A Time To Die, Book 1 of the Out Of Time series (Enclave Publishing) by Nadine Brandes, is a young adult post-apocalyptic dystopian fantasy. I know that’s quite a mouthful and might seem a little daunting, but I think it’s an accurate description of this debut novel.

The protagonist, Parvin Blackwater, is an eighteen-year-old, and therefore at the upper end of the young adult genre.

The fantasy world Nadine Brandes created is a futuristic United States of the East formed after a cataclysmic event wiped out much of the rest of the world—and therefore post-apocalyptic.

The government of the USE is strict in enforcing (with Enforcers) certain laws of the land, most prominently that individuals must produce their clocks—a physical device that has been coded for them and counts down the years, days, hours, and seconds to their death. Anyone without a clock is branded a Radical and duly punished. Such a repressive government earns this novel the dystopian label.

The Story. Parvin was a triplet though one of her brothers died, his clock zeroing out upon birth. Her other brother and she have a problem before they are old enough to realize it—the government doesn’t make allowances for triplets and only implanted their pregnant mother with the code for two clocks. With one already showing zeros, the one remaining clock could be Parvin’s or her brother Reid’s.

What’s more, the clock indicates that whoever it belongs to will die in one year. Because they secretly share the clock, the government provides them each a Mentor who gives them a last year assessment and helps them arrive at a Last Year goal.

Parvin has done little with her life up to this point, but she has a passion to save Radicals since she and her brother have shown, albeit secretly, that living without a clock is not harmful to them or their society, and therefore Radicals are not a danger and don’t need to be imprisoned, relocated, or sent over the wall into the unknown West and sure death.

She decides her Last Year goal will be to write her biography in which she will reveal the secret about her clock with the hopes that she can show people the truth about the Radicals. When she finishes, however, she realizes her writing is . . . boring.

From their Low City library she finds a number of other biographies. The best ones, she realizes, were written by Skelley Chase, and she asks her Mentor to arrange an interview with him.

When the Mentor does the impossible and brings Skelley Chase to Unity Village, he reads Parvin’s manuscript and agrees to team with her to tell her story. But, he says, her story is bigger than what she’s written, and to tell it, she must go over the Wall.

And this is pretty much the set up. From this point on, I didn’t want to put the book down.

Strengths. The concept behind A Time To Die is unique. Yes, it’s a dystopian novel, and we’ve seen a number of those—Hunger Games, Divergent, and the Safe Lands series. Yes, it’s post-apocalyptic, and we’ve seen a number of those, too—TV’s Revolution, The City of Ember, Evan Angler’s Swipe series. But A Time To Die has unique elements, the most pronounced being the clocks that indicate when a person will die, removing some of the uncertainty of life.

The protagonist, Parvin Blackwater, is also a believable character and sympathetic, if for no other reason than the fact that she’s eighteen and preparing to die. As the story progresses, however, Parvin grows as a person, which makes her an even more engaging character.

The world-building of this story is not extensive, but it is sufficient to give a flavor of this futuristic place and time. There are small things that crop up to enhance the feel of otherness—technologies, people groups, idioms.

After a certain point, the plot is filled with tension and conflict. While the story doesn’t unfold at a breath-taking pace, it has moments filled with action, followed by periods of recovery. In my way of thinking, this is a much more realistic pace than stories modeled on action-adventure movies, and allows the reader to more fully experience the events and the character’s emotions.

The great strength of the book, however, is its Christian content. The government of the United States of the East does not allow adults to teach religion to anyone under eighteen, but Parvin knows God and His Son, Jesus Christ, because her brother Reid introduced her to Him. Nevertheless, she has a lot of questions about her relationship with Him, especially when life becomes hard and lonely.

Her questions are natural, her discovery of truth is believable, her growing relationship with God and her understanding of her purpose is momentous. Because her faith journey is so seamlessly woven with her life journey, the story escapes the dreaded “preachiness” pitfall while delivering solid Biblical truth that applies to everyday living.

Weaknesses. While I might wish for more world-building, the main issue I have with A Time To Die is the beginning. Because Nadine Brandes is a skilled writer, I was never bored, and yet during the setup phase, I was not compelled to continue reading. If I set the book down for a few days, I didn’t feel the need to return to it. Because I didn’t have another book going, I did continue reading and found the story and characters interesting.

After the inciting incident, all that changed and the story haunted me so that I wanted to return to it as soon as possible. I could only wish the beginning had that same quality.

One other area—towards the end there was one place I thought the events dragged on a bit too long, but that may have been a matter of taste. I was anxious to know what happened next and wanted to rush along. Others may be more content to experience in depth what the character was going through.

Recommendation. I was so excited to find another top notch writer in Nadine Brandes and just as excited to be drawn into the post-apocalyptic dystopian world she created. A Time To Die is a must read for fans of Christian fantasy, for those who love dystopian fiction as long as they aren’t offended that the story includes God.

Do be warned that the start of the book may seem slower than what you might like. Never fear, though, because the pace will pick up and you’ll be caught in this world before you know it.

