This article is in response to Laura VanArendonk Baugh’s two-part series, Cosplay 101 for Christians.

Please note that this is not intended to be a rebuttal. It simply answers the question her article raised in my mind: “Are there any limits to what should be done during cosplay?” (This is a subject I’d never considered before I read her articles on the topic.)

As such this followup article is really a “yes, that’s fine, but …” addendum.

Since whenever anybody talks about limits to anything, doing so may imply rules, and having rules implies to many people legalism or legalistic thinking, let me be clear that’s not where I’m coming from. First, a couple of personal but I hope reasonable definitions:

• “Legalism” in Christianity represents the idea that it’s necessary to obey a series of rules in order to earn personal salvation and/or favor with God.
• “Legalistic” refers to churches and Christian organizations which don’t openly state their rules are required for salvation, but insist that you must keep a series of rules nonetheless.

Note that while I am going to talk about rules/guiding principles, I am not saying these rules are necessary for your salvation (or God’s favor), so they do not represent legalism. I also don’t insist you keep my rules, so these rules are not legalistic.

I mean to explain my point of view, but leave it up to you to decide for yourself (between you and God) what you believe is right.

Since I’m talking about me a bit, let me mention I personally spent a significant chunk of my childhood not in any kind of church at all and had a great deal of personal freedom to do what I wanted. It turns out that I knew there were some things I didn’t want to even try—drugs, for example. I made a rule for myself to stay away from them.

I believe that’s something mature Christians should routinely do: decide for themselves what they can and cannot personally accept regarding things not explicitly stated to be right or wrong in Christian Scripture.

I believe for people who were strongly exposed to legalism/legalistic churches and who have escaped that kind of thinking to understand God looks at people’s hearts and not their outward appearance, it may be weird to suggest there should be rules or principles involved in the application of cosplay. That maybe some things might not be a good idea to pretend to be.

But the New Testament has lots of principles it expects Christians to apply. And it expects you to apply them to everything (I Cor 10:31, Col 3:17—do all to glorify God AND all in the name of Jesus). You are to apply them for yourself, not because somebody makes you do so, seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit (John 16:13), walking in the Spirit and receiving the fruits of doing so (Gal. 5:16-23).

What happens if somebody else is doing something we believers don’t feel is correct? Things for which there are no explicit Scriptural instructions?

In short, we are to tolerate the convictions other people have as much as possible. (See I Cor. 8 and Romans 14-15.) Which does not mean we never talk about such topics—though we should not argue about anything endlessly (II Tim. 2:23)—but that does not exclude disagreement or stating what we think is important. Romans 15:14 specifically states that we Christians are capable of admonishing and teaching and encouraging one another, in a context immediately after the discussion of Christian liberty, which includes disagreeing with one another at times.

Please note that nearly everything that otherwise can be good has a limit, a point where excess makes it bad. Chocolate is good, too much chocolate can be bad. I think cosplay can be good. I agree it’s essentially an artistic expression, as Laura VanArendonk Baugh said in her second article. I agree artistic expression, like chocolate, is a gift of God and is generally good. But I also believe artistic expression can be abused.

In other words, cosplay, like chocolate, has a limit. That’s normal—almost everything has a limit. Even drinking too much pure water can kill you.

More than anything, that’s what I want people who read this article to embrace—the concept of the existence of a limit on this topic. Where the limit is exactly for your cosplay is something you need to figure out for yourself. The advice of other Christians matters, but in the end God and Holy Scripture should guide you to your own convictions.

Note also when I’m talking about “limits” and “convictions” I don’t mean “personal comfort zone.” Yeah, a comfort zone is a real thing, but I’m talking about when you think something is actually wrong, either sinful or potentially so or dangerous and think you have a solid reason to stay away from it. But you also recognize other people may not see things the same way as you—or have the same issues you have.

To help you understand what I mean by limits and help you consider what your own limits might be, I’m going to share some cosplay costumes I wouldn’t ever wear out of personal conviction. (Also note I am not big into cosplay in the first place, which is perhaps like not being into oil painting—it means I’m not an expert on the subject, but I’m still capable of saying what I would not wear … or paint.

By Sandman-AC at Deviant Art.

1. I would not wear this Conan the Barbarian costume below (it’s not because I don’t have this guy’s abs).

Why not? Because I have a personal concept of modesty this costume violates. I don’t take off my shirt in public, not ever (even swimming I wear a t-shirt unless totally in private). I think it’s wrong (seriously).

