I have been thinking for years about what constitutes preaching in fiction. We all know we aren’t supposed to preach at our readers. But how does one refrain? The answer can’t be to simply write stories scoured of all conviction.

Katherine Paterson said, in a talk given in 1989 at the New York Public Library, that she becomes uncomfortable when people ask her about the moral of her stories or the values she’s trying to impart. “Moral judgment is not my prerogative,” she said. “Moral judgment is the prerogative of the Creator, and if the Bible is to be believed, when the Creator makes a moral judgment it breaks His heart.”

She allows that she’ll make moral judgments for herself, and as a parent she will try to teach her children what she believes “to be right and good” and what she sees as “evil and wrong.” She’ll also do whatever she can to work for peace and justice, which she believes is right, and to combat war and oppression, which she believes to be evil. “But when it comes to passing judgment on other people,” she says, “even on my own children, I have to tread carefully.”

OK let’s get this out right up front: Katherine Paterson is way more intelligent than I’ll ever be. Still, though I tremble, I must say, for a woman who doesn’t believe she has the right to make moral judgments she sure has a lot of beliefs about what is good and right and what is wrong and evil.

Of course she makes moral judgments. She can’t help it. I agree that we are not to judge others, if by that we mean we aren’t to condemn them to hell. We can’t read another’s heart to see if he’s repented of sinful action. But if we aren’t allowed to condemn people to hell, neither are we allowed to decide they go to heaven.

In Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Paterson has a main character, the brilliant little girl, Leslie, say that she doesn’t have to believe the Bible and God doesn’t damn people to hell. Later, when this beautiful girl dies and her best friend, Jess, mourns her, his father comforts him, saying, “Lord, boy, don’t be a fool. God ain’t gonna send any little girls to hell.”

So, this writer who puts no moral messages into her fiction has orchestrated the story so that the brilliant girl doesn’t believe God sends people to hell, and the adult man doesn’t believe God sends little girls to hell. The only one who believes Leslie is in hell is the bratty six-year-old who is too stupid to know any better.

This is fine. Katherine, apparently believes that at ten a child has not yet reached the age of accountability. This is between her and God.

My point is not to argue original sin and the fate of unbelieving children. The point I make here is that no matter how much we like to think we don’t preach, we all do preach. Our worldview seeps into our stories.

But there is an acceptable way to preach in fiction. After all, Bridge to Terabithia won the Newbery in 1978. No one minded her preaching.

So, are we to have the good characters believe what we believe and the stupid characters believe the opposite, and then tell everyone we don’t preach in fiction?

I think there’s more to it than that.

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