Welcome to Marscast, a podcast from Mid-America Reform Seminary, where our faculty members address all things theological and cultural through a reformed lens. I'm your host, Jared Luchibor. In today's episode, Dr. Andrew Compton and Rob McKenzie continue their conversation on Rob's book, Seeker's Progress, exploring how storytelling can effectively convey theological truths, make them memorable, and address common faith questions. They'll touch on the challenges of publishing Christian fiction and the importance of encouraging Christians to read more. Take a listen. You've told us a little about writing stories, but tell us about how you see the benefits, the value of writing fiction, storytelling like this, for apologetics or for catechesis. Well, in one sense, narrative story writing is the it's it sticks to the ribs of your mind. It's easier putting it, you know, it's easier for people to draw back on something they've read that is a little bit dramatic in the narrative. One of one of the constant themes that I have through the book Is a Is a necessity for a substitutionary atonement. I think that is something that was kind of lost in the church and Once that was removed that that that's what has helped lead to a more Pagan as you're saying spiritual, you know pluralistic Because if Christ doesn't have to, if our sin doesn't have to be transferred and righteousness transferred back, then we can just flatten out the necessity of the gospel itself. And so we can be more acceptive of, or accepting of, any kind of what we might call religion, because we're all spiritual, right? So because I see that as a problem, I kind of wove it through the story. And it pops up, you know, first it kind of pops up in the interpreter's house. And so It's more of, well, this is the Interpreter's House, this is the foundational teaching. But then it starts popping up with seekers' questions that he's posing to different people. And I think there's, for me, climaxes with his talking to Professor Holdout. at the college. And that, again, it's this old, grizzled professor who has stood for orthodoxy his whole life, stood against this encroaching paganism, this liberalism. And he's fought all the battles, and he's stayed. Where others might have left, he has stayed to fight the battles. And so his passion about the things of God, orthodoxy, really come out in his speeches. And he thinks he's talking to somebody who's on his side. So that passion is very much a, you know, talking to an ally. And of course, a seeker is very kind to him and, and likes him. But, but it's in his in seekers mind, he's, he's kind of listening to what's being said, and he's re, you know, and I think that as people, we do that, do we, we live our lives through narrative. And I don't think people think about it like that. But you go to work, and you come home, and your wife says to you, oh, what did you do today? That's a narrative question. And of course, what did you do today? Or you're never going to guess what happened to me. That's a narrative. I was driving home, and somebody cut me off is a storytelling. And we're living our lives through a story. It's a real story. I remember saying to my wife, we were talking about this, actually, I think this was before we were married, and I was saying that, or she was talking about something like, you know, my life's not that exciting, it's not like the movies. And I said, well, actually, I think that every life is exactly like a movie, except we live the boring parts. Because movies, they go from, you know, one scene to another, and we're gonna pop ahead a few years. But we also live the times when, you know, we have to vacuum. Yeah, yeah. Things like that. It really does. I may have said in past podcasts, but of course with different guests I always repeat things. But, you know, I was amazed when V. Phillips Long and Ian Proven and Tremper Longman produced their Biblical History of Israel. And it was really a defense of the historicity of the Old Testament. But one great line that Phil Long brought out in a chapter on the literary shape of the biblical text, and I've never heard anybody put it as quite as on point as he did, but he said the reason that these historical texts have a literary shape is because life has a literary shape, and that's kind of where it gets at. The very people who are trying to say that the literary shape of the biblical narratives somehow calls their historicity into question seem to be out of touch with Day-to-day life and the storied nature that life itself is so I I do hear sometimes in teaching people to write, you know, you don't want your novel You don't want your story to become too preachy or too didactic, you know you you if the minute you do that You're using it as propaganda. It's no longer a good storytelling now obviously in Seekers Progress there's a whole lot of really good storytelling going on and And it's very, I don't want to say preachy as though it was a negative thing, but it's very didactic. Some of that's the template that Bunyan gave you, but maybe interact with that. What have you found in terms of trying to convey a message, trying to placard the plausibility of a worldview through this narrative mode? Well, first of all, anybody that's writing anything or speaking is giving a worldview, no matter what they're saying, no matter what they're talking about. So Stephen King has a worldview that is in his books, and Charles Dickens has a worldview that's in his books. And