Note my concept of modesty doesn’t have to be yours—but if I would never take my shirt off in public as Travis Perry, I am not going to have a different standard as Conan. Since I get to pick the costume I wear in advance, I get to decide if the costume matches my personal values—the fact I’m wearing a costume does not excuse me from my ordinary ideas of modesty. No way I’m wearing that.

From Alibaba.com under “Deluxe Conan the Barbarian Costume.”

2. But I’m not wearing this Conan costume either.

This one doesn’t affect my sense of modesty because of the fake plastic chest. But it hits another issue—while I watched Conan the Barbarian in theaters in 1982 and still think the music is epic, Conan stands for a lot of things I don’t agree with. Yes, I know that wearing a Conan costume doesn’t make me him, but I actually would be more comfortable wearing the costume of the villain of that 1982 movie, Thulsa Doom (played by James Earl Jones). Because most people know when you wear a villain’s costume, you don’t agree with what the villain stands for. But when you wear the protagonist’s costume, people assume you think the protagonist is awesome and are in some kind of agreement with his or her point of view.

Conan is attributed to have answered, “What is best in life?” by saying: “To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!” I could not agree less with that point of view. I don’t want people to think I approve of things I actually don’t, because I don’t want my good motives to be seen as evil (Romans 14:16), because I don’t even want to give an appearance of evil on my part (I Thes. 5:22), and because I want to be an example to other Christians (Titus 2:7).

Note I shared a personal conversation between Laura and E. Stephen Burnett in which they saw everything I had to say here in advance. Laura commented that this second point of mine contradicts me saying I had no issue with what she said about playing villains. To a degree she’s right, though I just said it’s bad heroes that bother me more than villains. Though it’s true what the character represents matters to me and she basically said it should not matter. But then in the PM I used the example of the Gor sword-and-planet series (which routinely praised sexual slavery for women), saying I would not ever dress as a character from that world—and she agreed she did not support that series. Therefore, if I came as a character from Gor, I’d be guaranteed to make her angry—fictional character or not. So in truth, even Laura has a limit on this topic.

This means for me I would rule out in advance dressing as a protagonist who believes things I can’t stand. What that means for you, I don’t know—you have to make up your own mind between you and God.

From the Comics Alliance under the title “Cosplay: Gender-Swapped Wonder Women Are a Wonder, Man [NYCC 2011] by Laura Hudson October 16, 2011”

3. I’m not wearing this costume either:

Clearly this is a joke. I actually think it’s a little bit funny, albeit perhaps insulting to the entire Wonder Woman franchise. As a costume, it’s also a trifle immodest for my taste, but my main reason for me not wearing it is not immodesty and not that I disapprove of Wonder Woman as a character (she’s mostly pretty good, actually, though the Greek goddess thing of the recent movie annoys me), but because I would not dress as a woman. Not even as a joke.

The Bible lays down quite a lot of verses about separation of male and female. I’m not going to quote them here, because in the end I recognize it’s an interpretation on my part to say: “God means male to be in the male category and female to be female. God created binary gender and honors it.” I could pile on a stack of verses to support my interpretation and probably defend it pretty well—though it would be a bit harder to defend the idea that a natural consequence of that interpretation is I would not wear clothes intended for women, not even in a costume.

But my interpretation here is in fact based on Scripture. I am in fact entitled to oppose cross-gender dressing as a personal conviction. I’m also entitled to defend the idea that “crossplay” is something Christians should not do.

But I recognize that is my conviction for me and cannot be transferred to you, unless you look at the Scriptures yourself and find you agree with me.

Note this is a conviction based on Christian concepts and not a matter of my squeamishness or comfort zone. In high school I dressed as a woman for a Montana State University film project based on Some Like It Hot (for those of you who know the film, this is the role Tony Curtis played). I was honestly uncomfortable in women’s clothes. But I oppose crossing that line not just because this feels “icky.” I was able to dress like a woman in high school when I had very little Scriptural knowledge. It’s because I know more now, not because I’m more squeamish, that I think the division of genders is real, intended by God, and have noticed we are living in a culture that’s quite confused about that—a confusion I believe we should alleviate as Christians, not add to.

Therefore, I wouldn’t engage in “crossplay” and don’t recommend you do so, either. But in the end, that conviction is between you and God.

So, I’m not wearing a costume that shows too much of my skin; I’m not going to wear a costume of a protagonist character whose personal philosophy I loathe; and I’m not going to dress as a woman. Note—that still leaves a vast array of potential costumes I could wear without violating my own conscience.