Arena
by Karen Hancock
Bethany House Publishing
Adult science fantasy/allegory
Re-released, 2012

Callie Hayes is living a life of fear and disillusionment when she volunteers for a psychology experiment that promises to turn her life around. As her orientation proceeds, Callie becomes frightened by the secrecy and evasion she encounters. When she demands to be released from the program, she is suddenly dropped into a terrifying alien world and into a perilous battle between good and evil. With limited resources and only a few cryptic words to guide her, Callie embarks on a life-changing journey. Will she decipher the plans the Benefactor has established for her escape, or will she succumb to the deception of the Arena?

– – – – –

Excerpt from Chapter 1

“They won’t be taking blood or anything, will they?” Callie Hayes looked up from the clipboard in her hands to the dimpled youth behind the receptionist’s counter.

“Our physical evaluations are noninvasive,” he assured her. “Completely painless.”

“For goodness’ sake, Callie,” Med Riley protested beside her. “It’s only a psychology experiment. Why are you giving him the third degree?”

“I want to know what I’m getting into this time.” Callie pushed slipping wire-rim glasses back up her nose as she flashed an accusing glance at her companion.

Meg was petite, freckled, and green-eyed, her face framed by chin-length black curls. She wore a white spaghetti-strap T-shirt with blue shorts, and she’d been Callie’s best friend since fourth grade. Together they’d endured adolescence, the divorce of Meg’s parents, a two-year obsession with Zane Grey novels, high school, and college. After graduating from the University of Arizona four years ago, they’d both settled into a holding pattern—Meg waiting for a teaching position at one of the Tucson school districts, and Callie just waiting. It was through Meg’s temporary job with the university’s Psychology Department that she stumbled onto the world of the paid guinea pig. “Easy money,” she dubbed it.

But Callie discovered there were reasons guinea pigs got paid.

“Thirty dollars,” Meg had promised last time, “and all we have to do is lie in the sun for a few hours.”

Ha! It was bad enough having stranger smear squares of sunscreen on her bottom and peer at them every fifteen minutes, but when the local news crews showed up, Callie nearly died of embarrassment—and swore she’d never let Meg talk her into any such thing again.

“This isn’t like the sunscreen business,” Meg assured her. She turned to the receptionist. “We had one bad experience, and now she’s paranoid.”

The baby-faced youth nodded. His nameplate read Gabe, and though he looked like a high schooler, Callie guessed he was a college freshman.

“Ask as many questions as you like,” he said. “I’ll answer anything that won’t affect the integrity of the experiment.”

Callie frowned, fingering the end of the thick red braid that hung over her shoulder. “No drugs?”

Gabe’s blue eyes widened. “Of course not! As our flyer says, we offer evaluation of and instruction in the decision-making process. There are absolutely no drugs.”

“So what do we have to do for the fifty dollars?”

“You’ll be negotiating an obstacle course and—“
“Obstacle course?” Callie looked up from the waiver. “That won’t involve heights, will it? Rope climbing, that sort of thing?”

“Good grief, Cal,” Meg cried. “It’s not boot camp.”

“Just let the man answer, okay?”

“It is on the ninth floor,” Gabe said. “Are you acrophobic?”

“only once I get to the tenth floor.” She laughed nervously.

“Maybe we can help with that.”

“I was just joking.” The last thing she needed was another bout with a shrink.

Gabe shrugged. “Well, we’ve had good success with phobias—and fear in general, for that matter.”

“See?” Meg’s short dark curls brushed Callie’s shoulder as she leaned close. “It’s not like that other thing at all. In fact, it might even give you an excuse to miss your sister’s birthday bash tonight. Unless you think the Mr. Right she’s got for you this time really will be Mr. Right.”

Callie snorted. Her sister, Lisa, moved in an alien world—upscale, fashion-fixated, and socially saturated. Lisa’s Mr. Rights were inevitably lawyers or MBAs, all acquaintances or co-workers of her husband’s. Expecting another version of Lisa, the men were always disappointed when they met her short, dull, tongue-tied little sister.

Callie detested the whole scenario. And the possibility of having an excuse for missing the affair was a powerful incentive. “How long will it take?” she asked Gabe.

“Not more than a few hours if you follow instructions. We do ask that you commit to finishing the experiment, however.”

“And we won’t have to do anything embarrassing or improper?”

He looked amused. “Only if you choose to.”

“Come on, Cal,” Meg murmured. “You said you’d do this.”

“Oh, all right.” Callie signed the waiver and handed it over. It’s only for a couple of hours, she consoled herself. And who knows—maybe I will gain new and powerful insights. Maybe I’ll learn how to say no to Lisa. Maybe it’ll even turn my life around like the flyer promises. There’s no denying it could use some turning around.

Four years out of college, she was still making minimum wage raising rats for biology experiments. She still lived in a rented apartment, still had to endure her mother’s lectures about finding a man and getting focused, and still wasn’t any closer to doing what she really wanted to do—paint. Unfortunately that was something both her mother and sister considered completely unacceptable. A career in art was too unreliable. Worse, her deadbeat father was an artist—when he wasn’t following the horse races or losing his money in Las Vegas—and she didn’t want to be like him, did she?

