every true story ends in death

Mom doesn’t like to read my writing. She complains to me, “Someone dies in every story you write.” She’s right. A woman once complained to Ernest Hemmingway, “Every story you write ends with someone’s death.” Hemmingway curtly replied, “Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true story-teller who would keep that from you.” As I read works of Hemmingway—I’m a big fan of A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea—is saturated with nihilistic elements, and I am finding that my writing, too, has lots of nihilistic undertones. As a Christian, this has concerned me. In Worldviews class today, a girl asked the professor, “Can someone be a naturalist or a nihilist or an extistentialist and be a Christian at the same time?” The professor replied, “Definitely. I would bet that ¾ of this campus is existentialist.” He went on to say that these philosophies saturate our culture in a variety of forms, and that there are Christians who hold to many of the beliefs of these “anti-Christian” worldviews. So I’ve decided that I am a “Christian Nihilist”, although when nihilism speaks of “God being dead” and “life holding no meaning” I disagree; however, I agree with many of nihilism’s tenants. I expect a xanga post on this to be coming sometime in the future.