Death in Christian Fiction

A couple weeks ago, I was involved in a wonderful, long conversation with a group of friends about death in Christian fiction. One of the friends has written a series in which the main character dies. She knew responses would be…varied. That though she’d set this up from book one and delivered an arc of spiritual redemption and the ultimate love story with Christ above all, some readers would hate it. And as someone who loves her happily-ever-afters, I get that. But it also made me ask myself a lot of good questions. So I figured I’d share them here.

First, I look at some of my favorite books. One of them is A Voice in the Wind by Francine Rivers. Another is The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis, the final installment of the Chronicles of Narnia. (Spoiler alert! If you have not read either of these books and intend to, skip the rest of this paragraph! But given that both have been out for decades…I’m gonna talk about the endings, LOL.) In both of them, main characters die (in the case of Rivers’s book, we think the character dies and learn in the next book she didn’t…but for the purposes of THAT BOOK, she dies).

And in both of them, I count them as favorites not because the story delivered what I wanted…but because the story delivered what I needed.

Though I read The Last Battle long before A Voice in the Wind, I don’t honestly remember my reaction to it as I read it (I was in third grade). What I remember is the impression it left on me. When I was rereading the series to my kids when they were in middle school, it struck me how much of my theology–my understanding of God and His mercy and His love and His righteousness, what heaven really is and what earth really isn’t–came from that book.

Through his story, Lewis showed me a biblical truth it’s so easy to overlook in this life: that this life is but the echo. The reflection. That real life is not here, it’s in heaven. This is an imitation, and when it passes away–when we pass away–we are not losing something. We’re gaining something. And that’s cause for rejoicing, not mourning. Heaven is the ultimate happily-ever-after. And though we who are left on earth mourn when we lose someone, because they’re no longer here with us, for the person joining Christ in heaven, there’s no room for grief. The joy is too great.

That’s a beautiful thing. 

When it comes to A Voice in the Wind, I do remember my reaction when I read it. I was probably 14 or so. I remember getting to the end and thinking, “No. NO. NOOOOO!!” And hating, at first, that this was how she ended the book. And then sitting back and letting it sink in. And coming to a very different conclusion.

That this was not an ending I liked. But it was an ending I loved. Because it was beautiful. It showed me that it’s better to die for Christ than to deny Him. That following Him might have consequences, but they’re worth it. That death is not the end.

It was the first time in my memory that I saw the beauty in what I didn’t want to happen and admitted that it was better than the victory I desired.

That’s a life lesson that’s stuck with me.

As a writer, I’ve killed characters before. POV characters. Even some that you might consider main characters (though never THE main character). (Okay, funny story. So a main character dies halfway through A Stray Drop of Blood. It was, in fact, the thing around which I’d planned THE WHOLE BOOK. Because it’s what led the heroine to Golgotha. When I wrote A Soft Breath of Wind, the next-generation sequel, someone asked, “You don’t kill a main character in this one, do you?” And I replied with, “Uhhhhhh.” If you’ve read it, you know why. If you haven’t, you should. 😉 Because it has a VERY HAPPY by traditional definitions ending, but there’s some death involved. In the happy. I promise. Anyway!)

Back to my point. 😉 I’ve killed main characters–but that’s not usually the end of the story. It’s usually the middle. It’s what points my other characters in the direction that leads them to the climax. It hurts. And it’s supposed to, because losing people hurts us. But it’s also an inescapable part of life, and it’s a spiritual victory for a Christian, and sometimes we need reminders of that too.

Sometimes we need reminders that this life is the imitation. That this life is the prelude. That this life is the prequel. Our real story begins when we fall at the feet of Christ.

But as readers, we have expectations. And sometimes what we want from a book is escape from the hard things–I get that. I’m a mood reader, so I will absolutely reach for a rom-com when life’s too hard already. Or a fantasy, where I am literally taken to a whole different world. I’m not always in the emotional place to pick up a heavy book.

Sometimes, I pick one up not knowing that’s what I’m getting. Sometimes, those stories devastate me. Sometimes, I struggle, because what I wanted was not what I got. 

But you know what? Every time, it’s what I need. It’s God using fiction to teach me something true. It’s God reminding me that though I may turn my face away from the hard things, that’s not where healing lies. It’s not where understanding will find me. It’s not where I’ll reconcile with those difficult truths. It’s only in facing them that I’ll finally be brought to the point where I throw myself into His arms.

As authors, we know we have to balance reader expectations with the stories we need to tell. Sometimes, that means clueing readers in early that this is a certain kind of book. In the one I just turned into Tyndale, we start with my heroine arriving at a concentration camp then jump back to “the real story.” You know all along where she ends up–but guess what? There’s another ending too. In A Soft Breath of Wind, which does indeed have a shocking (both in bad and good ways) ending, the story starts with a demonic attack, quickly followed by the death of a loved one–those are your clues to what kind of story it is. In A Portrait of Loyalty, which kills a beloved (though not main or POV) character, we start with a train wreck and betrayal and war, and if you’re familiar with history, you likely know from the date that the Spanish Flu is about to strike London (and if not, you still know that this is a book about war and betrayal, so…).

Now, I have made a promise to my readers that every book will have a happy ending. There’s quite often a lot of not-so-happy along the way. I’m not sure I’m skilled enough to deliver an ending like Francine Rivers’s or C. S. Lewis’s, where the happy isn’t the earthly happy. Where it instead points the reader to that greater, more eternal happiness. I don’t know–but I know there are other writers whose whole purpose for a book or series was to paint a picture of that other truth.

That to live is Christ. And to die is gain.

It’s a hard truth. It’s a truth we might recite but rarely remember as we live. It’s a truth that becomes much more precious when you’ve stared death in the eyes.

And it was a timely conversation for me. Because yet again, I’m writing a book where a POV character dies–but this time, you know it from her very first scene. She’s living with a diagnosis of a disease that will kill her, no question. And it will happen in the next few months. I’d already decided that was Iraja’s story when I received my brain-tumor diagnosis (and I wrote about that here: Strange Timing). She was yet again a character I created for the sole purpose of showing her death. I didn’t know, when I first developed her role, that she would be the character through whom I worked through thoughts of my own mortality. I didn’t know she would become the model for how I wanted to live out the rest of my days, whether they were many or few. I didn’t know that God had given me this character because I needed to be able to process a diagnosis that pulled the rug out from under me for quite a few weeks and led to brain surgery and radiation and another year of chemo (even if my prognosis is, in fact, great).

But He knew.

Just as He knew every time I picked up a book with something in it I didn’t feel ready for that I was. That it was what I needed. He knows that sometimes my expectations need to be defied. And sometimes I need to wrestle with that defiance. Sometimes I need to be forcibly shown that what I think is best is just the in-the-mirror, dimly. Sometimes my happy ending isn’t what it’s all about.

Death is gut-wrenching. Death makes us cry. Death, probably more than anything else in this life, plunges us into denial, whether we are Christians or not.

And death can be beautiful too. Death can be where Christ shines through. Death can be where we see His hand–sometimes because His light has shone through that life so clearly; and sometimes because the deaths reveal the darkness that makes that Light so necessary.

Always, we need the reminder. That death is not defeat. Death is victory. Death is not a tragic ending for a believer–it’s a joyous one. 

Because death is not the end. It’s just the beginning.