Since the movie Noah debuted this past week, the reactions among Christians have varied widely.

Ken Hamm, in a Times article, said:

Ultimately, there is barely a hint of biblical fidelity in this film. It is an unbiblical, pagan film from its start.

He pretty much trashes the film. So does Matt Walsh who said:

On Friday, my wife and I had a very rare date night.

Naturally, we decided to spend it being pummeled by the blaring condescension of the most insipid, absurd, unimaginative, clumsily contrived piece of anti-Christian filmmaking to come along since, well, probably just last week.

Based on reviews like that, you’d think this was The Last Temptation of Christ II, which was also roundly condemned by Christian leaders when it hit the big screen in 1988. In reality, there is a striking similarity in that neither film pretends to be faithful to the Biblical narrative, but both are condemned for not being faithful anyway.

But not by all Christians. Some don’t seem to be phased by it. Charity Bishop, for instance, writes:

Nothing about this movie is simple; everything has the potential to divide viewers. Those who like movies straight out of the text are going to struggle to accept the many changes, expansions, character development and inventive ideas that flesh out the plot, create drama, explain Ham’s relationship with Noah, and include miracles not mentioned in scripture.

But concludes:

It’s uncomfortable to watch at times because it doesn’t involve perfect characters — all of them are human, make mistakes, and even, on occasion, do evil things. Its truths are profound but unsettling, and the actions of Noah at times don’t fit our idea of “godliness,” but that’s the point. It makes a blatant statement that the flood didn’t eradicate evil — it lives on, in us. And that’s why we need a savior.

Our own Austin Gunderson in his recent review of the movie also makes the bold statement on SpecFaith concerning his experience of the film:

What I witnessed over the course of the ensuing 138 minutes was the greatest work of Christian speculative cinema I’ve ever seen.

And concludes:

Aronofsky’s Noah isn’t a faithful retelling of an historical event. Instead, it’s something far more ambitious and terrifying: an epic fantasy which dares to examine the impartiality of divine justice without taking salvation for granted.

The opinions vary widely about its Christianness. This isn’t a review of the film, or even the reviews of the film. Rather I point out this divergence because it illustrates two visions of fiction, specifically Christian fiction.

One view is that fiction is a teaching tool.

In that understanding, Christian fiction’s primary goal and purpose is to relate Biblical truths (as interpreted by a specific community of faith) in a systematic and accurate fashion. Ultimately, it should convey the Gospel message. The fear is that if it doesn’t do so, it will teach people untruths and lead them away from God, not to Him. Thus, any deviation from their perception of Biblical truth is cause for alarm and condemnation.

The other view is that fiction conveys an emotional experience of Christian themes.

Unlike God, who is infallible, authors are not writing the Bible, nor a systematic theology, but a story about fallible characters who may believe the wrong things, misunderstand God, in short, sin. It is a story depicting theology lived out, and thus like real life, messy. Not every question gets answered. Not all resolutions are in tidy, neatly wrapped packages.

The purpose of this type of Christian fiction is to wrestle with Christian themes in an emotionally engaging manner. To help people encounter and incarnate the truth within themselves. The details are only important in conveying the story arc and theme in an engaging manner.

The first view focuses on accuracy of any apparent teaching and its details to a group’s perception of Biblical truth. The second focuses on accuracy in conveying Biblical and Christian themes lived out either wrongly or rightly, in a realistic fashion, that causes the reader to examine their own relationship to God.

In my opinion, the error of the first is in shoehorning a speculative story of life, which is messy, into the goals and expectations of a systematic theology text, expecting a speculative fiction title to be “The Bible: Reloaded.”

As I’ve said before, the biggest problem Christians have with speculative fiction, especially the Christian variety, is in treating it like it is non-fiction.

This is true whether it is the author writing a story or a reader who misses the grandeur of the forest because they are too busy noticing the imperfections of the trees.

Recently, I received a private message about my book, Reality’s Dawn. It is a book open to some criticisms from the first group. One such review is on Goodreads. But this reader saw the forest, and was affected by it:

Thank you for writing Reality’s Dawn! It’s one of the most inspiring things that have come to mind today!

