Daily Inspiration Quote by Jerry B. Jenkins

Jenkins is laying down a craft credo that doubles as a gatekeeping move: fiction earns its keep only when it smuggles something morally or spiritually consequential into the reader’s bloodstream. He’s not talking about fact-checkable truth; he’s invoking Truth as a north star, the kind that sounds like it belongs in a sermon as much as in a writing workshop. The capitalization matters. It turns a slippery idea into a brand promise.

The subtext is partly defensive. Novelists often get asked why they “make things up” when the world is already dramatic; Jenkins flips the premise. In his frame, invention isn’t escapism, it’s a precision tool. By staging human experience in a controlled environment - characters under pressure, choices with consequences - fiction can reveal patterns real life hides behind noise and denial. It’s an argument for parable over reportage: you don’t need an event to be literal to make its meaning land.

Context sharpens the stakes. Jenkins is best known for high-circulation, values-forward storytelling; “worthwhile” is doing heavy lifting as a moral filter, not just an aesthetic preference. That implicitly demotes irony, stylistic play, and the deliberately small or ambiguous novel as frivolous, even if those modes can be truthful in their own way. The line is persuasive because it flatters the reader and the writer at once: you’re not consuming entertainment, you’re participating in revelation. It’s also risky, because once you declare Truth the point, you invite the next question: whose Truth gets the capital letter?