At her mother’s insistence, she had gone into pre-med. But she was not accepted at med school after graduation—much to her relief—and thus far the only thing her science degree had turned up was the rat-raising job. A job that somehow spilled from part time into full and consumed all her energy, so that little art got done, and she stayed where she was, trapped, frustrated, and waiting for a miracle to set her free.

Gabe told them to go on up and indicated an elevator panel in the textured beige wall beside the desk. Meg hesitated, looking uncertain, then leaned over the counter. “Alex Chapman was supposed to meet us—”

“Yes. He’s waiting upstairs.”

As they entered the elevator May nudged Callie’s arm. “He’s waiting for us! Did you hear?” She fluffed her black curls and groped in her purse for a breath mint. “Do I look okay? What am I gonna say?”

“Hello usually works.” Callie tried not to think of the dark swell of space beneath her feet, pushed away thoughts of cables snapping and cars plummeting. The last thing she wanted was to have an attack here.

“But what about after hello?” Meg persisted.

“You never had any problems talking to Jack.”

“There’s a light-year of difference between Jack and Alex. Wait’ll you see him, Cal. He is so gorgeous.”

“So you’ve said. Many times.”

“Have I?” Meg giggled.

Callie watched the six blink out and the seven appear over the door. Uneasiness churned in her middle. She was okay up to the seventh floor, but after that, things got dicey. Floor-level fear was a fairly common manifestation of acrophobia, but because it didn’t match the stereotypical fear of heights, it was harder for others to relate to. You were expected to freak out when you looked out a lofty window or stepped onto a rooftop observation deck, and most people nursed enough of their own latent acrophobia to sympathize. But falling into a full-blown panic just because the numbers changed on an elevator panel? Even she knew it made no sense.

Not that it mattered. Above the sixth floor, she got jittery. And above the ninth. . . .STOP it! Don’t think about it!

“We come to it at last.”

Yes, today brings the final trailer for the final installment of The Hobbit film series — the now-much-maligned (yet arguably over-padded) adaptation by The Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson and presumably hundreds of overworked New Zealand special-effects staff.

Lately there’s been a little more hate about The Hobbit. Geeks seem to react to the thing as if there can only be one geek-master allowed at a time. As if Jackson had his day back with The Lord of the Rings, and now we’ve moved on to the age of Marvel films alone and nothing else is allowed ever. So when The Hobbit film series comes along, flaws and all, some fans react as if they won the Golden Ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory but won’t quit smacking their gum or playing their video games or whining to their parents.

Me? I’m just glad to be here.

Yes, the last film, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, had its ridiculous drug-trip-through-the-tunnel-style moments. Yes, there was no need for an over-bloated chase scene through Erebor that turned the Dwarves into new Warner Brothers cartoon characters and Smaug into a parody of himself. (Thorin’s wheelbarrow-on-molten-lava surfing and whooshing-on-chains moments stray far beyond the similar throwaway Legolas-action-hero moments from The Lord of the Rings.) And yes, Tauriel, the film-only elf maiden who actually did fine until this moment, had no need to light up like Monica from Touched By An Angel.

No. Stop. Don’t.

Rather than depart the theater giddy for the final film, I departed with the thought: Well … okay. And since then I’ve only seen the film a second time; my reaction stayed the same.

But I wrote a more-positive review of The Hobbit part 2.¹ I’m still glad to be here. It’s a great time to be a fantastical story fan. To switch metaphors, why treat this solely like organized sports with all the punditry and rivalries and demands that we fire the coach?

I’m even more optimistic for the final film. And I’m still letting my The Hobbit hype happen as I await today’s trailer for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. Maybe you feel the same. And maybe you’d like to join me for the final stage of this series, which I’ve renamed Exploring ‘The Hobbit.’

These questions were originally written for a months-long reading group for all ages at Providence Community Church in Lexington, Ky. But you don’t need a reading group to explore The Hobbit all over again. You need only your enjoyment of the story, your memory of these chapters, and perhaps a quick skim back over the material.

Let’s begin now.

Chapter 13: Not at Home

1. When we last saw Smaug, he was flying south toward the Running River. But the dwarves don’t know this. Would you have preferred not knowing that Smaug has gone elsewhere, so as to increase suspicion when the party is forced down into the caves?
2. In desperation they agreed, and Thorin was the first to go forward by Bilbo’s side. (page 222) Things have definitely changed between them. But are the dwarves legitimately behind Bilbo as their leader, or tagging along with him because (by contract and by chance) the hobbit has been here before? Or might there be some other reason?
3. How does Tolkien not “stick” with one character, being inside his head, but instead jump from the dwarves to Bilbo and back? (Other novelists, for example, would have made it clear if the story was following Bilbo, and then, say, Thorin.) What are the advantages of this “omniscient narrator” approach? What are any disadvantages? For example, here does this emphasize Bilbo’s finding of the Arkenstone Thorin wants?
4. “But I suppose I must tell the dwarves about it — some time. They did say I could pick and choose my own share; and I think I would choose this, if they took all the rest!” All the same [Bilbo] had an uncomfortable feeling that the picking and choosing had not really been meant to include this marvellous gem, and that trouble would yet come of it. (page 224) Given Thorin’s earlier longing for the Arkenstone, how does this set us up for an inevitable conflict between the characters — just when they’ve begun to work together?
5. Also in light of this, what do you think about Thorin’s gift to Bilbo of the mithril jacket? What is the significance of Thorin giving anything to Bilbo, much more so dwarf-armor?
6. “Come, come!” said Thorin laughing — his spirits had begun to rise again, and he rattled the precious stones in his pockets. “Don’t call my palace a nasty hole! You wait till it has been cleaned and redecorated!” (page 229) Has Thorin ever laughed before in the story, or shown a positive outlook like this? If not, why the positive change in him now?

