By Robin Phillips, November 19, 2012 in the Christian Worldview Journal
My dad, Michael Phillips, is a Christian novelist, so as I was growing up fiction played an important role in our lives. His career began by editing the novels of George MacDonald before he branched out to begin writing his own novels.
Though my father was a good story-teller, he never intended to just tell stories as an end in itself. Rather, he sought to use his fiction ministry to draw people closer to God the Father, and to spur believers on to a life of more faithful obedience to the commands of scripture.
Growing up it was sometimes interesting to hear people object to my father’s writing ministry. “Why not just tell the truth plainly, instead of putting it into stories?” I would sometimes hear people say. Other times I would sometime people say something like this: “If I wanted to learn more about the Lord, a novel would be the last book I would pick up. Why not go straight to the Bible or to works of theology?”
