It is a good thing to have bad things in our favorite stories. All the best stories have dark parts. Harry Potter’s mother murdered by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named; Aslan slain on the Stone Table; Macbeth’s bloody hands, which all the world’s oceans cannot wash; the rage of Achilles; the scouring of the Shire; the man on the cross. In a way, great stories seem to demand great evil.
Yet not all narrative darkness is created equal. There is certainly such a thing as too much of a bad thing. Here we come face to face with a perennial question: How should Christians engage with — or even create — stories that deal with the deepest shadows and darkest sins? If you’re reading this article, I’m assuming you love stories, including stories filled with bent characters and shadowy deeds. So, how should Christians wrestle with this darkness in a godly way?
Wrestle is the right verb to highlight the issue. It connotes combat and struggle and antagonism. The children of light are opposed to the darkness. However, the word also conveys intimacy and proximity. If we create and consume stories with darkness, we will get uncomfortably close to sin and evil — especially our own. Is it worth it?
Not Whether but How
Our aim in answering this question should be to develop mature taste. We want to be “those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Hebrews 5:14). We strive for the kind of taste (or discernment) that aligns with God’s taste — loving good, hating evil, celebrating wisdom, scorning folly. In short, we want to enjoy creating and consuming the kinds of stories God likes to tell.
However, taste is a matter of prudence not cookie-cutter laws. That doesn’t make taste a free-for-all or an excuse for license. God’s taste sets the standard for our taste. We should reject worldly taste that glories in shame and revels in darkness. Yet defining and developing godly taste takes a lifetime and a lot of wisdom.
And this side of Eden, our storytelling must somehow deal with sin and evil. The question is not whether but how. In the world God designed, all narrative art has to come face to face with the dark. You can’t have a happy ending — in fact, you can’t have a story — without darkness. Plot demands conflict. Without the dragon, the knight has no foe to slay and no damsel to rescue. Francis Schaeffer warns that failing to grapple with darkness makes art less than Christian:
Christian art needs to recognize the minor theme [sin, evil, suffering]. . . . If Christian art only emphasizes the major theme [God, grace, and goodness], then it is not fully Christian but simply romantic art. (Art and the Bible, 86)
Whatever else Paul means when he exhorts us to think about what is good, true, and beautiful (Philippians 4:8), he cannot be excluding stories with stark evil in them because the Bible itself has some very dark corners.
So, Christians must wrestle with the dark in stories if we are to engage with them at all. But we can say much more about how we should embark on this dangerous endeavor.
Love Leads Us
If wrestling with the dark is worth doing, then it should fit comfortably under the royal law of King Jesus: Love the Lord your God supremely, fully, and increasingly, and love others as yourself (Mark 12:29–31). Just as rightly ordered loves motivate what God does, he expects those same ordered loves to lead us as well. So, Christian creators and consumers wrestle with the dark motivated by love — moved to love God more, to love self rightly, and to love others well.
There is a sub-Christian way of engaging with dark stories, not moved by these loves. Those who take that way love the darkness itself; they celebrate the dying of the light (John 3:19). So, how can we ensure our wrestling does not devolve into that kind of reveling? Most importantly, the stories we consume should help us love God more. Try interrogating your favorite stories with three questions.
1. Does this story help me imitate God’s taste?
All man’s stories are derivative. That’s what it means to be a sub-creator. God authors the original. It is in his story that we, and our tales, live and move and have our being. And we are called to copy him as loving children imitate their father (Ephesians 5:1). So, as a general principle, Christians should enjoy the kind of stories God loves to tell.
But when we consider God’s story, darkness licks up around the edges. The tempest of sin rages in his epic drama. When we look to Scripture, we see dragons harassing maidens, cities reduced to rubble, war among the stars, mothers eating their children, daughters sleeping with their fathers, a prostitute quartered, a bride price of Philistine foreskins, and, of course, God upon a tree.
When we turn to Jesus himself, we hear him telling us tales that grapple with evil. His parables are brimful with shadows. A man in hell begging for but one drop of water. Tenants who kill their landlord’s messengers and his son. Tares tossed in the furnace. And all manner of wicked servants. And when we turn to God’s world, a world he holds in being moment by moment with the word of his power, a world that is his living story, evil runs rampant. At times, the narrative seems to drown in it.
