Why the stories we tell (and write) matter more than we think
I want to talk about something that sounds simple but carries enormous weight: fiction is powerful.
Not just in a cozy, curl-up-with-a-good-book way. I mean culturally, spiritually, generationally powerful. Fiction shapes what people believe is normal, what they find admirable, who they root for – and who they despise.
When the “good guy” wasn’t the good guy
Think back to M*A*S*H and All in the Family – two beloved sitcoms of the 1970s that left a longer shadow than most people realize.
In M*A*S*H, the brilliant, witty Hawkeye Pierce was the character audiences adored. He was also a committed womanizer with no interest in God or faith. Meanwhile, Frank Burns – the only member of the medical team with a Bible – was portrayed as a coward and a hypocrite, almost universally despised.
And in All in the Family, Archie Bunker was presented as the face of the typical White Anglo-Saxon Protestant: loud, bigoted, and embarrassing. The show’s not-so-subtle message was that Christianity and traditional American values were things to be mocked, not admired.
You may disagree with my opinion of these shows. That’s fine. But over the decades since, we’ve watched a measurable cultural shift: a decline in civic trust, religious faith, and personal integrity; a rise in cynicism, coarseness, and moral confusion. I believe the entertainment we’ve been consuming over the past 50 years has something to do with that. Stories are never just stories.
“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” — Albert Camus
I mourned a fictional Belgian detective
I recently listened to Agatha Christie’s Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case. It was hard to listen to.
I love Hercule Poirot. His arrogance. His immaculate appearance. Those impossibly perceptive “little gray cells.” And Agatha Christie’s mysteries featuring him are utterly irresistible. But Christie grew to resent the character her readers wouldn’t let her retire, and she wrote his death in Curtain, sealing the manuscript away for decades.
As I listened, I caught myself wondering whether Agatha Christie will be friendly to Poirot when she sees him in Heaven. Then I remembered: he won’t be there. No fictional characters will be roaming the golden streets. I grieve!
That’s the power of well-drawn characters. They feel real. They make you better – or, if the story is cynical enough, they quietly erode something in you without your noticing.
And I will never be Anne of Green Gables
My sixth-grade teacher read Anne of Green Gables aloud to the class after lunch. I was captured from the first chapter. I requested the whole series for Christmas. I’ve read and listened to it multiple times across my entire life. And one of my deepest, most irrational sorrows is that I am absolutely nothing like Anne Shirley Blythe.
Anne is imaginative, impulsive, passionate, and utterly unafraid to feel things deeply. L.M. Montgomery gave her a voice so vivid that she still makes readers want to be better – more alive, more earnest, more themselves – over a century after Anne first appeared on the page.
That’s what great fiction does.
So what does this have to do with you?
Maybe you have an itch to write. Maybe you’ve had it for years and haven’t done anything about it, because it felt too hard, too complicated, or too unlikely to matter.
I want to push back on that.
We are living in remarkable times. If you’ve spent any time on this website, you know I believe we’re in the final chapter of history before the Rapture and the events of Revelation unfold. That means the stories believers tell right now – about faith, about hope, about what it means to follow Jesus in a confusing world – matter enormously. Your voice, your perspective, your creative expression could encourage someone who is struggling to hold on.
Non-fiction matters, of course. But works of fiction – stories, parables, imaginative worlds – have always been the vehicle that carries truth deepest into the human heart. Jesus told stories. Every great revival has had its storytellers.
What if you’re one of them?
A simple, fun way to start
I want to tell you about something I’ve been using called Sqribble. It’s a tool that makes creating books genuinely enjoyable, almost like playing. You can write your own content, use the built-in AI to help, and illustrate your book with ease.
A friend of mine wrote short, simple stories about her twin grandchildren — just a page or two each. I put them into Sqribble, illustrated them, and sent the files back to her. She printed them and gave them to the grandchildren for Christmas. Those children have a little book about themselves, made with love. That’s a ministry.
If you ever want to sell what you create – ebooks, coloring books, audiobooks, any digital PDF – there’s a companion platform called Sqrindle. You can see the kinds of things people are creating and selling by visiting my author page here.
I do want to be honest with you: the vast majority of writers, even excellent ones, never make significant money from their books. That’s just the reality. But if God has given you something to say, writing can be a ministry, and Sqribble is a surprisingly simple way to do it.
Ready to try it?
Sqribble is part of a suite of tools called Empirely. The whole package is available at a special price, and if you ever want to promote your work, those extra marketing tools will be there when you’re ready. But for most writers, Sqribble alone is worth the price. It makes creating and illustrating books genuinely fun.
About the Empirely page:
1 To see pricing, click the hot pink “Sign Up” button. You’ll find one at the top of the page and one at the bottom. (See picture of the button below.)
2 The Empirely page describes 30-something business tools, but Sqribble and Sqrindle are the first two, so you can ignore the rest if you’re not interested in them
3 Sqribble has been around for several years, but the multi-faceted platform Empirely is new and only recently became available to affiliate marketers. So, right now, pricing is the best it will ever be. And if you buy now, you lock in the price, as long as you retain your membership. (I have no idea when prices will increase.)
4 I will earn a commission if you purchase through this link, at no extra cost to you.
Whether you write one book that blesses your grandchildren or a hundred that reach strangers across the world, your story has value. Your wisdom is precious. Consider sharing your heart with others.
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My mother was a high-school Bible teacher. Toward the end of her career, she wrote two workbooks for her students’ use – one for the Old Testament and one for the New Testament. I typed these up, saved them as PDFs, and offered them for sale on Sqrindle. In other words, I didn’t use Sqribble to create the workbooks, but they were still welcome on the Sqrindle platform.
Here are links to my blog indexes, so please click one and keep reading!
My Books, Workbooks, and Fun Books
Knowing the Unknowable One
Opening the Treasure Chest
Walking Heart-to-Heart with God
Walking Heart-to-Heart with Each Other
Fighting the Good Fight of Faith
Christian Mysteries: Why I Love Them!
List of Some Nonfiction Books You Don’t Want to Miss
Index of Assorted Topics