Story-telling is a powerful tool. Readers who are invested in stories walk with the characters through their trials, struggles, dramas, and triumphs.
When I am writing a Christian story, either a short story, a young adult novel or an adult novel, I become so invested in my characters’ joys and sorrows that I’m not consciously sharing the love of Christ with my readers. But when one of my characters behaves in a Christ-like way, I’m subconsciously sharing Christ’s love with them.
A good example of this occurs in my brand-new young adult novel, Surrounded. My protagonist, Margaret, has a friend, Karabo, who, despite being victimised, bullied and framed, behaves in an extraordinarily unselfish way towards the very person who causes her expulsion from the school. When his younger brother gets very sick, she prays constantly that Jesus will heal him. This has surprising consequences both for her, her friend Margaret and for the perpetrator himself. And when Karabo’s mother, the school’s cleaner, resigns in support of her daughter, instead of bitterness, she radiates love. She is so passionate about spreading love, not hate, that she makes beautiful beaded stuffed animals with a difference. All of the animals appear in the pages of the Bible: a dove, an eagle, a lamb, a horse and the Lion of Judah himself. Each of these animals has a representative Bible verse attached to them so that when the creatures are sold at the market, she is sharing a striking message from the Bible with her customers. And Joshua Speranto, the famous gospel singer, is so invested in sharing the love of Jesus with young people that he comes to Margaret’s break-time Bible study at her school to sing his latest numbers. This, despite the fact that he is preparing for a sell-out concert at a huge stadium. At one of these break-time sessions, he gives Margaret a wonderful surprise. He hands her ten tickets to his concert.
There are many more examples in my fiction of characters who share the love of Christ with others. There are characters who make great sacrifices for other people, like Themba in The Provider (a short story in the anthology, Tapestries), who shares his only warm jersey and the only food he has for the day – a piece of bread- with a destitute young girl. Or Jade and her mother in Jade’s Heaven Dream (also in Tapestries), who want to cheer up and inspire the people in their town. So they pins up Jade’s picture of heaven in every possible place so the people can be encouraged. In my picture book, The Biggest Blessing Julia, admittedly reluctantly, shares her most treasured possession, a beautiful angel, with someone less fortunate than herself. All these kindly and unselfish actions reflect in a very small way something of Jesus’ light. The characters in these stories are examples of how to behave in a godly way. When readers get caught up in these stories, they will root for these characters whose good deeds reflect some aspect of Jesus’ love shining through them.
Of course, the converse is also true: characters acting in very un-Christ-like ways are walking, talking examples of how not to behave. There are plenty of examples of that kind of people in my fiction, too, as I present the age-old conflict between good and evil in most of my work.
Christian virtues like kindness, generosity, thankfulness, forgiveness, patience, honouring others, displaying a servant heart, caring for each other, avoiding gossip can all be show-cased through your characters’ behaviour.
The fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control – (Galatians 5, vs. 22-23), can be demonstrated in your characters’ lives. Stories are truly powerful tools for spotlighting Christ’s love that shines through his people, making the world a better place.
So, to all Christian writers out there, if you want to spread the love of Jesus through your work, have your characters behaving in Christ-like ways so your readers can see Jesus’ light shining through them, just as if they were real people who actually lived in your community.
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