1. One of my favorite things about speculative fiction is the way it deepens my sense of wonder and awe at God’s world, and God’s works.  Because I’ve grown up within the church, I’ve heard the same stories and messages repeatedly all my life, and sometimes my ears can get dull to them because they are so familiar.  They become commonplace to me, instead of the astounding things that they are.  In a speculative book or movie, characters or events often broadcast those same messages, in a completely different way, and that gives me fresh eyes to stare in awe at God’s works.  (For example, as I blogged recently, a sermon about angels and a memory of C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy catapulted me into an eagerness for heaven that I had never felt before.)  I feel like the highest value of speculative fiction is that it reminds us that this “ordinary” world is actually quite extraordinary, and its Maker is even more extraordinary, even though we may not see Him with our naked eyes.  🙂

    • Galadriel says:

      Exactly! Stories remind me that our life is a story, that God is a story as well as history. As much as I see where certian people are coming from when they insist on calling Noah, David, etc…”biblical narrravitives” instead of “stories”–to emphasize the truth of it–it bothers me, because stories are so important to who we are.

  2. Kessie says:

    I don’t understand where you’re coming from with this series. Are you maintaining, yourself, that stories are a waste of time? Or simply playing devil’s advocate for the people who do?
     
    …and if it’s all a waste of time, what are we even doing here?

    • Stories are not a waste of time for the Christian — that’s not at all what I’m saying.

      (If I were maintaining this, I have a severe case of schizophrenia, due to being webhost for this site!)

      But why they’re not a waste of time — that’s the crucial question. If it’s true that God is glorified, or should be glorified, in all that we do, that includes story-enjoyment. And as I’ll suggest next week, stories reflect God’s truths and beauties to us based on the Christian worldview that songs, nature, or nonfiction book simply can’t do.

  3. Kirsty says:

    I know my grandparents, who were missionaries, were very pleased when people sent them the Broons or Oor Wullie (Scottish comic books), not just Christian books & magazines!

  4. […] Story. This is based on what the Westminster Shorter Confession says is “man’s chief end,” as noted last week: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him […]

  5. […] no. A person’s chief end is to “glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” God defines a huge part of this purpose in Gen. 1:28. Here He gives what theologians call the […]

What do you think?