so in one sense, anytime they get into any kind of didactic section, they're preaching. So, I mean, I'll get to where it goes wrong. Cause it does go wrong. It can go wrong. Sure. Sure. It's Bunyan did give me a template that I'm trying to follow. Although the I'm trying to use, I use modern language to a degree. I try to keep a flavor of some of the middle English that's being used. I try to throw it in a little bit here and there just as homages to Bunyan. But I, but I'm writing it for a modern audience, so I'm going to use modern language. I think one of the things that stuck out was when he's talking with Apollyon, and it says something like, he heaped his plate full of more mashed potatoes. There you go. Right. So it's kind of like a mixture. Yeah, kind of. But anyway, keep going. Yeah. So I'm writing to that audience, and there's times, and you see the more didactic, especially in interpreters' house. But even then, the interpreter is using paintings that are all of a sudden these paintings, which again, I'm looking back to what Bunyan's doing. So to really answer your question, maybe I'll look at more of the novel I'm writing, the dystopian novel, because it's a Christian dystopian. It's set in a world 40, 50 years in the future where Christianity is starting to become driven underground. And so I'm trying to get certain biblical truths across. And I have Christian characters, but I also have non-Christian characters. In fact, my protagonist is not a Christian. And so how do you do that? How do you do that without it becoming Ayn Rand, who goes on for 78 pages with her manifesto? Which is fine, but I mean that's it breaks up this it kind of hurts the story a bit And it has to be done from a narrative perspective in a natural way So my you know from a literary standpoint I enter into conversations so a new chapter begins. I'm in the middle of a conversation that's an easy way to do it because Then there's already argumentation going on you might miss the beginning, but you're gonna pick it up a little bit as you go the other way is You know looking at being having different characters being forced to have to defend themselves And if you're forced to defend yourself, it's much more natural And that's one thing I'm doing in that book is I'm trying to help Christians, and I do this in Seekers Progress as well, how do you answer these questions when these questions are given to you? If you're talking with your friend and they say, like in Seekers, well, aren't all religions the same. If there are people that are good people that follow a different religion, why in the world would God send them to hell? We need to be able to answer those questions. And so I bring that out in the book. But you have to, little hit or miss, it has to flow. And so as a writer, the key is, there is no good writing, there's only good rewriting. So it's going through it over and over and over again. And I gave it, my wife, We had some good suggestions. My editor was Ian Wright, who was fantastic, even though I would get pages back, and there'd be like blood splatter everywhere, because he would use a red pen, and it would be shocking, and I'd have to recover. That's why our seminary interns who work with him come out so polished. Right, that's exactly right. He puts the detail work into these guys. That's exactly right, because I want that. I want criticism. I want you to tell me where I'm being too long, or this doesn't work. There's a scene in Seekers where I had planned on doing a four or five-page didactic section. And it was kind of like the culmination. Here it is. The symbols are going to crash, and we're going to get into this knock-down, drag-out discussion. And when I got there, several things had happened. One, the relationship between the two characters had changed. Most of what I was going to say had already been said. And the situation that they found themselves in in their discussion And where they were both coming from at the time was such that a long drawn out discussion would have been forced. It wouldn't have been natural and it wasn't even necessary. So it was going to be four or five pages of discussion ended up being about a page. And, and so, you know, so here I am with my notes that I've already drawn out my outline for what this, you know, I'm like rip, rip, rip, throw it away, but it works. Yeah, yeah. Well, and, you know, even the back and forth, the dialogue format of Pilgrim's Progress and then Seeker's Progress, interestingly fits within something that was pretty common in the Reformation period of these sort of teaching through dialogues. I mentioned in some of these earlier podcasts, you know, the marrow of modern divinity is in many ways a, it's like a story, admittedly, It's so driven by the arguments that you don't really get a sense of plot or anything. But it really, anytime you have conversation, you really can promote and show the plausibility, show the intelligibility of a given view over and against another one. Now, it is true that, you know, many conservatives feel that fiction is somehow manipulative. That, you know, okay, you've talked about the, how'd you put that, the ribs of the mind, you know, the sticks of the ribs. Yeah, I mean, there's a full body, holistic, emotional, imagination kind of thing that's captured. through storytelling that is somehow seen as distracting from just the pure contemplation that we need in good catechesis or in good doing of theology. How have you responded to