Have you ever thought of your main character as a herald of the christian faith -and thought of the impact he could have on the readers ? the kind of person one would admire, a kind of "advertisement" for christianity ? I mean, someone who overtly holds christian beliefs (and not only a mere reflection of them like in the Lord of the Ring), and struggles to keep up to them. Have you ever tried to have this "christian hero" who could become a classic reference and arise christian sympathies among the readers? I am thinking about the ideal of the christian knight, for instance.

When one admires someone a lot, what if he happens to learn that this person is a christian ? Wouldn't it change the image the reader might have of christianity, and refresh his vision of it ; and in his desire to look like the hero he admires, he might also try to draw closer to christianity. At the beginning to be like the hero, and then to find God ?

I know this might sound a bit "tricky", but this is what Jesus and Paul asked of all christians : to be exemplary, so that people would glorify their Father in Heaven through them. But as many fictional "champions" of the Good only behave christianly without claiming christianity as his faith (not to speak of heroes who happen to live in worlds where there is no christianity at all!) then his "fans" don't make the link with christianity.

How do you deal with this issue in your story ? In what way are your characters heralds of the christian faith -or not ? If your hero is meant to be a herald of the christian faith, how does he evolves, and how does he distinguish himself from other morally good people around him, who do not believe in Christ -without being PERFECT ?

Sometimes I am afraid my hero may fight a fight which many atheist or agnostics cannot understand -some lack of indulgence here, some very stiff principle there (against something which is not supposed to be immoral for a non christian)....How do you handle this in your stories ?

Sort of like a paladin, then? My current project's heroine is an actual paladin, but I don't use Christianity explicitly in my stories, and I don't really plan to in my stories.

If I did though, I would be very, very careful. It would be entirely too easily to poorly represent Christianity, or misrepresent it, which is why I personally don't. Writing my genres makes working Christianity an explicit part nearly impossible and would probably end up cheapening the story rather than strengthening it.

The key would to have a three dimensional character. Anything less will make this nearly impossible. Living as a Christian is very complex, contradictory, and challenging. That makes writing it the same way. A character would need to as alive as a flesh and blood person to truly portray this.

The reason why would also have to be clearly explained, and theology as well. It would be dangerous to simply have the character acting that way without a reason why. It would be real least to assume hey acted that way because they were a hero and heroes are Good People. That is typically my assumption as well.

I would make the story character driven, I think. Focusing too much in plot wouldn't give enough room to effectively portray Christianity. The hero would be fairly ordinary, I think. The struggle would be internally coming to grips with issues and then trying to love them externally.

Hat would probably be how I end up approaching it. Perhaps I overthought it, but I tend to do that.

My own problem with this comes down to what I'm struggling about with how my stories fit into God right now. It's so hard to tell what to do. About things like this.

But I think Varon is entirely right in that if the character ends up a perfect goody-goody, no one will like him and it won't help anything.

Yet at the same time, I've read books where a certain character is very, very good, and yet I love him so much. You can do it right.

In Crime and Punishment, you could say that Sonya was a champion of Christianity. She was Christian, and she was a heroine. She was portrayed as the good person... very good... rather an ideal, the person the MC looked to for help and for a guide to goodness; and yet I never felt she was less of a person, less human because of it.

I think the way she was in that story was beautiful. And she did all the things, I think, that you are talking about: admirable, overtly Christian, desirable to imitate, looked up to by the characters in the book.

Of course, there is also the fact that she was a prostitute. * odd smile * But – yes, well, that's sort of a different issue altogether. And I don't think she would have been less human to me if she hadn't been, if she had been more... more innocent. I think her character itself was enough to make her human.

I'm still working through my thoughts on this, but I believe that even to champion goodness without championing God directly is viable.

I don't know.... It's just that, God is all good, and good, true goodness, only comes from God. Nothing else on earth, no religion, no human, nothing, has goodness like his. When you create a good story, that holds up good things, it can be good to a person. Music can be good. Or a poem about trees. Or about love. I think whether you have an explicit idea of religion and theology in a story has to do with what story you are telling, and what you need it to do....

