Don’t Wake the ‘Watchful Dragons’

Sleeping Dragon, Pedro Lopes’ speed painting

In his essay, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to be Said,” C.S. Lewis famously explained why he wrote fairy tales:

I wrote fairy tales because the Fairy Tale seemed the ideal Form for the stuff I had to say. Then, of course, the Man in me began to have his turn. I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed [sic] much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.

The “watchful dragons” Lewis spoke of were, in his case “inhibition[s]” about the religion of his childhood, obligations to “to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God.”

The contemporary Christian storyteller encounters similar dragons — defensive mechanisms that guard readers’ hearts and minds when the subject of God, Christ, or religion are broached. Lewis chose fairy tales because of their “Form,” their disarming quality, their ability to “strip” stories of “their stained-glass and Sunday school associations” making the Gospel “for the first time appear in [its] real potency.”

Most Christian writers would probably say they want their stories to have such “potency.” They want their stories to slip past their readers’ “watchful dragons” and stir something beyond the fortress of their inhibitions. If so, I wonder that we’re doing it all wrong. Why? The chosen “Form” for many Christian storytellers is “Christian fiction” — stories aimed at Christian audiences with an overt Gospel message. The problem with such stories, however, is that they wake “watchful dragons,” they alert the reader’s defense mechanisms, they signal that Gospel content is present and should be handled with caution. If handled at all.

Lewis sought to retain the Gospel’s “potency” by writing fairy tales, embedding the Gospel in a less overt, less didactic fashion. In his essay “Christian Apologetics,” Lewis suggests that Christian writers should apply a similar principle to their own writing:

“What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects – with their Christianity latent.”

To be “latent” is to be “embedded,” “naturally organic,” an “intrinsic part” of something else. The opposite of “latent” is when something is “obvious,” “manifest,” “clear,” or “apparent.” Thus, Lewis suggests that the types of “Christian stories” most able to “steal past [the] watchful dragons” of defensiveness and inhibition are not stories with an explicit Gospel message, but stories where the Gospel is less “apparent” and more “organic” to the tale.

And this is where I think much Christian fiction loses its potency. For the Christian writer hoping to reach unbelievers the absolute worst thing they can do is announce their story as “Christian.” No, I’m not talking about bait and switch, sneaking your book into the mainstream market in order to clobber readers with the Gospel. Christian writers who do this deserve to get reamed by readers. Nor am I talking about going out of the way to conceal any reference to the Gospel in your story. Writers who do this may deserve to be charged with “compromise.” My point is simply that when we adopt a “Form” — in this sense, the label “Christian fiction” —  we immediately wake the watchful dragons of contrary worldviews and prevent our stories from reaching unreached audiences.