Due to attempting National Novel Writing Month again this year, during November I’ll be digging into my own blog’s archives for articles of interest. This particular one I wrote in July of 2013. Consider this article in light of how Christian fictional works portray the husband and wife relationship, often based upon flawed theology.

——————————————-

You already know what Scripture verses I’m going to discuss, don’t you? My recent guest post, “Have You Committed Adultery Lately,” at Mike Duran’s blog, “Decompose,” inspired me from the comments to address this subject: the infamous Eph. 5:22-24 passage:

Wives, be in subjection unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, being himself the saviour of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives also be to their husbands in everything. (ASV)

Using this Scripture passage, abuse, adultery, ill-treatment, as well as lesser sins and crimes have been excused, justified, and ignored if a woman was the victim. If only she would have submitted like St. Paul demanded, she wouldn’t be a victim of these crimes, the reasoning goes.

With the authority of Scripture behind them, Christian husbands, even pastors and religious counselors, have enabled sinful lifestyles at the expense of their victims and God’s justice.

So are the above verses to be taken as many interpret them? Even feminist, intent on battling a male-dominated culture, interpret them in this manner and label St. Paul a misogynist.

It is my contention that these verses are taken out of context, and perverted into teaching an attitude that is 180 degrees opposite what St. Paul meant. Allow me to make my case.

First, we must understand the general context and message St. Paul is conveying to us. This is established at the beginning of the chapter:

Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell. (Eph 5:1-2 ASV)

Love. St. Paul is attempting in the verses that follow, to give practical examples of what walking in love in imitation of Christ looks like. Any interpretation, therefore, that does not flow from love, violates this context and is not the message St. Paul sent. It is not God’s Word to take a verse out of context and proclaim it as truth. You are, by definition, a false prophet.

If you don’t concede the point, then I quote to you the following Scripture, which by your method of interpretation, you are required to do: “…you would even go beyond circumcision.” (Gal 5:12 ASV)

Second, let’s take a look at the immediate context:

…subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ. (Eph 5:21 ASV)

Memo to religious leaders: St. Paul is talking about how everyone, male and female, subject themselves to each other! He isn’t singling out one group over another. His intent is to show how each group, and he goes through several, subject themselves to one another. Even those in authority over others.

Mutual submission is how we “walk in love” in our daily lives. It is the opposite of pride, of “don’t tell me what to do” attitude, of lording it over each other. Any interpretation that violates the context of mutual submission is a false teaching of the evil one. Not worth the words wasted on it.

St. Paul therefore excludes any teaching that a woman should put up with abuse from her husband. He excludes using these verses to justify adultery or other sins. Neither of those is submitting to one’s spouse. Neither is walking in love. Neither is imitating Christ.

So what is the context? Simply, this is what walking in love through submission to each other looks like.

Wives, you show your love, your respect for your husband by submitting to his leadership. Obey him.

Husbands, you show your love and respect for your wife by submitting to her needs. Obey her.

“What?” you may ask. “It doesn’t say that to the husbands!” It most certainly does. It specifically says, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it…” (Eph 5:25 ASV) What did Jesus say?

But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Not so shall it be among you: but whosoever would become great among you shall be your minister; and whosoever would be first among you shall be your servant: even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. (Mat 20:25-28 ASV)

To be an imitator of Christ, to walk in love as Christ did, requires a husband to become a servant to his wife. You are not married to her to be ministered to, but to minister to her! If you fail to do this, you are not loving your wives as Christ loved the Church. To act as a lord over your wife is in direct conflict with what Jesus taught.

St. Paul clearly intended that a husband and wife submit to each other in love. If one or both fail to do this, the relationship doesn’t work and is not following Biblical principles for marriage.

Likewise, it should be clear that any type of teaching from these verses that a woman should submit to abuse, excuse adultery, or live in a hostile environment because she should submit to her husband is not only using these verses out of context, but is using them to excuse and justify sin. A sin in and of itself that Jesus equates as a “brood of vipers.”

My advice? Don’t be a viper. Be a servant.

How do you submit in your daily life to witness to Christ’s love?

For whatever reason, many in the Christian side of the publishing industry frown on allegory. Perhaps editors have seen too many representations of God-by-another-name. I don’t know if readers care, but I suspect editors and agents find this approach “not fresh.”

How, then, should a Christian speculative writer show God?

