What is it about dynamic Christians that makes them so hard to capture in literature?

By Tompaul Wheeler

Visiting friends in London, England, my wife Lisa and I took a side trip to the university town of Oxford. Among the professors to stroll its streets were authors J.R.R. Tolkien and the friend he helped lead to Christianity, C.S. Lewis. We stopped by their schools and hangouts in the more than 1200-year-old city, admiring Magdalen College's New Building (built in 1733) and the herd of deer that graze freely on a campus field. 

Back home in Tennessee, I pulled out my old videocassette of Shadowlands, a fictionalization of the story of C.S. Lewis and his wife Joy. The film covers the years between their meeting, marriage, and her death from cancer, and was widely acclaimed by both audiences and critics. It's an engrossing film with much to say, except for one major detail: the portrayal of Lewis' personality and temperament is far from reality. 

Shadowlands depicts Lewis as absurdly reserved. In real life Lewis, though a consummate scholar, was a fun-loving guy with a perpetual twinkle in his eye. Friends described his quick wit and infectious laughter. 

The movie's Lewis (the Oscar-winning Anthony Hopkins) barely knows how to handle himself outside a classroom. In shaping a story of a man discovering the power of love, Shadowlands emphasizes his intellect at the expense of his passion. 

Unfortunately, Shadowlands isn't alone in movie biographies that emphasize angst over charisma, whittling down dynamic personalities ‘til there's little left but their gloomiest days. The musical bio-pic Walk the Line depicts much of the life and struggles of Christian musician Johnny Cash, but in exploring what spurred his addictions, it forgets to show the audience the larger-than-life qualities that made Cash such a magnetic presence in the first place. In 2003's Luther, a speedy tour of Martin Luther's life, the Reformation's original rabble-rouser is reduced, after a few early zingers at the establishment, to a man moaning, "Most days, I'm so depressed I can't even get out of bed." While Luther's life had more than its share of lows alongside the triumphs, the morose portrayal is hardly what you'd expect of a man whose fearless stand for the gospel changed Christianity and the western world forever. 

And don't get me started about your typical Jesus movie. In depictions like Franco Zeffirelli's television miniseries Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus spends much of his time looking sleepy, occasionally glancing around with a mystical blur in His eyes before falling into a pseudo-trance. If the Pharisees had met this guy they might have been impressed, but little kids sure wouldn't have jumped on His knees. 

What is it about dynamic Christians that makes them so hard to capture in literature? If you're reading this website you've hopefully met a few in real life, but even Christians do a poor job of making their fellow Christians, let alone their Christ, appear multidimensional. We spend so much time emphasizing doing the right things that we forget what it's like to be righteous, wrestling with an imperfect world and stepping boldly into the darkness to rescue truth and redeem God's children. 

But when you meet a true Christian, someone whose love for God and other people shapes everything about them, the difference is unmistakable--and incredible. When it comes to witnessing, I'll take one Spirit-filled disciple over a hundred cut-and-paste pew-warmers any day. Too many Christians step gingerly around the world's flaws, trying not to make offense, or simply don't know how to plug into their otherworldly calling. When Jesus promised followers a new life "to the full," He called for people who, despite their very real struggles--with self, with depression, with addiction--would show that while the Christian life has its share of grief and pain, it's rarely dull.