These are my thoughts on the limits of cosplay, shared as examples to help you develop your own concepts, if you haven’t already done so.

What are your thoughts?

(Any Disturbed fans in the house? *crickets*)

This past Sunday, the series finale of the action/horror series The Strain aired after four seasons. The show was based on a trilogy by Guillermo Del Toro (the movie director) and Chuck Hogan. The basic premise is that a blood-borne disease turns people into daylight-shunning vampires, but they don’t bite with fangs; rather, they have a snake-like appendage that shoots out from a hole in their neck and latches onto their victims like a leech and siphons away their blood while transferring the disease which turns the victims into “munchers.” It’s a fairly complex tale with a CDC disease specialist as the main protagonist, and there is a diverse cast of supporting characters, along with an ancient book, Nazis, very unbelievable explanations of vampire lore, family squabbles, and a “Master” that needs to be killed to stop the plague, because every sentient attack on the human race follows the anthill hierarchy: kill the queen and the foot soldiers will scatter.

Image Copyright FX

Despite the story’s ambition, the books were just this side of ludicrous, and while the TV show did change a few things and simplify many others, it was more grounded and coherent as a whole, in my opinion. I can’t say that I’ll miss it but it was a good run while it lasted, and thankfully it ended as planned rather than being abruptly cancelled. And I do have to say that it was a unique take on the vampire phenomenon, making it a medical condition rather than something supernatural or sexy. The “munchers” are sub-human monsters that just want to feed. No goth fashion or underground raves or secret covens. The whole Master/slaves aspect aside, the breakdown of society and individual tensions would manifest in any horrific plague scenario, as other movies and shows have depicted.

It’s interesting how the biggest threat to human existence rarely gets news coverage. It’s not North Korea or global warming or white privilege; it’s disease. The rapid advancement of technology has seen a corresponding boom in medical breakthroughs, and we have been spared the population-decimating scourges of ages past. I remember feeling literally nauseous as I did research on the Black Death plague for my medieval fiction novel Nikolai the Penitent. The outbreak of the Spanish flu a century ago, which killed between 50-100 million people, and even the more recent SARS and Ebola epidemics remind us that the threat is always at the gate. With more than seven billion people on the planet, the opportunity for rogue viruses to find abundant hosts increases every day.

I can’t help but wonder if the only thing keeping us from falling prey to a sweeping pandemic is God’s providence. Considering that more than two and a half billion people don’t have access to basic sanitation, the likelihood of a mortal disease suddenly appearing is nothing short of terrifying. Science and medicine have worked tirelessly to keep that from happening, but the Book of Revelation tells us that plagues will once again fall upon the Earth. The two witnesses in chapter 11 wield plagues at will, and seven plagues descend in chapter 15, along with even more plagues in chapter 16. Unlike warfare or terrorism, there isn’t an enemy to fight against in an outbreak, and social order can break down frighteningly fast. H.G. Wells saw the power a germ can wield, having his alien invaders fall prey to the tiniest microorganisms despite standing tall against our mightiest arsenals.

I’m not a doomsayer or fearmonger. All I’m saying is wash your hands, thank God that you have clean running water, and pray that the horrors we read about in history, fiction, and the Bible won’t manifest themselves in our lifetime.

He was a simple hobbit whose uncle happened to possess a decent fortune and enjoy longevity.

So why do we care about Frodo? Why does the unfolding narrative of his quest to destroy the One Ring enrapture us?

Image via lotr.wikia.com

Or think of Harry Potter. An unremarkable English kid with a tragic past, terrible relatives, and a penchant for disobeying the rules. Yet he’s one of the wizarding world’s most well-known names, and the tales of his years at Hogwarts have captured the imaginations of millions.

I could go on, listing story after story, journey after journey. Some written better, more entertaining, or more thought-provoking than others, but all with a common thread running through them.

They’re not real, but in our minds, it’s as if they are.

In her article last week, Becky Miller discussed the theme of victory in speculative fiction, and concluded with this:

Speculative fiction…reminds us of what we hope for.

There are many reasons we enjoy stories.

• The plot.
• The characters.
• The themes.
• The world.

However, these don’t dig deep enough. They don’t reach to the core of why stories hold such an enchanting sway upon us. The reason, as Becky alluded to, is simple.

They show us what we hope for.

In many ways, fictional stories are scattered pieces of glass, each shard a different color, broken off from some real-world source and then reassembled into a mesmerizing stained-glass masterpiece.

