regarding assault with a deadly weapon against a fellow soldier upon insufficient grounds. See this video if you’re curious about the specifics.