That is why we write as authors, and what we hope to find when we read a story. To struggle with and be inspired by God’s reality.

The movie Noah is not a retelling of the Biblical story even though it matches the broad outline of the story. But I’d tend to evaluate this like any speculative fiction story in relation to my faith: What picture of God and man is painted for me when taken as a whole? Is that Biblically true and worth challenging my assumptions and complacency? If so, they succeeded. If and when I go see the movie Noah for myself, I might have an answer.

This is NOT a review of Noah, the movie. I haven’t seen it. But once again, a story inspired by Scripture is on the big screen and generating considerable conversation. The reviews of Noah and comments I’ve read ignited some thought about what we’ve come to call Biblical fiction.

First, Biblical fiction must adhere to the same principles as historical fiction, unless a person is writing an alternate history. Therefore, setting details need to be as accurate as possible. Having Napoleon whip out a cell phone, for example, would be anachronistic.

There are also character issues that need to be consistent with the available records of the people involved. Hitler, for instance, should not be portrayed as loving Jews nor Abraham Lincoln as a slothful drunk (that would more nearly describe his vice president).

In addition, Biblical fiction has the burden of consistency with the larger narrative of the Bible. For that reason, the retelling of a Bible story must have the same outcome as that told in the Bible. King David could not be unrepentant of his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband, in the same way that Adam and Eve could not defeat Satan and resist temptation. Why? Because of the implications such changes hold for the redemptive story–the larger narrative.

A second realization I’ve had about Biblical fiction is that not every Biblical account lends itself well to fictionalization. The backbone of fiction is conflict. While there certainly is a fair amount of conflict in the various individual narratives in Scripture, some are nothing more than a snapshot of God working.

Elijah stays with a widow and her son during a drought and God miraculously provides an unending flow of flour and oil so they won’t starve. Jesus feeds five thousand people with a few loaves and fishes. Ruth follows her mother-in-law back to Israel after the death of her husband and remarries. Peter has a dream about eating unclean animals, then preaches to a group of Gentiles.

These and many other accounts are interesting, but they don’t follow what is the commonly accepted story structure of today’s fiction. The “protagonist” doesn’t necessarily have a need or want that is driving him. There isn’t a clear adversary. Conflict isn’t at the crux of the narrative.

Applying these thoughts to the movie, Noah, what do we see?

In many ways the Biblical account of the flood is not a story. Rather, it’s the climax of a story. The actual story is that Mankind rebelled against God, to the point that He brought judgment on all but righteous Noah (Genesis 6:1-8). Then in more detail the Bible records the climax of the story–the way God brought judgment and saved Noah (Genesis 6:13-8:18).

There isn’t any conflict in this climatic event. God is in charge. Noah simply obeys and consequently survives, he and those with him.

To fictionalize a story like Noah, the writers must imagine conflict. As I understand it, the screenwriters of Noah the movie did so by (1) changing the nature of God, and (2) changing the character of Noah.

In the movie, apparently God did not clearly communicate with mankind or with Noah, resulting in conflict within the character. Was he understanding what God wanted him to do?

This stands in sharp contrast to the Biblical account: “And God said to Noah . . . [Noah] did all that God commanded him” (Genesis 6:13a, 22). Clearly, God let Noah know exactly what He wanted, down to the specifications of the ark and how many of each type of animal he was to take along. As the climax breaks, it is God Himself who seals Noah and his family into the ark. Clearly, God did not stand afar off, in obscurity, leaving things up to Noah to figure out.

Noah’s character is also clear. Throughout the Genesis account and in various other places in Scripture, he is portrayed as a righteous man (Ezekiel 14:14, for example), an individual who found favor with God. For some believers this portrayal of him is hard to fit into our theology.

We know that all have sinned, that we are saved by grace, and we don’t like the idea that God singled out Noah because of his righteousness. Where is grace in that?

Isn’t a “righteous Noah” story showing a person earning his own salvation? Better, then, if we portray Noah as a zealot about to murder his own family who chooses against his better judgment to spare them instead. Now people will see God’s grace when He rescues him.

