What is the point of a story if it does not bring hope? What is the point if all a story brings is sadness, hardship, despair, and evil? Is not the world full enough already with those things without us adding to them? If you want to see evil, if you want to feel pain, look at the world around you. It does not take much looking to see the suffering. It does not take much looking to see the evil. Why must we create more of it in our stories?
And yet, there is a place for sadness, and evil, and pain in tales that we write, for it can bring change and healing. Without it, the stories would be lifeless, mere platitudes, yes even a mockery to those in pain. For life truly is full of all those things. So how can I speak out of both sides of my mouth then saying we must not write evil and yet we must write evil?
It is the evil without hope that I write against. Stories must end in hope--even if just a glimmer of it--for stories show us life. And to give up hope, is to up life.
For a christian especially there is hope, even in death--especially in death. It is sometimes the privilege of stories to reveal that hope in our lives, or to recall it to us when it grows dim, and we seem to have lost it.
If it ever comes to a point where our stories lose all hope and happy ends, it will be a sad world indeed to live in...
But ah! Where is the hope in that?
I do not despair for I am sure there are others like me who still hold dear the happy endings of their childhoods and wish to see them return. And perhaps, perhaps I might have a small hand helping them once more bring hope to our world.
