Inventive people groups are a staple of speculative fiction. J. R. R. Tolkien’s hobbits might be the best group of fantasy people ever created. They are cute and cuddly, with their short stature and tough, leathery feet covered in hair—though they’d be insulted if Big People treated them like dolls. They’re also suspicious of the outside world and real homebodies. They love to eat and to celebrate and they love the Shire.

In addition, they have some unique abilities—they can be extremely quiet when walking about (which made Bilbo the perfect choice to be Gandalf’s burglar). They also have excellent hearing and sharp eyesight. Beyond these physical attributes, hobbits are courageous and steadfast, intent on doing their work well and seeing it to completion.

I suppose it is because Bilbo and then Frodo were such admirable characters that all of Hobbation has become well-loved. But there are any number of other people groups who have won over readers.

In Donita K. Paul’s DragonKeeper Chronicles, there are a number of races with intriguing qualities. Reminiscent of hobbits are the doneel:

One of the seven high races. These people are furry with bulging eyes, thin black lips, and ears at the top and front of their skulls. They are small in stature, rarely over three feet tall. Generally are musical and given to wearing flamboyant clothing. (Glossary, DragonSpell, Donita Paul)

As I recall, they also loved to cook and had a definite sense of propriety. The chief donnel in the Chronicles is Dar. Here’s how the main character views him when she first meets him:

The whistling first sounded like a double-crested mountain finch, but then a few too many high notes warbled at the end of the call. Kale’s eyes sprang open, and she sat up. A doneel sat on a log by the stream. From his finger, a string dangled over the edge of a rock into the water. His clothes were tattered but bright in hue between the smudges of dirt and blood [which he’d acquired in a recent battle]. His whistle changed to the song of a speckled thrush.

Kale compared the look of this real=life doneel to the painted figure in the mural at the River Away Tavern. This whistling doneel sat, but she was sure if he stood, his little frame would not reach four feet. His tan and white furry head sat on a well=proportioned body. His large eyes hid under shaggy eyebrows that drooped down his temples and mingled with a long mustache. His broad nose stuck out like the muzzle of a dog, and his black lips met with hardly a chin at all underneath. Dressed in rich fabric of glorious colors, he was far more interesting than the blurry image on the dark tavern wall. (DragonSpellpp, pp 20-21)

Ms. Paul’s stories are filled with different people groups, generally divided into the seven high races and the seven low races, though other groups pop up throughout.

Interestingly she divides dragons into groups as well—major dragons used for transportation, minor dragons the size of kittens and gifted with peculiar individual abilities such as healing, and meech dragons who are the most intelligent of the species and capable of human speech.

In The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader C. S. Lewis invented a number of people groups as well, the best being the Dufflepuds. The passage of Lucy’s discovery of who they really are is filled with Lewis’s humor. Here’s a somewhat lengthy excerpt—I didn’t want to cut out the humorous parts at the beginning:

“You see, [said the Magician] it’s only they who think they were so nice to look at before. They say they’ve been uglified, but that isn’t what I called it. Many people might say the change was for the better.”

“Are they awfully conceited?”

“They are. Or at least the Chief Duffer is, and he’s taught all the rest to be. They always believe every word he says.”

“We’d noticed that,” said Lucy.

“Yes—we’d get on better without him, in a way. Of course I could turn him into something else, or even put a spell on him which would make them not believe a word he said. But I don’t like to do that. It’s better for them to admire him than to admire nobody.”

“Don’t they admire you?” asked Lucy.

“Oh, not me,” said the Magician. “They wouldn’t admire me.”

“What was it you uglified them for—I mean, what they call uglified?”

“Well, they wouldn’t do what they were told. Their work is to mind the garden and raise food—not for me as they imagine, but for themselves. They wouldn’t do it at all if I didn’t make them. And of course for a garden you want water. There is a beautiful spring about half a mile away up the hill. And from that spring there flows a stream which comes right past the garden. All I asked them to do was to take their water from the stream instead of trudging up to the spring with their buckets two or three times a day and tiring themselves out besides spilling half of it on the way back. But they wouldn’t see it. In the end they refused point blank.”

“Are they as stupid as all that?” asked Lucy.

The Magician sighed. “You wouldn’t believe the troubles I’ve had with them. A few months ago they were all for washing up the plates and knives before dinner: they said it saved time afterwards. I’ve caught them planting boiled potatoes to save cooking them when they were dug up. One day the cat got into the dairy and twenty of them were at work moving all the mile out; no one thought of moving the cat. But I see you’ve finished. Let’s go and look at the Duffers now they can be looked at.”

. . .

“I don’t see anybody,” said Lucy. “And what are those mushroom things?”

The things she pointed at were dotted all over the level grass. They were certainly very like mushrooms, but far too big—the stalks about three feet high and the umbrellas about the same length from edge to edge. When she looked carefully she noticed too that the stalks joined the umbrellas not in the middle but at one side which gave an unbalanced look to them. And there was something—a sort of little bundle—lying on the grass at the foot of each stalk. In fact the longer she gazed at them the less like mushrooms they appeared. The umbrella part was not really round as she had thought at first. It was longer than it was broad, and it widened at one end. There were a great many of them, fifty or more.

The clock struck three.

Instantly a most extraordinary thing happened. Each of the “mushrooms” suddenly turned upside down. The little bundles which had lain at the bottom of the stalks were heads and bodies. The stalks themselves were legs. But not two legs to each body. Each body had a single thick leg right under it (not to one side like the leg of a one-legged man) and at the end of it, a single enormous foot—a broad-toed foot with the toes curling up a little so that it looked rather like a small canoe. She saw in a moment why they had looked like mushrooms. They had been lying flat on their backs each with its single leg straight up in the air and its enormous foot spread out above it.

Before the doneel, Dufflepuds, and hobbits were the people created from the imagination of Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels. Perhaps most famous were the Lilliputians, a race of people no bigger than six inches tall.

