This week is the second week of our “Fiction and Parables” blog article, which is focused on an analytical view of Jesus’ storytelling style through His parables, seeking a closer look at what kind of fiction the Christian storyteller can and can’t tell. In this second half, the goal will be to analyze the items in “Do” list to construct an overarching view of the positive goals for Christian storytelling.

As Jesus demonstrated in His parables, fiction is a fantastic tool for ministering to others. 38 parables are recorded in three of the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) ranging in topics, message, purpose, and audience. They also ranged in scope, where some were simple metaphors (such as the yeast parable of Matthew 13:33) and others were more complex works of fiction (the parable of the tenants in Mark 12:1-11). Regardless of all their variations, however, all these parables had a singular purpose in mind: direct people towards the goodness and righteousness of God.

Now, a common question many storytellers have is why do I have to pick an audience for my story? Why can’t I just write a story for everyone?

While this is a wonderful sentiment and it would be lovely if storytelling worked that way, it is, unfortunately, not going to pay the bills. Yes, Christian stories serve an important spiritual purpose. Yes, storytelling is often an art form, where the goal is to create something beautiful or emotionally stirring. Yes, it is good to have a heart that yearns to share a message to as wide of an audience as possible. However, a story written for “everyone” is a story set up for failure, both monetarily and in terms of how far the message will spread.

As previous articles have mentioned, the Christian audience is not a monolith — and neither is the secular audience. Different people, from a variety of demographics, backgrounds, cultural upbringings, and lifestyles all have distinct needs and wants from their fictional narratives. What appeals to one group of people will not appeal to another, nor will the kind of story that is spiritually useful for one group of people be useful for another. All storytellers must determine who their audience is in order to write a compelling and useful story.

The previous article briefly mentioned that one of the issues with mainstream Christian media is facing is the fact that it is pretty much all family- or kid-friendly. This is not a terrible thing in and of itself; having media that can be enjoyed by all ages is fantastic for family bonding time or entertaining the kids. However, being “family-friendly” should not be a requirement for all pieces of Christian media. There is no Scriptural reason why every single story produced by Christians and for Christians needs to be suitable for the whole family. This is especially true when even the Bible itself is not truly suitable for the whole family by current cultural standards.

Modern mainstream Christian media has itself in a bit of a pickle. It is most often — setting aside some more recent efforts — family-friendly by default and fairly sanitized of sin, drama, trauma, or raw emotion. It tends to present a somewhat unrelatable type of Christianity that is all peace and perfection with no real strife or problems that are solved quickly and efficiently with a simple prayer (not saying prayer isn’t one of the most powerful tools in the Christian’s arsenal against temptation and evil, but only rarely does it produce a truly miraculous 180 of emotion or situation).

Well, since there is plenty of good secular media out there, do we even need ‘Christian’ media?

This is an entirely reasonable question. There is quite a bit of excellent, moral, and creative secular stories out in the world and once the Christian audience is well-equipped to navigate them, they should have all the storytelling they could ever want. This overabundance, however, does not negate the purpose and value of intentionally Christian media.

Morality is inescapable. Like theology, the term seems like a much bigger, weightier word than it actually is. Every person on this planet has their own set of morals; the rights and wrongs that guide them through making everyday decisions. Often times these morals align with a greater cultural or religious context, but sometimes — what is especially popular in the U.S. and many Western countries today — people come up with their own moral codes based on what they feel is right and wrong.