that? Obviously, we still want our preachers to be preaching sermons, not just telling stories, although we could argue about the ways in which a good sermon has a development to it, a flow, but that kind of would take us a little far afield. Yeah, but what say you? What's interesting because Emma you mentioned my first book identifying the seeds I grew up as a dispensationalist and went through college as a dispensationalist and then became reformed and so within the dispensational world I met people that would say that any fiction is sin because it is lying. And so then I become reformed. And I think I've left a lot of those circles behind, even though a lot of my friends and family growing up are still dispensational. So I still live in that world, which is kind of why I wrote the book. But I've met people in the reformed world that have said the same thing and I've I've been I'm surprised about that and their points are that again, it's lying because it's fiction or You should never have you should never write anything that has any kind of sin within it such as you know, I mean in murder or you know adultery or anything like that, and because it's promoting sin. And I've been a little shocked at that. The Bible is, what, 70% narrative if you throw in all the Psalms and the parables and all that. Even the Gospels, I mean, they're telling stories. The whole Bible is telling stories, true stories, and yet still stories. Jesus went up on the mountain and he sat down and the crowds came around him. That's narrative. And Jesus uses parables. When I would bring that up to those who would be against any kind of fiction, the response always was, well, that's Jesus and it's the Bible and It's his prerogative. He can cradle off any kind of made-up falsehood and somehow get away with it, but what? Yeah, I think it falls down in the explanation. But Jesus, and I think you mentioned emotion before, maybe not, but Jesus, when he tells the story, especially with the parables, he is using emotion. A man, just an average man is going down a road and he's beaten and robbed and he's laying almost dead. Here's the crowd sitting around him and what are they? What are they thinking? They're getting angry Yeah, it's awful and they can visualize this because they understand walking around these roads in this area robbers are there They've probably been robbed or had friends robbed. Yes, so they put this narrative and they're hearing it and their emotions are being arising, you know in kind of anger righteous Ignatian and And then good Jewish people come walking by, and they don't help their fellow Jew. And that's going to be different emotions that are going to be. And then the Samaritan who is despised comes by, and he's the good guy. Those are different emotions, but it's all narrative. And it's narrative that is being used to convey truth. And the people listening are in their minds. They're visualizing that guy getting beaten up. They're visualizing the people walking by. They're visualizing the Samaritan taking to the inn. They're thinking about that. And their emotions are being stirred up. But they're also getting the truth. That's the rib sticking to the mind. It's that, oh, kindness to our neighbor even should be shown to those who we should be despising if they're in need. You know, and it does seem also that story, that telling theology, doing apologetics through a storied mode, in a lot of ways, Greece is the skins for this development we're always trying to make between theology and its application, or theology as it is lived in light of, and with a preposition there. Theology... Yeah, Michael Horton. You don't teach English, it's okay. Yeah, right. Everything in Hebrew is backwards anyway. Horton talked about, you know, you have the drama and then the actions of God in history lead to the stable nouns of doctrine or dogma. And from there though, this pushes us into discipleship and love for one another and doxology, you know, our worship of God. But it does seem that telling the kind of filling in these theological truths via story eases that that movement of showing how doctrine is not just sort of this isolated this isolated thing that you know we yeah it's good for us to think about but how we live our lives apart from making sure we're moral here and there and not doing sinful things it doesn't exactly map on to our day-to-day life but i think story can really help to do that because now here here are a set of beliefs And the characters are living in light of them and showing the consequences. Showing not telling, that famous little line. And even the little quip that's so often repeated, the suspension of disbelief. Oh, the willful suspension of disbelief. Yeah, I mean, you kind of get a, you step back and go, okay, let's watch how this plays out. I'm willing to watch how this plays out, you know, in a way that we might not if we were to say, I'm going to give you five points of why this particular doctrine is true. Yes, one thing that was interesting, and I've done, actually I was able to do a conference series where I gave lectures on Pilgrim's Progress, and what I did is I took the first book and then the second book, and I kind of went through different areas, but I showed the contrast that Bunny was doing. His first book was very autobiographical. He is Christian, and the experiences that Christian have actually match with Bunyan's life himself. And so Christian goes to the Valley of the Shadow of Death, or no, he