Playing God: Life Lessons I've Learned From Writing Fantasy - Part 2

    This second installment in my three-part "Playing God" series relates to the first, in that it is an offshoot of the first. In the previous post, I said that God is the Author of our lives--the one with the plot in hand--and He is going to make sure that everything turns out to our good.

    In this post, I want to answer a couple common questions asked by members of my faith (and many others too, I'm sure).

    The first question is, "If I'm trying to be righteous and do everything I'm supposed to, why do I still go through hard things?"

    In my experience as a fantasy author, my characters are justified in asking the exact same thing. Some of the things I've put them through are hard! If I were a gambler, I'd be willing to bet that if any of my characters met me in person and knew who I am and the role I play in their lives, they would probably want to punch me in the face--probably multiple times.

    A short list of the things I've done to my characters in the past includes, but is not limited to: killing their loved ones, kidnapping them and wiping their memories (or just kidnapping them at a young age so they don't have any memories to begin with), blowing them up with volcanoes, sacrificing them to rabid dragons, dropping them into icy wildernesses in the middle of winter, turning them into terrifying humanoid beasts, feeding them to acidic cloning slime, et cetera. It's what we author-types do!

    The few times when I've inserted a self-analogue into a story to talk to my characters, they've said things akin to the following: Why would you do this to me? What did I ever do to you, that you should put me through such torment and hardship? You're an awful person! Look at what you've done to everything and everyone I love! How COULD you?

    To which I reply, "My dear character, I created you for a purpose: to help me tell a story. Unfortunately, stories don't function without conflict. I've tried to write conflict-less stories before, and they never work, because there's no opposition, nothing to force you into stretching and growing into someone better than you were before. Without conflict, the story loses everything that makes it interesting, because there's no change or progression going on in response to it."

    At risk of sounding like I'm repeating myself from the last post, I believe that God says exactly the same thing to us in our times of trial and hardship.

    Another, related question that seems to be asked a lot is, "Why won't God take my trials away from me?"

    Back to my conversations with my characters!

    If a character were to ask me why I don't just solve their problems for them at the climax of the story, I would say, "Well, little character, the whole point of the story is that you learn something from your experiences, and if I just swoop in and take care of your problems for you, you won't learn the lesson I'm trying to teach you! Furthermore, if I do this for you, the readers are going to chuck my book across the room for committing deus ex machina [literally, "The god in the machine." It comes from Greek theatre, where the characters frequently paint themselves into a corner and one of the gods has to come in and save them before they die]. If I do it for you, all the tension and suspense I've been building this whole time is going to fall flat, making the whole story a disappointment."

    God doesn't do everything for us (that would cause a very literal instance of deus ex machina), but He does put people and events in our path to support us, teach us, and give us the strength to push forward and do the hard thing on our own. His is an enabling power, not because it lets us repeat unhealthy behaviors (as seen in co-dependent relationships), but because it gives us the tools we need to solve our own problems.

    I do exactly the same thing to my characters, and so do the authors of most of the books I've read. At the lowest point, the most difficult moment, the time when all seems to be lost, something or someone comes into the story at just the right time and becomes the final piece to the puzzle the protagonist faces. The problem never magically resolves itself on its own, and there's still work to be done, but all of a sudden, the impossible task has become possible--and as we are told in the Scriptures, "All things are possible with God."

    It's not because He fixes everything for us, or drops the solution into our lap, but because He brings us the tools we need to come up with our own solution to the problem. He nudges us to use our own intellect and creativity to get ourselves out of this mess, and when we make it to the other side, we realize that all he did was push us to do something we could have done all along.

    After the fact, it can seem like such a small thing He does for us--something we could easily discount as being "all us" (and I believe that this is where the "pride cycle" seen in Scripture comes from). But the truth is that, most of the time, we would be tempted to give up way too soon without God's little nudges and bits and bobs of aid.

    It's like when you're working with a small child on (as they see it) a difficult problem. In one of my trainings for my job at the Thanksgiving Point Institute in Lehi, Utah, we were told that when a kid is trying to do a hard thing, growing frustrated, and wanting to give up, you should never step in and do it for them.

    Instead, the trainer told us, you should give them pieces of the puzzle, little by little and one by one, until they have enough to figure it out on their own. This teaches them that they can solve problems and do hard things, which is super important for their cognitive development. And let me tell you, the expression on a little kid's face when they do something they thought they couldn't is amazing. It's honestly one of my favorite things in the world, and absolutely the best part of my job! But in all my work with young children, I can't think of a single time when the kid credited me for helping them, because as far as they're concerned, they did it on their own.

    ...Which is, admittedly, exactly what we want, because we are trying to build these kids' confidence in themselves and their abilities, but I think it's important to note that it's this same kind of behavior in adults that leads to the "pride cycle" I mentioned earlier. I clearly have more to ponder on that particular facet of this topic, because somehow it's okay when we are working with kids, but not when God is working with us. Maybe it's because kids need to develop enough confidence to act and try things out on their own, while we adults (theoretically) already have that confidence and now need to temper it with humility? I don't know the answer to that question; if you've got any thoughts, please drop them in the comments!