Truth In Fiction

The very fact that many people conceive of, create, and so deeply enjoy fictional works of entertainment is itself a philosophically significant thing.  Even when people do not contemplate or savor the depths of this, modern life is immersed in the fact that they can create or have access to a now-enormous range of diverse films, television shows, video games, books, oral stories, and so on.  Of the numerous reasons why someone might enjoy entertainment, one of the deepest is its ability to draw attention to foundational or precise truths, ideas, and possibilities.  Entertainment can serve as a mirror that shows various individuals who they are or makes them focus on an epistemological or metaphysical issue.

Fiction can provide everything from emotional and intellectual stimulation to an excuse to gather with friends to escapism during personal crises or times of boredom, but the deepest capacity of entertainment is indeed that of drawing the attention of viewers, players, or readers to foundational, grand, or esoteric philosophical truths while emotionally engaging them and helping to strip away whatever facades they might have set up for themselves.  Some entertainment is not made with anything of substance in mind, and some philosophical explorations in stories are almost accidental, but fiction is far from useless in connecting with even a broken society.  It can actually be a way to get people to consider truths or concepts which they could otherwise ignore indefinitely.

Anyone who intentionally puts off foundational philosophical analysis until prompted by others or by entertainment is irrational and lacks initiative to embrace the deepest parts of reality, of course, but fiction remains a powerful stimulative force for both rationalists and non-rationalists.  Rationalists can find themselves revisiting familiar and new concepts alike, even if they are ones that any person could come to by just looking to reason without any sensory input to prompt ideas.  Non-rationalists can find themselves seeing certain epistemological truths, moral dilemmas, or existential matters addressed by someone else for perhaps the first time.

Christians have an additional reason to appreciate how fictional stories can entertain, inspire, and provoke thought: Jesus himself uses fiction, or parables, to regularly convey theological and broader philosophical ideas in the gospel accounts.  Sometimes these allegories and stories of his are vague to the point that he explained the symbolic role of characters or settings, while other parables are direct enough that no one needs explicit elaboration from Jesus in the text to understand the exact ideas they seem to communicate.  In both cases, Jesus told fictional stories based on key moral, eschatological, or soteriological ideas.  That Jesus relied on fiction to help communicate concepts adds another layer to why Christians are free to appreciate fiction.

Contrary to the commands of Deuteronomy 4:2, many vocal Christians have tried to demonize entire genres of fiction such as horror or erotica without realizing the obvious, deep ways that all fiction could connect to both Christianity and philosophical truths that underpin or transcend Christianity.  The Christian who loves fiction of many kinds and does not intentionally wait for entertainment to prompt deeper thought, though, can see how much entertainment is trivialized by the church and secular society.  He or she can find the truth in fiction that is so easily overlooked in favor of blind escapism or legalistic idiocy.