Upon leaving Lilliput, Gulliver encounters a group of people on Brobdingnag who are giants. Next his ship is attacked by pirates and he’s marooned on a rocky island only to be rescued by the flying island of Laputa, “a kingdom devoted to the arts of music and mathematics but unable to use them for practical ends” (Wikipedia).

His travels take him to other strange lands such as Luggnagg where he encounters the struldbrugs, immortals who do not enjoy the fountain of youth but continue to age and suffer infirmity as a result. Gulliver’s final voyage results in mutiny. He’s set in a boat and encounters a land where he finds “a race of hideous, deformed and savage humanoid creatures to which he conceives a violent antipathy. Shortly afterwards he meets a race of horses who call themselves Houyhnhnms (which in their language means “the perfection of nature”); they are the rulers, while the deformed creatures called Yahoos are human beings in their base form” (Ibid.)

I could go on. The creation of people groups seems to be a common speculative trope, sometimes for allegorical purposes and sometimes for the sheer beauty and ingenuity of creation.

What people group have you discovered in your reading? Who’s your favorite and why? If they are a group of your own creation, tell us in a hundred words or less what makes them unique.

Storm Siren

by

Mary Weber

In a world at war, a slave girl’s lethal curse could become one kingdom’s weapon of salvation. If the curse – and the girl – can be controlled.

Excerpt from Chapter 1

“Fourteen circles for fourteen owners.”

I shade my eyes to block the sun’s reflection off the distant mountains currently doused in snow and smoke and flesh-eating birds. The yellow flags above me snap sharp and loud in the breeze as if to emphasize my owner’s words that yes, she’s quite aware such a high count is utterly ridiculous.

Waiting for it . . .

“Fourteen?” the sweaty merchant says.

Ha! There it is. Eleven years of repeatedly being sold, and it’s sad, really, how familiar I’ve become with this conversation. Today, if Brea has her way, I will meet my fifteenth, which I suppose should actually bother me. But it doesn’t.

Brea nods. “Fourteen.”

I smirk and turn to watch a gimpy minstrel roaming through the marketplace, which is the closest I’ve ever been to Faelen’s High Court. The poor guy is singing so wretchedly off-key, I want to giggle, except he might be newly returned from the war front, so I don’t. Besides, his odd version of the old ballad “The Monster and the Sea of Elisedd’s Sadness” reminds me of my home up in the Fendres. Have you been there? I want to ask him.

Instead, I look over as the enormous merchant grunts his nervousness and retreats from me, giving the ground a superstitious spit. He eyes Brea. “Fourteen owners says either yer lyin’ or she’s got the dark-death disease. Whichever it is, you best get her out of my way. I got a money business to run.” He makes to hurry off toward the selling stand, almost tripping in his fur-trimmed shoes.

I grin. Yes, run away in your too-little boots.

“Wait!” Brea grabs his arm. “Nym doesn’t have the disease. She’s just . . .”

The merchant scowls at her grip on his sleeve.

She releases it, but her roundish face turns stony with determination. “She’s just too uppity for the poorer folk, that’s all. There’s only so much a master can take of a servant who thinks she’s made of better than the rest.”

What in hulls? Is she off her chump? My laugh bubbles up and I choke it back, waiting for her to choke on her lie. He creeps closer and slides a look of dislike down my partially hooded face, my chin, my half-cloaked body. “She don’t look uppity. She don’t even look decent enough for the favor houses.”

Whoa. I bite back a prickly remark about his mum birthing him in one of those dung havens and look away. Neither of them deserves a reaction. Using my practiced haughty pose, I face the lively crowd gathered like giddy children in front of the selling platform. Five, ten, fifty people. They’re all smiling as if the circus with its panther monkeys and manic dwarves were performing instead of a fat guy in little boots exploiting children. Seems even decent women are desperate for extra hands while the men are off fighting a war we’ve no hope of winning.

The merchant chews his puffy lip and studies me, like he expects me to help coerce him. Is he jesting? I raise an eyebrow and glare at him until, finally, he grunts again and pulls up the cuff on my right arm.

I stiffen.

His gloved fingers run over each thread tattooed around my wrist like tiny bracelets. “One. Two. Three . . .” He numbers the circles slowly, fourteen in a row inked into my skin with the juice of the black mugplant. I almost feel like I should clap for him.

Good job, I mouth. You know how to count.

The merchant’s face twists into a snarl. He gives me a vicious pinch below my elbow and pushes my sleeve higher up my arm onto my shoulder. I shiver and, narrowing my eyes, start to pull away, but Brea leans into me.

“You hold yourself together,” she sputters close to my ear. “And for fool’s sake, keep your hair covered, or so help me, Nymia, I’ll break your fingers again.”.

I bite my tongue but refuse her the satisfaction of dipping my gaze to my slightly misshapen left hand, which I’m now curling into a fist.

“How old are you?” the dealer growls in my face.

“Seventeen,” I growl back.

“When was she first sold?” This question is for Brea, but I feel his bristly glove squeeze my skin as if he expects me to alert him if she’s dishonest.

“Age six. Her parents died when she was five and then she lived a short time with a midwife who had no use for her.” She says this last part with a slice of disgust in her voice that’s directed at me. And as much as I try to force it down, the hateful shame swells up to eat holes in my chest. She’s got me on that one. Two parents, one midwife, and fourteen owners I’ve ruined, the latest being Brea’s own husband. And it doesn’t matter that I tried to warn every single one of them.

The merchant’s eyes constrict. “There somethin’ else wrong with her yer not tellin’ me?”

“Nothing’s wrong with her. She’s perfectly fine. Just give me three draghts and she’s yours.”

“Three draghts?” I murmur. “How generous.”

