Welcome to the Australasian Christian Writers Tuesday Book Chat, where we encourage book lovers to answer our bookish question of the week.
Today’s question is:
Should Christians read fiction? Why … or why not?
We look forward to hearing your thoughts. Please join in the conversation in a comment on this post or in a comment on the blog post shared in our Australasian Christian Writers Facebook Group. Or, if you’re feeling wordy (like me), write a blog post and link to it in the comments.
Let’s chat!
And don’t forget: if you’d like to participate in our weekly Book Chat by posting the question and your answer on your blog, drop us an email via our Contact page and we’ll send you the list of questions for 2019.
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Iola Goulton is a New Zealand book reviewer, freelance editor, and author, writing contemporary Christian romance with a Kiwi twist. Iola lives in the beautiful Bay of Plenty in New Zealand (not far from Hobbiton) with her husband, two teenagers and one cat.
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Published by Iola Goulton @iolagoulton
Iola Goulton is a New Zealand book reviewer, freelance editor, and author, writing contemporary Christian romance with a Kiwi twist. Iola lives in the beautiful Bay of Plenty in New Zealand (not far from Hobbiton) with her husband, two teenagers and one cat.
View more posts
I can’t see a reason why not. We start reading or being read to as babies in most cases and they are fiction books and we continue through school and then continue as adults. In Sunday School we are given fiction books for prizes. I can’t see a reason why not to read clean fiction. I find reading an escape. If reading fiction was wrong then so would watching anything but news, sport and documentaries on TV. The same with watching most movies.
Great point about TV and the movies. If novels are bad, most TV shows and movies are worse. (But I think novels are good, so the TV addicts can relax.)
I love fiction. I write junior fiction. And as long as it doesn’t wrestle with or change the Lord’s standards, why not? In fact, I include light Christian themes in my books.
Great! I think it’s especially important for us to have children’s fiction with Christian themes, because we need children to be open to God and how else are non-Christian children going to hear about Him?
Hi Iola, I’m yet to hear or read a convincing theological argument to justify why reading Christian fiction is unedifying. That said, there are obviously circumstances where a particular story or genre of Christian fiction that may not be inspiring or encouraging or edifying for some readers. I think reading fiction can be compared to eating chocolate. In small doses it’s divine, but if you spent all day every day eating a whole lot of chocolate, there may be undesirable consequences.
I love the chocolate analogy! I’m going to remember that one.
Think about the parables in the Bible. Jesus used stories to get people to understand what He was trying to say. Sometimes it’s much easier for us to understand something and take it on board when we see how it looks for someone else – be that a true story or fiction. Identifying with the characters help us to put things in perspective or find new ways of looking at things.
I agree! You also make a good point about identifying with the characters. It’s often easier to identify with a fictional character than with real-life people, so it can show us new ways of looking at things.