Like, What Even is Christian Fiction?

When people ask about my religion, I tell them I was raised Christian. That seems simple enough, and leaves room for ambiguity. First of all, it would be a lie to commit myself to any school of thought beyond my own. I'm not good enough at following directions to belong to any dogma. More importantly, though, it revokes any accountability that the religion and culture would have for my actions. If I provide that partition between what I was raised to be and the person I've become, that lets a lot of people from my upbringing off the hook. I come from a very religious family. I love them, but I'm not the same as them. We have two very different approaches to life, and I don't wanna cramp their style.

Most Christians I know are too well-conducted. Their shirts are unstained. If you zoom in on their profile pictures, you won't find that their visages are dotted with blackheads. I can't relate to that. I'm a dang mess at all times. I can practice my song every night and still hit the same wrong notes every time. A few months back, my ex called me erratic. I was like, well, yeah. What else is old? Even at my best, chaotic good is not orderly. You throw enough darts, you're bound to hit the board every now and again, even if you're taking shots in the dark. 

My issue with a lot of Christian art today is hard truth tends to be traded out for platitudes. The depiction of a struggle to sustain fidelity is left alone in the corner of the bar while false promises are courted on the dance floor. If we're so dang perfect, what good is God? Real talk, you will turn your back on morality in life. You will excuse yourself with relativism. It doesn't have to be religious. You'll covet someone outside of your relationship. You'll bump Tupac even though you ride for Biggie. That's human nature, and it sucks. If you don't believe that we were willed into creation, then that's why we invented God. The human mind alone is a labyrinth of deceit and false narratives. We're the best, but we still suck. Morality isn't about being a perfect example; it's about honest effort.

I believe in sin, but I cling to the concept of forgiveness. If not for that, I'm in a heap of trouble. I'm also OCD, so I have no choice but to believe in some narrative to life. A world without purpose sounds to me like an unwanted gift that you only keep in your possession because it was already given to you and the effort to return the dang thing just doesn't seem worth it. Even if we belong in Pandora's box, at least we have that context to contain ourselves in. When I was promoting my fifth book, e-Mo, I called it post-Christian fiction. That was neat, because it upset everybody that heard it. Atheists I knew didn't like that it implied there was any place for Christianity in the modern world and Christians didn't care for the fact that it implied we are approaching if not living in a world beyond a Christian majority. The book's confessional nature, using social media as a new form of prayer, though, was to show that humanity cannot replicate objective morality. You might be well-reasoned, but you cannot appease the mob. Others might be no more human than you, but they ain't any less human, either. An agent that I submitted to once said that Bret Easton Ellis was feminist enough to show women done wrong. I don't think that enough religious writers challenge themselves to confront the world their beliefs are rooted in. The Bible's got more crazy antics than any exploitation movie I've ever seen.

I don't have a good zinger to end this on and I feel like I'm straining too hard to invent one, so I'll just say I'm happy with what I've got here and contentedness isn't something I'm used to feeling. IDK. See ya.

-Todd

1. There's another quote I was looking for where Alejandro Jodorowsky says he makes films about Christianity because he lives in a Christian environment and how he wants to reflect that, and that if he lived in a country constructed around another religion, he'd probably make movies about that. I paraphrase it all the time, but I couldn't find it in less than five minutes' Google time, so just pretend that I included it somewhere above.
   
2. My cousin is actually in one of those Christian metal bands. I don't know even less about the genre than I know about most things, but I think that's pretty awesome, so peep him at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxAKOZmCxuXbtmzc4r2mhdw