So today I was doing some last minute Christmas shopping and decided to run by Bible's Plus to see if they might have anything promising. Since they severely downsized several years ago, I really don't shop their much because they just don't typically have what I want. But since I was driving by I figured it wouldn't hurt to look. I started checking out the books, starting with Christian Living and slowly working my way towards Fiction. It didn't take very long because the other sections were quite small, so I headed over to Fiction to finish up, hoping to find something. As I started looking, I paused. Almost every single book had a picture of woman on it or a couple. Fiction is the largest section of books there so that was a lot of books that looked very similar. As I started going through the books I came across a theme. Nearly every book there was a romance.
Now don't get me wrong, I like to read an occasional romance book, but the fact that a Christian bookstore's Fiction section was made up almost entirely of that single genre kind of disturbed me. I highly doubt that any of the books had anything explicit or particularly sexual in them, but many of them, in reading the backs, didn't even mention God or anything spiritual whatsoever. Most of them were focused on the, Will she find love? Will he open his heart to her? Will they find each other?, etc. There were a few that did seem to focus on God, but by and large, it seemed to be a mass of clean romance books.
I was disappointed that this store that I had always enjoyed going to was now focused on this one aspect. I used to love their Fiction section because they had a decent variety of books. Now, it took me a full 10 minutes to find a book that didn't have any kind of romance in it.
I know a lot of women enjoy romances, like I said, I like to read one occasionally, but the key is occasionally. I've read articles about how reading nothing but romances can be bad for people's marriages and other romantic relationships because those books can create that ideal man or woman or relationship that simply can't be obtained in real life. It can cause people to set unreasonable expectations and when they're not met, it can cause conflict. The fact that a Christian bookstore is encouraging that, consciously or not, is sad.
When I mentioned it to one of the employees, she essentially waved me off, saying that they get what's popular and romance novels are popular, so they keep them stocked. But being a Christian and following Christ doesn't really go with being popular. We're to do what's right, to encourage what is right not popular. So while I understand that they want to appeal to people as a business and have what people want, I think there also needs to be moderation.
As I said before the Fiction section is the largest section in their books and I do mean largest. They could probably put five or six of their other sections of books where Fiction is and there would still be room for more. The other sections, with books for men and women, books about marriage and Christian living, seemed ignored, neglected. There really wasn't much to choose from. Yet those, to me at least, seemed to be the more important books, the ones that should have more prominence.
I think all this can apply to our lives as well. There are many times when we let the "Fiction" part of our lives take the forefront, and push everything else back and make it smaller, more convenient. And unfortunately, all too often one of those things we push back is God, the One who should truly be at the forefront of our lives. So I guess what I'm trying to say is to not let the "Fiction" in our lives almost completely obscure Christ and our purpose in Him. Fiction is nice, its fun, but its not necessary and by no means should it take over everything else in our lives.
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