Fiction - Glenn Conjurske

Fiction

I have not read fiction for nearly thirty years. I gave it up when I was converted. This I did instinctively, not because I believed fiction was sinful, but because I had no more interest in it, any more than I had in major league baseball games. I had eternity before me, and perishing souls around me, and these engrossed my heart and my mind, and I instinctively gave myself to those things which were profitable to the ends for which I now lived. When the question of reading fiction has occasionally come up to me, I have stood against it. What profit is there in it? Christ prays, “Sanctify them through thy truth.” (John 17:17). We are not sanctified by fiction, but truth. This is argument enough for me. “Time for eternity” is my motto, and I cannot spend my precious time in anything which does not forward the ends for which I live.

In recent days, however, I have been led to a train of thought which has persuaded me that fiction is not only without profit to the life of godliness, but that it is positively harmful. I have a daughter who is now 21 years old. She never went to school a day in her life, but was taught (mostly informally) at home. She knew the alphabet when she turned one, could read a large vocabulary of words when she turned two, could read sentences when she turned three, could read the King James Bible well when she was five, and has been devouring the substantial biographies and missionary books which fill my bookshelves since she was seven. She has never read fiction. We have none in the house (not by design, at any rate), and, with the possible exception of a few small pieces which may have slipped by me, I have not allowed her to have it. But her long acquaintance with truth has given her a capacity to recognize fantasy when she sees it. I recently bought a book which I supposed was historical and factual. My daughter immediately delved into it, as she usually does my new acquisitions. After reading a while, she informed me that she thought it was fiction. I asked her why she thought so, and she told me that everything happened at the right time, and everything turned out right.

She did not learn this by reading fiction, but by reading truth. You might suppose that I taught her these things, but this is not so. The fact is, she taught them to me. I must confess that I was at first amazed that a young girl who has never read fiction could so easily spot it, and give such cogent reasons for it. But perhaps I should not have been. I was once told of a course which teaches people to recognize counterfeit money, in which the students are never shown a counterfeit bill. (And since writing this I have had opportunity to question a friend, who is a bank executive, about it, and he confirmed the truth of it.) A thorough knowledge of the true enables them to spot the false at once. And I really suppose that if I had given my daughter a mixed diet of fact and fiction, she would never have had such an ability to tell them apart. A small matter, you say? Not so, for a person who cannot tell truth from fiction in a book, cannot tell them apart in life, and this is a serious matter. But more on that anon.

As I pondered over the reasons which my daughter gave me for believing the book to be fiction, my mind went back to a book I had read years ago. I had bought it from a Christian publisher, assuming that it was a historical account, nor was there anything in title, preface, or introduction, to indicate otherwise. But when I read the book, I was left with the feeling that it was likely untrue, and for the same two reasons (now that I think about it) which my daughter assigned: everything happened at the right time, and turned out perfect. The lad’s faithful dog, who had been confined at home miles away, arrived at the precise moment when the wolf (in the deep woods, in the dark night!) was about to spring upon the boy. The dog, of course, conquered the wolf. All of the boy’s extremely wicked brothers were converted, and too easily, at that. As I pondered all of this, it dawned upon me that this is the general character of fiction. This is indeed the characteristic which removes fiction from the realm of the commonplace, and makes it attractive. The too dark picture, as if by the touch of a fairy’s wand, is transformed into a picture which is too bright—-and they all live happily ever after. This is not reality, but fantasy.

Well, what of it? What harm is there in it? A great deal of harm, for these fantasies give their readers a false view of life, and fill them with expectations which in all probability will never be realized. Life as it really is is replaced in their minds by a dream world which does not exist, and thus their souls are filled with discontent and disillusionment, such as unfit them for the sober realities of life. An old proverb affirms, “Too much hope deceives,” and this is strictly true. We are all prone enough to spend our lives dreaming and pining for the perfect circumstances, instead of buckling down to work where we are, and overcoming in the circumstances which we have. To feed and strengthen that propensity by reading fantasies is detrimental, and therefore wrong. “Too much hope” does indeed deceive, and one of the things which is true in fiction is that it does give “too much hope.”

This, as hinted above, is one of the main elements that raises fiction above the level of the commonplace, and makes it attractive, and this it is which makes it addictive to many. It feeds their natural (and understandable) longings for “paradise restored,” and leads them to expect it here and now, where it never shall be, in the midst of this groaning, travailing, sin-cursed earth. Fiction is thus as addictive as sugar. Offer a “sugar fiend” celery sticks or roast beef, and it fails to excite them. They want something sweet! Offer a fiction addict a solid biography, and it fails to interest him. There is little or nothing in it to feed his cravings for Wonderland. Such folks don’t want commonplace reality. They have “too much hope,” and therefore too much disappointment, and they need fantasies to feed their false hopes. We would not pretend, of course, that all readers of fiction will come to this. We only point out that this is its natural tendency.

