From Edie: Zena Dell Lowe offers insight as to why so much Christian fiction feel shallow. With her help, learn how to write stories rooted in a true Christian worldview—honest, compelling, and aligned with biblical truth without being preachy.
Stop Writing “Christian Stories:” How to Write Fiction with a True Christian Worldview
by Zena Dell Lowe @ZenaDellLowe
Why are so many Christian stories so bad? Not all of them. But enough of them that even Christians hesitate to recommend them. It’s not because the talent isn’t there or the stories don’t matter. It’s because we’ve misunderstood what we’re trying to make.
Somewhere along the way, people started using the term Christian as a genre label. But a Christian worldview is not a genre. It’s a lens through which reality is interpreted. Confusing the two is exactly why so much faith-based content feels preachy, shallow, emotionally dishonest… and, if we’re being honest, bad.
Somehow, the goal quietly shifted from telling the truth about reality to signaling "This is Christian content.” Those are radically different creative missions. And if we don’t correct course, we will continue to lose ground creatively and culturally.
Simply put, we need to understand the difference between writing a Christian story and writing a story with a Christian worldview.![]()
The distinction We’ve Lost
When people say a story is Christian, they usually mean it contains clean language, overt moral messaging, explicit references to God or Jesus, and an audience primarily made up of believers. But this is a market category.
These external markers are about branding, audience targeting, and content restrictions. They don’t actually tell us what the story believes about reality. In fact, none of these external markers guarantees a Christian worldview.
In fact, some stories that never mention God at all are far more aligned with a biblical understanding of things like good and evil, redemption, justice, and human nature.
A Christian story (as we currently understand it) is defined by its signals. A story with a Christian worldview is something deeper. It’s a philosophical and theological framework for understanding reality itself. And by reality, I mean the world as Scripture reveals it.
We live in a postmodern culture where "telling the truth about reality" might be interpreted as telling “my truth,” or staying “emotionally authentic.” However, when I say “true,” I mean accurately reflecting objective reality as revealed in Scripture, especially in regards to sin, human nature, and what redemption or justice actually require.
Every story ultimately answers those questions whether it intends to or not. The only issue is whether it answers them truthfully. A story can be completely “secular” and still affirm biblical truth at a deep structural level, whereas an explicitly Christian one can still communicate something false, distorted, or shallow.
The System Problem
This happens because the system producing these stories doesn’t actually reward truth. It rewards signals. Label something Christian, and audiences automatically know to expect clean content, safe themes, and inoffensive language. But none of that demands a deeper understanding of theology, more insight into the human condition, or even a solid story structure.
The sad truth is that we’ve unintentionally trained the market to expect something from us that doesn’t actually reflect the depth of Christianity. We’ve signaled that what makes a story Christian is its restraint—no sex, no language, no violence—rather than its understanding of reality.
Over time, that created a feedback loop. The market rewards what it recognizes. Creators deliver more of it. And the signal becomes the identity.
Many films produced within the faith-based system—including those from platforms like Pure Flix—rely heavily on these external markers of faith while neglecting the deeper moral and theological coherence that would actually make a story true.
Stories like this create the appearance of Christianity without engaging its substance. They avoid certain behaviors, but end up flattening the reality of sin, the complexity of the human condition, and the cost of real transformation.
By sanitizing the world, they distort it.
What This Looks Like in Practice
I’ve seen this firsthand. In one project I was hired to rewrite, the character that was positioned as the moral authority had been written as harsh, judgmental, and lacking compassion toward another struggling father. On the surface, this may have looked like righteousness. But theologically, it was completely misaligned.
A truly moral character within a Christian worldview would be able to hold both truth and grace at the same time. He wouldn’t simply condemn. He would understand the struggle and respond with compassion, not superiority.
The more honest version of the story wasn’t about a negligent father who needed to be corrected. It was about a loving father who didn’t know how to connect with his daughters. That’s a real, human problem, where transformation actually means something.
But stories like this are harder to write because they require nuance and deeper understanding. More importantly, they require a worldview that can see both the dignity and the depravity of man without collapsing into cliché.
Why This Matters
Christian writers have been locked in a box for too long. As a result, we’re losing the cultural battle. But the good news is, you don’t have to stay in that box. You don’t need message-driven stories or a sermon in Act Three. You don’t need to sanitize the human struggle to make it more palatable.
Instead, tell the truth.
Build characters who wrestle with reality. Write stories where choices have genuine consequences, and where brokenness hurts, and redemption costs something. These stories are far more aligned with how truth operates in Scripture. These are the stories worth telling.
What It Actually Means to Write with a Christian Worldview
Writing with a Christian worldview doesn’t mean inserting religious content. It means portraying reality as it actually is: recognizing that good and evil are real; that choices matter; that human beings are broken but not beyond redemption; that transformation is costly; that truth exists whether we feel it or not; and that sacrifice, humility, and love are not weaknesses but strengths.
None of this requires a church scene, a sermon, or even the name “Jesus” to be spoken. Just show characters honestly navigating sin and suffering in a fallen world—without preaching. When the story world feels consistent with how real humans experience life, it rings true. And truth is powerful.
This doesn’t mean there’s no value in writing clean, family-friendly stories, especially for children. There’s a place for simple, edifying tales. Just don’t confuse them with deep, truthful storytelling.
The Real Issue
Some of you will be tempted to say, “We need both kinds of stories.” But that’s not strong enough. The current category of “Christian” content has replaced the pursuit of truth with the pursuit of approval. As long as approval remains the goal, the stories will continue to feel hollow, no matter how clean they are.
The question was never meant to be, “Does this look Christian?” But rather, “Does this tell the truth about reality according to Scripture?” If we start there, we won’t need the label because we’ll finally be telling stories that mean something.
Our true calling is to write stories that are honest about the fallen world and hopeful in the right ways—not because they slap a Jesus sticker on at the end, but because they reflect the actual shape of reality: sin is real, grace is costlier and more surprising than we expect, and humans are both image-bearers and deeply broken.
So the next time you sit down to write, don’t mistake your story for a marketing category. Instead, tell the truth about your character’s journey through a fallen world. That’s how we begin to take back culture—one honest story at a time.
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To find out more about Zena or her current courses and projects, check out her websites at WWW.MISSIONRANCHFILMS.COM and WWW.THESTORYTELLERSMISSION.COM
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