goes to the Valley of Humiliation, and he's in the Valley of Humiliation, and he's almost killed. And when Christiana and the boys and Mercy go to the Valley of Humiliation, They have a much easier time, they find comfort, they have remembrances of Christian and how hard it was for him, and they have sympathy for him. And for Mercy, she could have lived in the Valley of Humiliation her whole life. And what's great about what Bunyan does there is that his first book, which is very autobiographical, the second book is him as a pastor teaching his congregation and There's of course in his life. He writes the first book in prison He writes the second book as a pastor when he's you know, and so and his pastor or his church was made up 80% women so there's a personal reason why he uses women more than than men within the second book because he's teaching And yet, through those teachings, people, you mentioned this about the willful suspension of disbelief. I actually prefer Tolkien's term, secondary, that you enter into a secondary world with secondary belief. And he, because he would say that the willful suspension of disbelief is what happens to you if you've entered into a secondary world with secondary belief and actually have pulled back. that you then, and then you re-enter, and when you re-enter is when you willfully are suspending your disbelief, because entering into a secondary world is natural. And so Bunyan draws his people in that when you come into the world that he's created, That you should be able to find yourself in one of these characters going through these experiences because There's so there's so much contrast between the individuals and how they experience them that there's some people who will go to the Valley of humiliation and they'll be like Christian and there's others who will go to Valley of humiliation be like mercy and Where are you fitting? How if you've had all these hard things happen to you these tragedies that have happened to you this week? You've been brought into the Valley of humiliation. Who are you going to be? Do you feel that, you know, in the Reformed tradition we have, that we've employed this idiom of storytelling sufficiently, tried to, you know, inculcate the Reformed worldview, teach Reformed theology, promote the Christian faith? Have we done that enough with fiction? How might we, I guess, promote this better going forward? Well, I would love to see many more books produced that use this kind of narrative fiction style to promote Christianity and promote specific doctrines within Christianity. I think that part of the reason why we don't see it as much is because You know, I think using the CCM, Contemporary Christian Music, is a better illustration. It helps us understand better. CCM, which kind of came to really its birth in the 60s and then into the 70s with the Jesus movement, saw a dedication to producing music that was centered around Jesus in a contemporary style. But what it would become would be its own sub-genre of the music world. For right or wrong, that's what it has become. And so if you are a Christian and you're a very talented singer, you have a choice. You can go into the main world of music, or you can become a contemporary Christian music. But you can't do both. There's very few people. Amy Grant has kind of been the one that actually was able to do both, to a degree, maybe Creed. But even then. What has also happened is that because the subcategory existed, you had people that were not the best at music and produced a lot of bad music, but because they were in their own... So uncomfortable to say it, but it's kind of so true. Now, there's some... We love them, but they're really bad. And there's been some, there's some better people as well. And then there's people, um, like I would say, Michael Carden, Rich Mullins, who were fantastic as musicians and songwriters and are at the top. Um, but you had to make that choice. Yeah. where before that, as a Christian, you were a musician. And you were a musician, and your Christianity, your Christian worldview should and would come out in that. And as writers, this has kind of happened with publishing as well, where either you are a literary writer or you are a Christian writer. And And those kind of categories, I think, is definitely hurting what we have to choose from for what we're going to read. And in the world of literature, then, OK, so here you are. You're a talented writer, but you don't want to be considered a Christian writer. You want to be considered a writer. And so you produce books that might be fantastic, but you're going to stay away from Christian themes. You're not going to let that in any way dominate the book, even though there might be a little bit of a flavor in it. And again, I'm not trying to disparage anybody or blame anyone. But look at it from this perspective. If you want to be a writer, you write books, and then you can win a Pulitzer, or you could be a Christian writer and win a Christianity Today award. it's not, as a writer, you want the Pulitzer, right? And I think a lot of people don't write looking for a Pulitzer, but still, you're pigeonholed into this category. And where the Reformation would say, we are to do all things to the glory of God, that there should be writers who are Christian and they write to the glory of God and musicians that do the same thing and all the rest. But we've kind of trapped ourselves into that category. So with publishers And again, I'm not trying