Either she doesn’t hear or chooses to ignore me as the merchant rubs his huge, stubbled jowls and considers the offer. Although I can already sense he’ll take it. Three is cheap. Beyond cheap. It’s pathetic. I consider feeling insulted.

The minstrel limps by, practically giddy as he continues his fabulously bad recount of the Monster and the Sea. ” ‘Twas the night compassion forsooooook us.” He’s singing, referring to the night an agreement was struck between Paelen’s past king and the great, flesh-eating Draewulf. The price of which had been Faelen’s children. “And the big sea, she roared and spit up her foam at the shape-shifter’s trickery and our foooooolish king.”

I swallow and feel m amusement over how much he’s enjoying himself catch in my throat at what I know comes next.

“The ocean, she’s begging for our salvation. Begging for blood that will set our children free.”

And for a moment I swear I can feel the sea waves calling, begging my blood to set us all free.

Except just as with the Draewulf, my blood comes at a price.

“Blast the crippled croaker! Would someone put him out of his misery?” the merchant shouts.

A louder shout and then a cheer interrupt the inharmonious tune. Someone’s just been bought for a higher amount than expected. The merchant looks at the stage behind us and smiles. Then, without glancing at me, he says, “Done,” and fishes into his hip bag ot drop three draghts into Brea’s open palm.

Congratulations, Nym. You’re officially the cheapest slave sold in Faelen history.

Brea hands the reins of my collar to the merchant and turns from him, but not so quickly as to confirm his suspicion that there’s something else amiss with me. Just before she leaves, she leans into me again, and her black hair brushes against my cheek.

“Pity you weren’t born a boy,” she whispers. “They would’ve just killed you outright. Saved us all from what you are.” And then she’s gone.

Providence Community Church on its last Sunday (Oct. 26, 2014) in a too-small space.

Among my acquaintances, friends and interwebz connections, I believe I’ve spotted a trend: More people are getting discouraged about promoting the reading, writing, and publishing of Christ-influenced fantastical fiction. I’ve recommended one way to fix this: We can’t skip over Jesus’s appointment of His institutional Church of churches to get His mission done — as if we need only individuals and the internet for the calling/ministry of fantastical stories.

Also, yes, many local churches are terrible, not because they’re too focused on their mission but because they confuse made-up stuff with God’s mission.¹

Now — after some delay — it’s finally time to deliver on what I promised before:

Geeky fans sometimes do find a place in a local church and can begin to share the stories they love. It happened to me, anyway, and I hope to share some of my own story.

Intro: my local church

From spring 2007 to November 2013, I was an attender and then a member of Providence Community Church in Lexington, Ky.² As a church “wanderer” before then (because reasons), I was finally able see a biblical local church born and grow and start maturing as a vibrant body.

Providence was (and is) a great option for a church home. Its teaching pastors³ explore Scripture book-by-book and verse-by-verse. They teach the biblical Gospel without moralism and without basing the “sermons” on joyless-cautionary or fluffy-inspirational anecdotes. As for the people, they are friendly and diverse in backgrounds and ages. You get the small families and large families, older empty-nesters and younger college students, and hardcore Southern Baptist Reformed theologian types and folks who care little about the “isms” and prefer reading other things.

Turns out there was plenty of place for me there: someone who enjoys studying the “isms” and semi-thick theology books, but also loves to explore and share fantastical fiction.

Both enjoyments can glorify God, though in a church you’d think theology books would get more traction. However, I was convinced that if fantastical fiction is a gift that a redeemed saint can use to worship Him, then why not worship Him together using such a gift? Was there any way to do that? I started thinking about a “new” kind of church activity …

SpecFaith goes live

Some years before Providence, my family and I attended another church: Tates Creek Presbyterian, also in Lexington. This was during the Lord of the Rings films’ theatrical releases. And two folks at that church⁴ were hosting a groundbreaking (for me) study about a book other than the Bible: the actual The Lord of the Rings by the actual J.R.R. Tolkien.

The class was amazing. I remember learning so much about Tolkien along with a more-diverse class than most Sunday schools: older folks right down to middle-school kids.

Surely those fond memories inspired me to try the same at Providence. But I hadn’t done anything like this before — something you’d think a fantastical fan would not be intimidated to try.⁵

Yet try we did. We started with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, following the same homemade syllabus you can still find right here at SpecFaith. Next we moved to The Hobbit, timed quite well for the first film’s release date. That summer we shifted to movies, starting with the original Star Wars trilogy and then also watching and discussing The Princess Bride, WALL-E, and one of my favorites, the underappreciated The Spiderwick Chronicles.

How to train your story group

Here’s how we organized the church story groups.

1. We met weekly or once every two weeks at the church. For the reading groups we met on Saturday afternoons. The final movie groups were on Sunday afternoons.
2. We encouraged participants to read book chapters in advance.
3. We also read chapters — or chapter selections — aloud during the reading group.
4. Fun voices are optional. Acting your character is encouraged. Trade narrators often.
5. Celebrity impersonations: mandatory (at least for myself, such as constantly calling dibs on the role of Aslan as he could have been portrayed by Sir Patrick Stewart).
6. Don’t be awkward. No aw-shucks or nervousness! If you love these stories and know that you can use this love to help worship God with others, then show it. Even “fake” that confidence until it becomes real. And suddenly you realize you’ve leveled up.
7. Prepare in advance. No I’m-just-a-nerd nervousness! If you love these stories and know you can use this love to worship God with others, then show it. Even “fake” the confidence until it becomes real. Suddenly you’ve leveled up as a Christian and a fan.

I’m no longer a member of Providence, only because in late 2013 my wife and I moved to Austin, Texas. One of these days I’ll try to start another church story group — or find new ways to encourage others to attempt starting story groups in their local churches.

Maybe then we can encourage Christians to see fantastical stories in a biblical light. Maybe then we can view them just as joyfully-seriously as we should view other gifts of God.