I’ve read some stories in which God is God. In other words, He is no different in the speculative world—science fiction or fantasy—than He is in the real world or as He would appear in a contemporary story.

Many others seem to shy away from a representative of God at all. Rather, the conflict is between a morally right group and a morally corrupt group with God perhaps being the catalyst for the former to live as they do. J. R. R. Tolkien wrote along these lines. Sauron, the great evil of Middle Earth, doesn’t exactly show up in Lord of the Rings, but his presence is more tangible than that of Ilúvatar, the Supreme Creator God who brought into being others of power.

C. S. Lewis approached showing God in a way that seems allegorical, but in reality was what he termed “supposal” (for further discussion of Lewis’s approach to fantasy, see “C. S. Lewis And Sub-creation”). He created the world of Narnia and essentially asked, If Jesus were to become incarnated there, what would He be like?

In a recent blog post about C. S. Lewis struggling to reach an unbelieving generation, Phyllis Wheeler, editor at Castle Gate Press, said

[noted lecturer Jerram Barrs] told us this week that Lewis’s prayer for the non-Christians reading his stories was that “they will fall in love with Aslan, and when they later hear of Jesus, they will recognize him.”
(“C. S. Lewis struggled to reach an unbelieving generation, too”)

I’ve taken a symbolic approach in my fantasy series The Lore of Efrathah. Except, I find it nearly impossible to convince those who have given me feedback that the rightful ruler of Efrathah isn’t a representation of God. And of course He is, though I made no intentional effort to model the character after Him. Since God is singular—good and all powerful and sovereign—a fictitious character with those qualities is hard to mistake for someone other than God, at least among other Christians.

Now Jesus—that’s another story.

The Old Testament does an incredible job of preparing humankind for the Messiah by presenting a string of living, everyday folk who exhibited a quality or acted in a specific way or filled a particular role that mirrors who Jesus is and what He’s done. So Isaac became the sacrificial Son (and the ram, the substitutionary sacrifice); Moses was the Judge leading the people out of captivity; David was the victorious King, and so on.

In the same way, fiction can represent Christ, rather than replicate Him, simply by portraying characters who lead the escape or sacrifice that others might live or provide the means of healing the wounded or become the long-awaited ruler.

Of course many stories have featured those characters, so perhaps the next innovative way of showing Christ is something other than what we typically think of Him. Perhaps we need a character who acts a bit more like the zealous Jesus cleansing the temple or the One telling Peter to stop acting like Satan or the rabbi sending away people who aren’t willing to sell everything.

The thing is, God the Father doesn’t act in predictable ways. He builds a nation by letting His people get pulled into slavery. He defeats an army of tens of thousands with three hundred shouting, pot-breaking torch wavers. He brings His Son into the world via a virgin. Jesus, being the image of the invisible God, is just as unpredictable. He paid taxes with a coin from a fish’s mouth, cursed fig trees to make a spiritual point, and include among His close disciples one He knew would betray Him.

We’d say people who act this way are thinking outside the box. In contrast, though, it seems to me our story representations of God and of Christ are quite inside the box. We seldom see God do anything unique or unpredictable in our fiction.

I don’t think depicting God in an overt way means we cannot show Him doing surprising and unexpected things. His nature is to do and think things that are different from our thoughts and ways, so our fiction would rightly show God losing to win or telling the protagonist to wait instead of go or comforting him instead of rescuing him.

Of course allegorical representations of God, supposal creations of Him, or symbolic renderings can do the same kinds of inventive, radical actions.

In short, I think a reflection of God in fiction, to be effective, should contain the unexpected.

In what books and with what ways have you seen an author successfully show God?

Does Deuteronomy 18 condemn anything labeled “magic”?¹

If we love fantastical stories, should we be concerned about their magic? Should parents worry that fictitious magic is a “gateway drug” introducing children to real paganism?

Scripture commands believers not to commit specific sins of sorcery and witchcraft. But if we ignore the actual definitions and intentions of those sins and instead go off to condemn anything that carries the same label, we have wandered into blindness. We have replaced actual biblical discernment with manmade traditions. We’ve accepted the notion that if a command for Christians is good, then a command around the command must be better.

Unfortunately many Christian media-discernment materials — including many that claim to help parents understand fantastical stories — commit this very error of blindness.²

Christian parents often assume witches like Elsa from Frozen and wizards like Obi-wan Kenobi from Star Wars are okay, but this magician is still Undesirable No. 1.

For example, MovieGuide founder Dr. Ted Baehr writes:

God wants us to avoid completely witchcraft and sorcery. […] You must protect your children and grandchildren, therefore, from the occult evils promoted by the Harry Potter books and movies.³

“Wretched Radio” host Todd Friel also condemned the Harry Potter series for this reason:

It’s a sin. Deuteronomy 18. God hates that stuff. I’m not going to ingest that stuff, nor am I going to let my kids [ingest it].”⁴

This isn’t just about Harry Potter. Christians often fail to realize that “magic” in stories can take many forms. They will open their doors to “the Force” of Star Wars or “pixie dust” of classic Disney fairy tales, but lock all their deadbolts against stories that overtly boast of magical content. You can call the story’s magic “science,” “superpowers,” “the Force,” “alien abilities,” or even magic/miracles that an alternate-world Godlike figure (such as Aslan in Narnia) gives to his followers for his purposes. But it’s still indistinguishable from magic.

