Somewhere along the way, we decided that all stories must end with a moral lesson. That every film, every song, every painting, every novel must leave us with something righteous, digestible, and uplifting. This rigid expectation is slowly killing creativity.
It’s most obvious in Christian cinema, where every narrative seems forced into the same mold: sinner, struggle, salvation, sermon. But the problem is bigger than religion. The same moral dogma has infiltrated much of modern creativity. We often reject stories that are ambiguous, complex, or unresolved — even though that’s how real life works. Even though that’s how God’s creation works.
Take the Bible itself. It is not a collection of tidy parables. It is a raw, wild, unflinching account of human failure, divine mystery, violence, love, injustice, redemption, and unresolved tension. Job didn’t get answers. David didn’t escape consequences. Jesus wept. Not every story ended with a “lesson.” Some just told the truth.
Great artists understand this. C.S. Lewis didn’t write The Chronicles of Narnia to preach. He built a world that embodied the deep spiritual rhythms of creation, fall, sacrifice, and restoration. You can read Narnia without spotting a single Bible verse — and yet it will still stir the soul more deeply than most explicitly “Christian” works today.
Even secular shows like Game of Thrones, for all their flaws, explore biblical themes more honestly than many so-called religious stories: power, betrayal, prophecy, justice, and consequence — often without the comfort of a happy ending. Life is complex. Art should reflect that.
And then there’s Daddy Lumba. Critics often reduce his music to moral failure because it doesn’t carry a sanctified message. But they miss the point. His songs have comforted, inspired, and empowered people through heartbreak and joy. He made music that met people where they were — not where the moral gatekeepers wanted them to be. That, too, is gospel.
We misunderstand Jesus’ Parable of the Talents. It’s not a fable about saving your soul by avoiding risk. It’s a charge to create, to invest, to act with boldness. “Whatever your hands find to do, do it with all your might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10). The moral is not in the outcome — it’s in the effort, the courage to create honestly and passionately.
Creativity thrives in freedom, not fear. When artists are constantly pressured to produce morally perfect work, they stop telling the truth. They start pretending. And that, ironically, is the greatest moral failure of all — the loss of truth in the name of virtue.
Let’s liberate creativity from this tyranny of moral endings. Not every story needs to preach. Some just need to speak.