And maybe then — much further down the road, and further than we would have liked — we can also build up more desire among Christians for stories that beautifully and truthfully explore the fantastical wonders of God, realistic people, and amazing worlds.

Would story groups work in your church?

Often understood as an allegory of the Gospel.

Anyone familiar with J. R. R. Tolkien’s thoughts on C. S. Lewis’ Narnia books knows one of this complaints about them were they were too overtly allegorical. What he meant by that are the obvious references to Christian people and themes in a didactic manner. An obvious example is that Aslan represents Christ, and how Aslan gives his life up to save Edmund from the White Witch is an obvious allegory of the penal-substitutionary understanding of the atonement of Christ on the cross.

It should be noted that Lewis didn’t see these things strictly as allegory. Louis A. Markos explains what Lewis meant by this statement:

According to his creator, Aslan is not an allegory for Christ but the Christ of Narnia. The distinction is vital. Were Aslan only an allegory, a mere stand-in for the hero of the Gospels, he would not engage the reader as he does. In fact, as Lewis explained, Aslan is what the second person of the Trinity (God the Son) might have been like had he been incarnated in a magical world of talking animals and living trees.

Of course that does nothing to address Tolkien’s concerns about the overtness of the subject matter. Tolkien preferred to bury his analogies deeper into the story, or to put it in modern terms, that such overt analogies to Christian persons or theologies makes the story too preachy. In essence, Tolkien and Lewis were having the same debate we’ve seen in our day between overt Gospel stories in fiction as opposed to subtle Christian world-view influence.

So How Does a Reader Evaluate the Quality of an Allegory?

First, I’ll attempt to define the word allegory so that we’re on the same page.

Allegory is a complex metaphor.

In my Biblical Interpretation class in seminary, the following distinctions were made.

• A simile is comparison of one thing to another in order to use that which is familiar to understand the less familiar. The key phrase often used in a simile is X is like Y. A biblical example would be Jesus’ statement, “The kingdom of heaven is like . . .” Usually they are to make a specific point or illustrate a truth.
• A parable is an extended and more complex simile. You have the simpler ones like “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant who upon finding a pearl of great price, goes and sells all he has to buy it.” It isn’t that the elements of the parable are meant to represent other people, things, or ideas, but to make a point. A more complex parable is the Sower. This is not to say an allegorical interpretation cannot be made of it, only that as literature, it is not an allegory.
• A metaphor is when one thing is stated to be another in order to illustrate the relationships of something unfamiliar by using that which is familiar. It is usually stated in terms of X is Y. A biblical example would be Jesus saying, “I am the gate.” He of course did not mean He was literally a gate with hinges, but that as a gate provides entrance to the pasture and protection for the sheep, so He is the entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven.
• Likewise, an allegory is an extended and more complex series of metaphors. It is designed to show the various interconnected relationships of the unfamiliar using familiar relationships. The most famous being Jesus’ allegory of the vine and the branches in John 15. Christ is the vine, we are the branches, God the Father is the vine dresser. It reveals the relationships between the Father, the Son, us, and each other by how the vine, branches, and vine dresser relate to each other. Truths are brought to light about each one, but through how they relate to one another rather than how they are like one another.

These are good distinctions when it comes to understanding the type of literature of a particular biblical passage, but perhaps needs more distinctions when we apply it to fiction. All the above forms fall into the general category of an analogy, which is simply comparing one thing to another. It is the usage of the analogy that distinguishes them. In that light, I’d like to provide my own breakdown of types of what we call allegory. Remember, we’re talking allegory as literature, not allegory as an interpretation method. Two different things. The former is intended by the author. The latter by the recipient.

These distinctions illustrate a common misconception of which Lewis’ definition of allegory falls into. An allegory proper doesn’t have a character representing a real-life character, but they are that character in that world. Lewis didn’t intend for Aslan to represent Christ, but to be Christ in that story. Which fits into the definition of what an allegory is. To say that Aslan represents Christ is to say that Aslan is like Christ in our world for the purposes of saying truths about who Christ is. Then it becomes more about simile and parable in intent.

That distinction can, however, help us to see what is a true allegory as opposed to other types of analogies. When it is obvious the author wants you to understand that something is something as it is in our world, it is an element of allegory. When it is clear it is like something else in our world, it is more akin to a simile or parable in order to illustrate a truth or moral.

Speculative fiction uses allegory in three main degrees.

1. Full Allegory – The story as a whole is allegorical. An example of that would be Pilgrim’s Progress which in its entirety is meant to be an allegory of the Christian life and salvation.
2. Integral Allegory – The story contains allegorical elements as a major component of its storyline. I would classify Lewis’s Narnia series more into that level. While some characters and events are meant to be allegorically understood, not all parts are. That doesn’t preclude an overall correlation like The Magician’s Nephew being illustrative of the Creation narrative, only that Lewis didn’t intend for every aspect and character of that story to be in Narnia what it is in our world, despite the attempts of some to interpret it that way.
3. Incidental Allegory – The story contains scattered allegorical elements, often not fully correlating to the real thing, but enough to illustrate relational truths. Some of these at times can border more on simile than metaphor. An example would be Gandalf’s sacrificing himself to save the company from the Balrog, dying, and then resurrecting back to life in Lord of the Rings. Tolkien didn’t intend to say that Gandalf was Christ in his world or that this event was a one-to-one correlation to the death and resurrection of Christ, but is allegorical in what the resurrection of Christ means emotionally to Christians. Or should, I might say. Even then, it is obvious that while providing a key turning point in the story, it doesn’t equate to the same level of importance in our salvation history as Jesus’ death and resurrection. So it is only part allegorical, part simile (Gandalf’s death and resurrection is like or a type of Christ’s). There are several of these types of incidental allegories in Lord of the Rings that even Tolkien himself pointed out.