Except, apparently God wanted to show His grace in a different way through the actual events. He did so by putting on display Noah’s faith and obedience:

By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. (Heb. 11:7)

And God showed His grace through His protection–He took Noah and his family safely through the water:

He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water. Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you—not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 3:19b-21, emphasis added)

Through the actual events God also showed His grace in contrast to His judgment–punishing the wicked and preserving the godly:

[God] preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly (2 Peter 2:5b)

I understand that a fictionalized account of a Biblical story without conflict needs a great deal of speculation. I can see, for instance, how a writer could imagine an antagonist who would perhaps claim to be a prophet of God or of a false god, contradicting Noah’s preaching and trying to sabotage his efforts to build the ark in obedience to God.

I can see family strife resulting from the ridicule of neighbors as they mocked this hundred-year construction project. I can even see an internal struggle–worry about how Noah and his family could survive in a world where everyone else had died or fear of a God who judges righteously mixed with gratitude for His preservation.

In other words, I think it’s possible to write a story ripe with imagined conflict without violating Biblical history, God’s character, or Noah’s nature.

That’s the movie I would like to see.

The following is the first ever Spec Faith Fiction Friday–an excerpt from a Christian speculative novel. Today we’re featuring One Realm Beyond, book 1 of the Realm Walkers series by Donita Paul. Enjoy.

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1
RAISING A RUCKUS

Cantor straddled the thick tree limb suspended less than three feet over his favorite fishing hole. He’d fished from this spot for more than eighteen years, from the time he could barely straddle the fat limb ‘til now, when the tips of his sandals almost brushed the surface of the clear, cold water. He watched the small fish circle below him, waiting for the big one just as he had been taught. His fishing mentor, Odem, probably took him fishing here before he was out of diapers. Cantor wouldn’t want to share the limb now. Though the tree had grown with him over the years, he didn’t think the branch would hold the weight of two grown men. He wasn’t eager for a bath in the frigid water from the mountain’s runoff.

Still and patient, Cantor waited for the large carp he called Bully to rise and push the other fish out of the way. A sprinkle of thumb-sized chunks of bread floated on the water. One of the smaller guppies darted off to the side, and a huge, open mouth appeared under the surface. The fish snapped up a sodden crust.

Cantor hurled the stone in his hand. The rock thunked against the skull of his target. All the smaller fish deserted Bully, who floated on his side. With a grin, Cantor threw his leg over the limb and slipped into the knee-high water. He shivered in the icy snowmelt, grabbed his catch, and slogged to the shore.

Exposed roots riddled the steep bank, making irregular hand and foot holds. Cantor threw the fish onto the grass above his head and climbed out. Sitting cross-legged in the tall grass, he removed his sandals and put them on a rock to dry in the sun. He opened the pouch Ahma had sewn into his tunic and removed an undersized scabbard.

He’d owned this small, sharp knife since childhood. Odem had visited on his sixth birthday and, against Ahma’s protests, given the tool to him. Cantor’d thought himself very clever when he named the knife Slice, especially when Odem laughed in his loud bray that filled the tiny cabin. Ahma shook her head and fetched another piece of greenberry pie for him and Odem.

She’d caught Cantor that night picking his teeth with the blade. Boxing his ears, she told him if she caught him doing another stupid thing with “that weapon,” she’d take it away.

Cantor grinned as he applied Slice to the job of gutting the big carp. A couple of carrion birds landed in a tree nearby. Cantor nodded in their direction. “I’ll leave you the tasty insides. I don’t suppose you would agree to peaceably share between yourselves.”

The bigger of the two mountain crows spread his wings and threatened the smaller, cawing and crowding the other bird off the limb.

Cantor shook his head. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

He pulled a thin string of gut from the innards. With it in his hand, he aimed at the bird and snapped his fingers. The filament wrapped around the large scavenger’s beak. The string would work loose after the smaller bird had a chance at Cantor’s fishy offering.

