1. Amy Timco says:

    Amen and amen! We can’t just pick out the pieces we like and scrap the rest. Presenting truths about God’s character and the nature of His work in any medium (whether sermon, story, autobiography, music, whatever) is a huge responsibility because we’re accountable to the One we are borrowing from. If we get it wrong — yikes. It’s His name and His work we are misrepresenting at that point.

  2. C.S.Lakin says:

    Allegory definition:a representation of an abstract meaning through concrete forms.

    When I say my fairy tales, like The Wolf if Tebron, are allegories I think people are just getting too caught up in semantics. If a story portrays an example of self-sacrificing love, such as how the wolf dies to provide salvation for a human ( just as Aslan does), then we are to see the quality of live that can give us a clue to how God loves. The Bible is full of stories meant to reveal the heart of God. Just as Nathan pierced King David’s conscience by telling him the story of the rich man taking the poor mans lamb.

    I use a lot of Scripture in my books– not so much in Wolf but dozens in the next two books. I take the verses out if context and salvage them, probably in a way that will greatly offend you. Yet I believe God led me to tell these stories and use Scripture to create scenes and spark emotion that ultimately will draw readers to him. I use lots of scriptures in The Land of Darkness that refer to people in darkness, but I make them refer to an actual place where people are “in the dark” wandering lost and separated from God by a giant chasm ( read: Pilgrims Progress). I imagine some will be upset by my salvaging Scripture but I make it clear my intent aligns with the Bible’s– to point to Jesus as the only hope for mankind if by reading my books an unbeliever gets curios about the Word and feels drawn to God, I’m going to dare say my use of salvaging Scripture was worthwhile. While I was offended by The Shack, it was mostly because it did not claim to be fiction and grossly misrepresented the person of God. To me that’s the key– as long as Gods nature and gospel is not contaminated, then I have no problem with salvaging the heart of Scripture.

  3. To me that’s the key– as long as Gods nature and gospel is not contaminated, then I have no problem with salvaging the heart of Scripture.

    That would indeed seem to be the key, Susanne. But using Scriptures in the way you have described — including “the heart of Scripture,” pointing to the transcendent yet personal God as He has revealed Himself and making sure to include the true heart of the Gospel — does not count as wrongful, disrespectful “salvaging” the way I’ve said it here.

    Rather, that’s just repeating truth, in a way that honors the Author of the Bible and doesn’t treat what He’s said as means to our own favored ends.

    For example, note my inclusion of Ephesians 1:4 up there. The author of Jesus Calling did “salvage” that verse, ignoring the heart of what Paul (under the Spirit’s inspiration) was saying about the Gospel, and instead forcing it to be about following “paths designed uniquely.” That’s a disrespectful and un-Biblical “salvaging,” because she wanted to say something about how we should follow the right paths, Jesus loves us, etc., and so twisted a phrase from the Scripture to “prove” this. And whether or not the thought is true is a different issue: if it’s true, use another Scripture to back it up. (This bypasses, of course, the whole speaking-on-behalf-of-Jesus thing!)

    All of this would be different from repeating or even paraphrasing Ephesians 1:4, or another Scripture verse, and preserving its “heart” as you have said. For example, I could say, “Paul tells Ephesians that God chose them ‘before the foundation of the world’ to be His adopted sons, thanks to the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ, to praise His Name forever.” That isn’t an exact replica of the verse. But the heart is there, and I haven’t twisted it to be about something else, such as “follow your path!” So that kind of quoting of Scripture wouldn’t count as the wrong “salvaging” I was talking about.

    Meanwhile, from what I have read, The Shack indeed gets away with the claim “it’s just fiction” but then does far more than salvage the Scripture: its author not only says what he believes about God is nonfiction, but rebelliously, and sadly even arrogantly, puts his own “revelation” up against what God has said about Himself, then excuses it by saying this will help people “love God more.” It may, but with that minor little issue about having shown an un-Biblical and harmful view of God, so that they’re loving a made-up “god.”

    (Edited here and there for clarity.)

  4. No one takes Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice and writes all-new love letters “from” him “to” you personally.