As I said, though, don't try and hold me to what I'm saying here, because I'm in the middle of trying to work it out right now. * thoughtful frown *

Thank you both for your answers



Precisely, if all that is good comes from God, how could anything taking place in a world without the God we know be considered as good ? That should be a problem for atheists : if there is no God, nothing absolute and above them, then how could good or evil exist ? The natural result of atheism is total nihilism ; Yet most of atheists refuse to admit this, and believe there could be absolute good without any God...In my sense, this is self-delusion.

But as christian writers, we know things are not this way, and that morality without God would have no value at all -it would simply not exist, or only as a social invention. Therefore how could our heroes evolve in goodness in worlds without the God we know (or at least one of His avatar)? There would be no difference with non-christian fantasy. A hero known to be a Christian would stand for good and against evil, because they hold a theological charge for him, and his fight against evil becomes holy and much more powerful.
Thus the reader would understand that he is not only a "good guy" who wants to have a good conscience or a naive farmboy (I voluntarily caricature) who goes on a journey only because he has been told to by an obscure prophet. Therefore I believe a christian hero -or a hero moved by a holy conception of morality- could be the only one to thoroughly justify his choosing to follow goodness.

Ans Yes, Varon, I agree with you it would be risky to hold a representation of christianity at the end of your pen, and of course a christian character is all the more fascinating because of his complexity ; but I think it is Worth it. I am only afraid that a secular reader would not be able to "follow" him (or wouldn't do it).

It's unfortunate that so many people don't give a single chance to christianity Most of them only skip when they see the label "christian". That's not cool, because christian people read atheist works and novels all the same...

Great thoughts, guys! I agree with you all that it is very important to keep a strong Christian character from being perfect, and to make them complex, human, and flawed. I like how you put it, Varon:


One thing that struck me about Sonya, and also Alexey/Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov, was how silent they were. They didn't have all the answers. It was the non-Christian characters - Raskolnikov, Ivan - who had the long philosophical tirades. Sonya and Alyosha sat and listened and loved. Yes, they did occasionally offer answers; but they didn't have it All Figured Out. You know? And that made it much more believable and...not sure how to put this...pleasant?...to me. In other words, it wasn't annoying.

Also, Sonya was very humble, which helps a lot in such cases.

Now, I don't think I've ever had, or even seen, a conversation about religion with a non-Christian, so take everything I'm about to say with a grain of salt...but from my own experiences of people who are anti-Christian on the Internet, it seems that there are three main things that turn them off from Christianity. (I'm sure there are others, but this is my general perception). 1) strict rules; 2) illusions, deception - they think Christians are purposefully fooling themselves and not facing the truth; 3) the arrogance of many Christians. The sad thing is that, as far as I believe, true Christianity is exactly not those things. We don't have strict rules; we have grace. There are rules, yes, but our whole attitude towards them is, hopefully, very different from what our attitude would be towards hard-and-fast rules that you must follow if you are to be saved. We shouldn't be deceiving ourselves, we should love the truth - Jesus is the way and the truth and the life, and to quote a different author all truth is God's truth. And most of all, we should not be arrogant!

But I think it's easy as believers to fall into those patterns of legalism, deception, and arrogance. It's so much easier to just follow rules than to regularly bare your heart to the Lord and ask for forgiveness. It's so much easier to hide yourself from threatening worldviews and ideas instead of facing them and figuring out the truth and what's really going on. (Please note that I don't have a problem with staying away from anti-Christian ideas, etc. to a certain extent, especially when you're young! The point is that it's easy to fall into a pattern of just staying safe with all the nice Christian ideas that you want to believe.) And it's so easy to get proud when you compare yourself with unbelievers...So honestly I can't really blame those non-Christians for thinking true Christianity is that way, unfortunately...but this is really beside the point...

Anyways, so in my novel, I'm trying to have a strong Christian character who is very much not legalistic, self-deceiving, and arrogant, specifically to react against these misconceptions of true Christianity. But most of all, I am trying to make him flawed. Because I think that's ultimately what Christianity is all about - flawed people and things and institutions and ideas being redeemed and transformed by God and used for His great purposes. And I think that's one of the parts of Christianity that non-Christians often miss, and one of the parts that's (as far as I know) unique among the religions of the world.