It’s the echoes of hope, those intersections of fiction and reality, that drive the storytelling engine. After all, if we’re not invested in a character, in what they do and what happens to them, then the story’s power dies.

How does this idea of “what we hope for” play out in stories? Why does it provide such a potent appeal?

Phase 1: Entrance

Excluding the continuation of a series, in which case many elements and characters are already familiar, this is where the reader starts. Square one. Jason Bourne before he learns anything about himself or his situation.

At this point, we’re inching our way down the gentle slope into the shallow side of the pool, feeling our way forward and seeing where the next step will take us. Will the story engage our minds? Present a compelling story arc? Introduce a relevant theme? Provide relatable, likeable characters?

If the answer is yes, we move forward with more confidence. Each step builds our trust and reveals more of the world we’ve entered, giving details, hinting at background, fleshing out the characters and plot.

Phase 2: Familiarity

Once the foundation is laid, we begin connecting with the story on deeper and more meaningful levels. We start to relate to the characters and care what happens. And parts of their journey become mini mirrors, reflecting our own journeys in familiar ways.

Returning to the Harry Potter analogy, we all know what it’s like to be involved in difficult relationships. We know what it’s like to be disliked, bullied, mistreated. We empathize with his situation, and suddenly, subconsciously, we’ve taken a thread of our story and woven it into the fabric of what we’re reading.

Image via harrypotter.wikia.com

It happens again and again, sometimes in small, unnoticeable ways. Sometimes in ways that resound with the clarion call of truth such that we wonder if we’ve actually become the character in the story.

That’s where “what we hope for” bounds in, and where we enter the deepest phase.

Phase 3: Immersion

No more tiptoeing into the shallow end of the pool now—we’re diving to the bottom of the end that’s 10 feet deep. We root for Harry, not because he’s good looking or is one of the “cool kids” but because we’re relating to his story in personal ways that tie back to our own stories.

And we hope.

We know the importance of winning that final Quidditch match of the season, so we hope Gryffindor triumphs.

We know the beauty of having close friends, so we hope Ron and Harry and Hermione stick together, and we find it fulfilling when they help each other and laugh together.

We know what it’s like to have enemies, so we hope Harry can overcome his.

But secretly, I think, we’re not only hoping for Harry. We’re hoping for ourselves, too. We’ve become invested, involved, immersed in the story. And we hope. If things turn out all right for Harry, maybe they’ll turn out all right for us, too.

On a broader scale, we encounter the end of the tale…where the villain is vanquished and good wins out. We look to our own lives, and we hope.

Such is the power of storytelling. It resonates because deep down, we know it’s true. Maybe not in the same ways fictionally as in reality, but true all the same. The reason?

Our lives are a continuous string of stories. We understand story, even if we don’t realize it. When we cross the magic threshold into the fictional realm of storyland, we’re getting a glimpse—albeit unique and different—of our stories.

Thanks to that correlation, stories can, and constantly do, remind us of what we hope for in our stories.

Why do you think we connect with stories?

We live in such a “me” era, which started with the “Me Generation” back in the 1970s and has only escalated with the Generation Me of the following decade. So I hesitated to feature the words “For Me” in the title of this post. On one hand the phrase seems quite contemporary, but does it fit with what God’s word has to say?

Actually “For me” is the beginning of one of the Apostle Paul’s most well-known statements recorded in the Bible: “For me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Phil 1:21 – Most translations say, “For to me . . .” but the difference doesn’t seem to affect the meaning). In other words, the concept of focusing on the individual has a place in Scripture. Essentially Paul was making a declaration about his life—what he valued, what was of utmost importance to him, and the short version that encapsulated the focus and direction of who he was, could be summarized in one word: Christ.

Recently I heard a sermon that turned that question back onto the hearer, or onto those reading Paul’s statement. If I were writing the line, when I came to, “For me, to live is ___,” how would I fill in the blank?

Would a truthful answer be something like, For me, to live is being a writer? Or since I’m such a sports fan and am so excited for the beginning of the new NFL season, would the truthful statement be, For me, to live is football. There are lots of options. For me, to live is my family. For me, to live is fiction. For me, to live is reading.

Obviously there are many good things that can fit into the blank, but none more significant than Paul’s original statement. Nothing is better than Christ. Not good story telling. Not art. Not speculative fiction. Not any of the things we so often make our focus, the things we write about and value.

Paul’s statement, instead of encouraging us to fit Christ in with our passion (I can fit Christ into my passion for football by praying for the players, for example), challenges us to live in such a way that Christ becomes our main focus.