Yet, amazingly and mysteriously, God looks at all the dark corners and shadowy spaces of this story, and he says, “Worth it!” The righteous Judge can make this assessment because the story of glory outshines all the darkness. And in all his stories, evil is exposed as loathsome. God’s tales, especially as told in his word, catechize us to love the Light and despise the dark. At their best, the dark tales we tell serve that same end. So, do the stories you spend time with help you imitate God’s taste?
2. Does this story help me savor his sovereignty?
As finite creatures, we often struggle to reconcile the evil in the world with God’s exhaustive sovereignty. How can God be in full control of evil without being responsible for it? Stories that wrestle with the dark can help relieve (some of) the tension we feel here. They can at least put the mystery in the right place.
After all, God is the Author, and we are his characters. He created us; he ordained the plots of our lives; he knows all our lines (Psalm 139:16). And yet, he is not guilty of our evil. Tolkien writes the character of Saruman into The Lord of the Rings, but he bears no guilt for the scouring of the Shire. He invents the Nazgul but is no wraith because of it.
Our stories can help us taste the sweetness of God’s sovereignty because, in the end, the banner of Genesis 50:20 flies high over the strongholds of darkness in every good story: You intended this for evil; I intended it for good.
Tolkien provides a wonderful picture of the harmony of providence in The Silmarillion. That tale begins with Eru (Tolkien’s name for God in his legendarium). Eru creates a host of angelic beings called the Ainur and then invites them to help create the world by making music. However, one of the Ainur, Melkor, rebels against Eru’s musical theme, making his own discordant song. Melkor’s disharmony spreads, but every time it seems to threaten total chaos, Eru weaves Melkor’s evil into his own theme. Finally, Eru silences all the music and addresses Melkor in some of my favorite lines in all of Tolkien:
Thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined. (The Silmarillion, 17)
What a wonderful picture of a sovereign author! All evil is woven into the symphony of glory and serves “things more wonderful.” When we wrestle with evil in stories, we get front-row seats to this marriage of agency and sovereignty. Stories put flesh on the bones of doctrine. Do your stories help you delight in God’s exhaustive sovereignty?
3. Does this story highlight the happy ending?
In the best stories (like the ones God tells), the dark serves as a handmaiden to the happy ending. It deepens the delight when grace breaks in. It heightens the happiness when evil is kicked in the teeth.
Again and again, good stories demonstrate how beauty can blossom out of evil and bear good fruit. Tolkien calls this surprising transformation eucatastrophe, the sudden, surprising turn in the tale when light shatters the darkness. Tolkien explains that eucatastrophe requires the whole story to work: every page, every paragraph, every sentence, every word, and all the white space in between. Yet the happy ending has a backward glory that illuminates all the darkest twists of the tale, a glory that, as Sam says, makes all the sad things come untrue. We would never hear the oh-so-satisfying crack of the Stone Table under Aslan’s resurrected body without the deplorable evil of the White Witch. The cross comes before the empty tomb.
When we wrestle with the darkness, when we create and consume stories with happy endings that make all the sad things come untrue, when we realize that it takes the whole tale, darkness and sin and shadow, to set up the eucatastrophe, then we create room in our imaginations to anticipate the supreme Happy Ending of God’s grand tale.
When God looks at the whole tale of reality that he has penned, he deems that the end for which he created the world outshines all of the darkness. He permits the dragon because the Hero’s triumph is worth the danger. Like stars in the night, darkness serves as a foil to light; evil ultimately serves goodness. We have a hard time imagining this until we savor the backward glory of the happy ending in our own sub-creative stories. Do your stories help you love the God of happy endings?
Dark That Serves the Light
The darkness just before dawn makes a clear sunrise all the more glorious. And in the best stories, shadows help us love the Light. Not all darkness in stories works this way: Some darkness distorts our taste and blurs our vision of God’s sovereignty and his happy ending. The line will not be the same for each person. But if you can answer yes to the three questions above, you’re well on your way to enjoying stories with darkness in a godly way.
God made man a storyteller so that we might love him more. The chief end of good stories, stories that wrestle with the dark, is to help us glorify God by enjoying him forever. So, cultivate mature taste, spinning and savoring the kinds of tales God loves to tell.
Desiring God