On Christian Writing
SOMETIMES ONE’S FAITH SHOULD BE LATENT IN THE WRITING, NOT BLATANT
I think you have a mistaken idea of a Christian writer’s duty. We must use the talent we have, not the talents we haven’t. We must not of course write anything that will flatter lust, pride, or ambition. But we needn’t all write patently moral or theological work. Indeed, work whose Christianity is latent may do quite as much good and may reach some whom the more obvious religious work would scare away.
The first business of a story is to be a good story. When our Lord made a wheel in the carpenter shop, depend upon it, it was first and foremost a good wheel. Don’t try to “bring in” specifically Christian bits: if God wants you to serve Him in that way (He may not: there are different vocations), you will find it coming in of its own accord. If not, well—a good story which will give innocent pleasure is a good thing, just like cooking a good nourishing meal. (You don’t put little texts in your family soup, I’ll be bound.)
By the way, none of my stories began with a Christian message. I always start from a mental picture—the floating islands, a faun with an umbrella in a snowy wood, an “injured” human head. Of course my nonfiction works are different. But they succeed because I’m a professional teacher, and explanation happens to be one of the things I’ve learned to do.
But the great thing is to cultivate one’s own garden, to do well the job which one’s own natural capacities point out (after first doing well whatever the “duties of one’s station” impose). Any honest workmanship (whether making stories, shoes, or rabbit hutches) can be done to the glory of God.
Letter to Cynthia Donnelly, August 14, 1954 (CL 3)
THE RIGHT QUESTION TO ASK
The Christian writer: . . . if his talents are such that he can produce good work by writing in an established form and dealing with experiences common to all his race, he will do so . . . . It is to him an argument not of strength but of weakness that he should respond fully to the vision only “in his own way.” And always of every idea and of every method he will ask not “Is it mine?,” but “Is it good?”
“Christianity and Literature,” Christian Reflections
WRITING CLEARLY FORCES YOU TO THINK CLEARLY
You must translate every bit of your theology into the vernacular. This is very troublesome, and it means you say very little in half an hour, but it is essential. It is also of the greatest service to your own thought. I have come to the conviction that if you cannot translate your thoughts into uneducated language, then your thoughts were confused. Power to translate is the test of having really understood one’s own meaning.
“Christian Apologetics,” God in the Dock