You Like What???
I get a lot
of strange looks at church-type events when I reveal that my favorite move of
all time is “Silence of the Lambs”. It seems that to some of my Christian
friends the love of the Lord and scary movies are mutually exclusive. Not so. I
have actually found that my love of “all things scary” has opened up a new
venue to evangelize as there are a lot of people just like me who happen to
like things that make you crawl out of your own skin.
Sadly, I
have also come to realize that our genre/business/niche is fraught with a whole
lot of people who are just plain “God-Haters”. It seems as if they believe that
one cannot write good horror fiction unless there is a disdain for the Lord and
all things Christian. Obviously not everyone in our business shares my strong
faith in Jesus Christ, but my experience is that I am definitely in a tiny
minority in this regard.
Case in
point. My acceptance speech at the 2012 (for the year 2011) Stoker Awards for
Specialty Press of the Year, I opened up by thanking Jesus and the dining room
was like a morgue with the exception of a “W00t” yelled out by my friend
Roberta Lannes and broad grins from my wife, and friends Liz and Josh Scott.
Perhaps a “Hail Satan!” would have elicited a much more robust response from
the crowd of stunned onlookers.
In the
midst of this, I just continue to share my faith at conventions and online, and
to publish books, this is what I do best, in that order. Bottom line, if you
love horror and are a Christian, know that it is OK and you don’t have to
change who you are to fit someone else’s mold. I am also evolving in the way
that I respond to others who believe differently than I do, nowadays I try to
just “love them as they are”, but admittedly, it is not always easy. As I start
seminary in the fall of this year, I may even meet more people who love the
Lord but can’t wait for the remake of the latest horror classic, and remark
AHA! when they find out I’m waiting too…
Roy Robbins
May 2013
Anaheim,
CA.
No comments:
Post a Comment