I am fascinated by the fact that two of the greatest mystery writers of the 20th century, G.K. Chesterton and Dorothy Sayers (some people would say they were the very greatest) were also Christian theologians. Mind you, they didn’t teach in theological seminaries and they weren’t ordained; in fact they were both lay people. But they wrote some of the most challenging religious books of their century, even while they were about the business of writing murder mysteries.
But as I have continued to think about it, I’ve decided that it’s perfectly logical for a mystery writer also to be a theological writer. Because the story of our human race is in some ways as fascinating a mystery as you can ever find. In a sense, it’s the mother of all mystery stories.
I’m speaking particularly of murder mysteries.
A paradise
Suppose you came upon a beautiful community, a kind of paradise, a Shangri-La where everyone was supposed to live forever. But suppose instead that people were dying. Some were being murdered, but others were dying with no clear cause. Sometimes they seemed to waste away over a period of time. In some instances they complained of pain. In still other cases, their lives were going along beautifully when, without warning, they passed away.
The mystery is especially complicated, because in this community - I repeat - no one was supposed to die. And still worse, there was no pattern in the deaths. In a murder mystery, the al