He finished his chore and strung the fish on a switch cut from the longleaf tree. Cleaning his blade in the sandy soil, he heard the gentle whoosh of a portal opening. With a casual air he did not feel, he put the knife in its scabbard and the scabbard in his pouch.

Where was Tom? At the cabin with Ahma? He’d last seen his mentor’s furry companion sunning himself on the front stoop. But Tom could be a stealthy canine, quiet like a cat sneaking up on a mouse.

With a searching look at the surrounding trees, he propped the switch on his shoulder, the large carp dangling behind him. He angled away from the portal as if it didn’t make the hairs on the back of his neck tingle, as if it didn’t give off the scent of new horizons, adventure, and intrigue, as if he hadn’t a thought in his head about diving through.

Anyone watching would think he had only the intention of taking his catch home to dear Ahma for their dinner. Except Tom, of course. Tom had an uncanny sense of knowing what he planned. And Cantor had just used his talent to enhance his aim, not bothering to disguise he burst of energy. That ripple would be detected by any other being familiar with Primen’s gifts. Tom would have felt it.

Cantor made himself wait until the distance to the portal had shortened considerably. With a final, nonchalant inspection of the surrounding meadow, Cantor hauled in a deep breath, dropped the fish, and bolted toward the gaping hole in space. His heart quickened when he saw it was a horizontal portal. Vertical openings presented a shaft, which required scrambling up or plunging down to enter another plane.

If he’d outsmarted Tom, he was in for some fun. He pumped his legs harder.

The distinct sound of leathery wings unfolding caught his ear. He fought back a grin and redoubled the speed of his dash to freedom. The dragon on course to intercept him roared a warning. Accepting the challenge, Cantor pushed his muscles with all his might. If he could reach the portal first, he could dive and roll. The dragon in flight would have to land and squeeze through.

Cantor kept his eye on the opening. On the other side, he could see a street with people hurrying to and fro. A rush of air above him warned him just in time. He ducked and avoided the clutching claws of a brilliantly colored mor dragon as it swooped to catch him. The small, powerful beast was slightly larger than a full-grown cow. Cantor glanced up to see him dip one wing and neatly turn, barely losing momentum as he came back for another pass. Cantor refocused on the portal. Fifteen more feet.

The dragon dropped from the sky, approaching his target face on. He skimmed the high grass and rose to thud against Cantor’s chest with his own. The impact knocked Cantor down and pushed the air out of his lungs. He remained on the ground, staring up at the blue sky. Dragging air in with rasping, choking sounds, he rolled to his side and curled up to facilitate at least one life-sustaining breath.

The dragon landed and approached. Cantor would have liked to fake death, be still enough to confuse the beast stalking him, and get the better of the interfering animal. But he concentrated instead on breathing, pulling air in and pushing air out.

The dragon’s clawed foot rested on his shoulder, then with a pinch, he forced Cantor to roll onto his back.

In spite of the spasms racking his chest, Cantor recognized the wicked gleam in his tormentor’s eyes. The beast all but crowed with glee at having downed his prey. With a hop, the dragon sat on Cantor’s chest.

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To continue reading the first chapter of One Realm Beyond, visit Christianbook. You can also purchase the book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Christianbook or wherever books are sold.

About fifteen years ago, when I was attending Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, I had the privilege of taking a course entitled “The Gospel and C. S. Lewis” from a man we called Rev. Rossow. Essentially, the course was a study as to what Lewis had to say about God and faith and salvation in some of his fictional writings. We tackled about half the Narnia books, the first two books in the Space Trilogy, a number of his poems, and Till We Have Faces.

I’d like to say that I took the course because, as a Christian geek, I wanted to relive my childhood, but that’s not really why I took it. See, at that point, I had only really read one of Lewis’s books, namely The Screwtape Letters. I had never touched any of the Narnia Chronicles up until that point. I knew they existed; my little brother read them when he was a kid. I just never bothered.

Yes, I’ll turn in my geek card when this article is done.

At any rate, toward the end of the course, we were given a wide open project to complete. What we did was largely left up to us. We just had to engage in Lewis’s other fictional writings, the ones we hadn’t covered in class, in some meaningful way. I remember one of my friends set one of Lewis’s poems to music and then made the whole class sing it.

