Thoughts On Stories—Fiction, Mental Health, and Childhood
Photo: Katerina Kucherenko
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“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” —John 2:15
When Fantasy Beats Reality
I grew up loving stories—particularly movies and books, and especially the genres of fantasy and science fiction. I was infatuated with the power of the imagination, and delighted by how an author or a filmmaker could seemingly create an entire alternative world.
In fact, I loved it so much that I myself began writing stories. As a young, budding writer, it was my favorite thing to write. Something about an imagined world often seemed more compelling and more engaging to me than the real world.
The Dangers of Loving Fiction
In recent years, however, I started to think more critically about this love for fiction, which seems to be shared, to varying degrees, by the vast majority of our culture. I started to ask questions like, if I love a fictional world more than the real world, isn’t that kind of an insult to God, who created the real world? Aren’t I showing that I prefer a human creator’s work over the Original Creator’s work? Shouldn’t I prefer His creation?
So also, I started to consider whether it may even be harmful to grow up with all these fictional stories rattling around in the head. For me, as I’m sure for others, it made it hard to appreciate things in the real world. For example, I liked the idea of being interested in other cultures, but taking the time to learn about them seemed bland to me. I preferred to learn about a fictional culture in some fantasy world, packaged in a digestible story form with heroes and villains and otherworldly powers and high stakes.
Mental Health Problems
In addition to dulling my interest in the real world, this love for fiction was—I believe—a significant factor in my “mental health” problems. Maybe “mental health problems” is a little too strong, but it’s just to say that this love for fiction seemed to have a negative impact on my psychological and emotional well-being. Here’s what I mean.
My life was not dramatic, and was in fact relatively conflict-free, but I loved the drama of fiction. Internally, I became overly dramatic about things I should have been practical and sober-minded about. In hindsight, it seems like my subconscious said, “If I respond in this way, maybe my life can have a bit of that drama and conflict that I see in stories.” (I believe this was subconscious, because consciously I despised real-life “drama,” and avoided conflict like the plague—which was surely also part of the problem.)
This internal drama, a kind of love of misery, caused me no small distress as I entered adulthood, especially in relationships. My thoughts would get stuck in a vicious circle of feeling distressed, pacifying those feelings of distress, checking to make sure I wasn’t really still distressed, and then becoming distressed again. There was some variation to the content of the thoughts, but it was always as though my brain slipped a groove to go back to feeling miserable. I seriously started wondering if I had obsessive-compulsive disorder.
When Reality Beats Fantasy
Now, a decade into adulthood, and happily married for the better part of that decade, those psychological and emotional difficulties are (thank God) behind me. If I did have some kind of OCD, I don’t have it now. And, for me, one of the keys to overcoming the cycle of mental distress was to change what I consumed.
At first, I essentially detoxed from fiction, and delved into learning about real-world stuff, such as politics. Even if it seemed uninteresting, I would investigate random topics that I had never learned about before, like, “How do they make popcorn?” (Hint: they don’t “make” it, genius.) Eventually, my interest in real things expanded. I fanned the flames of curiosity, and over time the new information in my brain helped, I believe, to throw the switch of my mental railroad so my train of thoughts escaped from the endless cycle.
Nowadays, I do sometimes partake in fiction—a film, a book, or some other medium. But even as I do, I wrestle with some questions. What does a healthy relationship with fiction look like? And now, as a new father, what does it look like for my child?
The Issue of Escapism
Often, fiction is intended purely as entertainment, and is enjoyed as an “escape” from daily life. Presumably, people want to “escape” because their daily life is humdrum, outright miserable, or simply stressful in a normal kind of way, as fulfilling one’s regular responsibilities can be. But let’s think about this Christianly. In each of these cases—a humdrum life, a miserable life, or a stressful life—shouldn’t the resolution be to find joy and peace in God? If we look for those elsewhere, aren’t we placing our hope in another, false savior? That is to say, aren’t we committing idolatry?
Maybe there’s an argument to be made that escape isn’t all bad, and that it can be one of the means God uses to help us decompress and return to our difficulties and responsibilities feeling refreshed, with a new perspective. If so, I’d like to see the biblical support for such a perspective.
In defense of escapism, C.S. Lewis relayed a question once put to him by J.R.R. Tolkien: "What class of men would you expect to be most preoccupied with, and hostile to, the idea of escape?" The answer: jailers. It’s a punchy point, but, of course, it’s an equivocation: “escape” from jail is not the same as “escape” from reality.
Tolkien’s (and Lewis’s) implication, it seems, is that a person’s reality may be as terrible as jail, so we shouldn’t bemoan that person trying to find relief from it. But for the point to hold any water in the Christian life, one would have to explain why fiction, and not prayer, is the better refuge from life’s difficulties. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find any biblical footing for such a view. The anti-escapist, on the other hand, may present passages like 1 Peter 5:7-8a: “[Cast] all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. Be sober-minded; be watchful.”
Of course, people may also consume fiction for reasons that do not entail escape, attempting to keep at least one foot in the real world as they consume it. But that is not always an easy task. Fiction is often immersive, such that even the person who is not intending to “escape” may find, by the end of it, he had escaped; he had for a brief time lost himself, and rather than merely consume the story, he was himself consumed by it. In fact, it’s not uncommon for authors and filmmakers to be told they should try to create their work in such a way that the audience forgets they’re reading a book or watching a film.
