Let's Talk: Christ and Artistic License

Hello everyone! How is everyone doing this fine week? Are you enjoying the autumn weather?

        Today on let’s talk I want to ask the question. Is it okay to take Artistic/Poetic license when it comes to writing a representation, or including, Jesus Christ in our stories/movies?

        Now before we start let me just state that there is a difference between an Allegorical representation of Christ and Artistic licensed Christ.

Allegory means “A story, poem, or picture that can be used to reveal meaning. Or to point to something.”

Artistic license means “To denote the distortion of fact, alteration of the conventions of grammar or language, or rewording of pre-existing text made by an artist to improve a piece of art.”

Both are about making a representation of something. The difference is that one gives more room for distortion.

        As Christian writers, I think it’s safe to say (or at I hope it’s safe to say) that we want all want to have a character that represents Christ in our novel. If it’s not the literal Christ we want someone that is like Him so that it points our protagonist/reader to Him. And that’s great, I’m all for that. But I do think we can go about it the wrong way. And there is a danger in getting it wrong. But more on that in a moment.

        I think, and I hope you will agree, that As Christian writers we should do our absolute best to represent Christ right. Because for all we know an unbeliever will pick up our book. And if we are making a poor representations of Christ, or ones that are just wrong, we are making idols based off Christ and could be leading others astray.

        I know, that’s a bold statement. But when you think about it, anything less than a prefect representation of Christ/God is an idol. 

Well then how do you suggest I represent Him perfectly in my writing? Do I have to just copy and paste verse where Jesus is talking into my novel? Because if that is what you are saying it’s almost impossible because that will throw off the flow of my novel! I mean come on DUDE!

 No I'm not saying you have to copy and paste verse. I do think when it comes to writing a Christ representation in our novels that it should be done in an allegorical way. Not in an artistic license kind of way.

So why the allegorical way?

The reason I think it should be done in the allegorical way is because doing it in the allegorical way means that you’ll have to study who God/Christ is. It means you’ll have to dive into your Bible to research what it was He meant when He said something. It means you’ll have to cross-reference it with other passages to get the full meaning. It means you’ll have to look at everything He said and did. And by doing that you’ll gain a better understanding of who Christ/God is. That way your allegory will be discriminately pointing back to Christ. So no matter who your reader is they’ll know who this Character represents. I’ve seen this done quite well a few times within books. But not really in movies. From what I’ve seen in movies they like artistic license best.

So why NOT the artistic license way?

Oh, that’s an easy one to answer. Because it creates false gods/idols that are based off Christ. I’ve seen this a lot in books and movies. It’s where the author/writer doesn’t know what Jesus really said/meant but thinks that they know the basic idea and that’s good enough. Kind like my lest favorite part in the Narnia movie “voyage of the dawn treader”

Man, that is BAD! Straight up heresy right there. But that is artistic license for you. Never did God or Jesus Christ say anything even remotely resembling that but because artistic license was taken it mean it doesn’t really matter because it’s a distortion meant to improve the art.

Wait! How is that bad?! That is literally the best part of the whole movie!

Well it’s bad because it’s saying that (according to the movie/books) Christ will let you into heaven if you have a noble heart (I.E a strong passion about something). Let’s see who else did I know that had strong passions about things… hummmmmm...

I'm not saying Hitler is in Heaven, but under that logic anything is possible. And under artistic license that kind of logic fly’s, even though Christ never said anything like that, because artistic license was taken on Christ.

Now does that mean I think you can never use artistic license? Of course not. I use it all the time when I draw or when I write. In fact, anytime someone writes fantasy they use artistic license. Because they are distorting the world as we known it. And let me tell you, fantasy is one of my favorite genres.

So, artistic license does have a place for the Christian writer. But I don’t think it should be used when it comes to writing representations of Christ. But what do you think? Let me know down below.

Remember my one year blog anniversary/face reveal/Q&A is coming up soon, if you could drop some (really good/hard) questions right here in this Googlely thing that would be a big HELP!

Oh! And before I go I also did my first guest post right HERE- You can go and check out my typos there if you so wish. And until next time, Stay True to the King!