God's Story in Fiction
How the secular world tends to write the spiritual
I’m usually pretty ticked with how Hollywood tends to portray God, the afterlife, and Christianity in general.
God is usually wrathful or absent, if He’s even mentioned. The afterlife is always very heaven and hell, angels and demons, like in Supernatural or Good Omens. But even in The Good Place, when they try to reason it away with morals and ethics, they can’t quite figure it out. Check out this blog from my archives for my full thoughts on the afterlife system set up in this show. Christians tend to be either super cheesy like in How to Save a Life or God’s Not Dead 17, or they’re super critical like in Easy A.
But believe it or not, this blog post is not intended just to complain. Its purpose is two-fold. One is to tell Christians that we need to step up and make some better content out there that properly represents us and our God! C.S. Lewis once said “the world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature.” Let’s not leave the telling of our stories to secular Hollywood. Let’s enter the game ourselves and show the excellent work that God calls each of us to do.
The second purpose is to let you know that thanks to my good friend, Shaneen, I found a piece of secular fiction out there that actually does a good job of representing Christianity. Midnight Mass, a Netflix show from producer Mike Flanagan, shows many different real facets of the Christian walk, and I highly recommend it. I will warn you that it is rated TV-MA for violence and gore, so you’re probably going to have to be a bit of a horror fan to get some true enjoyment out of it. But most horror movies and shows fall into the typical tropes of judgy nuns and hypocritical churches, and this one doesn’t really do that. There is one judgy character, but I think we can all agree that those people do exist in reality as well.
The show also includes characters like a boy who grew up in the faith and then left it because he had dealt with some real hardships in his life. There’s a Muslim character who is fighting for the same religious freedom the Christians are fighting for. There are plenty of average church-going folk just trying to do the right thing. There’s a pastor who admits that he doesn’t know everything and that he also wrestles with sin. There are religious people who aren’t afraid to point out when the church is doing something it shouldn’t be doing.
The whole show was a whirlwind to take in, and in my finale debrief conversation with Shaneen, she rightfully pointed out that there were many different portrayals of faith throughout the seven episodes, and while not all of them were positive, they were honest. She loved that viewers are able to see what good could come out of a relationship with God, but also what can happen when religion gets corrupted. And I think that is so important to remember. Walking with God is not always a walk in the park. Christians are not always perfect. We are not always hypocritical like some fiction portrays, but we are always sinners in need of a Savior. And I think this show did a great job representing that.
I’m interested to know your thoughts, so feel free to leave comments or replies of some of your favorite Christian depictions in fiction, and some of the cringey ones as well. It’s sometimes fun to laugh at some of the ways the secular and even the Christian world fails to properly represent the faith journey, but it’s also important to remember that we have a responsibility to lead people to Christ. We should take that seriously in the content we create and enjoy.
Personal note from Keela: this will be my last blog for a while, as my second kiddo is due at the end of this month! I will be taking some time away from blogging and podcasting and just focus on being a mom of two. My plan is to be back with regular posts in January, so be on the lookout for that. If something comes to mind that I feel the need to share before then, I’ll probably just make it available for paid subscribers, so be sure to upgrade if you’d like to see those. Otherwise, I’ll be back in a few months! Thanks for sticking around!