A Life in Exile

With the recent release of, The Life I Now Live, the fourth novel in my Middle East Collection, people ask me why I choose to write about Islam and Muslims coming to Christ through fiction. I spoke a bit about this during an interview with Dawn and Steve on Moody Radio, but I wanted to share in more detail on this post, as some of you who are serving may be looking for ways to share the story of your people groups with others.

People love a good story.

Writers throughout the centuries have leaned into the notion that everyone loves a good story. A compelling plot and strong characters can draw readers into worlds far removed from their own and bring empathy and understanding for the worldviews or life situations of protagonists and even villains. Well-read people are often more accepting and can listen to others before forming or giving an opinion of their own.

Writing about life in other countries draws readers into the exotic differences that often make for good escapism. When the writer has the advantage of having actually lived in a specific country, they can describe aspects of nature, culture, and daily life in tangible ways to engage the readers. Remembering what attracted or even disgusted you in the early days of your mission service are great additions to stories and make them that much more enticing.

It is this love of story that drew me to write fiction.

Fiction versus Nonfiction.

Does writing fiction mean nonfiction accounts of experiences of Muslims coming to faith have no value? Absolutely not. In reality, the fact that a book is nonfiction does not make it less of a good story, and some writers have done an excellent job in sharing the true stories of those who have come to faith. There are also nonfiction books about Islam, and I have written one of those along with my late husband, when we wrote A Christian Guide to the Qur’an: Building Bridges in Muslim Evangelism.

Biographies or autobiographies are also nonfiction books that tell the stories of missionaries or the conversion stories of people from other religions. My own story of my husband’s life, A Life Surrendered: Raouf W. Ghattas, is an attempt at sharing the true-life example of a person who has given his life to serving Christ.

So, nonfiction does have its place, and it serves well among readers who are actively seeking to know more about a certain religion or to learn from the lives of missionaries or converts. Christian readers do lean toward nonfiction, and good nonfiction works are needed on the topic of missions and the Christian life. Fiction, however, can reach a wider audience of readers. The target group will be those who love Christian fiction, but it will also pull in the general reader who is searching for something different, a book that opens their eyes to a world vastly different from their own.

Fiction with a purpose.

Another reason I write fiction is to be able to pull the reader into the world of my characters—the good, the bad, and the supernatural of it all. There is no one-size-fits-all for what it looks like for, in my case, a Muslim to come to faith in Christ. It’s messy, and each person’s experience is different due to the country or area where they live, their family background, the amount of possible persecution associated with conversion, and the support or lack thereof of other believers or the church. Thus, the reason, I wrote my original three novels looking at stories of Muslims coming to Christ based in three different countries. I lived in each of the countries represented, and the experiences of those coming to Christ were vastly different. I wanted my readers to understand that. For the Christian reader, it can inform their prayer life and their own attempts to share Christ with Muslims, wherever they may live.

Writing fiction enabled me to combine bits and pieces of real-life Muslim-background-believers into one storyline, if not one protagonist, because just as our stories of coming to Christ vary, every story is unique, no matter the country or upbringing. I like being able to do a mish-mash of experiences to fill out the story and make it more compelling.

Fiction also allows me to protect the identities of the believers within that country. I work hard not to make a storyline so precise that a local reader could figure out the person’s identity. Names are changed and varied from those I knew or worked with. I want to be able to convey a person’s experience without exposing and endangering them.

Ultimately, my prayer is that my fiction points readers to Jesus. He is the center of every story, not the characters I include. My goal is to help readers see what Christ can do in the lives of those who hear of him and respond in faith. Whether their life circumstances change or not, (and in many cases they don’t), their outlook on life impacts everything around them. Hope does that. Jesus is the source of that hope, and that’s the purpose of my fiction and why I write it.

Grace and Peace

If you missed the last Mission Monday post, click HERE. Or, check out these posts on writing: Writing Backwards, Writing Home, To Be or Not to Be, and You Should Write that Down! To see a list of all my books, visit this link.