to blame publishers, but they have been considered the gatekeepers. And so like the book, This Present Darkness, which of course became this phenomenal thing, having worked at IVP, although this was long before I was there. I was still in junior high, I think at this time. And, but IVP was offered that book and they turned it down and then it went to Crossway and it became this huge thing. Now, of course, if IVP had known, That it was going to be huge. But you're sitting there as an editor and you've got to make choices. You're going to publish 100 books a year and you get 10,000 submissions. You've got to be choosy. So the question has to be asked, what's going to sell? And there are publishers that have tried to be kind of vanity publishers or arts for art's sake. Or, for theology's sake, we're going to publish very narrow books about very narrow theology that we personally want to see publishing, and then they sell 150 copies, and you lose thousands and thousands of dollars, and then you close your doors the next year. these, you know, there's a joke within the publishing world that if you want a best-selling fiction book, you publish Amish Romance. Yeah. Because it sells. Sure, sure. And so, if someone comes and they have, you know, you look at this book and it's like, boy, this is Dickens-esque. This is fantastic. And then you do your demographics on the market and you think, Yeah, this is going to sell 200 copies. As a publisher, you can't publish it. Even though it might be a book that we're looking for, it's something that gets pushed by the wayside. And I think that this is starting to expand. It's easier to publish things now. And so these kind of books can get out there better. And my influences very much are Tolkien and Lewis and the Inklings. how they wrote and why they were writing and what they were writing about, even though theologically I have many disagreements with them. But what they produced was fantastic. And I think the kinds of books that we're talking about that we'd love to see more of is something like the Screwtape Letters, or at least in that genre. It's a fantastic story, it's great narrative, and it's compelling for Christians. It's helpful to understand how the satanic influences in our lives, how Satan tries to pull us away. from Christianity make us, remind us of our sin, make us think we're not Christians. I mean, this is often how it works. I think the Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis is just phenomenal theologically, and yet it's got these great stories. But Tolkien and Lewis, when they started the Inklings, they had this kind of a purpose statement, their own mission statement. We are going to write books that we want to read. And sometimes authors do go to the, I'm going to publish books that will sell or I'm going to publish books. Sure. Even, even the, this is kind of a sincere thing. I'm going to publish book books that people want to read, which, which is not. I don't blame somebody for thinking that. There's a sincerity there. And yet, where are you? It's got to come from you. You write what you know. You write what you like. You're writing to the glory of God, but you're writing for yourself books that you want to read. And if that kind of passion is put into people's books, they become better books. It seems like technology, you know, now print on demand, eBooks have enabled writers to sort of get their work out in ways that wasn't possible even 15 years ago. So in some ways that's a helpful move. But yeah, you do have sort of the bottom line in a lot of cases. And in fact, you mentioned this present darkness. I was reading about the story with that, that Crossway took it on. And it didn't have great sales from the start. It took Amy Grant actually mentioning it in a concert. And she was, she and I think Michael W. Smith, and at the time their spouses, they were all on tour together, and they would sit and read. And when she started saying, look, hey, Brady, I've been reading this book, you need to get this. That's when Brady was able to stop working at the, I think, REI or someplace and start writing full time. Yeah, so if you can get Amy my book, Yeah, we can try. We'll see how that works. But no, it does show the challenge in that way. But it does seem also that there's so many options to try to get good stories in print, or at least available for mass distribution. And I mean, we just have such a storied society now. The literary turn, the postmodern turn has invoked story so heavily as a metaphor. People think in terms of stories so much that this really is a great opportunity for writers who want to convey and promote the Christian worldview through their characters and through their stories. Right. You mentioned how people think in story. And I agree with that. I think that's how we've been created. Tolkien talks about this as we sub-create. God created everything we sub-create from what he has given us. And that has to do with everything in life. So when people are writing, they're acting in a way that God created them. But that's also true if you're decorating your home. You're sub-creating. So one other thing that you got me thinking about is that, what do we recommend for people to read, Christians to read, and also that we need to encourage people to read? I've met too many Christians that will say, well, I don't read. Yeah. And it just breaks my heart. Yeah. And one thing you mentioned was different ways. I mean, audiobooks are now, both