Award-Winning Author: A Christian Novel is a 400-Page Tract
by Randall Murphree
April 22, 2004
(AgapePress) - AFA Journal editor Randall Murphree interviewed novelist Randy Singer after his second legal thriller, Irreparable Harm, was released in 2003. It is up for a Christy Award for the year's best Christian fiction (to be announced in June). Directed Verdict, Singer's first title, won the Christy for best suspense novel of 2002. His third, Dying Declaration, will be released by WaterBrook in May. Singer is vice president of the North American Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention.AP: Why are you -- a litigation attorney and a missions administrator -- writing fiction?
RS: I'll be on an airplane, sitting next to someone and one of two things happens -- first, they want to talk, and eventually -- if I'm going to be on the plane with someone for a couple of hours -- I'm going to get to share my faith. Or, they don't want to talk, and the way they signal that is to open a book and start reading.
I look over at these people and after a few airplane trips I start thinking, they're going to put 30 hours of their life into reading some author's notion of reality and worldview, and they're doing it in a fiction piece, so their defenses are down and they're just absorbing the worldview of this author.
I started thinking about how Christ taught in parables, and the power of the story in His ministry. I wondered if I could put together a legal thriller, a piece of fiction, that would cause someone who is not a Christian to be absorbed in the story, but at the same time clearly present the gospel in a way that's unmistakable.
I'm an unlikely guy to write a novel. I'll tell you that, right off the bat. I took the minimum number of English and journalism classes. I probably never read a novel I wasn't required to read until I was 30. When I started reading, I started devouring books. Still, I'm a nonfiction guy. That's my background.
AP: Do you perceive Christian fiction as a tool for spreading the gospel?
RS: What I see with Christian fiction is really two things. One, it's a 400-page gospel tract, because the story is the story of how God, through His Son Jesus Christ, redeems lives. But before someone will hear that story, they have to care about the characters, care about the story and be drawn in. So it's my best effort to present the gospel in human form with flesh on it.
The second thing is, all through the story is God's truth. This is especially true with the subject matters I've tried to pick. For example, with Irreparable Harm, [there's] one thing that's convicted me on stem-cell research and cloning. It's such a complicated issue; we as Christians know that we believe in sanctity of life, but we don't really have a handle on how these issues relate.
So I put my poor little lawyer, Mitch Taylor, fresh out of law school, in the middle of the messiest bunch of ethical dilemmas you could ever imagine. Hopefully, the reader will walk through that and discover a biblical worldview on some critical issues that we're facing right now.
My belief is that when abortion first hit the public scene, as a Christian community we weren't really ready to deal with it the way that we should have been. And I see the tide turning on abortion. I'm so thankful for that. But I think it's taken us decades to really frame it in a way that people understand it's about the life of the child. [We've been] very slow. God forbid that the same thing would happen on the cloning issue.
AP: When you started reading a lot, who were some of the novelists you enjoyed?
RS: Pretty much all secular fiction -- [John] Grisham and Richard North Patterson, who write legal thrillers in the secular market. There was not a whole lot of Christian fiction at the time, and I think that has helped me because my goal is to write so that an unchurched person will be comfortable reading the book and then be confronted with the truth in a natural storyline.
I know a lot of Christian authors do that very well; I'm not saying they don't. But by kind of being "tutored" by the secular authors, I think I've picked up the elements of the thriller that most readers would be looking for.
What I decided to do was try to absorb someone in the story. And, my commitment to the Lord was that every book would have a clear presentation of the pure gospel of Christ. Not a kind of vague biblical worldview or spiritual element, but a clear presentation of the gospel. My second desire was to weave it into a story in a way that would feel really natural to a reader.
AP: Do you now have favorite Christian novelists?
RS: I sure do. I've become an avid reader of a lot of Christian novelists who are very, very good. Randy Alcorn is one of my favorites in that he knows how to develop characters. He draws you into a story, so I've learned a lot from him. I think T. Davis Bunn is one of the most gifted writers. I find myself reading his books and thinking, "How did he think to write that phrase?"
There are a lot of others. Ted Dekker writes engaging and thrilling things as far as I'm concerned. Those are some of my favorite folks right now.
Randall Murphree, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is editor of AFA Journal, a monthly publication of the American Family Association.
