Illumination Writes

Hello World! It’s been several hot minutes since I’ve posted any content on this blog. I know I said, “new content in April,” but I feel like the more times I say something like that, I fail to meet that goal. So, apologies from me on that end, but I’m learning to not put as many time constraints on myself because life has been both crazy and fantastic the last few months. Recently, I’ve been pulled on to do some work-related trips/events, I’ve gotten plugged into a great bible study group (shoutout to my bible study peeps), and devoting some more time to other hobbies. Needless to say, I’ve been busy. Needless to say, I’ve been busy and have had little energy to funnel into my writing. However, I’ve been mulling over this idea for a few months and decided it was finally time to release it to you all.

In the process of writing my novel, I found myself falling into a writing trope that I’ll call the ‘religion is bad’ trope. I’d like to say up-front that I am a Christian, I have been for essentially my whole life; for me to accidentally write this trope, made me pause to really think through what is communicated to us about religion through our fictional media.

Across all kinds of stories, I see a consistent theme where there is a religion, cult or a set of beliefs that sets itself up as an antagonistic force in the story. In some video games and movies I’ve come across recently, if there is religion included in the world building, it is more likely than not a cult that is used to justify the antagonists’ actions, or is actively trying to enslave or destroy an entire population. If religion is used in a piece of media positively, it is typically a corny Christian movie that leaves much to be desired creatively. The point is, I find that more often than not, religion is used to justify bad belief systems in the worldbuilding of many stories.

It happens so often, that as I was writing my own piece, I began to write in a clergy that used a god to justify their poor behavior toward people in an underprivileged community. I think subliminally, I have been taught in media that if there are bad beliefs in a society, those bad beliefs have to come from somewhere, and the most logical place for them to come from is usually some form of religious system.

However much we want to deny it, religion does play a heavy hand in the structure of society. It does instruct a society about what is moral and what appropriate behavior should be. In fiction, we must have a reason for why our world believes in what it does—and justifying irrational moral behavior from the antagonists under the guise of religious reasons is a really easy one to write. I’m not saying that the ‘religion is bad’ trope shouldn’t be used, but for my own writing, I’ve had to identify why this happens to improve my own story.

Will I have a manipulative clergy in my book? Probably not. As a Christian, I found it really odd that one of my early justifications of the bad beliefs in my in-world culture had to be justified by a religion. I personally view religion as a net positive for society (and when I refer to religion being a positive thing, I specifically am referring to Christianity because that’s what I actively practice and it has been an overall positive thing in my life). It made me stop and question why there aren’t more good pieces of fiction that show religion as a positive force rather than a negative one. Perhaps, it’s because most people have had bad experience with different churches and religion as a whole—that fact saddens me. (Trust me, I’ve been there as well.)

Will I be writing a positive use of religion in my book now that I’ve recognized this trope? At this point, I’m not sure. I may have some minor references to God, but having faith isn’t going to be one of the core aspects of the book. And I don’t think it needs to be either. The point is to write a good story.

So, am I stuck with the ‘religion is bad’ trope if I want to justify bad belief systems in my world building? Not necessarily. Yes, religion often is the backbone of a society when it comes to beliefs and cultural practices, but I’ve found that I can also write some historical events for the world that put certain ideas into practice as ideals for the society. Then the conflict doesn’t become, ‘we have to reject faith in this thing to also remove the bad beliefs,’ rather it’s more of a, ‘these practices worked in the past, but they don’t serve us anymore in the modern age.’ I think it might give my story a bit more of a realistic grounded feel to it, rather than immediately blaming religion for causing the society to be bad. It gives my characters room to grow and change, without necessarily rejecting a benevolent god-like figure in the world.

In closing, I’d like to open the comments up for discussion about this trope, how you feel about it and if you’ve seen examples of it in stories you’ve engaged with or even in your own writing. I’m so excited that now my new website has comments enabled, so this will be a good first test run to see how those actually work. Please leave a comment below and I’ll try to respond to as many as I can.

Until next time!