Space doesn’t permit a full exploration of fictional magic. But many Christian materials give even less attention to the definition(s) of real occult practices the Bible condemns. For example, The Culture-Wise Family, edited by Ted Baehr, never tries to explore what magic God forbids or the reasons he forbids it. This is a gross oversight. It not only makes many Christians miss fantastical stories in their cultures, but promotes blind legalism.

Deuteronomy 18: Winners don’t do divination

Deut. 18 is the first biblical chapter that concerned Christians cite to defend the belief that Christians must avoid anything that seems to resemble ungodly “magic” or paganism. But what “magic” does Deut. 18 actually address?⁵

Goober, Barney and Floyd shouldn’t have messed with that stuff.

Most Christians who cite the text about magic are thinking of verses 9–12:

“When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD. And because of these abominations the LORD your God is driving them out before you.”

Deut. 18:9–12

God strongly condemns pagan practices of human sacrifices, then turns to other practices: divination, fortune-telling, omen-interpretation, charming, and necromancy (attempting to speak to the dead). Israel’s neighbors practiced these for anti-God reasons: they wanted to manipulate their own lives, to assure their personal and agricultural fertility. God declares that these things are an abomination in his sight. For his people he sets up another way to assure their salvation and safety: the final Prophet (vv. 15–18), the promise of Jesus Christ.

So in Deut. 18, God really condemns one sort of sin: idolatrous divination, for the purpose of self-protection and manipulation of your environment.

Most Christian parents haven’t seemed to catch on that Elsa from Frozen is actually a witch.

Here God does not address the issue of anything else labeled “magic.” He does not address the questions of whether these pagan strategies actually work or whether they summon Satanic or demonic power. Here he is utterly uninterested in these topics. He only gives one motive for people: their holiness for his sake. “You shall be blameless before the LORD your God … the LORD your God has not allowed you to do this” (vv. 13–14).

New Testament truth: Don’t reject the final Prophet

Peter’s conflict with Simon Magus, 1620 painting by Avanzino Nucci. Peter is in the center, Simon at top right (in black).

The Old Testament seems to offer few other mentions of idolatry-based magic practice.⁶

The New Testament shows how people still reject Deut. 18’s final Prophet, Jesus Christ, in favor of idolatry. And the NT first mentions some kind of magic — whether street-huckster magic or divination — in the account of Simon (Acts. 8:9–24). When the newly converted(?) magician tries to purchase actual power from the Holy Spirit from the apostles, the apostle Peter strongly rebukes Simon. But Peter places the blame right where it belongs: Simon’s own wickedness and “the intent of [his] heart” (v. 22). In the New Testament as in the Old, bitter and iniquitous people (v. 23) are still tempted toward such idolatrous “magic.”

Two more New Testament texts specifically condemn the sin of sorcery: Gal. 5:19-20 and Rev. 21:8. Each may allude to a broad array of pagan practices, but all based in one sin: to divine the future and manipulate the world, ignoring the final Prophet Jesus Christ.

Conclusion: God hates particular magic for particular reasons

In all these Scriptures we see clear characteristics of the kind of magic that God does hate:

1. God condemns divination. Therefore God’s people must trust him alone and reject idolatrous and unbiblical attempts to discern the future and control your own fate.
2. God condemns false prophets and their “magic.” Therefore God’s people must reject ideas, things, or people who endorse idolatry and draw attention to themselves.
3. God condemns sorcery. Therefore God’s people must reject any other sorcerous method people use in an attempt to divine the divine will for idolatrous ends.

In each case the Bible condemns idolatry that leads to personal magic practice. The sin begins in the person’s heart with a desire to worship something other than God. The sin continues when the person seeks some other means for divining the will of God, the will of other gods, or “fate,” instead of trusting God and believing in his word. That’s sinful magic.

Don’t misunderstand. People are wickedly creative and can use anything to sin: fictitious magic, the English language, even the names of God and Scripture truths. Nothing is good just because it exists or because a Christian enjoys it. Rather, God commands us to receive his good gifts with intentional thanksgiving because they’re made holy for us by the word and prayer (1 Tim. 4:4). But if you are a Christian who intentionally fights sin and has less desire to “divine” the future for idolatrous ends, then you can enjoy made-up magic.

It occurred to me the other day that, although I have been posting at SpecFaith for a few months now, I’ve yet to say anything really controversial. Then I remembered that Halloween is coming up, and that’s always a prime opportunity, what with some Christians getting agitated about the holiday, and other Christians getting agitated with them for getting agitated.

Even Halloween can be innocent.

At the risk of defusing the controversy, I want to make clear that this post is not about whether Christians can or should celebrate Halloween. I regard the observance of all “special days” as a matter of Christian liberty, in which Christians may without condemnation do as they please. My position, roughly summed up, is that everybody can celebrate Halloween and nobody has to, and whether anybody should is based on personal factors, i.e. stuff about your life I don’t know. So I want to talk about something else.

