>>33839748But, as I said, I was doing a lot of reading and studying on my own, and what I was learning & realizing was that my concept for Serenity was too shallow.
I originally conceived of Serenity as a story about an unhappy girl who finds a happy ending. She’s a rebellious teen with an arrest record and a couple of drug busts; she encounters Christian kids who won’t give up on her and as a result she gradually turns her life around, coming to know Christ in the process.
Well, that’s still in there, but as we were working on the series, it began dawning on me that Serenity had a much different purpose that what I originally envisioned.
I had seen her as the pet project of some good church going kids; she would be cleaned up and straightened out and while she would keep a few of her eccentricities, in the end she would be just like them.
But then this insight hit me: Serenity was not sent to the Christian kids so they could save her; she was sent so she could save them.
I began to realize that the bulk of the Christian kids in the story, though they all had their own personal problems, were in reality sheltered from the real blows of the world.
Sure, they attended church regularly and participated in the Prayer Club at school, and did all those things that the Christian Booksellers Association would want them to do in order to carry the books in their stores, but they had really not been exposed to the harsh realities of the world around them (most of them, that is; a couple have brushed up with it).
From what I read of what was happening in our culture (secular & church), they would graduate school and go to college and then their faith would be blasted to shreds.
Because they wouldn’t be ready for it.
