By: A.B. Timothy

I wrote a little bit about this topic in my post the other week called: “The Advantage of a Church Upbringing.” There, I wrote about my experience in a literature class at my local community college, where my professor explained to me the advantage I would have over my peers, and how right he was. In the West, our literature is so supremely Christian that even the works that profess a lack of faith in God are best understood with a biblical lens, simply because the author was him/herself biblically literate.

Some may argue that it only matters if you read books that were written before our grandparents were alive, but that is not true. Literary magazines today are still full of stories penned by authors who, while claiming atheism, borrow from the Christian worldview to make their arguments or get across their themes. Take the recent story “Cream” for example, which you can read here. This story contains a scene where there is a car that proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ over loudspeakers. If you’ve not studied Christian literature, like the Gospels, you will be clueless as to the implications this has in the story and what it could mean for the themes and plot. Yes, it is true, the story is Japanese, and these cars are a common occurrence in many Japanese cities, but the author could have chosen to have his character ignore this detail, but he did not. Instead, he made explicit not of it. This tells us it matters to the story.

There are so many other examples of this in the world of fiction, both speculative and literary. Perhaps the most famous example of this is The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. This brilliant man did a fantastic job making his works readable and enjoyable for the average reader, but the depth opens up to a canyon of meaning if you are familiar with Biblical themes and subtextual ideas. The idea of the Three Types of Christ, talked about by many scholars and casual Christian fans alike, is something that will go completely unappreciated and unnoticed by people who are ignorant of Christian literature.

Are you a Christian? It’s not my place to judge the destiny of your soul; all I can do is encourage you. If you aren’t a Christian, that’s okay, for now anyway. In either case, if you aren’t already, go familiarize yourself with the gospels at a bare minimum, and get to understand the themes of sacrificial love, resurrection, devotion, betrayal, brotherhood, and humanity found in them. Read some parables taught by Jesus. Have you ever wondered what someone meant when they said “prodigal”? Well, the meaning of it is at your fingertips, in Luke 15:11-32. That story would be a great place to start, and it will help you begin to see the literary designs of God’s Love.

Interested in seeing Biblical themes in literature discussed further? Go check out Arthurian Aesthetics on X. He has a fantastic blog, and one of his posts talks about the Prophet Jeremiah’s role in bringing relics to Britain.

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