The last type tends to not be so overt. Unlike Narnia, Middle Earth has no one character that is obviously Christ or God in the story, even if you can find some incidental allegories within the events of certain characters, like Frodo’s climbing of Mt. Doom being allegorical of Jesus’ assent to Golgotha, and Sam being allegorically like the man who carried Christ’s cross for Him when His physical body faltered. Only those familiar with the Gospel story would likely see that correlation and illustration of the relationships. For most people, it passes over as just part of the story.

How Allegorical Should Allegory Be?

There is a problem in using allegory. That is, if your goal is to slip the Gospel story in unnoticed by the masses. If the allegory is overt enough, like Lewis’, it is hardly slipping in the Gospel unnoticed save for those with no knowledge of the Gospel story. The allegories hit us over the head with the subtlety of a freight train approaching an intersection.

Likewise, if the allegory isn’t overt enough, the reader will not pick up on it enough to discern the message. In which case it becomes like a tree falling in a forest when no one is around to hear it. Is there a purpose to the allegory if no one gets the message?

As an author who has used allegory, I’ve asked myself the same questions. My Reality Chronicles series is like type #2 above, integral allegory. Not that I have a character in that world who is Christ, but there are intentional allegorical elements in the story (the steam house and the ring, primarily) that I suspect very few have picked up on. There are also incidental allegories, like the events toward the end of book three, Reality’s Fire, that are scattered through the books. Those are probably noticed more by Christians at least. But I fear if people don’t pick up on the clues enough to realize what the steam house and ring are allegorizing, all the other relationship it points to will be lost to most people, or they’ll see allegories I didn’t intend, perhaps even non-Christian ones.

Part of the risk, I suppose, of this writing endeavor. I comfort myself that Christ had the same issues, and trusted that those who had ears to hear would get His points in the parables. If the questions of the disciples were any indication, not a lot of them did get His point.

But perhaps that is the true value of a good allegory. Those who are in a place to receive the message will discover it and it will have its intended impact as God uses it. Those who don’t will just see them as simple morality tales, or fairy tales of interest.

As a reader, what type of allegory do you find most compelling? Are there some you can point to that have had a profound influence upon your walk with God?

In “Art and Evangelism” I stated

We writers don’t have to incorporate all Truth into our stories because, above all else, we can’t.

Instead, we can give our own feeble glimpse of God’s work or nature in order to contribute some small addition to the reader’s knowledge of our great God.

As one of our commenters pointed out, this type of fiction which doesn’t put Jesus front and center may not impact an unsaved reader the way, say, a Billy Graham crusade would.

But clearly, not every non-Christian is ready to receive the message of humankind’s fall, lost state, need of salvation, and rescue by a loving God through the blood of His precious Son. Something intervening takes place to bring a lost soul to the place where he is willing to listen to the salvation message.

Louie Zamperini, the subject of the movie Unbroken, comes to mind. When he returned to the US from the prisoner of war camp after World War II, he experienced all the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, at the time an unrecognized consequence of living through something as horrific as Louie had gone through.

Though he had made death-bed-type promises to God during his ordeal on the ocean and in the Japanese camp, he experienced recurring nightmares and fell into a life of alcohol abuse.

Nightmares began in prison camp and plagued Zamperini long after he returned home to California.

“The nightmares were every night,” he said. “I couldn’t get rid of it.”

Time wasn’t healing his wounds; it was making them worse. One night Zamperini dreamed he was strangling the Bird [the abusive commander of his prisoner of war camp]. Instead, he woke up strangling his wife. Scared and desperate, he started getting drunk to forget about the horrors that plagued him.

With her husband out drinking every night, Zamperini’s wife Cynthia filed for divorce. After surviving so much, Zamperini was about to lose everything. (“After ‘Unbroken’: Billy Graham and Louis Zamperini” by Kristy Etheridge

Four years after returning to the US and on the brink of personal disaster, Louie went to a Billy Graham crusade and accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior. He recounted the event:

And then Billy was quoting another verse from the Bible that gave me my answer: “If thou shalt confess with thy heart,” you know, “with thy mouth, and believe in thine heart that God would raise Him from the dead thou shalt be saved.” [Romans 10:9] Well, I knew then it had to be a heart belief, you know, besides the head. And so I knew, I knew, what I should do but I didn’t want to do it, because I…I…I felt that…well, I felt that if I made a decision that I’d be the biggest hypocrite in the world because I knew I couldn’t live a Christian life. But then other things were said that I grabbed on to at the meeting about the Lord upholding me with the right hand of His righteousness. I thought, “Well, if I had help, maybe I could make it.” And then…I was ready to leave the tent. I got to the main aisle when Billy began to say things like that and mentioned something about the Lord helping us. And I thought, “Well, if I had help maybe if I can make it.” It was then I turned to the right, went back to the prayer room and made my confession of faith in Christ. And then, boy, it was a complete turnabout. (Interview with Louis Zamperini by Dr. Lois Ferm on May 16, 1976)

But what prompted Louie to go to an evangelistic crusade in the first place? The soil of his heart had been prepared when he was a teen, his adversity brought him to an end of himself, but he needed something to prompt him to look to God for his answers.

In short, his wife persuaded him. She was the catalyst that moved him, and God used His Word and the preaching of a man to open Louie’s blind eyes.

When my father [Billy Graham] invited people to turn their lives over to Jesus Christ, [Louie’s wife] responded by accepting Him as her Lord and Savior. That night Cynthia informed Louie that because of this decision she had made, she would not divorce him.

Louie was thrilled. Though he was skeptical of her religious experience, he began to see changes in her. (“After ‘Unbroken’: The remarkable story of Louis Zamperini’s faith,” Franklin Graham)

Soon after Cynthia persuaded Louie to attend the crusade himself.

God can use a spouse, a neighbor, a TV show, a painting, a novel—whatever He chooses—to prepare a person’s heart or to prod him to a place where he hears the gospel.