Me, I went the more traditional route. I decided to write a paper on Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy.

For those of you unfamiliar with this one, it’s the story of a boy named Shasta. One night, he overhears a conversation between his father and another man. In this conversation, Shasta’s father reveals that he’s really not his dad and that he’s willing to sell Shasta to the man as a slave. Shasta decides to run away and he steals the other man’s horse. It turns out that the other horse is a Talking Horse named Bree, and the two of them decide to flee to Narnia. Along the way, circumstances bring them together with a girl named Aravis and her Talking Horse companion, Hwin.

It’s a rip-roaring adventure, with lots of near misses, surprise twists, and even a tiny, tiny hint of romance at the end. But there is one thing missing: Aslan.

That’s what struck me as odd when I read the book the first time. This is a Narnia book. That should mean that Aslan, the Christ-analogue of Lewis’s stories, should be present in some meaningful way. But as the two horses and their humans make their way to Narnia and the North, Aslan is largely absent. Shasta and Aravis and the Horses are seemingly on their own, forced to rely on themselves and their own wits to make it to safety. Aslan does make an appearance, but it’s only at the end of the book.

At one point, though, Aslan has a long chat with Shasta about his adventure and reveals that, in truth, he’s been with Shasta every step of the way. Shasta never realized it.

Aslan says this:

“I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.”

In all of those circumstances, Aslan says, he was there and Shasta never realized it. In other words, Aslan was acting as a God who hides.

The sad reality is that we Christians often expect God to be out in the open. We expect Him to behave in big, flashy ways that make it obvious that He’s there and obvious that He’s at work. We forget that sometimes, God can be sneaky. He operates from the shadows. He nudges instead of pushes. He entices instead of drags.

He hides.

That gives me great comfort, because it means that God can be active even when I don’t see Him. He can work through and with mysterious and even mind-boggling means to accomplish His purposes.

I think we need to remember that. Let God do His work in His way and in His time. And keep our eyes open. You never know where He might turn up.

Austrian writer Norbert Gstrein

The Washington Post reported this past Friday that . . .

Earlier this week, the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association announced the finalists for its annual Christian Book Awards in seven categories.

Noticeably absent is any Christian Speculative fiction title.

If you’ve been following SpecFaith of late, you’d know that voting to select the finalist for the Clive Staples award started yesterday. If you haven’t yet, check out the nominated list and the rules, and cast your ballot. This award focuses on speculative fiction.

Awards like these are intended to pick and showcase quality Christian fiction.

Some would suggest that such awards end up being popularity contests and that overall, Christian fiction lacks the high quality of the general market. Others disagree about quality. From the above Washington Post article:

Karen Watson, associate publisher of fiction at Tyndale — best known for the miraculously bestselling “Left Behind” series — laments that the “old snapshot for this category is fairly unyielding.” She suggests that people who scoff at Christian fiction probably haven’t read it lately. “Critics say that it is full of poorly written, simplistic stories with little literary quality. But that is an old snapshot. The quality is there for readers who are looking for an inspirational read,” Watson said.

Karen Watson isn’t the only one, considering she would be biased to say as much. The Publisher Weekly’s religion editor agrees:

Marcia Z. Nelson, a religion editor for Publishers Weekly, says many of these novels are better than literary snobs might assume. “At its best, it’s good commercial fiction. It’s certainly not as formulaic as it used to be; the explicit come-to-Jesus resolutions are few. The best of it is thoughtful and develops engaging characters, believable dialog and plotting that reels you in,” Nelson said.

The quality labels that Marcia Nelson mentions—thoughtful, engaging characters with believable dialog, plotting that reals you in—is reflected in my informal and unscientific poll on how readers judge quality last week.

Here is the raw breakdown of the categories and how frequently they were mentioned.

So, what’s the beef?

Despite it being a small sample, it sounds like readers and publishers are on the same page as to what constitutes quality Christian fiction. Or are they?

