On truth, fiction and being a Christian writer

Christian Century, Dec 17, 1997 by James Calvin Schaap

And how is that done? Through complexity. What the very best writers--Christian and non-Christian--understand is that we are an odd fusion of failure and success; we're capable of becoming aces and asses all in the same afternoon. We have no greater capacity for chicanery than compassion, and we are fully capable of delivering one cleverly outfitted in the trappings of the other. We are, all of us, absolutely fascinating, and the only way to tell the truth about us is to tell it all. What Christian writers know is that even though we are indelibly affected by sin, we carry, amazingly enough, nothing less formidable than the very image of God.

I have an agenda--let there be no doubt. For me, at least, there is such a thing as Truth--not only about the Creator but also about us. I am not a preacher, but my job is still to bring something of the good news in a form peculiar to and consonant with my craft as a fiction writer. Somewhere, somehow, my faith has to tell, or I'm not sure it's faith at all. Believe the tale, after all, and not the teller.

For me, telling stories is a matter of telling the truth about being human, about the world we live in, and about another world we are promised in the name of our Lord. For me, like O'Connor, the truth is the gospel. I rather like the way the narrator of my most recent book says it. In this case, he speaks for me: "The blessing of the gospel, after all, is not simply happiness, but eternal joy, which comes from two humbling realizations: that our sin is real--and that it is gone.

That's the whole story, the real good news.

James Calvin Schaap is a professor of English at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa. His most recent work of fiction is The secrets of Barneveld Calvary.