As Christians we should ask: is it ever good to lose ourselves? Is it good to voluntarily forget who we are—namely, who we are in Christ—even for a moment? And is that not indeed what happens, to some extent, when we immerse ourselves in a fictional world—especially a world where Christ is not presumed to be Lord?
It’s undeniable that humans are story-oriented beings, and that God is too, firstly because we’re made in His image (so, if we are, He is), and secondly because much of His special revelation in the Bible comes to us in story form. But those stories are not fiction, they’re history. They’re non-fiction. And indeed I wonder if many of the supposed benefits of fiction cannot also be gained through non-fiction, such as through reading history or hearing loved one’s life stories. Plus, those activities certainly have benefits that fiction does not.
A Philosophy of Fiction
I haven’t yet figured out all the answers to these questions, but I think they need to be asked, and I don’t think Christians talk about these things enough. Over the years I’ve heard a lot of opining about specific fictional content, like which films or books or video games Christians should stay away from, but I haven’t heard much by way of a robust, overarching Christian philosophy of fiction in general.
I believe the answers will be quite nuanced. And I do not believe, in the end, that the conclusion will be to utterly shun fiction. After all, there is some biblical precedent for fiction: parables. So, fiction itself is not all bad. But it must be navigated wisely, and (here’s the bottom line) it must not be loved more than reality, because, for the Christian, reality is far, far better.
There is no better story than the true story of the gospel! It is our redemption and restoration to God through Jesus Christ, it impacts every aspect of life and the world, and it’s real. If we are more captivated and delighted by any other story, that’s a problem. It’s an indication of spiritual malaise, or worse.
Stories and Children
So, how can parents help direct their children to have a healthy relationship with fiction—specifically, to not love fiction more than reality? I have a hypothesis:
If a child grows up engaged in non-fiction the way I grew up engaged in fiction, he is likely to have a love and appreciation for God’s world and God’s story as I had for imaginative worlds and imaginative stories, and he will be bettter equipped to understand and be successful in the world where he actually lives and the story of which he is actually apart.
What would it look like to be “engaged in non-fiction” in this way? While a child is very young, I envision it as telling him Bible stories and other historical anecdotes instead of fairy tales and made-up children’s stories. This can be aided by picture books or other creative visuals that portray those historical events.
Then, as the child gets a little older and begins reading for himself, Mom and Dad can supply him with books about historical people and events, and about real-world topics.
At both stages, I would limit or entirely avoid “screen time” (TV, online video, video games, etc.), which doctors say is negative for development anyway, and which, if avoided, would eliminate a huge swath of fiction to help keep a child rooted in reality.
Now, I don’t want to be unrealistic or overly rigid with this. If I’m playing with my child, and I pretend that the toy rhinoceros and the toy bear are speaking to each other in English, it could be said that I’m “engaging in fiction,” since real rhinoceroses and real bears do not socialize, much less in human language—and, to go one level deeper, since those pieces of plastic are not actually the animals they represent. Well, OK. That’s not the end of the world. And I don’t intend to shelter my child from the fact that fiction exists, or the fact that anthropomorphism is a thing. If I were to shelter him from those facts, I would be working against my goal, which is to help him understand the real world; in the real world, fiction exists, and anthropomorphism is pervasive (even inevitable).
But notice that the toys in this scenario are toy animals—animals that really exist—not, say, superhero action figures or some other such fictional characters. So I am still being careful not to endear my child to commercialized fictional stories at this very young age. I’d rather ground him in reality, so that when he does interact with fiction, he does so with understanding and critical thinking, with his mind ahead of his heart.
In all these considerations, the problem isn’t so much fiction itself, but the love of fiction. Mainly, I don’t want my child to love and be involved with fiction more than non-fiction. Emphatically, this does not mean discouraging imaginative play. But I do want to observe that play closely, because it may be a good indication of what he’s being most influenced by, and his influences are exactly what I’m seeking to carefully curate.
As the child moves toward and into adolescence, exposure to fiction can broaden incrementally, especially within the context of analyzing it rather than becoming a fan of it; ideally, this would more often be classic literature than contemporary popular media. Screen time would be more flexible, in accordance with the child’s level of maturity and self-control, again with a view toward analysis rather than fandom. Critical consumption of history, sciences, arts, and current events would always be emphasized over mindless consumption of popular or commercial fiction.
By the time the child becomes an adult, he will (Lord willing) be grounded in a robust understanding of the real world, past and present, and be equipped with an arsenal of knowledge and skills to make his way in it. He will likely be steps ahead of his peers, beset as they may be with expertise in imaginary things and ignorance of real things. When he interacts with fiction, he will have a foundation to not be swept up in it, but to think about it critically and, when it’s good, enjoy it to an appropriate degree. His standards for entertainment will be high, and his interest in being entertained will be under control.
Your Thoughts?
As noted, I’m still working through these ideas. There is some related literature I’ve begun to read, particularly from Lewis, Tolkien, and G.K. Chesterton. I may interact with their thoughts in future articles. Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss those. In the meantime, what are your thoughts? I’m really interested in feedback on this topic. Send your comments my way.
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.