1. notleia says:

    A while ago, I was in an art museum and derping around the modern art section where I found an inexplicable blue square wooden pillar, about six feet tall, with a thin white painted line around the top. The piece was called “The Sea” and the plaque said it was supposed to be experiential art. I can kinda-sorta get what was meant because the sea is a literary symbol of the unconscious and the art piece was supposed to be about your individual reaction to it as you walked around it. However, my experience was one of bafflement, anticlimax, and general WTFery. It was a blue wood box.
    That is pretty much how I feel about this rambly path of articles that leads to the conclusion of “like what you want to like.” I was gonna do that anyway, but thanks, I guess.
    But kudos for this site trying something a little different, something more in the more subjective line with plenty of opinions bouncing off each other. And I would like to thank RL Copple in particular for giving me even a vaguely defensible opportunity to use moderate swearwords. I took much delight in that, juvenile as it was.

  2. Steve Rzasa says:

    I think this article say quite eloquently everything I’ve wanted to say about Christian fiction. Contrary to popular belief, Christian fiction is not “in trouble.” It is different than “secular” fiction or whatever that means. It has to be. Because we’re called to be different than everyone else in the world. And that’s what this article lays out nice and bluntly.
    Well done!

  3. bainespal says:

    I’ve always tentatively agreed with you on the whole holy joy thing — it’s a Lewisian idea, probably also a Biblical idea, after all. But my reason for loving storytelling is slightly different.
     
    Life is small and disappointing. There must be greater truth and meaning than what we experience. So, we need stories to put our lives in the context of what really matters. For me, this is the most important reason to love great stories, because I’m dissatisfied with life and with my experience of Christianity. I’ll admit, though, that this line of reasoning has occasionally lead me to think that Tolkien (or insert-other-great-author-here) is a better worldbuilder than God. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that this world would be as glorious and meaningful and inclusive as all our most beloved stories and myths are, if only this world were not fallen.
     

  4. Julie D says:

    One of my reasons for preferring speculative fiction to general or realistic fiction is similar to bainespal’s comment above– it reminds us that even though we feel like crawling hashmarks on a gritty chalkboard, there is more to life than we normally see.

What do you think?