What if sin had never entered the world we live in?
What if we lived in a modern world without sin?
What would that look like?
These are the questions that started the story of The Maker’s Pool.
I started dreaming this story around 2001, amid a time of upheaval in the world in my life personally.
I dreamed of a better world, a place where people walked with their God in complete trust, and with complete trust in each other.
My husband Bill and I started brainstorming some of the jobs that probably wouldn’t be necessary in a world without sin. Here are a few we thought of:
- Locksmith
- Police officer
- Insurance agent
And since a world without sin would not have allowed disease to enter, we’d also have a world without a need for most doctors – a cheery thought as I was facing significant health issues at the time.
A world without sin
While admittedly an exercise in escapism to begin with, the idea grew in me of deeply visualizing a modern sin-free world. After all, without a vision of what the world could be, how could we aim higher? As the Bible says in Proverbs 29:18:
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
I asked Bill, working as a reference librarian at a public library, to find fiction for me with this premise. While we could find fiction with a setting in heaven, current fiction set on a sin-free world was scarce.
Of course, we thought, a good story has to have conflict. And a sin-free world by definition would be short on conflict.
Enter the tempter concept in the story: The beautiful, perfect world of loving relationships needs protection against an evil tempter.
But this story concept seemed too advanced for adults. The childlike faith required to imagine such a place made it a natural choice to write the story as a children’s novel.
As Madeleine L’Engle, the author of A Wrinkle in Time, put it:
You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.
And—okay, I admit it—children’s literature has always been a favorite of mine. What can I say? The old adage of “Write what you enjoy reading” holds true.
What would a sin-free world look like?
So I used my imagination to the best of my ability to show what a world without sin might look like. I put in characters that reminded me of characters from my favorite stories as a kid. I poured love and prayer into bringing the story to life with my limited human abilities.
Plenty of room remains for writers more gifted than I am to take up the challenge and elaborate on what a sin-free world could look like.
My dream is that as more writers and dreamers cast that vision of living and walking in a world with perfect trust in a loving God, we might start to see that world materialize before us.
It’s too late to have a sinless world—but it’s not too late for less sin in the world.
In closing, I point to a quote from musician Rich Mullins in his song, “Higher Education and the Book of Love”.
I do not know that we can have a heaven here on earth, but I am sure we need not have a hell.
This is why I write.
