{Underestimated:} {Fiction}

Personally, I've always found there was something special about fiction --- So much so, that I named my daughter after 19th century female novelist, Charlotte Brontë --- Some may say, I enjoy fiction even to a fault. To quote my oldest brother Troy, {who has a particularly comical beef with how much I --- and most every other woman --- hopped on the Twilight Train}, "Emily, when are you ever going to read a REAL book". LOL

Sure --- true stories, life application, self-help, books on politics, religion, history, science, and other non-fiction works seem to have the OBVIOUS literary upper-hand, but I came across an article recently that serves as a great explanation for my previously unexplainable draw to fictional stories and characters.

In a way, I would argue that fictional stories are many times more real and more truthful than some "true stories" --- Think about it --- Biographies, as well as autobiographies, are written as true stories of someone's life, but undoubtedly, they are written in a way to enhance, by inclusion or exclusion, what will most surely support the writer's personal agenda of how they would like the subject to be viewed --- In other words, "History is written by those who have hanged heroes".

The article I read specifically brought to light the importance of not only reading to our children, but reading fiction to our children as a way to help them learn empathy, "Which in turn helps our children develop a heart of compassion for a broken world".

Fiction, although "not true" in the sense of "actual events", is based off of the truth of "what could be", and the plausibly real, raw, and reactive, human emotion that proves to be the momentum that propels characters from point to point throughout a story. There is a sense of truth in characters interactions with each other and in response to circumstances, that is relatable to the majority of people as a whole.

Fiction allows what reality usually doesn't --- the ability to see past ourselves and through the eyes of another, taking on their burdens, feeling their loss, their elation, their sacrifice, their hope, and their love. Fiction let's us exercise empathy, a practice that can then be translated into our non-fiction reality.

What I'm not saying:

I'm not saying that truth is relative.

I am a firm believer that there is absolute truth. I believe that we are to "love our God with all our minds", and so challenge our minds with continuous, fact based study, but many times people fall to one extreme or another --- either we're all about the touchy feely emotional stuff, or we're too scientific and frank about what should shake us to the core.

What I am saying:

We serve a God who is full of compassion, and if we want our children to grow to have the heart of God, we need to excercise empathy as a spiritual discipline. Jesus himself used parables (fictional stories) to teach, and if the Messiah thought so highly of fiction, why shouldn't we?