Agatha Christie: Detective Writer Extraordinaire

Agatha Christie (1890-1976) was an prodigious writer with around 80 detective novels and other collections of stories published, giving us sleuths of the calibre of Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot.  

She also wrote, The Mousetrap which holds the record for the longest-running play ever (60 years and 25,000 performances in 2012).

Her works have sold an astonishing four billion items with her sales eclipsed only by the Bible and Shakespeare's works.

What is usually not so well known is that Christie was a Christian (Church of England) who took her faith seriously enough for a reader to detect it within her works. However, her writing is not evangelical for her vocation was detective novel-writing for the glory of God.

One of her major theme-ideas was the often hidden but nevertheless real sinfulness of men and women.¹This sinfulness was also to be found in English villages which romantic writers liked to think pristine and wholesome.

Next time we will look at Christie's The Body In The Library and see how the above theme of the novelist is expressed in her great creation, the sleuthhound Jane Marple.

1. This theme is one of whom Christie would have been reminded at every Holy Communion service in the opening Collect: 'Almighty God, unto whom all hears are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.' (1662 BCP)

A Pattern for Christian Worship

Just recently, I've again come across the writings of Dr J. I. Packer, now in his 80s, who has been a pastor and academic. 

He was once a great hero of mine when I was an orthodox Calvinist decades ago. He was an Anglican but recently left the Canadian church because of its well-publicised slide into liberalism.

Interestingly, although he classed himself as an evangelical he had a great love for The Book of Common Prayer (BCP: 1662). (Being an evangelical Anglican and having a love for the BCP seems rare today.)

Packer was brought up on the BCP and I can understand his strong affection for its rhythms and its implicit piety. (I was not nurtured in it but first encountered Anglicanism through An Australian Prayer Book (AAPA: 1978).)

Faith and Believing Takes Practice!

Increasing our faith may take place during times when the presence of God is most evident. However, paradoxically, it is perhaps likely to take place when we are being sorely tested. It is at just those difficult times when we can learn to practise exercising faith when circumstances don't encourage us.

But we need to practise exercising it by remembering in whom we believe.

Mark describes the healings of the woman who touched the hem of Jesus' outer garment and the raising of Jairus' daughter (Mk 5.21-43). In both these incidents of extreme affliction and sorrow faith is mentioned. To the woman with the haemorrhaging condition who had touched Jesus' garment in faith Jesus said, 'Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your affliction' (v 34); and to Jairus in the anguish precipitated by the news that his daughter had died, Jesus said, 'Do not be afraid; only believe'.

In both these people, faith was exercised in Jesus as the healer.

The common belief that just faith in faith is what is required is fallacious. I don't doubt that people may be helped or even healed by having faith in what they cannot name but God has been revealed in his Son and it is in the Son that we are required to have faith.

We are also to remember that it's not the strength or size of our faith that matters; it is the trustworthiness of the One in whom we trust . . . .

'for it is better to have a weak faith in a very strong bridge than a strong faith in a weak bridge' --words spoken by our priest-in-charge Heather Sunday last.