One of the most powerful tools in the Christian storytellers’ toolbox is symbolism. It allows deep, meaningful messages to be conveyed efficiently and — often times — subtly. It is useful in stories with both overt and covert messaging, although it tends to carry more weight in the latter. What, however, defines “symbolism”? And how can storytellers use it to their best advantage when it comes to the messages in their storytelling?

Covert messaging in storytelling is — in both the Christian and secular worlds — far too often overlooked. It is often considered weak, cowardly, or unwilling to express its overtly for some improper way. In the Christian realm, stories with covert messaging are often looked down upon and considered “not Christian enough” (which is so often a form of legalism and expression of works-based faith). If a story does not shout “Jesus” from the highest rooftops, it is thrown into a secular-untouchable box. Interestingly enough, this same kind of anti-covert messaging philosophy is raring its ugly head in the secular world as well; stories are called out for cowardice if they do not have enough of whatever the year’s highlight worldly virtue is. Stories with subtle messaging are under cultural attack and often struggle to find a market that will fully accept them.

In the modern world, overt messaging has a quite the reputation. It’s spoken about with crinkled noses, mouths twisted with disgust, and annoyed sighs. Now, this is not due to overt messaging in and of itself; there is nothing wrong with having a story that has a clear and distinct message to bring to the world. What it is due to is one particular type of overt messaging, which is the bane of every story’s existence: sermonizing. Sermonizing is, to put it mildly, the primary cause of death for the majority of “could’ve been great” stories. It draws the life and enthusiasm out of a piece of fiction like some kind of messaging blackhole. It turns the message from a gift the creator is offering to the audience into a club with which to bludgeon said audience. It is the same mechanic that is tearing the legs out from under all the major Hollywood studios in recent years as well as keeping Christian media relegated to its little corner of the wider media market.

The two primary ways that stories convey their messages — overt and covert — exist on a spectrum. On one end, there is overt, these are the really obvious messages that stand out quite clearly. There is no denying what the stories are trying to convey to the audience. For Christian media, these kinds of stories have obviously Christian characters and themes, typically not hiding much behind symbolism. They make their statement boldly, sometimes sermonizing to the point of sacrificing the good of the story.

Every story has three major aspects that most fiction-writing classes build off of: worldbuilding, characters, and plot. These three aspects are kind of like the primary colors of paint an artist can use to create a masterpiece. The colors can be mixed, used in different quantities, and layered in all kinds of ways that allow the artist to convey the imagery and message they want. The same is true with the worldbuilding, characters, and plot of a fictional story; each of these elements of storytelling can be fleshed out, turned on their head, and layered in however the storyteller wants to build the story they are looking for.

This week is the third and final week of our “Fiction and Parables” blog article, which is diving deep into some of the principles and themes of Jesus’ parables. This week focuses in on things that Jesus’ parables don’t do, things and themes they avoid, which need to be studied by Christian storytellers for their own stories. Like the list of Do’s, this is by far incomplete, but it should be enough to help guide the Christian storyteller into crafting an excellent, God-glorifying story!

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.

If you read last week’s post, this concept won’t be too surprising. If you did not catch it, the premise is simple: the Bible is a collection of stories.

Now that we have established the fact that storytelling is an important aspect of human life — an important tool of communication, both psychologically and culturally — we can narrow the focus of the question to a sharper point: is storytelling important…to Christians?