Just as good writing can influence the way readers respond to redemption themes in a book, bad writing can have the opposite effect. If the reader is distracted by clichés, overuse of certain phrases, and inconsistencies, or if the reader is not absorbed into the characters’ world and emotions, the desired message of the story is less likely to get through. The reader must be invested in the story for he or she to apply the ideas in it - whether consciously or unconsciously - to reality.
The Guardian by Robbie Cheuvront and Erik Reed is a well-intentioned book about a scroll that the Apostle John wrote about the end times and supposedly passed down through his descendants. The main character, Anna Riley, is a descendant of John and is tasked with finding, protecting, and deciphering the scroll. The story is, in the authors’ own words, “one that is focused on Anna Riley’s journey of faith” (5) and is not intended to be a serious interpretation of the Revelation passage that mentions such a scroll. Although the book is classified as Christian Fiction, several of its traits hinder the theme of redemption from being portrayed effectively.
The characters are not realistic. The main character, Anna Riley, is not a Christian, yet she prays to God, swears like a third grader, and accepts everything she is told about God and faith without complaint or challenge. Her reaction to Christian things like church or Scripture is not believable. In other words, she is a “Christianized” non-Christian character and therefore an unrealistic portrayal of nonbelievers. This does not help Christians who read the novel to learn how to interact with nonbelievers, nor does it help nonbelievers who read the novel to know how someone like them can become a believer.
The Guardian has a supernatural element that involves angels and Lucifer himself. Even though angels can be used as an effective plot device to offer a godly perspective or direction, they can too easily be portrayed in a way that is not biblical and be a sign of lazy writing. It is easy for an author to fall into the trap of lubricating the plot with angelic activity because angels or demons offer such a cut-and-dry view of good versus evil. Instead of exploring the complicated but applicable nature of the human heart in need of redemption, an author can explain a human’s motivation for doing right or wrong by having an angel or demon appear to them. How can the book express the significance of redemption if the characters are portrayed as mere puppets of supernatural forces?
The “censorship” of the novel - what I call the exclusion of adult themes such as cussing, violence, and sex in Christian fiction - is inconsistent depending on the subject. On one hand, multiple violent deaths occur, most at the hands of Jonathan, the assassin hired to kill Anna, and many are written with enough detail to be somewhat gruesome. Despite all of this violence, all of the other aspects of the novel are heavily edited not to offend. The exclamations that all characters use, whether Christian or nonbeliever, good or evil, are so censored that they sound unnatural and cheesy. Jonathan, an assassin, has no qualms about brutally murdering people, regardless of whether or not he is ordered to do so, yet he never uses any language that is considered even mildly offensive, including times when he is impatient or angry. For example, when told that no one can find where Anna currently is, he snaps at one of his henchman to tell the searcher “to light a fire under his rear end” (247). Jonathan is clearly a dangerous, evil man, but in an aggravated state, the worst he says is “rear end.” When reading the book, I was unable to take Jonathan seriously as a character after this scene because he simply did not seem threatening or realistic. Nonbelievers reading this book who are accustomed to using stronger language will notice such sanitized language even more, and it might turn them away from the story, or at least from taking it to heart. The authors did not necessarily have to include a curse word in its place, but saying that Jonathan cursed or used an expletive would convey the point. None of that happens in the story.
I am not against censorship in Christian novels, especially because adult themes are much more likely to offend the target audience of such books, and authors must honor God with what they write. However, by watering down the depravity and moral darkness of the world, authors also water down how much they can show the impact of God’s light, peace, joy, and salvation. The darker a place is, the brighter a light will be. The acceptable balance of realism and censorship is up to the author, and the line between both is debatable. Nevertheless, Cheuvront and Reed went too far with their censorship.
Redemption is present in The Guardian, but its value is lost in a myriad of distractions like the ones mentioned above. One person develops and improves spiritually: Anna. All other characters are static and have the sole purpose of creating a plot in which to place her. The authors’ self-proclaimed purpose of the novel is to convey her spiritual journey, and that purpose is fulfilled – that purpose, and nothing more. She goes from being a nonbeliever to a Christian. This in itself is not bad; in fact, every Christian novel that aims to show redemption must have this transformation in a character. But the way in which this transformation takes place sets an effective novel apart from an ineffective one, and The Guardian’s method makes it one of the latter. Jason, Anna’s Christian boyfriend, tells her that the key to the final riddle they must solve is salvation, and that she does not have it. When Anna hears this, “her breath [comes] in little pants, and her face [is] sickly pale” (411). Her reaction is jarring with no explanation. Later, Jason explains step-by-step how to become a Christian and prays the “salvation prayer” with Anna. The authors write out every word. On the surface, it looks like this novel fulfills the purpose of sharing the gospel with any unbelievers who read it, but I believe that laying the steps out in such an obvious way actually has the opposite effect and damages the witness of the novel.
From the perspective of a nonbeliever, having to slog through several pages of Christian instructions would irritate me. I am probably reading the novel for entertainment value and perhaps because of a vague curiosity about Christianity. To have such a conspicuous effort of evangelism shoved in the midst of a plot might make me feel attacked or a victim of a furtive agenda. I am not saying that all nonbelievers would automatically feel this way, nor am I saying that a Christian author should never have the gospel clearly laid out in their novel. But using a novel to preach a sermon on salvation is like using a sermon for nothing more than a storytelling opportunity. They are different media and ideally use different techniques to achieve the same purpose. A person will not be moved by a novel to allow God into their life if the novel merely repeats what they heard all their life in church, or if it confirms their ineffectual and indistinct impression of Christianity. Therefore, while the way in which Anna becomes a Christian is not incorrect, it is less likely to be effective than a more dramatic and realistic epiphany embedded in the plot.