A Word About Fiction

Early on in my writing career, my wife started a lovely collection for me. Each time I published a new book, she would buy me one of those framed old-fashioned-looking portraits of some famous author to hang on the wall of my office. I’ve been writing for several years now, and I’ve got pictures of Mark Twain, C.S. Lewis, John Steinbeck, and other novelists staring at me as I try to write every morning. Each of those writers had a phenomenal ability to write stories that were totally fabricated out of the cloth of their own imaginations. They described plots and twists and turns in the lives of characters in a way that enchanted their readers. The protagonists they created in their books were memorable, for sure. But they weren’t real. There were no actual people behind the names of the characters in their novels. Their books and their storytelling were what we call ‘fiction.’

 

The other literary form we’re all familiar with is non-fiction. That’s what I usually write. A non-fiction work can be a story or narrative, usually grounded in some factual reality, that’s offering information, or analysis, or opinion; perspective on the real world. Non-fiction writers describe the way things are, or the reasons why things are the way they are.

But I think there’s a third kind of literary reality. It’s not fiction, and it’s not exactly non-fiction either. It’s what I would call “Revealed Truth.” That’s the kind of story God writes.

God’s stories don’t come from his imagination; they come from his intention. They aren’t made up. They’re made real. The writer of Hebrews described faith as: “The substance of things hoped for. The evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)

That verse alone suggests that the truest stories aren’t the ones we see; they’re the ones God says.

Hebrews 11 is filled with reminders of real, flesh-and-blood people who walked into impossible situations because they believed what God said.

By faith, Noah built an ark in the middle of a drought. That’s not fiction. That’s truth.
By faith, Abraham left everything familiar to follow a promise he couldn’t actually see. That’s not fiction. That’s truth.
By faith, Rahab welcomed strangers and wrote the ending to her own story. And that’s not fiction. That’s the truth!

Those weren’t imaginary figures. They were ordinary, real people, living out extraordinary plots that the Author and Finisher of Their Faith had created just for them. 

I like to envision God as the only Author who never stops writing. I’m a one-of-a-kind character in the eternal story God Himself is writing. And no matter who you are, you’re in His story, too. Not as a footnote. Not as background. But as one of the characters in the ongoing, unfolding, never-fiction tale of God’s redemption.

Hebrews chapter 12 encourages us to keep our eye on Jesus. I may write my little pieces of non-fiction Classic State of Mind every week. But the older I get, the more convinced I am that the best stories are the ones only God can write.

And He doesn’t write fiction.