Fiction might also lay out the plan of salvation, and some may respond. But in this post-Christian era perhaps the novels that can be most effective are those that prep ground, do the in-between work, or serve as the catalyst to bring someone to a place where they can hear the clear teaching of God’s word.

A type is “a person or thing symbolizing or exemplifying the ideal or defining characteristics of something.” For those who don’t know about the sacrifice Jesus made for the sins of the world, they might most need to read about a person exemplifying such a sacrifice. Same with any number of other things that define Christianity—a sovereign God who loves unconditionally, humans who fell from grace, just judgment for disobedience, and so on.

Too many Christian writers see their role as that of the teachers. Certainly incorporating the gospel into a story is not wrong, but neither is it the only way a story can be Christian.

Writers and readers alike need to understand that God can use a story in the process of evangelism. Louie Zamperini’s own true story has impacted thousands of people. So might Christian speculative novels that introduce readers to the characteristics of the Christian faith through the use of types.

Note: Today’s guest article is by Lacy R. Burnett (who happens to be SpecFaith editor E. Stephen Burnett’s wife). On Feb. 1, Lacy and her sister, Beatrice Jones, launched ForGloryandBeauty.org. This new web ministry’s mission is to explore the glories of God in art, fashion and life — not that much different from SpecFaith’s mission.

And on Fridays the two sites’ missions will coincide even closer, such as today’s article Fandom Friday: Agent Carter that explores the heroic ideals and ideal-reflecting fashion style of the Marvel miniseries.

The article is cross-posted here with permission.

We here at 4GAB are mostly normal, sane human beings. But we have our crazy fangirl moments, and we like dressing up nearly as much as your four-year-old niece. So on Fandom Fridays we will celebrate the beauty, art and storytelling of our favorite stories—in novels, film and television shows—as well as fantastic cosplay and our own projects in that direction.

Peggy is demure as can be while apartment-hunting.

Lately one of my favorite shows has been the “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”/Captain America spinoff series “Agent Carter.” It airs Tuesday nights and follows Peggy Carter’s adventures as an agent of the Strategic Scientific Reserve after World War II.

Agent Carter could have gone so wrong in so many ways. It could have been a soap opera, a girls-are-awesome-boys-are-dumb travesty, or even just a run-of-the-mill costume mystery.

But somehow it has managed to avoid all of the above and become something really special.

“Agent Carter” was initially promoted as a show about a woman battling her way through the ranks of insensitive brutish men. But that’s not how it’s turned out. Yes, every day Peggy must fight nasty pervasive misogyny in her office. Her coworkers are serving their country, but their refusal to trust her abilities is their biggest weakness. But both Peggy and her male colleagues still display competency, loyalty, and intelligence, and that’s truly refreshing.

Those are some of the story’s key themes. How do the creators show these in the story’s style?

One thing that has impressed me most about this show is that Peggy is deeply practical about what she wears. Yet “practical” doesn’t necessarily mean “frumpy.”

You may have seen posters and promo shots that emphasize Peggy’s wardrobe. Heels and a pinstripe dress for the office? Oh yes! In fact, her flawless office style is one of her most efficient disguises. She knows her co-workers see her as “just a girl” and she flaunts it, all the while picking up information while pouring the coffee, filing papers, and taking lunch orders.

No skintight leather for this lady!

But she’s no fool. When she’s on mission she doesn’t mess around with eyeliner. Also, you’ll look in vain for sex-appealing black-leather catsuits. (We’re looking at you, Black Widow.) Instead, Peggy suits up in regulation tactical gear just like the boys, pulls her curls into a pony tail and goes in. Another favorite ensemble is the brown jumpsuit she uses for spelunking sewers and some light piracy in an earlier episode.

And she never, ever loses her class. So far the show has not included one moment where I had to worry about what my husband saw.

Her intentionality is inspiring. Peggy makes me want to be more purposeful about what healthy messages, life goals, and moral ideals my own clothes are reflecting. Sure, we may not be fighting misogyny at work or infiltrating enemy bases. But all of us can find plenty of situations in which what we wear makes statements about who we are and what we believe.

How do stories like “Agent Carter” inspire you?

For years I’ve been waiting for a book such as The Things of Earth by Joe Rigney.¹

And today Christ and Pop Culture has made this biblical and practical nonfiction book available for free to members.

Just now I downloaded this little book. No, I haven’t yet read it. (And no one has suggested I write this pseudo-endorsement before reading it.) But I’m already certain this is a resource that Christians of all theological persuasions desperately need. We must carefully and biblically study this topic, if we care at all about personal holiness that pleases our Savior and enjoying/engaging the human cultures God has given us — including popular culture, media, stories and songs, and fantastical stories.

Here’s why I’m fairly sure Rigney’s resource is one that Christians should explore and discuss:

1. He’s a gospel-centered guy. So glorifying God and believing doctrine according to Scripture are a top goal.
2. Rigney’s message “Live Like a Narnian: Christian Discipleship in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles” was a highlight of the 2013 Desiring God conference (in which authors and speakers explored the rationalism and romances of Lewis).
3. Many Christians, even those who explore deeper truths, haven’t a clue what to do with creativity and culture.

That last is especially crucial. Because if some doctrine-minded Christians have a weakness, it’s suspicions that stories and art are useless, tangential, “lesser” than theology and sermons, or even evil. Even some allies of Rigney’s — e.g., at Desiring God Ministries — have occasionally demonstrated uncertainty about how their biblical view of worship should inform our discernment, engagement and enjoyment of the stories and songs of human culture.

