Further Gripes about Christian Romance

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On Monday, I listed some of my major problems with Christian Romance. Today, I want to wrap up that discussion as much as I can. (Also, once again, I would like to thank my sister for aiding and abetting in the writing of this post.) 

See, the problem is, we get so hung up on the “Christian” label, like somehow we’re being promised a great story. At least it’s “clean”. At least it ascribes to a certain set of values. At least…etc. But writers and consumers apparently sometimes forget that “Christian” and “quality” are not synonymous. So let’s talk about this. 

Personhood. I already addressed this in Monday’s post, but I want to reiterate because I focused only on the woman side of issue, and I’d like to broaden my scope. Among other things, I mentioned that the heroines in Christian Romances often seem to exist only for their men to romance them, and that these heroines don’t have much substance to their personalities. However, I should also mention that the men in Christian Romances aren’t generally treated like real human beings either. Instead, they are frequently idealized. 

If you pay close enough attention, you’ll see a pattern. Our Christian Romance hero doesn’t have any true faults. Sure, he teases the heroine and tries to make her angry, but it’s all in good fun. He might have some emotional rough patches (for instance, he might get angry at our heroine for some, probably justifiable, reason), but he has no deep personal flaws. He, like the heroine, doesn’t have a violent streak, or a selfish streak, or a bitter streak. Or, if he does have flaws, they are highly romanticized and painted as good/desirable. He doesn’t even think like a man, usually. In essence, he’s what women unconsciously look for in men—he is a woman in a man’s body. Not to mention, he is insanely attractive and, as with our heroine’s physical appearance, we are frequently reminded of his dashing good looks. Because we all know hotness is the most important factor in a relationship. 

Ugliness. A good romance doesn’t present cardboard characters who exist only to be beautiful and in love. We are all of us imperfect, and we all have ugly aspects to our character. Pretending those facets don’t exist doesn’t give us a better romance—it just gives us a dishonest one. Sometimes I think Christian Romance writers shy away from the representation of sin in their characters’ lives because they’re writing “clean” books. How can you write a “clean” book if you have sinful characters? Wouldn’t it just be awful to show us how bad humans can be? 

I’m not saying Christian writers have to throw away their guidebooks and their morals and write about sordid love affairs and whatnot. But I am saying a Christian writer shouldn’t shy away from the truth, even when it gets ugly. It may not be as desirable to have a heroine and hero who struggle with temptation and sin, who sometimes think bad thoughts and want bad things despite their faith, who mess up again and again until they learn—if they ever learn—but that’s what people are really like. Sure, we humans have many attractive qualities about us: humor, intelligence, physical appearance, whatever. But there’s nothing more beautiful than the grace God has given us, and I wish more Christian Romances focused on that—God’s grace despite our faults—instead of squeaky-clean, perfect-looking, pseudo-humans. Love is more beautiful when it exists despite the ugliness of sin than it is when it exists only as a washed-out, untested version of itself. 

Testing Love. In my Monday post, I briefly touched on the tendency toward romanticized portrayals of roguish men. Many of the heroes in Christian Romance are presented as these reformed ruffians with just enough wickedness in them to make them interesting and exciting and wonderfully dangerous. But this wicked streak is painted as something attractive, desirable, and ultimately harmless. In other words, even his faults are good. And I’ll admit that there is definitely something very attractive about that sort of man. Otherwise, why would that character type be so popular? 

But this representation of the bad guy gone good—or worse, the good bad guy—ignores certain fundamental aspects of human nature. So let me give you an example of human nature. In LORNA DOONE (a book I adore beyond all human reason) we have a highwayman side character who is in love with the main character’s sister, Annie. Annie and the highwayman get married, and the highwayman promises that he has put his old ways behind him and that his love for Annie will be enough. He will not feel the need to go back to holding up carriages at gun point. He has found another cause to live for. Hearts and romance and all that mushy stuff. But fast-forward to later on in the book, and what do we find? Our highwayman has grown restless. After the initial excitement of his marriage has faded and domestic daily life has gotten into full swing, he has begun to realize something. He is, at heart, just not cut out for this sort of existence. At the peak of his romantic feelings, he may have chosen to change his ways, but he is still the man who found adventure and life in breaking the law—his love for Annie and his good intentions haven’t changed the core of his being. Because of this, his antsy-ness at being tied down when his soul was meant to free as a bird puts a strain on their marriage. 

I’m using this example, not because I’m saying every romance that portrays a rogue and a lady falling in love will end in hardship (and I’m also not going to tell you the end of Annie and her highwayman’s story—you’ll have to read the book for that), but I am saying that rogues don’t change completely. At some point down the road, once the excitement of marriage fades, they will want to revert back to their old ways because that’s what comes naturally to them. Even the “good” guys will not seem perfect forever. So instead of always showing us the time when the hero and heroine fall in love, with all its dashing romance and blinding emotion, wouldn’t it be great if writers sometimes showed us what comes later on, down the road? Wouldn’t it be nice if they showed our couple struggling to stay in love despite the natural tendency toward entropy? 

It’s so easy to fall in love, and it’s so easy to write about falling in love. But love doesn’t mean all that much when it isn’t tested, and I think a lot of Christian Romance writers miss that. Otherwise I don’t think we would have so many stories about falling in love and so few about staying in love. After all, we live in a culture where love ends. Often it seems that we fall in love with the secret understanding that we’re falling, but we’ll one day stop falling, and then it will be over. But real love is beautiful and messy and hard, and it is a conscious choice, not an accident. It is a war, not a vacation. The fact that so many Christian writers focus heavily on the happy aspects and shy away from representing the trenches makes me wonder how much these writers truly understand the love they’re writing about. It makes me wonder how much faith they have that the love they’re representing is strong enough to last beyond the honeymoon period. 

In Conclusion. I know there are plenty of unhealthy romances out there and that this is not a peculiarly Christian problem. But if we, as Christians, believe that God is love and the author of all love, then our Romance novels should reflect that belief. In short, Christian Romance should be better, purer, more powerful than run-of-the-mill Romance. Because we Christians should understand what romance means. 

Since I have griped so much about the majority of Christian Romance, I think it’s only fair that I share the ones that have not disappointed me. Unfortunately, the majority of my exposure to Christian Romance happened when I was a young thing, so many of the stories have melded together in my mind. I can’t be sure, now, if the books I think were fine were actually fine. I’m sorry. I do believe Janette Oke’s LOVE COME’S SOFTLY series is okay, as I remember it feeling particularly safe and real. But aside from that, I would have to do some rereading before I felt comfortable putting my stamp of approval on any other examples. 

What about you, little coffee beans? What do you think? Do you have any good examples of Christian Romance? What has been your experience with this genre?