Huh I realise a lot of books I mentioned are not exactly Christian books. And I curated the church library for a while.
I remember dumping a whole lot of Christian fiction because it was so unbelievable, like Left Behind series. I really didn't get the fuss over The Shack. A lot of what was in the church library was outdated, or specific to a certain kind of Christianity.
We reasoned if anyone was into Christian fiction they could access it in the public library which has all the Amish novels etc. I've read a few Francine Rivers. She used to write romance before she became a Christian, and then after actually some of her novels are pretty good, although it can feel contrived when she shoehorns scripture into the plots.'
I don't have any particular favourites in the fiction genre, I'm more fascinated by real life stories, but I learned some of them were made up.
I think one of them stands out though it was Crack in the Wall by Jackie Pullinger. Because it was about what God was doing in Hong Kong where my mother lived. I didn't think God cared about China, or Chinese people, but He does. I always felt that maybe God had overlooked the most popular/populated country on the planet.
Otherwise most of the books we had were about christian missionaries, or American self help books, or End times fear mongering. Purity culture was also a thing we had to remove because of the damage it had done to a lot of young Christians. I'm kind of at a remove from all that now.
Jesus did speak in parables, and I find a lot of spiritual truth in them, and his words, rather than what everyone else thinks. Though the Bible can be hard to read because it's not like a novel but a collection of books written by different people. and at a time in history that is far from today. It is also, to be honest very male orientated. although there are books like Esther and Ruth and a whole bunch of women in the Bible that had interesting lives. I'm like what happened to Dinah? The only daughter in the family of 12 brothers. She didn't stand a chance.
Also Leah who had tender eyes. She had it rough. Or what about Hannah wife number 2 who couldn't have children at first. Being Barren was a big deal in those days, especially when God was busy building up the population of his chosen people.
Thousands of years later, people are trying to STOP having lots of children, by using birth control or abortion tc and when they realised that we need more to support the aging population, we now have things like IVF fertility treatments.
It doesn't make sense and rarely talked about in Christian circles, as many assume women are happy being baby machines and that's all they are designed to do in life.
I mean romance stories are all well and good, but I notice often in those novels that have romance in them that children and pregnancy are rarely mentioned. I dunno maybe its just some thoughts I had recently about why is it so important to marry and have kids as part and parcel of being a Christian. I used to believe that church was only for families and because people got married in them, that was what it was for. haha so naive. But it's still true for a lot of churches.
