There is a place for Christian Friendly YA Books to balance out the many inescapable negative influences of the 21st century and provide good, entertaining stories that present a view of society that is positive and hopeful. Teenage years can be turbulent enough negotiating the changes teens go through growing from a child into a young adult. Nowadays teens have more to contend with than previous generations. The world is a darker place than it was even a decade ago. It would be easy to paint a black, pessimistic picture of a world spiraling into self-inflicted oblivion; a world without much hope for the future like some post-apocalyptic movies where the Earth is uninhabitable. It’s easy because in many ways it’s true:
War continues to rage in the Middle East where innocent people are being killed or displaced;
Terrorist attacks continue making once safe destinations potentially unsafe (London, Paris);
Whether we agree with it or not, the extremes of weather in Australia alone point to a climate change of some sort – ‘how dare we?’
The news programs of any day point to an increase in teenage crime;
Depression and a growing anxiety are big issues in the 21st century;
an increase in the suicide rates, RUOK?
How to stop/deal with cyber bullying which has tragically pushed some teens to take their own lives.
This list is by no means exhaustive. There is evil in the world and it’s not just evil men doing evil things to innocent people. Disastrous floods, droughts and storms, horrendous accidents and incidents of road rage are reported daily in the news…and I’m still just glossing over some of the more obvious evils of a society in crisis.
Evil exists. Diseases exist. Death exists. Stress exists, and teenagers have to deal with it all while the hormones rage out of control.
What’s causing it all? Where does the evil come from? Is there any hope? Christian friendly YA books provide a very positive answer to these questions for very good reasons. In the gospel of Matthew (Chapter 5:13 – 14) Jesus tells his disciples that they are ‘the salt of the earth’ and ‘the light of the world’ (NIV). In ancient times salt was valued as a preservative, a spice which added flavour to food. It stopped the rot, so to speak. In writing a Christian friendly YA book, an author is metaphorically preserving what is good for a generation under attack, offering an explanation as to why the world is in such bad shape and providing a solution to the problem.
Being the ‘light of the world’, an author is dispelling the darkness, like an usher in a movie theatre, showing the way. (I think this happened in ancient times. I’m reasonably sure they don’t have ushers anymore. Shows my age.) However, light does make the way clear. There is a good song which comes from the Psalms which says, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” Light shows the way.
Christian friendly YA books address the spiritual side of things, provide a balance. There is a lot more to the physical universe than what can be seen. The main character in my first book, Six Against the Darkness, Book 1, The Coming of the Light, is a teenage girl who can see past the physical world and into the parallel spiritual world of good and evil. Her friend who is a boy explains the inner conversation that goes on almost incessantly, the soft whisperings suggesting that he is simply not good enough or, perhaps even worse, that he’s better than all the other losers. He says, ‘Nothing unusual. Everyone has this chatter going on. It’s just a matter of tuning it out.’ Hopefully by reading Christian friendly Young Adult books, readers would not only be entertained but also understand the ‘chatter’, follow their own patterns of internal dialogue and learn how to deal with them. As Brandon says, we all have this chatter and sometimes it’s not all that helpful.
The reason I write Christian fantasy books is to provide an alternative interpretation for the violence and hatred that is evident in the world – to provide a world view that explains why the world is like it is and how to combat it, not to succumb and be sucked in by what’s going on.
Because there are so many different voices trying to gain the attention of teenagers nowadays, pulling them in different directions, good stories based on Christian principles are able to provide salt and light to this generation under attack. Although fiction or fantasy, the underlying themes of compassion, kindness and loyalty are always there in some form.
The best and the worst of distractions, the device (whether phone, iPad or laptop) can be a great destroyer when it comes to basic communication between people. Gail and I recently spent a few days holidaying with friends in a resort. More than once we found ourselves each armed with our phones, totally absorbed with the tiny screens, not speaking a single word. “Are we bad people?” one of us said. Guilty! I thought. We were doing the very thing we were telling our kids to tell their kids not to do.
Apart from the distraction devices offer, there is the question of what are our kids and grandkids doing on their devices? It’s not only the distraction that is a concern but what the kids are exposed to. The web can be a trap to young minds in the same way that a spider’s web is a trap to an unsuspecting insect. It’s too easy to get hooked on games and spend whole nights playing them – washed out next morning, sleepless nights, exhaustion, unable to concentrate at school (or on the job). The addiction is so enticing that it’s possible for players to spend the whole weekend gaming and end up a total wreck by Monday morning.
I know of some parents who refuse to have a TV in their home or won’t have news on because it is too violent for young people to watch although with all that’s available on TV, movies to download and the internet generally, YA can become conditioned to violence and cruelty followed by a good dose of vengeance – consider the increase in teenage crime. Christian friendly YA books can take readers through a gamut of emotions and leave them unscathed, perhaps wiser for the experience.
This obsession with devices starts young nowadays. Toddlers (or some babies for that matter) can go through the motions of operating an iPhone or iPad (the screen-flicking thing). They learn young. Our granddaughter was playing on a rocking horse, with one hand on the reins and with the other she was playing games on an iPhone. Priorities!
So, I’ll keep writing Christian friendly Young Adult books and hope to spread the word far and wide so that enough kids read them to make a difference.
Writing Christian Fiction is very rewarding but as authors we are not meant to sermonise, rather to tell gripping stories exploring the big issues of the day.
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