Timothy's Thoughts

We don’t always get to choose how the Lord blesses us. In fact, many times we pray asking for something and never receive what we ask, but when we sit back and let him choose, it can be fun to watch him work. A few days ago, I donated some money to Lifeword through our church. I won’t tell you how much, but it had a couple of zeros in it. I wrote the check, kind of figured they needed the money more than I did and sent it on its way. I never expected to get it back, but a few days after I wrote that check my employer gave me a bonus for some work I had done earlier in the year. The bonus was the exact amount that I gave to Lifeword. Sometimes the Lord blesses us and we don’t see it so clearly, but it’s nice when he shows us in such an obvious way. I could have gone years without missing that money. I didn’t need the bonus, though it isn’t unwelcome. I have been doubly blessed. I was blessed by being able to support an organization like Lifeword and I was blessed by God handing the mone...

This week’s theme has been theme. In fiction, theme is where we make our claim that we want to prove or disprove, but it isn’t the same as with non-fiction. Going back to the tithing theme of earlier in the week, if I were to write a non-fiction piece in support of tithing, I would probably state my claim then back it up with Bible verses and real life examples. In fiction, we must be much more subtle. We don’t want this: “I don’t believe in tithing,” he told his pastor. “Then you’re robbing God,” the old preacher said. “Malachi 3:8 says, Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed Me! But ye say, ‘Wherein have we robbed Thee?’ In tithes and offerings. ” It gets the point across and it may even sound like a real life conversation, but it comes across as corny fiction. It doesn’t help that a novel is probably not the best place to talk about tithing, but if we wanted to do so we should craft a story that leads the reader to draw the conclusion that we ought to tithe rather than picking up ...

Robert Liparulo’s House of Dark Shadows is the story of a family that moves from L.A. to a small town. They move into a house that just isn’t right. Sounds don’t always come from the right places. People enter one room and come out another. The linen closet connects to locker 119 at school. Doorways in a hidden hallway lead to exciting adventures in far-off places in different time periods. The target reading level for this book appears to be fifth or sixth grade. Let’s start with the good stuff. The premise is great, obviously, and provides an example of what Christian Fantasy should be aiming for. What kid wouldn’t want to live in a house where the linen closest transports him to school, and then to have the ability to travel through time? Excellent! The theme for the book is something along the lines of tell the truth or face the consequences . We see this in that the father lies to his family to get them to move to the strange house and the boys are secretive about exploring the h...

One of the common complaints about Christian novels is that they tend to be didactic or preachy. The critics are somewhat justified in making this statement, since there are plenty of examples, even among the more popular Christian authors. Someone is bound to say, “they haven’t read Christian fiction recently.” That may be true, but it is a problem that we should try to avoid. I would say that the solution is to “show, don’t tell”, but that phrase is overused. Didactic writing happens when we try to convince people of a theme without providing the required supporting evidence. Usually, this happens with themes other than the main theme. If we feel obligated to put the plan of salvation in every book, it is likely to come across as preachy unless it is the main theme. No matter how important a theme is, if we don’t have room to handle it properly, it should be left out. The author of one of my favorite books included some chapters that I wish she had left out and I often skip over them...

Some authors don’t know the theme of their novel until after they have finished writing it. It can be helpful to know the theme as you write because it will guide you through the writing process. Scenes that don’t support or oppose the theme in some way can usually be eliminated without hurting the novel and doing so often helps. If we know the theme, early in the novel we need to state the theme. We don’t do something as blatant as saying, “My theme is good conquers evil.” Instead, we do something offhand. We don’t even have our protagonist state the theme. In a classic hero/villain story, we wouldn’t want to have the hero tell the villain, “you can’t win because good conquers evil.” Instead we might have a friend of the hero talking about a mean person at work. “No matter how badly she treats me, I going to treat her good, because good overcomes bad.” Then in the rest of the book we will go about proving that statement, mostly through the interaction between the hero and villain, rat...

I’ve talked about theme before. Yesterday, I listed many different Christian themes. We can think of those as Super-themes rather than an actual theme you will find in a novel. A theme in a novel is like a statement that we have set out to prove. In Christian fiction, we must approach it with a Christian world view, but that has more to do with the conclusion than what it does with the theme. Our theme statement can be either a statement in support of a Christian world view or the converse. Picking one of the themes from yesterday, let’s look at an example. Tithing. There’s a topic we don’t see much in Christian novels (probably for a good reason). What kind of theme statement might we have in support of tithing? Pulling a line from many sermons on the subject, we could say, “The Lord blesses those who tithe.” The converse is something like, “There’s no reason for Christians to tithe.” Creating the theme statement is the easy part. The difficult part is how we cover the topic in a no...

Christian Literature is often defined as writing that deals with Christian Themes and incorporates a Christian World View. So what are the Christian Themes? I came up with 101 of them. There are bound to be more and there is much disagreement, even among Christians, about what the Bible teaches about many of these. 1. Salvation 2. End Times 3. Marriage 4. True Love 5. Redemption 6. Return and Forgiveness 7. Stewardship 8. Obedience 9. Faith 10. Reap What You Sow 11. Wasteful Living 12. Husband Love Wife 13. Wives Submit 14. Church and Government 15. Prayer 16. Sin 17. The New Christian 18. Temptation 19. Lust 20. Church Attendance 21. Christian Service 22. Respect of Persons 23. Racism 24. Good Over Evil 25. Church Perpetuity 26. False Religion 27. Angels 28. Suffering 29. Dating 30. Tithing 31. Bible Study 32. The Workplace 33. Spiritual Warfare 34. Abortion 35. Love Thy Neighbor 36. The Bride of Christ 37. Church Discipline 38. Discipleship 39. Church Fights 40. Prophecy 41. Worship ...