I bring up Halloween because there is one aspect of the holiday that leads me out to a broader and more important issue. As October rolls by, I can’t help noticing, and thinking about, the part of Halloween I really dislike. And it’s not the costumes, or the trick-or-treating, or the origins of the holiday.

It’s the decorations. Cobwebs, spiders, skeletons, ghosts, tombstones, bloodstains, skulls, hearses. It is an ugly holiday. Nor is this entirely accidental. Nobody ever set up cardboard tombstones in the pursuit of beauty; the macabre trimmings of Halloween are chosen because they repulse, not because they attract.

For many people (by no means all), Halloween is an opportunity to indulge in the darker side, to deliberately evoke that shudder that all humans feel at ghosts and cemeteries, and many enjoy. It seems wrong, somehow, to make the emblems of Death, in his ghoulish glory, symbols of a holiday.

Death is, of course, a fact and an exceedingly stubborn one at that; we all have to face up to it sooner or later. But here is the question, and one that applies far beyond Halloween and even death: At what point does a necessary attention to sober facts degenerate into an unhealthy fascination with darkness?

This temptation to wallow is, I think, a fairly common one, and it takes different forms. Horror and other forms of dark fiction can indulge the unhealthy interest, but so can other genres – including romance, which is not quite the opposite of speculative fiction it is sometimes taken to be.

Ordinary gossip, the gossip rags, various fiction, and even respectable nonfiction can satisfy another sort of morbidity: an inordinate interest in other people’s sins and tragedies, in all their sicknesses, physical or emotional. To this kind of curiosity, it’s not the people who are interesting, just their mess.

Christians have had their own versions of this problem, although that is mostly in the past. (These days, churches are more often guilty of shallowness than they are of morbidity.) Teachers’ attempts to detail the exact horrors of hell were inevitably flights of human imagination, going far beyond the scant imagery in the Bible, and it could get rather gruesome. I wonder if even the Puritan fixation with one’s own sins could become morbid – if, instead of remembering that they were meant to rise up from the mud and walk, they sometimes rubbed their faces in it to feel how bad it really was.

Of course, our sin is another of those sober facts we need to face up to. And that brings me back to the question: Where is the line between facing the darkness and simply roving unwholesomely in it?

I suspect that, for different people, the line is drawn in different places; a news report, for instance, could be read with honest concern by one person and with morbid curiosity by another. But we have to remember to try and stay on the right side of that line, and not only on Halloween.

One of my favorite comedy movies is Rat Race. If you’ve seen it, you’ll get an idea of what I laugh at. One scene early in the movie has the group of would be competitors meeting in a fancy Las Vegas hotel ball room, waiting to find out what their once-in-a-lifetime prize is going to be.

The character played by Rowan Atkinson exclaims to the others already there as he gazes wide-eyed at the fancy décor, “Oh, isn’t this wonderful? Look at this room, what a beautiful room, have you seen this room?”

As the others look at him with bewildered expressions, Jon Lovitz’s character says, “Yes! We’re in it!”

I got the impression that was some people’s reaction to last week’s column about the “Five Myths of Cultural Engagement.” One person referred to the idea of cultural engagement as a myth itself, as in not a real issue. As if they said, “How can we not engage the culture? We’re in it!”

True enough. I apologize for tossing around a common buzz-word without defining what I meant by it. Not too many people really have a clear idea what the term means. It all depends upon how a person defines “culture” and “engagement.”

Rather than spend the rest of the article defining culture and engagement, I’ll put it simply and then give an analogy to make it clear.

For one culture to engage another assumes we’re talking about two cultures. In the context of these articles, we’re assuming a Christian culture and the culture we live in the world.

The question isn’t whether our Christian culture will engage that of the world’s, but how it engages it.

Which culture will change the other? Which culture bears a greater influence over the other? In short, which culture are you merely in it, but not of it?

And no, I’m not talking here of the Evangelical sub-culture bubble either. That is more a reaction to the culture one is in, attempting to redeem those elements of it in accordance to the Kingdom’s culture.

Many times, that sub-culture only changes the surface elements without changing the core of the worldly culture. Too many think if you take out the sex and cussing from a story, it is now Christian safe. Yes, just ignore the secular values behind the curtain.

What is a Christian culture in my definition?

Paul lays it out nicely in Romans 12. After imploring them to be living sacrifices, he says:

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. (Rom 12:2)

Following that verse, for the rest of the chapter, he goes into detailed examples of how that plays out in everyday life. In short, Paul is talking about our mindset and our lifestyle. It is to be radically different from the world’s.

We engage the cultural elements we live in (books, movies, art, politics, etc.) through the filter of a Christian mindset and lifestyle. If that is flipped—we engage the Kingdom through the filter of worldly values—we are not doing cultural engagement for the Kingdom, but for the world.

This brings up a major myth of cultural engagement that is true for more than Christian speculative fiction.

We engage the culture not by being the same, but by being different.