Narrowing our focus in that way can be hard. We love our family. We love our pet. We love our job. We love our community of people who think as we do and have a passion similar to our own. In short we love our speculative world.

We love creating and pretending. We love cosplay. We love all things fantasy or all things science fiction. We love superheros. We love vampires and werewolves and zombies and dragons and orcs. We love the Borg and we love Dr. Who.

The question is, do any of the things we love become the thing we live for? For me, to live is ___. Where does our love for speculative literature fit into the eternal scheme of things? Would I rather have Christ than fantasy? Than science fiction?

I don’t believe for one minute that imagination is evil or that speculative stories, by nature of their inventiveness, are evil) see Friday’s guest post by Mike Duran). Otherwise, we’d have to believe that Adam and Eve, who were part of the world that God called “very good” had no imagination, and there’s nothing in Scripture to tie the fall of humankind to acquiring an imagination. So I have to conclude that our imagination is God-given.

On the other hand, we know from any number of passages, that sin changed the color of our life. We don’t simply have a dirty spot that needs to be erased. Instead we are scarlet, and it colors our will and our intentions and our preferences and, yes, our imagination. But ditching our imagination does not deal with the problem. Only Christ’s blood shed on the cross can wash us so that what was scarlet becomes white as snow (Is 1:18).

He didn’t wash only our will. Or only our preferences. He washed even our imagination. But just as our will must be brought under subjection to Him, so our imagination must be brought under subjection to Him.

In fact, if we can say with Paul, For me, to live is Christ, than there’s nothing that we ought not bring under His rule and sway. In other words, for me, I’d rather obey Christ than read fantasy, than write fantasy, than watch fantasy, than promote fantasy. Or at least that’s where I should be.

Show me a person who thinks that the Old Testament is only tales for children, and I will show you a person who hasn’t read the Old Testament. I am not referring principally to the fact that a lot of material in the Old Testament isn’t exactly family-friendly, though that is true. The larger point is that the Bible has far beyond enough to challenge and satisfy a grown-up intellect. Even the stories, the straightforward part of the Old Testament, hold more complexity and depth than is quickly unlocked.

A lot of people miss it, and not only children. One reason for this, of course, is that many people don’t really read the Bible. Another reason is that the style of the narrative (as opposed to the poetry and the prophecy) is concise and businesslike and occasionally so understated you can only marvel. You have to work harder reading it because many things will not be spelled out. It’s plain, for example, that Esther and Xerxes did not have a monogamous marriage – if you catch the devil in the details. (Many people don’t. This contributes to the popular misbelief that the Book of Esther is a beautiful love story.)

One of my favorite examples of this unheralded significance comes at the very end of 1 Samuel. It concerns King Saul (as so much in 1 Samuel does) and how he was buried by the men of Jabesh Gilead. Saul and three of his sons died in a battle with the Philistines. The Philistines – this is pretty much the textbook definition of being a bad winner – then pinned their bodies to the wall of a city. And this is how the story ends:

When the people of Jabesh Gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, 12all their valiant men marched through the night to Beth Shan. They took down the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall of Beth Shan and went to Jabesh, where they burned them. 13Then they took their bones and buried them under a tamarisk tree at Jabesh, and they fasted seven days. (1 Samuel 31)

And you know at once that it was kind of them, but there is more beauty here than is readily apparent.

Jabesh Gilead played another, much earlier role in Saul’s story. His first true act as king was rescuing the people of Jabesh Gilead from an invader who had planned, after conquering the city, to gouge out the right eye of every man in it. Most debts are forgotten after forty years, but the men of Jabesh repaid the debt of the kindness Saul had shown them. Saul’s bread finally returned to him on the waters.

There is poetry in the fact that Saul’s reign, which began with him showing kindness to Jabesh Gilead, ended with Jabesh Gilead showing kindness to him. And it is all the more poignant because it is the last word in Saul’s story. There are few stories in the Bible darker or more tragic than Saul’s – the long descent, into murder and insanity and futile clawing to keep what God had given away. He had the peculiar torture of knowing the truth and not being helped by it. His last few chapters are filled with horror and despair, with the sense of being finally rejected by God and going helplessly into the end.

And then, to finish the story, the brave gratitude of the men of Jabesh – an act that looked wistfully back to a better past, a repayment of an old, old good deed that murmurs that Saul hadn’t wasted quite everything after all.

It is not redemption, not so little and so late. But it is a note of grace, at the very end.