But some will question whether it is possible to have “too much hope”—-what with all of the great and precious promises of God in the Bible. With a God who has promised to give us the desires of our hearts, to withhold no good thing from us, to freely give us all things—-with a God who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think—-is it possible to have “too much hope”? Yes, verily. We can have too much hope, and a good deal too much. We cannot have too much hope for heaven, but we can have a good deal too much of it for this life—-and fiction does not deal with heaven—-for no amount of faith can bring heaven to earth, nor transform earth into a fantasy-land, nor make the things of earth always to come out right, nor make any of them to come out right without cost and labor, nor obliterate the fact of death, nor the fact of life that “we who are in this tabernacle do groan,” nor remove the thorns from the roses, nor make the things of this earth rosy. But these fictions are rose colored glasses, which not only undermine faith by bringing it to disillusionment at the last, but undermine it in its very essence in the mean time, and that precisely by giving it “too much hope.” Faith is not a fairy’s wand, to transplant us from this sin-cursed, groaning, travailing earth to Utopia. By faith we do not escape from adversities and hardships and privations and disappointments, but overcome while we dwell in the midst of them. By faith we are made more than conquerors “IN all these things”—-IN “tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, and sword.” But the fantasies of fiction do not leave us “in all these things,” but clean escaped from them. Another old proverb says, “We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed,” and while this is certainly too cynical, it has some truth in it, and a good deal more truth than most fiction.

But some there are who will decry indeed the polluting fiction of the world, but yet contend for Christian fiction. But in the particular point which I am addressing at present, the Christian fiction is so much the worse than the worldly. Secular fiction may paint us a Utopian picture, and likely made Utopian by the pleasures of sin, but there it stops. Christian fiction paints the same Utopian picture, only unstained by sin, and then deliberately and of purpose attributes this Utopia to God and to faith—-a thing which secular fiction is innocent of—-and thus in its very essence and purpose destroys the doctrine and the life of faith.

But it may be legitimately asked, Does not God sometimes make things to come out just right? Yea, does he not sometimes work wonders and miracles to secure it? To be sure he does—-but not after the manner of fiction. For first, God’s wonders are not spread like falling leaves, but come like comets and eclipses. If they came every time folks wished—-yea, prayed—-for them, they would cease to be wonders. This is not only the doctrine of universal human experience, but also the doctrine of Scripture. “Many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land, but unto none of them was Elijah sent, but only unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” (Luke 4:25-27, Greek). God can raise the dead also, yea, he has done so—-once or twice, perhaps, to every thousand years of human history. God can stop the sun in the heavens also, and has done that also, a time or two in six thousand years.

What then? Can faith secure no wonders from the hand of God? To be sure it can, only observe, 1.those wonders are not to be secured lightly or easily or commonly; and 2.nor any nor all of those wonders will ever secure exemption from the groaning and travailing of the life in this tabernacle on this earth, nor secure for us a Utopian existence here below. Faith or no faith, “In the world ye shall have tribulation.” (John 16:33). Strong faith or weak faith, “Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.” (Job 5:7). Tribulation, persecution, hardship, disappointment, toil, and distress—-and God has no purpose to deliver us from these things here and now. By the evident working of the hand of God, Jacob received his long-lost and beloved Joseph back to his bosom, but only after languishing many years without him. And long ere this the same Jacob received the dream of his heart in his beloved Rachel—-but what toils and sufferings and swindlings must he endure to receive her, and for all that she was soon taken from him again. And after his entire pilgrimage of faith, he must yet say, “Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been.” (Gen. 47:9). The Utopian rest and enjoyment which all of our hearts so crave is neither here nor now, but reserved for us in heaven. So far as earth is concerned, “No rose without a thorn.” “No sunshine but hath some shadow.” “Wherever a man dwell, he shall be sure to have a thorn-bush near his door.” These old proverbs are the very truth, though it is hard truth to learn, and all of us are too prone to hope and dream and labor to secure our Utopian rest here below. But faith cannot give it to us, for God will not give it to us. It is God who has planted the thorn-bushes on earth, and he it is who plants them near our doors. That which conducts us into a wonderland of rest and pleasure on the earth is not faith, but, in one word—-fiction.

Some will of course object that all fiction is not of that character, or at least, that it need not be. Grant it, and you do not gain much. Suppose you can find some fiction which actually paints a true picture of life as it really is on this sin-cursed earth, and what will be the worth of it? Even leaving spiritual considerations out of the question, what is the value of that which is untrue? We learn wisdom from that which has been, but not from that which has been imagined. As the proverbs say, “History repeats itself,” and “What has been may be.” From facts which we know to be such, we draw encouragement, wisdom, and circumspection—-but if the man exists who can draw these things from imaginations, which he knows to be such, I confess he has a constitution which I do not understand.

Many, of course, will justify Christian fiction on the basis of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, or even the parables of Christ, but this is grasping at straws. Bunyan’s work, and the parables of Christ, are not fiction, but truth, though it be under the form of an allegory—-and these really have nothing in common with the fiction which floods the Christian market today. Yea, Aesop’s fables, though heathen, are of more value than Christian fiction, for they delineate truth and reality, and not fairy-land fantasies and impossible imaginations.

I conclude thus: those who understand truth and reality, and are immune to the influence of fictional imaginations, have no reason to indulge themselves in fiction, unless it be for mere recreation, and those who are committed to higher things will have no time to spare for that. Those who are likely to be influenced by fictional views had better by all means leave fiction alone.

Glenn Conjursk