Or as Christ and Pop Culture perfectly phrases it:

At this point, most people are familiar with John Piper and his call to “Christian Hedonism.” Piper had written and spoken on it extensively since the early 80’s. But one aspect he hasn’t devoted much space to is how a Christian Hedonist looks at culture, specifically when it comes to enjoying it. To remedy that, Joe Rigney, assistant professor of theology and Christian worldview at Bethlehem College and Seminary, has written The Things of The Earth: Treasuring God by Enjoying His Gifts. John Piper warmly commends the book to readers as being helpful to him personally, and thanks to Crossway, Christ and Pop Culture members can download and enjoy it for free.

For me, the dedication alone sells the book’s theme:

To my wife, Jen
You are a constant reminder that
the things of earth grow strangely bright
in the light of his glory and grace.²

Here’s an except from the book itself.

Don’t set your hope on uncertain riches. Don’t set your mind on the things of earth. But don’t forget that God richly provides you with everything to enjoy. How do we do this? How can we enjoy all that God richly provides without setting our affections on the things of earth?

The Battle of the Hymns

These two biblical threads have made their way into our songs and hymns. For instance, most evangelicals have sung Helen Lemmel’s hymn “Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus.” The chorus captures one half of the tension:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in his wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace.

What happens to the things of earth when Jesus shows up? They grow dim. They fade. Compared to him, they are as nothing and less than nothing. So when we set our minds on things above, the things below lose their power and beauty.

But Hemmel’s hymn isn’t the only song we sing. In “This Is My Father’s World,” Maltbie Babcock gives voice to the other side of the tension, celebrating the goodness of God’s creation:

This is my Father’s world:
He shines in all that’s fair;
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass;
He speaks to me everywhere.

So again , which is it? In the light of his face, do earthly goods grow dim? Or does he shine in all that’s fair? Does the rustling grass disappear when Christ arrives? Or do we hear him speaking in it? As I said before, what exactly are we to do with the things of earth?³

A few months ago, Scientific American published an article about Christianity vs. the existence of aliens entitled “Did Jesus Save the Klingons?” It’s not a new idea. It’s not even an original title; a few years ago, The Times published an article called “Does Jesus Save Aliens?” People have been talking for years about the theological problem posed to Christianity by sentient, alien life.

For myself, I don’t know why aliens should be a theological problem for Christians. I don’t know why they should be any kind of problem for anybody. If aliens do exist, we could be faced with problems much more urgent than a complex theological dilemma, particularly if the aliens arrived at Earth with death-rays and a will to conquer. And yet, you don’t see the Pentagon drawing up contingency plans for an alien invasion. There’s nothing more purposeless than deciding what to do about beings whose existence is entirely theoretical and whose nature, even if they do exist, is totally unknown.

As a matter of practical reality, there is no theological problem. Even as a matter of pure theory, I don’t see the conflict between Christianity and aliens. But what most interests me about the Christianity vs. aliens debate is not the reality, nor even the theory. It’s the sense that some of the people engaged in the debate actually think they’ve found a new question.

The whole business of aliens is a demonstration of Solomon’s maxim that there is nothing new under the sun. For thousands of years, humanity has been telling itself stories about races other than ourselves. We’ve had a thousand different names for them; fairy is only the best-known. Once people really believed they were next door – under the earth, in the wind, hiding in houses, living in the thick, ancient forests.

Eventually that belief died, or maybe it was only transmuted. Science, the long exploration to Earth’s farthest corners, and the unifying of the world convinced people we don’t share this planet, but what about the other planets? The idea of intelligent, alien life was pushed beyond our planet and now – commensurate with science’s increasing scope – it has been pushed beyond our solar system. Apparently, we can’t get over the idea.

Just as in Faerie we find the concept of rational, inhuman beings, so too we find the question of their souls and salvation. Folk tales do, on occasion, mix Christianity and Faerie (often with an explicit enmity between the two, but before too much is drawn from this, let it be remembered that the old tales also tend to assume hostility between Faerie and mankind). I’ve read stories that directly took on the question of whether Faeries could share Man’s salvation through Christ – and answered it both ways.

Did Jesus save the Elves? Did He save the Klingons? This makes a fascinating conversation, but it’s at least a thousand years old.

To enlighten the conversation, we should consider the one rational species aside from humanity, at whose fall and eternal destiny the Bible hints. Yes, I mean angels, who are generally discounted from these discussions, probably because angel is a religious term. Maybe if we called them by a sci-fi term, like fourth-dimensional beings …

Whatever the specifics of their nature, angels are rational, inhuman beings, and so Christianity has already come to grips with the notion of other races, and of whether Jesus will save them. And the answer, in this case, is no.

No one knows why, as the Book of Hebrews states, it is not angels that He helps. No account of the angelic fall is provided, and angels, though a consistent presence in Scripture, are also a peripheral one. This much is clear: Some angels – the “holy angels” – are sinless; they don’t need to be redeemed. Others have sinned and fallen – these are called demons; they won’t be redeemed. And we can only wonder why.

“Did Jesus save aliens?” is not as earth-shattering a question as some writers seem to think. But maybe it’s a more complex one. Perhaps aliens, if they exist, never fell and don’t need to be saved. Perhaps, if they fell, they fell like humans, or perhaps they fell like angels. Maybe God can and will apply Jesus’ blood to their account, or maybe it’s not aliens that He helps. We cannot possibly know.

And this is why, even apart from the fact that aliens could well be nothing more than a figment of human imagination, that I don’t worry about the supposed theological quandary of alien life. Christianity is limber enough to handle the question.

My “coming to Jesus” moment as a teen, ironically, started with horror. I say ironically, because I’ve mostly avoided horror through most of my life. Yet it was a bit of horror from the Bible which led me down the path of salvation.

I was in 9th grade, sitting in English class waiting for the bell to ring and class to start. A group of peers had gathered around a desk a couple of chairs behind me. The kid at the desk was attempting to witness to them, I believe. I don’t recall all he said and he had no idea I was listening in. He said something close to, “Did you know in the Bible says giant scorpions will fly around torturing people for five months in the last days?”