Okay, that was a very long rant. But the main point is that I think it may be helpful to see what common misconceptions there are about Christianity, and what kinds of things turn people off, and then specifically confront them. That's what I'm trying to do in my novel, at least, even though I doubt any non-Christians will ever end up reading it...


The question of how to show that somebody's a Christian is particularly tricky in a fantasy world, where "Christianity", "the Bible" and "God" may go by different names! In my case, I'm hoping to make it clear by what my character believes and practices. I might also throw some Scripture in there, but I'm not sure.


Hehe, I like this idea. Introduce and develop a really noble, admirable character, get your reader really invested in him, then reveal the fact that he's a Christian. But I always love it when authors catch me off guard, so of course I would like that... Honestly, depending on how you do it, I think some readers would be really annoyed, but others (perhaps more open and honest readers?) would stop and think and be intrigued. But I think many readers would just be annoyed. Like you might be if you were reading a novel with a really wonderful, admirable hero, and then he suddenly turned out to be a secular humanist...


As I mentioned earlier, I would try to focus on stuff like redemption and grace and whatnot, but I do get nervous sometimes that I'm too liberal about this stuff and avoid the law too much whenever I feel that I'm speaking to a potentially non-Christian audience...I think, though, that if the main focus is on grace but then you have the occasional moment of firmness, of strong adherence to a law that many people would think is too strict, maybe you could pull it off. I don't know. If your character is really admirable and has really gotten into your readers, then hopefully they will be honest and open enough to wonder about those bits they didn't understand, those bits where that character seemed too strict...I think many readers will just think, "Well, he's usually a great guy but he has his weak moments where he's too strict," but perhaps other readers will really ponder it. I don't know, honestly. And as I mentioned earlier I think I may be too afraid of offending somebody. Jesus certainly didn't have qualms about offending people!


Well, most Christians read atheistic literature all the same... But I agree that it is unfortunate that so many people just reject Christianity even without investigating it. It is a reminder to me that no matter how firm I may be in my beliefs, I should fairly consider other people's religions. I may be sure that they're wrong, but I should give them a fair investigation anyways, because that's what I want others to do with Christianity.

I wouldn't use the anti-Christian commenters and posters on the internet as the norm for what turns people awy from Christianity. From conversations with good friends of mine who are not Christian, some of the biggest things I noticed they seemed to dislike the most is that what an individual wants is no longer of much importance, nor is what they enjoy. Being in America, the loss of total individual freedom seems to be horrifying. The other is the idea that if God is good, why does he contine to allow injustice and evil to exist?

That's interesting. Yeah, different groups and cultures will certainly have different issues with Christianity...in the Muslim country where I live, for instance, I don't think people worry much about the problem of evil...even though I do, and as you mentioned Americans might. So in end, I think that if you're writing to a particular group and you want to have a strong Christian character, it may be helpful to look at what turns that particular group off so you can address that in particular. An ideal representation of Christianity would be able to answer any objections, simply because Christianity itself can handle those objections. But we can't write perfectly and deal with them all, so we might as well address the ones important to our audience. That's my feeling, at least.

Yess, that is a very good thought. I didn't realize that. But it made a big difference, yes, to know that there were so many things she didn't know and understand.

Though I think Razumikhin had a tirade or two, and I still like him. * grins * Maybe it was because he was pretty incoherent and drunk at least one of the times.... He didn't know everything, though, anyway. He was just good.

Reading some of your discussion here has actually encouraged me to rethink one of the main characters in one of the stories I'm writing. It never occurred to me to give him an edge, yet that just might be the thing he needs to be a realistic character. No one is perfect, and I certainly want to show what a realistic Christian looks like. Someone who has been redeemed only by God's grace, and continues to work out his salvation in a world that is falling apart, but not within the idea that he has somehow obtained this idealistic perfection. How I'm going to do this...I'm not totally sure, but I have some ideas. I just want the story to bring God as much glory as possible, and Lord willing, it will do so.