Christian Horror: Creating Fear or Exposing Light?

[THIS BLOG is written by MOLLY TURNER, Acquisitions Editor for Encourage Publishing.]

There is a genre of Christian Fiction that is swarming with stories of darkness, evil, and demons…and people love it. They love stories that accentuate the spiritual world and show the reader how it works, exposing how it entangles with our everyday lives. Interestingly, in my experience, these works tend to rely on using extremes to be the catalyst to move the story forward.

 What leads so many Christians to be preoccupied with a topic that the Bible is amazingly uninterested in explaining to us? Jesus, who regularly was engaging with demons while on earth, wasn’t interested in giving us a rule book on fighting the devil’s army, but rather said to put our trust in Him because He has overcome the world. And then there is of course the apostle Paul, who when charging the church of Ephesus to fight in spiritual warfare, rather than give a map of where evil lives or various tactics to expose or exorcize, he instead gives us direction to arm ourselves with the realities of our salvation in Christ and stand firm. If that is the posture of Scripture, why has Spiritual Horror become so influential to so many and often even causing them to shape their beliefs and lives around what they read?

Some may find that they enjoy reading about the realities of the spiritual world and imagining what it could be like and the war that is happening all around us. It is a way to engage in a fictional story that “feels Christian.”  Many of these stories, however, seem to primarily use a picture of God that is cliché rather than well-rounded, nuanced, and reflecting felt human experience grounded in Scripture. 

 

A classic example of Christian Horror is Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness, a story about the battle between good and evil in the small town of Ashton. The book weaves thrilling events and conflict in the town with the supernatural world swirling behind them. It is hard to put down and had an enormous following that continues to this day. Some of the criticism of the book, however, was that it presented an overly simplified dualistic view of good and evil. Peretti has written extensively and has done very well. Why? Because his books are riveting, exciting, and appeal to the Christian understanding that there is more going on in an event than meets the eye. We want to know what God is up to and what foes stand in our way of following after Him. The danger is, as always with anything meant for enjoyment, that readers take the story past what it was meant to do: entertain, rather than inform our sense of reality.

 

It could possibly create an absorption with what could be rather than what is, making readers more fearful than they ought to be. But that is of course up to them to monitor for themselves, right? Or are authors and publishers responsible for writing and publishing books that point readers not to fear, but to power, love, and self-control, as it says in 2 Tim 1:7? 

“...for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” (ESV)

 

So, are stories about demons helpful? Christians are charged to meditate on and fill themselves with what is true, right, and full of light. Does that rule out all stories with demons? We clearly can’t ignore the presence of evil forces being described in Scripture and we aren’t mandated to avoid fictional stories about them either. Is it possible that the answer is a matter of wisdom, and the intention behind the story and what light the supernatural is cast in? 

 

An example of a story about demons that isn’t designed to frighten as much as it comically challenges our view about our lives and God in them is C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. The book is a dialogue between an elder demon and his junior about their efforts to keep a man an atheist. The story, instead of feeding an insatiable desire for spooky, terror, or the demonic, instead forces us to see how our everyday lives are a call to live into holiness and pursuit of Jesus. It forces us to remember that our lives are participating in the spiritual realm whether we notice or not, and it points us to Jesus above all and his constant pursuit of us. Perhaps that is what we need from a story, to point us to Jesus and our need for Him. It is written in such a way to reflect on our lives under the light of Scripture, not fear or reactivity that focuses only on ourselves but redirects us to Jesus. 

 

If Lewis could do it, I’d wager that more Christian authors could winsomely write about the supernatural in such a way that doesn’t mainly cause us to focus on what is evil, but rather to look at and long for what is good, not to create fear but expose light.

From my experiences growing up to seeing how Christian Horror has shaped many people that I interact with as an adult, I have a lot of questions about the helpfulness of the genre, but what do you think? Respond in the comments and tell me what you love about the genre, your favorite titles, or why you never read it. How has the genre shaped your thinking for better or worse?

In Part 2 of our Darkness blog, we’ll talk about another sub-genre in Christian Fiction that has gained significant popularity in recent decades that also gets its basis from what is evil in the world: Christian Dystopian!

Molly

[If you would like to be notified about new blog posts in addition to new releases at Encourage Publishing, be sure to subscribe at this link.]

Are you a Christian writer? Or, do you have an inspirational or miraculous story to tell? Contact Molly through our website's submission portal and learn more about us.