my books are on audiobook. And so why don't read? Well, go listen, then. You do listen. We should be engaged with, and look, I'm a slow reader. I'm a slow writer. But it's something I still do. People can just fly through volumes and volumes. I'm working my way slowly through a book. Well, okay, it might take me longer, that's fine. But engaging our minds, thinking about the things of God through fiction or through didactic, or of course, we need to be reading scripture, is something God has created us to do, and it's helpful to us. But because you mentioned that in your series that you've talked about how there really isn't that a lot out there, or the what is out there, there isn't anything that's really great. There's some good stuff, but then there's a lot of Christian fiction that is kind of like fluff and it's just, It's fine or the Christian romance, which it's built, you know, I have no problem people want to write those I've no problem you want to read them. I have no problem. Sure but what what do we have to recommend to people and Part of the problem as far as recommending goes is is the choice that we have and I've reading about literary criticism and you know in the Christian world and I listen to your podcast that you've done and You know, there's people that are kind of at the high end, like Flannery O'Connor, who might be a genius as far as an author, a writer, goes. But I can't recommend her writings to the majority of people that I come across. For one, it's, you know, I hate to use this term, but it's a little highbrow for them. but it's also she's a left-leaning Roman Catholic that uses you know, conservative fundamental Christians as kind of her, who she tweaks and criticizes, and she wants to bring them to a left-leaning Catholic place. And so I'm not going to recommend that to the average person. I will recommend it to people that read a lot and are interested in literature and things like that, I'll recommend it to them. But so what are they reading? Well, they're reading the Amish romance novels, those that want to read, because that's what they have to choose from. So we need to find a way that we can encourage Christians to read broader and to find good stuff. But we also need to encourage authors to write books for people to read that are a little deeper, but still In a way that they're going to want to read them. Yeah, that's I think of several years ago in the Outlook magazine Glenda Mathis is a writer and Myself we were both asked to write a couple of paired articles She wrote one about the value of reading stories and value reading fiction I wrote one about the value of reading books about the Bible and books about theology, but we're both getting at as was the the intent with the editor and having us work together on that is I we were getting at the fact that God has chosen to reveal himself in a book. And our reading skill is, it's a virtue to cultivate that. That's a tool that needs special attention. And you're right, I mean, people aren't reading. Sadly, people aren't even reading the Bible. But this is just a plea to make reading, a normal part of, and a valued part of one's life. It's really exciting to just watch my kids who, you know, can just, the house is really quiet and you're like, oh no, what are they doing? But, oh wait, they're all curled up reading different books in different rooms and, you know, or even on a camping trip we just got back from. There were times they would all just be reading their books and, you know, and there's a lot of hope in that, that they're gonna hopefully have an easier time with reading just being a part of their life than it is for other people. I think one of the ways that people can start if they want to start reading as far as Christian and narrative is to read Christian biographies. It's very beneficial to understand what Christians have gone through in the past, but it also kind of whets the appetite. thankfully all of Lewis's stuff remains in print. In fact, I was at Costco a couple months ago. What do you know? There's the Space Trilogy. I bought the Space Trilogy from Costco. I'd been having it on my wish list. But you know, there's so much classic good writing from the past that deepens deepens our understanding of the faith, pushes us in healthy ways, apart, like you said, apart from the places where Louis gets a little off, but there's a lot of good resources and prayers that will continue to inspire storytellers, inspire writers to go this route. Well, thank you so much, Rob, for coming in. Thank you so much for your work on Seeker's Progress, on the other books you're working on. We look forward to having you back with your next novel, and can't wait to see where that goes. Thanks for having me. It's been great. Great talking. Next time, Dr. Compton interviews OPC pastor Rev. Jeremiah Montgomery, who discusses his Dark Harvest book trilogy, a trilogy of books published by PNR, and how his Reformed faith and ministry experiences have influenced his approach to fantasy writing. If you enjoyed this episode of MarzCast, please consider subscribing and telling others who may be interested. Also consider leaving a review. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated and they'll help us to enhance our content further. Your support allows us to produce engaging content and to build a community of lifelong learners and thoughtful practitioners. I'm Jared Luchobor signing off for now. See you in the next episode of MarzCast.