LOVE THY READER: A TECTONIC SHIFT IN OUR APPROACH TO WRITING by Bobbie Ann Cole

 

Imagine Jesus, sitting by the shore of that powder blue lake called Kinneret— Harp— because of its shape. The Master Storyteller is telling the story of The Lost Son, also known as Prodigal.

Is he telling the story because He loves sitting telling stories?

No! This is His way of getting an important message across—something His listeners need to know and understand about God and about themselves.

Who are these listeners? Interestingly, they are twofold. Luke 15, where this parable appears, quotes sinners and murmuring Pharisees. And the story is about two brothers, one a sinner and the other a murmuring Pharisee type.

Jesus’ audience can identify with his characters.

The story revolves around their unbrotherly relationship with one another. It centres on their very different relationships with their father who represents God.

The sinners learn that God is a forgiving Father and that they are not beyond redemption, even if they have wandered far away and wallowed in sin. They have only to return, (T’shuvah, the Hebrew word for repentance literally means return), and, overjoyed, He will take them in His loving arms.

The smug Pharisees in the story, represented by the resentful, older brother, are shown how pride and jealousy distance them from God and keep them outside of His dwelling place.

Jesus custom crafts this story for his listeners and we need to do the same for our intended reader.

This is something we sometimes overlook as we rush to respond to God’s call upon us to write.  

We have only to check the writerly intentions of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and all four Gospelists to recognize that God didn’t call them to write in a vacuum. They wrote with purpose and intent, for a specific readership.

Luke lays it out at the top of his book: Theophilus—potentially a patron— is his one reader and his intention is to provide an ‘orderly account… so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.’

Whether we are writing fiction or non-fiction, I say we must put our reader and his or her needs first, like Jesus did with His stories. Having their takeaway like frontlets before our eyes is not crass marketing.

What do you say?

ACW Competitions Manager Bobbie Ann Cole is an Amazon no.1 bestselling author who offers courses and groups aimed at encouraging and inspiring Christian writers to write. Her report: ‘10 Reasons Christian Writers Don’t Write and 1 Compelling Reason They Do’ is available free at www.forchristianwriters.com.