By: A.B. Timothy
I was raised a Christian and in the Church. I was born in 2001, and my mother has made sure that I attend almost every service I am physically able to. From Sunday Schools at 9:30 in the morning, to Midweek services to break up the repetitive school days of the week, I was in church every time the doors were open, and I wasn’t as sick as a dog. It wasn’t until college that this was put into perspective for me.
In the Fall Semester of 2023, I took a literature class at my local community college. This was a general literature class, going over the Western Canon of both British and American authors. At a point in the class, I was asked to speak with the professor outside the classroom, and I was worried I had done something to get into trouble. It was almost the opposite, however. When the professor spoke to me, he asked me about my religious background, and when I confirmed his suspicions of me being Christian and raised in the faith tradition, he enlightened me to something.
This thing that he brought to my attention was something that I took deeply for granted. I thought everyone grew up learning about David and Goliath, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Jesus and the 12 Disciples, and all the other Sunday School-worthy Bible stories. I thought this because my church had a bus ministry when I was growing up, so I assumed every kid rode the church bus, even if their parents did not go anymore; they were still learning the basics of the Bible. I was disabused of that notion by my literature professor and my fellow students in that class.
The professor told me, “You will have an easier time understanding and catching on to the subtextual themes of much of the bibliography of the class than your peers, because of your upbringing.” He was right. When the class began studying a work written in the 19th century that had clear allusions to Christ crucified and King David, I was shocked when my group members looked at me like I had grown a third eye when I started naming off Bible books and stories. It was both strange and fun, however, because it allowed me to share my faith with my peers in a non-combative, learning environment, where my religion actually came in handy.
Today, I use my upbringing to help me develop real characters and to infuse my stories with biblical themes and messages without offending the readers. That is something I very much enjoy doing. It gives me a lexicon of themes, character archetypes, and even story arcs to draw from. Now that I know that much of the reading audience today does not know these themes from their childhood, I get to reintroduce them into the water supply. Hopefully, after reading my stories, people will find the Biblical tales more palatable and less offensive, because they will not be as alien to them.
What about yourself? How does or did your unique upbringing affect your storytelling lens? Did you grow up Christian, too? Did you maybe grow up in a different faith tradition, which gives you a totally different library of stories and characters to draw from?
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