Why Do Christians Tell Crappy Stories?

This morning I followed my usual writing routine.  I woke up, made coffee, turned on the Spotify station I listen to when I write, and started typing.

And then, somehow, a Christian song got into the mix and it was so bad, it startled me out of my writing trance.

The music wasn’t great, but the lyrics were even worse. In the first verse, a woman is despondent and on the verge of suicide. In the second verse, a man is about to leave his family.  And then, by the chorus, Jesus has swept in and changed everything and suddenly, in a 3-minute, made-for-radio song, all’s right with the world.

Of course, I could’ve skipped the song, but instead I listened to it from start to finish, like the musical version of an appalling train wreck from which you can not look away.

The lyrics were a clunky, sappy club with which the angstyband assaulted listeners over and over again with a heavy and relentless, “JESUS SAVES. HE DOES. HE TOTALLY DOES. NO, FOR REAL, HE DOES!”

“Christians tell crappy stories,” I muttered to my laptop as the last note of the song faded away.

And then I wondered why.

Because the stories Jesus tells are timeless treasures that continue to resonate across cultures and continents and diverse religious (and non-religious) communities.

But the stories many Christians try to tell in literature and music and art? Not so much.

It’s no secret that there’s little demand for “Christian” literature outside of traditional Christian markets.

There’s little demand for “Christian” music outside of religious stations and church-going listeners.

And let’s not even get started about Kinkade-esque “Christian” art.

Often we blame non-Christian audiences.  Their hearts are too hard to listen to stories about Jesus, we say, shaking our heads as we pity the “lost” for what they’re missing.

But in reality, it’s not the subject of the story that’s off-putting.  It’s our sub-par storytelling that constantly misses the mark, sells sacred stories short, and gives Christian art forms their Razzie-worthy reputation.

All too often, Christians tell bad stories badly.

The question that worries me is, “If those are the stories we listen to and perpetuate and like….are we living bad stories badly, too?”