This statement shocked me. One, because having grown up in southern and central Texas, I’d been stung by scorpions more than once growing up. That hurt bad enough. I couldn’t imagine the horror of giant ones flying around stinging people. Sounded like something out of a science fiction monster flick.

Two, because having grown up as a pastor’s kid for the first 9 years of my life, all I could remember of Bible stories seemed quite benign by comparison. How does one mesh “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world” with God sending monsters to inflict pain on people? Inflicting such horrors seemed opposite of the loving father in the story of the Prodigal Son. Was this really in the Bible?

So I took mental note of the chapter/verse reference he mentioned. When I got home that day, I dusted off an old Bible my grandmother had given me and found the reference. The following is what I read.

And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man. And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions. And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle. And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months.
(Rev 9:3-10)

I was stunned. He was right. It caused me to wonder what else was in this book I didn’t know about. That incident sparked a journey to read the Bible and ultimately led me to faith in Christ. My salvation started with a Biblical horror story and speaks to the value of horror to move us out of our complacency. God, Jesus, regularly used this method in teaching. Two quick examples:

And if ye shall despise my statutes, or if your soul abhor my judgments, so that ye will not do all my commandments, but that ye break my covenant: I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart.
(Leviticus 26:15-16a)

The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; 42 And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
(Matthew 13: 41-42)

Many more could be listed. It goes to show us that:

The horror genre is not inherently anti-Christian.

The value or lack thereof of horror lies in the author’s use or abuse of it. For the Christian author, it is one more tool in the toolbox to point to God not only as one to be feared if not taken seriously, but as one full of love if we humbly accept Him into our lives.

Indeed, there are many aspects to horror that lend itself to a Christian interpretation. A couple of examples:

Evil and the Fall is real and frightening. It will, if we ignore God, destroy us. Nothing like facing the realization of staring down a horde of nightmarish demons in Hell to make you re-prioritize your life. We too often become complacent in our lives when it comes to God. For many, we need the swift kick-in-the-pants that a horror story from a Christian worldview could give us to pay attention to what is important.

The defeat or redemption of the evil or a monster witnesses to the reality that God will prevail. Therefore He is able to defeat or redeem the horrors in our own lives.

We Have Too a Narrow Definition of Horror

The root of this stems from a secularized version of Evangelical Christianity. Secular in that it uses “guilt by association” to divide things and categories into “of God” and “not of God” instead of evaluating them based on their meaning and usage.

I was in that crowd growing up. I only listened to Christian music and Christian radio, read only theological and devotional materials, didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, and only drank milk from a Christian cow. (That last one is satirical in case anyone is wondering. Extra points if you know the Christian singer and song that line came from.) We had our list of dos and don’ts to keep us holy, even though we only had a general idea why, rather than discerning the holiness on a case-by-case basis.

For example, we didn’t dance because of the abuse of square dancing back in the late and early 1800s and 1900s respectively. Therefore all dancing was guilty by association. So much so that when I pastored a church in 1992, there were whispers of disapproval that I allowed our daughter, 7 years old, to attend ballet lessons and dance on stage at the recitals.

And don’t think this is purely a modern problem. Peter, in Acts 10, refuses the food God offered him in a vision because it was unclean according to the Law. God responds: “What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common. “ (Acts 10:15b) He had lost sight of why God originally prohibited it and avoided the thing as evil in itself even when the God who had put it off limits now said to eat. Peter had a habit of putting God in a box. God kept destroying his boxes. Peter had the good sense to let God tear them up.

One standard definition of the horror genre: that which is “intended to, or have the capacity to frighten, scare, or startle their readers by inducing feelings of horror and terror.”

As mentioned before, we tend to take this definition too narrowly. I know I used to. Having seen the gore-filled 60s slasher movie as a 6-year-old, The Gruesome Twosome,I generally avoided horror stories because I thought that was what horror was. Guilty by association. Thanks to much modern-day horror movies filled with such gore, too many equate that as what horror is when in fact it is only one sub-genre of horror, and not one too many Christian writers or readers of horror are interested in.

But this is even broader than what we would typically call the horror genre. Many books not so labeled have elements of horror. Though I don’t consider myself a horror writer, my own Reality’s Chronicles series, labeled YA fantasy, is littered with horror moments in each book. A troll there, a monster here, a demon, a descent into Hades, all horror tropes. Many books use them that are not labeled as horror, but still labeled Christian.

Let’s go yet broader. A good percent of stories rely upon horror to create tension. The goal of creating tension requires an element of horror and terror in order to scare the reader that things are not going well for the protagonist. While the degree may be different, the intent isn’t. Whether we mention an evil villain attempting to destroy the world, our hero appearing to face certain doom, or even a romance story when one of the main characters appear to be on death’s bed prematurely. All done to scare the reader into thinking, “this is it, all is lost.” It may not be a vampire or Frankenstein, but it is horror nonetheless.

There are very few stories that don’t rely upon creating some level of horror to make the story work.

What am I saying? Go imbibe freely of horror without concern? Adopt worldly values and ignore traditional Christian boundaries? The sky’s the limit, nothing can hurt you?

To quote Paul, may it never be! Even as Jesus made it clear, despite those who abused the Law, He didn’t intend to erase it or replace it. Just because He railed against the Pharisees and other spiritual leaders for wrongly applying the Law didn’t mean it no longer had value because of that guilty association.

Rather, as Jesus did with the fig tree, we evaluate the fruit of the tree. Each tree. When Jesus didn’t find any fruit on one, He didn’t curse all fig trees. He cursed only that one fig tree. (Matthew 21:19)

We need to embrace discernment of each tree’s fruit, not outsource our discernment to boxes we’ve constructed. Then our discernment is nothing more than deciding how to categorize a thing or event as good or bad according to whether it falls into the same box that we’ve placed God.

How do you evaluate the fruit of a piece of horror literature?