    Ah, Stephen, you seem unversed in the perils of fanfiction. As a reader and contributer to that style of writing, I feel I must enlighten you to the fact that this practice of taking an author’s words and twisting them nilly-willy into whatever context the author feels like is depressingly popular, a prime example being the the dreaded “Mary Sue” syndrome: too often, Austenian fanfiction becomes an excuse for a fangirl to insert herself into the romance. While there is certainly a lot of drivel out there (and not just in the romances), I still defend fanfiction because buried admist the debris of mangled interpretations and vain inversions are real gems.

    To me, the artform of fanfiction (and I insist that it is an artform) is about respect. The author must respect the work that came before and neither attempt to completely reinvent nor completely imitate it. Both are self-destructing motivations. Instead, the author should (to use the phrase) be “in” but almost not “of” the world he or she is writing about. There is absolutely no way any fanfictionist may presume to authoritatively speak for or “be” the original author(s). However, it is possible after careful study to respectfully and humbly ask “What if?” After all, that is the question we all seek to answer. In fanficiton, the question is “If the author had written from a different viewpoint, or in a different scene, or decided to go down this path instead of that one, what would the story look like?” In speculative fiction, we go one step further, to the original Author: “If God had designed a different creation, if humanity had made different choices, if the Word had been revealed in a different setting or time, what would that world look like?”

    To me the question is not so much whether or not we should “borrow” from His Story; after all, as creations ourselves, we are bound to be deriative of the true creative force of the universe (all fiction, in that light, can be classified as fanfiction). Rather, the question is one of respect for His authority and creativity, and what our imaginations can bring to the stories we write. I think the best depictions of God that I’ve read in fiction are those that don’t attempt to completely “be” God, or even fully understand and explain Him. Instead, they share moments of God interacting with His creations; a microcosm of divinity, if you will. The best example that comes to mind at the moment is Dekker’s “Circle” triology, followed by Walley’s “Lamb Amongst the Stars.” In both instances the attitude of the author and the clear intention of the story cause the “borrowing” to cease feeling deritive and instead uses the excitement of a new perspective and story to infuse novel appreciation for that which it points to.

    Wow, I really need to start a blog so I stop writing these overly long comments. By the way, for further thoughts on the dangers of borrowing too thinly or poorly, see this blog post at the New Authors Fellowship.

  5. No, Michelle — please keep your lengthy thoughts here on Speculative Faith! 😀

    Perhaps the main difference between good fanfiction (which I as someone who hopes to write God-honoring “fanfiction” certainly enjoy!) and salvaging a creator’s work is the motivation. Are we hoping to honor the original story’s “canon” and themes, and in the case of “elseworlds”-style reality, not contradict a vital part of the Gospel narrative? Or does a writer revise the story, as you said, and twist it into a self-exalting fantasy with the self as main character, the only (or main) target of all the intrigue?

    … Sounds a lot like some ways of understanding the Bible, actually: substituting Self as the hero, with Jesus as the sidekick or Wise Helpful Guide, and not honoring God Himself as the Author, Director and Main Character. Hmm … Bible “Mary Sues” … (Goes off to muse further about that topic, perhaps for a future column, and look forward to sanctification beyond my own “Mary Sue” tendencies! …)

  6. I’d say that the common idea of taking what we like and treating the Word like a buffet table is illogical and immoral. Let’s say that none of the rules applied that you wrote and people didn’t give a whiff about the Divine Author’s intentions, His words must still be accepted on faith, ALL OF IT. We do not know the information that God is giving us as well as He does. If we only accept parts of it, and not others, then we make Him into a Liar. If he is a Liar, then how do we know the parts we accept are true or not. We must accept Him in whole, or reject Him in whole. I go for accepting Him in whole. HOOAH!!!

  7. […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Timothy Stone, Speculative Faith. Speculative Faith said: Some authors like to salvage Scripture for story parts. Do we treat other books that way? On #SpecFaith: http://bit.ly/ejKYB1 […]

  8. Nikole Hahn says:

    I work hard to not use the Bible as a salvage pile. Thanks for the tips. I’ll definitley go with more care than before. I just hope I don’t ever do it accidently.

  9. Stephen, I keep coming back here just to look at that book cover and laugh my head off.

  10. ESB,

    Amen. Very convicting.

    This bothers me terribly when preachers do it; I hadn’t put together the idea with fiction writing, but it’s just as bad. Thanks for the lesson…I’ll be on the watch.

  11. […] a writer’s toolbox. It echoes this earlier question. Do writers see other stories, starting with the Bible, primarily as worshipful-art first to […]

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