After all, if their expectations matched, publishers should be able to pick winning books most of the time. Yet the truth is around 80% of a publisher’s annual book list will not earn out. So they are only hitting reader expectations of quality around 20% of the time.

The benchmarks of thoughtful, engaging characters with believable dialog, and plotting that reals you in isn’t objectively measurable.

What one person sees as quality, another sees as junk. Yes, there are those stories most people would say don’t work and stories most agree fire on all cylinders. Those are the ends of a Bell Curve, however. In the middle you have much more disagreement.

This is evident when classic works on Amazon are given one or two star reviews. No one book, no matter how popular and generally agreed is well written, is going to match everyone’s idea of what is a quality story.

So what is a speculative-fiction-writing Christian to do? How is a Christian who wants to support quality, faith-based story-telling going to find and read quality novels?

The answer to the first question is fairly simple. Read, write, and learn. Let the readers decide the quality. One learns to write quality stories by practicing writing and learning something each time you do. Not by focusing on rules for quality fiction itself.

Writing is one of the few arts where practice is frequently not expected. That first story isn’t seen as practicing, but the next bestseller if the writer can fix X, Y, and Z. Write it and let the readers decide its quality. Learn from them, then go write another story implementing what you’ve learned. Painters, musicians, sculptors, actors, all learn by doing and making corrections. No writer should expect anything less on the road to becoming a quality writer.

The answer to the second is a bit more complex. There are reviews, like the ones at SpecFaith. There is the Speculative Fiction library you can browse. Other places like Goodreads can give helpful reviews, or search the internet to find reviews on blogs. Then pay it forward by submitting your own review of what you’ve read so others of like-mind can find what they would consider quality Christian fiction.

What other ways can we encourage, support, and reward quality Christian fiction?

The following is the list of 2014 Clive Staples Award readers’ choice nominations (in alphabetical order by the author’s last name):

Storm by Evan Angler (Thomas Nelson)

Rage’s Echo by J.S. Bailey (Tate Publishing)

Son of Truth by Morgan Busse (Marcher Lord Press)

A Cast of Stones by Patrick W. Carr (Bethany House)

The Hero’s Lot by Patrick W. Carr (Bethany House)

Exodus Rising by Bryan Davis (AMG Publishing / Living Ink Books)

Broken Wings by Shannon Dittemore (Thomas Nelson)

Dark Halo by Shannon Dittemore (Thomas Nelson)

The Darker Road by L.B. Graham (AMG Publishers / Living Ink Books)

Heroes of the Horde 1: Unleashed by Jennifer Hartz (Desert Breeze Publishing)

Future Savior Book 5: Revelation by Jennifer Hartz (Desert Breeze Publishing)

Never to Live by Just B. Jordan (Marcher Lord Press)

King by R. J. Larson (Bethany House)

Shadow Chaser by Jerel Law (Thomas Nelson)

Truth Runner by Jerel Law (Thomas Nelson)

A Hero’s Throne by Ross Lawhead (Thomas Nelson)

The Shadow Lamp by Stephen Lawhead (Thomas Nelson)

Secrets Kept by J. L. Mbewe (AltWit Press)

Constant Tower by Carole McDonnell (Wildside Press)

Anomaly by Krista McGee (Thomas Nelson)

Luminary by Krista McGee (Thomas Nelson)

Amish Vampires in Space by Kerry Nietz (Marcher Lord Press)

The Circle Girls: Once Upon A Witch by Anya Novikov (Watershed Books)

Failstate: Legends by John Otte (Marcher Lord Press)

Memory’s Door by James L. Rubart (Thomas Nelson)

Sandstorm by Steve Rzasa (Marcher Lord)

Nightriders by Marc Schooley (Marcher Lord Press)

The Sinners’ Garden by William Sirls (Thomas Nelson)

Dragonwitch by Anne Elisabeth Stengl (Bethany)

Merlin’s Blade by Robert Treskillard (Blink)

Merlin’s Shadow by Robert Treskillard (Blink)

Captives by Jill Williamson (Blink)

After an unintended “dry run,” the Clive Staples Award finalist voting begins today.