The Importance of Fiction

[EllethValatari]

I wanted to get some helpful criticism of an essay* I wrote for school.

Topic: How can Fiction Glorify God?

*I would like to admit that I had not read Tolkien's On Fairie Stories before writing this essay, and I deeply regret not incorporating its themes or quoting it.

Here's the essay (it written with a Christian worldview, but I would still greatly benefit from any non-Christian's critique):

Refracting the Light of Heaven
“Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” The unending flow of time is a great dance of countless acts and movements, written and directed by the Creator for whose glory it exists, in which each iota of Creation has a part. Upon Creation, God gifted man with the ability to create, and He commands us to use this gift for His glory. The first job ever given to man required a creative effort-the use of imagination: “Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would name them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name” (Gen. 2:19 ESV). Today it is impossible to imagine the world without man's creation, for we employ our own inventions daily. This, however, is no extraordinary act. As Isaac Watts writes in his book on logic, an imaginary idea “is made by enlarging, diminishing, uniting, or dividing real ideas in the mind, in such a manner as no objects or exemplars did or will ever exist.” When someone writes fiction, they are using real ideas found in Creation. If we take two ideas, gold and mountain, and join them, we have a golden mountain. If we take the next step, and climb that golden mountain, explore and conquer it, we have not mere writing, but a first step towards good literature.
In writing good fictional literature, we cannot merely excavate the first idea found. We must search for that which is good, beautiful, and glorifies God. But how can the writer’s creation glorify the creator? First and foremost, Mark 10:18 (ESV) states that “No one is good except God alone.” Therefore, if God is goodness, what is good in itself glorifies God because it reflects God. Good fiction must glorify God by reflecting his goodness, his love, and his creation.
In demonstrating how fiction glorifies God, it is crucial to first address how it does not. The most obvious of examples, unfortunately, is found everywhere in current culture, and that is the attempt to satisfy the world's thirst for entertainment. As Annie Dillard muses, "novels written with film contracts in mind have a faint, but unmistakable, and ruinous odor." And this is not the fate of merely corner-store movie-books, but anything written to reap fame or fortune. In this case, the end destroys the means, and the book is only words and paper. However, do not then conclude that any book that has been made into a movie is worthless. A Tale of Two Cities and Pride and Prejudice are both examples of excellent novels that have been adapted to film. Despite the obvious fact that recording had not been invented at the time of original publication for both works, in both of these cases we find writers working towards the creation of something beautiful, something that glorifies God, rather than themselves. As Marge Piercy states, "work is it's own cure. You have to like it better than being loved." For this reason, authors of fiction have to enjoy the realm of fiction itself much more than any practical benefits they might desire or even need. One important difference between a poor fiction writer and a good one is whether or not they care if the rest of the world enjoys reading what they wrote.
As stated earlier, good fiction glorifies God because it reflects God. This does not mean that a non-Christian writer cannot produce good fiction. Even if a writer’s purpose is not to glorify himself, he does not have to intend to glorify God in order for his work to do so. The Bible is full of examples of how things meant for evil can be used for good, and the Fall is the greatest example of them all. Satan tempted Adam and Eve in an attempt to ruin God’s plan for mankind, and it seemed that he succeeded. God, however, predestined mankind from the beginning of time to be saved, and to live with Him eternally. Therefore He sent His only Son to die for sinners, and by Christ’s death and Resurrection all those who believe in Him are saved. In tempting Adam and Eve, Satan attempted to deny God’s power, and yet he played a very important role in God’s plan for his creation. Certainly God can use a writer, even one who intends wholeheartedly to deny God, to create something that glorifies Himself. Concerning an author of fiction, he may glorify God by writing that which glorifies God, or he may write that which does not glorify God; and by the grace of God the writer’s plan will play a role in God’s plan.
Fiction, however, cannot be divided into that which is written for the glory of God and that written to deny God: it serves to fulfill a third purpose. This is the revelation of truth; which cannot be gathered from writing fiction, but from reading it. People who enjoy reading fiction do not necessarily enjoy it because they are escapists. While there is no harm in reading fiction for pleasure’s sake, in letting you flee reality, fiction allows reality to pursue you. If you asked a child what fiction is, he would tell you it is a story that is impossible or not true. However; the outrageousness of a fictional world is attractive because it does reflect reality; it reflects an outrageous world. We believe in an omnipotent and omnipresent God, and it is not unreasonable that so many deny the Gospel due to what they think is absurd. What’s wrong with an absurd world? Why is humanity repelled by impossibilities and ambiguities? Those who refuse to put their faith in God have no other way to reconcile with the world besides human reason. As J. M. Coetzee wrote, “The intellect itself will ultimately lead to nowhere,” and thus when you rely on man’s reason to explain life, impossibilities and ambiguities are daunting.
Bilbo was right when he said, “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door.” Leaving what we feel we know to be fact and going out into the world of chaos is a dangerous business, and it requires faith. What we have to learn is that reality is something we don’t see and know, something we cannot prove exists, something so inconceivable that there are thousands of scientists constantly trying to explain it. Even Jonah Lehrer, an expert on topics such as psychology and neuroscience, recognizes science’s limitations, “modern science has made very little progress towards any uniform understanding of everything.” Scientists know their limitations, Satan knows his limitations, and the sinful reaction to that understanding is to deny it.
G. K. Chesterton once said, “the poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.” Those who claim to know any truths about the world purely by man’s reasoning have not thought about the fact that what we perceive just might be blurred, and what is really true might be unperceivable. As Ralph Ellison says, “[fiction] can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.” Therefore, rather than attempting to comprehend the incomprehensible, let us be humbled by our human limitations and allow fiction to refract the light of the heavens into our minds, that we might be drawn closer to God.