God's love, and yet: pain and suffering

[marbleglove]

Today being Sunday and me feeling more virtuous than usual, I actually contemplated religious issues today. It occurred to me that if God is this incomprehensible creature with vast powers, I have a god-like role to the characters in my stories. So I considered this comparison for a bit. 

I love my characters. A few in particular are my favorites, of course, but for the most part, if I don't enjoy a character at least a little then I don't write them at all, and that's that. I love the good guys and I love the bad guys, and I love the conflicts they get themselves into. 

And I am not kind to my characters. When I love them, I love showing them off. I push them to their limits, finding outrageous scenarios that would show off a particular reaction from them. My characters do not get to skip happily along singing happy little songs because, good grief, it would be boring and I don't like boring characters. In fact, the type of character who is beautiful, wonderful, capable, happy, and who skips along singing happy songs while being beloved by everyone has a name. This name is Mary Sue, and she is not well thought off by all the other god-like creators out there. Occasionally, other fic-writers go out of their way to beat down a Mary Sue for being too irritating. 

My characters even have free will to the extent that if I write them as wildly out of character, it's just poor writing and I try to avoid that. 

I do want my characters to be happy... at the end of the story. Or maybe not happy, precisely, but better off than they were. Or, well, more impressive than they were?  Or at least have survived to have a really cool story to tell. And if they die a horrible death, at least it's for a good cause and other people will be impressed. If they ever find out about it since it's really made to be visible from a god-like perspective rather than to the other characters. But well, the other characters just aren't my audience, now are they? 

Anyway, those are my thoughts as I sat in holy silence contemplating the wonders of the world and the love of god. People who say, "God loves us, he wants us to be happy" are probably not fiction writers, or at least haven't thought it through. 

Have I horribly offended anyone by this bit of philosophical rambling? I did refrain from saying any of this out loud until I could get back to my computer. 

Comments

[frogs_of_war]

I agree. I've heard that writers are sadistic, but it isn't quite sadism. We just give trials by fire to make our creations the best they can be.

There have been times that I've made a character too perfect (part of the learning curve, I think). Once because I wouldn't let a character make a fool of himself. If I had the story would be complete by now, instead of wasting away in my WIP . I like the characters and the basic plot, but I didn't give the main character his trial by fire where he thinks he's desperately in love with a girl until someone yanks him out of the closet (which he didn't even realize he was in). I was too nice to him, but nice isn't what he needed.

I wouldn't so much call it free will. When I create a character, I know a lot about them, maybe not at first, but they become whole as I write. With only a few moment's thought I could say what my characters would do in any given situation. If a nice guy needs to deck someone in a crowded night club then he better have a good reason for it. So when a character can't to do what I want them to, I don't say it's the character that refuses, but just that I didn't put enough thought into who the character is or why they would act that way.

I've always wondered about the people who say, "God loves us, he wants us to be happy (or rich)" If the Israelites had been healthy, wealthy, wise, and content, the Bible would be a great deal shorter.

[marbleglove.livejournal.com]

I think we all go through the phase of writing too-perfect characters, before figuring out how much we lose by doing so. If you think on it, even in the Bible, there's Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, perfect and beautiful and happy and beloved. So of course they need to be tricked and betrayed and cursed and kicked out.

It's not sadism because we're not specifically enjoying the pain aspect. We just like the development created by the pain.

I suppose it's not precisely free-will but it's a lack of being a puppet. The characters have their own personality and can't be made to just say anything. The nice guy isn't going to randomly start a barroom brawl for fun even if I have god-like powers to make him.

There's the four descriptions of God: omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent. You can't have all four. Unless God's idea of benevolence is a great deal different from most humans'. Which I think is rather likely.