Often cultural engagement is put in terms of identifying what is popular in a culture and incorporating it in the hope those in that culture will identify with us. Too often in story-telling, some assume this means adding more sex and cussing back in, hoping to sound more “real” to the secular person. Then they’ll take us seriously.

Problem is a light version of what they are used to isn’t going to be that attractive. Shining the black light of Christ into the darkness is not going to get near the attention.

Consider the draw of a good fantasy story.

While there are many elements that go into making a fantasy story a good one, the ground-level core of what a fantasy story has is, well, a fantasy element. Something about the story that makes it radically different from what we experience in our lives. Without that, the story loses its appeal to fantasy fans.

Likewise, if everything in the fantasy story is nothing like our real life, it will be hard to relate to it. A reader needs to be able to identify on some level with the characters and the world, even while there needs to be some facets that are totally not of this world. The story revolves around how these fantasy elements affect the lives of the characters.

Light shining in darkness is a radical change, and will be noticed. Some will run from it, others drawn to it.

You’ll notice the same dynamic when Paul preaches to the Athenians. Paul had been preaching among them for a while. That’s when the philosophers decided to hear Paul out.

Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection. (Rom 17:18)

It wasn’t Paul’s use of the unknown god that gained him a hearing, but because he preached something radically different from what they were used to: Jesus Christ’s bodily resurrection from the dead.

The mindset and lifestyle Paul lays out is radically different from the world’s. Engaging the culture with a Christian one is more than identify with them. It is shining that radical light and life into the secular darkness.

That’s why Christ said that they’ll know we are Christians by our love for one another. (John 13:35) Because that love is different from what the world knows.

How do you see a Christian culture engaging the secular one?

Author friend and fellow blogger Mike Duran recently posted part two of his series on extraterrestrials and evangelicals. Honestly my first reaction was, who cares?

Disclaimer: I’m not a science fiction person. On top of that I don’t see the value in speculation about things we cannot know.

Oh, sure, I do look at Scripture and form my pet theories on some of the things God did not detail for us, and I suppose that’s what science fictionists do the same, only with science instead of Scripture. For whatever reason, extrapolating from what we know about science to what might exist has never appealed to me.

Consequently, I’m aware that my “Who cares” is probably not reflective of most people. It appears there is growing interest in the question of whether or not we humans are “alone in the universe.”

Well, as a Christian, I’ve never wondered whether we are alone because clearly the answer is no. God is with us. Further, there’s a whole invisible realm—“things in heaven,” as Colossians puts it—in which angelic hosts wage war and do whatever else angelic hosts do. So, “alone” we are not.

Of course science people are not asking about spiritual beings; they want to know if there are other physical beings with intelligence inhabiting some corner of the universe. Blogger John Sears posts a compelling argument that there is no evidence for extraterrestrial life in the universe. At the same time, he gives credence to the number of unexplained encounters, beyond the hoaxes and crazies, with flying saucers and/or other beings.

How can both be true?

My first thought is, who cares?

I know. It’s not a very writerly response. I can’t explain my lack of curiosity about life beyond this world. I continue to think that pursuit of the subject is futile because the truth of the matter is outside the ability of man to determine—so what’s the point? Plus, believing as I do that there is a spiritual realm, the encounters people report seem less likely to be with physical beings coming from another part of the universe and more likely to be manifestations of angelic or demonic beings. But that too is unprovable.

Mike Duran’s question, fueled by an article he read, “Did Jesus Save the Klingons?” is related to the spiritual ramifications of the existence of life on earth. Could those beings (creatures, aliens, extraterrestrials) have a recognizable relationship with God as we have?

I’m sure many will consider it blind faith on my part, but I have no doubt that if God placed other life in the universe, He has a plan that is just as good for them and for us as is the one He set in motion directly involving us.

Regardless of my thoughts on the matter, apparently there has been increasing interest in the possibility of extraterrestrial life and its ramifications on religion in general and Christianity in particular (see for example this article and this one).

I certainly have no problem with people who write science fiction. I consider it to be a type of fantasy, though. Yes, I realize that some of the science fiction of the past actually proved to be somewhat prophetic. The same can be said about the futuristic dystopian fiction of the past such as 1984 and Brave New World.

Those stories seem different, however. They were about human inventions or advancing technology or changes in society—things within the inventive capacity of humans or the resulting consequences of our development.

Stories about extraterrestrials seem to have a much less likelihood of being prophetic because the existence or nonexistence of other beings in the universe is out of our control. Hence, in my view, the speculation of such is more comparable to fantasy than to standard science fiction.

C. S. Lewis’s space trilogy, for instance, postulates life on other planets, but it has little feel of the prophetic, though it rings true as commentary on human society.

I can enjoy stories of a similar nature such as those by Kerry Nietz (Dark Trench saga—A Star Curiously Singing, The Superlative Stream, and Freeheads) or Michelle Levigne (The Commonwealth Universe—Azuli Eyes, Scouts Pride and some twenty other titles), but a discussion about the actual existence of extraterrestrials, my eyes glaze over. The speculation on the subject is nothing more than guesswork, so I don’t know why I should care.

So what have I missed? Why should Christians, writers, speculative readers care about what people say about the possibility of extraterrestrial life?