I’m looking forward to an inspiring weekend, a time of meeting new friends and learning new things, at the Faith Forward Writers Retreat near Sparta, Wisconsin. I’ll be a panelist in the open-to-the-public “Meet the Authors” event Thursday night. 

It’s billed as a retreat for “Christian-faith based writers.” It makes me wonder, this Easter week: What qualifies me  to speak at a Christian writers’ conference? Am I a Christian writer?

I am Christian; I am a writer. Therefore, I’m a Christian writer. But the term calls up an image of one who writes “Christian books”—Bible explorations, for example. Or inspiring essays. Or Christian romance, meaning romance novels in which the heroine’s Christian faith plays a pivotal role in the development and outcome of the plot. Some of my good writer friends, like Barbara M. Britton and Deb Wenzler Farris, write with excellence in some of these genres.

My books feature fictional characters—Anders, Maria, Daniel, Izzy—who live in a Christian world and whose faith is conventional, largely unexamined. Faith plays a role in forming their personalities, and it influences their actions, but it’s seldom at the front of their minds.

The Christianity in my books is like an iceberg, or like an old tree trunk that has floated in a lake or river long enough to become waterlogged. Only a bit may appear above the surface, but mariners: ignore it at your peril.

Since I’ll be billed in a public event as a Christian writer, this is a good time to inform you about the particular Christian faith that undergirds my doings, writing included. Though Your New Favorite Writer’s books are neither Bible commentaries nor theological treatises, Dear Reader, you may wish to learn the spiritual identity of their author. 

Who knows? It might be catching, and you deserve fair warning.

So here it is.

Credo

I believe there is a God, and I know it’s not me.

I think we are all creatures of a Great Intelligence far beyond our imaginations, exempt from our own limits of history and finitude.

I believe in Science; I believe God is its Author. The greatest scientists—the Keplers and Newtons and Einsteins and Hawkings—are its imperfect annotators.

Whether or not I know God is not as momentous as the fact that God knows me.

It is wondrous that, despite my imperfections, despite my dual nature as saint and sinner, God loves me wholly, forgives my transgressions, and showers blessings on me daily. God seems to ignore my just desserts. That is why God is called Love. 

Jesus Christ is the avatar of that Love.

As a Christian, I ought to be wholly on Christ’s team. But in our complex world, it’s often unclear to me whether I am batting for Jesus or the Other Guy. 

I have come to rely on God’s forgiveness, because I so often need it.

A Few Corollaries

The Bible says God commanded us to “go and make disciples of all nations.” I am choosing to use the method of drawing them to Christ through the attractiveness of my example. I know this seems a forlorn hope, but it’s what I’ve got.

How can I convert you? I have a hard enough job converting myself. 

Maybe that’s only my recessive personality speaking. For example, I also don’t wish to baptize you into my political views or my sports team. In fact, I’ve never hankered to run your life. You need to figure things out for yourself.

Yet, if I have the salvation power of Jesus Christ, and if that is the Greatest Gift in the World, should I not want to share it with everyone I meet? 

Well, of course I should. But I’m a writer, not a miracle worker. 

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”

Paul the Apostle.

I’m still working on the love part. Once I master that, we can talk about the rest.

Amen.

P.S.—You may still be able to attend the Faith Forward Writers Retreat. The sign-up is here.

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Evangelist