{"id":625,"date":"2008-04-10T15:11:46","date_gmt":"2008-04-10T15:11:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/10.131.168.108\/wordpress\/?p=625"},"modified":"2008-04-10T15:11:46","modified_gmt":"2008-04-10T15:11:46","slug":"625","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/2008\/04\/10\/625\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

My Perspective on Christian Fiction (hereafter called CF): <\/span>
<\/font>
Let me begin with two caveats.  First, keep in mind that I do sometimes read CF.  Honestly, Redeeming Love<\/span> by Rivers is one of my favorite books.  And I have read Kingsbury’s first Baxter series (all 5 books), and I cried when the mother died.  I have read other books that have been recommended or I’ve just picked up for a light read.  So I’m not opposed entirely, all the time.  Second, I am not accusing anyone who likes these books of being less spiritual, less thinking, less anything.  I’m not sharing these thoughts to put you down (if you like CF).  However, I do have my own opinions about this genre and here are my primary concerns:<\/p>\n

1. These books are not realistic.  Take Kingsbury’s Baxter family, for example.  How much can one family go through in five books: cancer, AIDS, 9\/11, premarital sex, cohabitation, affairs, adoption scandals, drug addiction, near-drowning, family crises, personal crises, and on and on and on…  Seriously, it just doesn’t happen like that. 
     Also, all the “bad” stuff all works out fine in the end.  Regardless of the family crisis, no one stays angry
\nor holds grudges. They forgive and move on.  The sister whose daughter is nearly drowned and suffers brain
\ndamage (Book 4) “really” struggles to reconnect with her role as mother
\nbut finds herself blooming into a tender-hearted woman who can even
\nlove her husband after he basically deserted them out of guilt. 
     And the “happy ending” is guaranteed, even if it takes a couple of books to come. Take the ending of Book #1 of the first Baxter
\nseries. It was so frustrating to me!  After struggling like a “good
\nwife” to reconcile with her wayward husband, he’s tragically (yet
\nconveniently) murdered at the end of the book, and two books later,
\nshe’s married to her first love whom she should’ve married after high
\nschool.  <\/p>\n

2. These books can be emotionally unhealthy.  Sometimes, CF novels are pretty much emotional porn for “good” women (sorry if that offends people).  It’s addicting, and we have to have the happy ending where “the girl waits patiently for her good, though slightly flawed man until through struggles and separation, they are finally united in eternal bliss”.  It’s escapist.  It’s shallow.  It makes us wish our husbands really did those kinds of things (when they don’t always) and really were those kinds of men (when no such man actually exists anywhere).  A more realistic story for Baxter book #1 would have been to watch the reconciled couple actually fight (for 4 more books) to have a marriage that was based on love and honored God.  Instead, the struggle was replaced with his murder and her eventual marriage to her “true” love.  And honestly, because they were so “perfect” for each other, the new couple wasn’t very interesting for much of the other books.  <\/p>\n

3.  The end result of #2 is that CF books are good for a light, mindless read.  You don’t have to worry about sex  (or other “bad” stuff) popping up, but neither do I get any glimpse into a real struggle.  “Happy ever after” doesn’t help me live this life; it gives me a place to escape from it.  And while that can sometimes be a good thing (I told you I do read the books sometimes), that is ALL that most Christian women read.  And they “live” vicariously through these, often historical, novels where men and women were exotic and strange and find themselves in some new and exciting circumstances every other chapter.  They are romanticized.  Everyone loves these books about the Amish communities, but my in-laws live very near some Amish, and they aren’t much like these books would suggest. It’s a false, shallow world where the stuff that happens in our lives doesn’t happen.  And exciting, romantic things happen instead.  <\/p>\n

4. And finally, call me a snob, but CF is not good literature.  The people you meet in CF aren’t really well-done characters who grow organically and change into better, more human people through suffering.  The plots are cheesy, driven by emotion instead of real action and the choices of the characters.  They try so hard to avoid all the “bad stuff” in secular novels that they become moralistic, and thus, most of them lack any real value<\/span>.  <\/p>\n

So that’s part of my problem with CF.   There are other issues I have (why would an unsaved person even want to be the kind of people described as “Christian” in those books most of the time?  Why would I, for that matter?), but that’s enough for now.  Feel free to respond.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Perspective on Christian Fiction (hereafter called CF): Let me begin with two caveats.  First, keep in mind that I do sometimes read CF.  Honestly, Redeeming Love by Rivers is one of my favorite books.  And I have read Kingsbury’s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}