I recently received a very negative review from a woman claiming to be a Christian reader of speculative fiction. Bad reviews are never enjoyable, but the reason for this one struck me strangely because she didn’t seem to understand the point of the story and was confused that my plot could even be a Christian plot line at all. The review was for my Descendants Saga novel: Fallen.

This book is a Harry Potter type of book that attempts to blur the lines of good and evil. It is filled with magic, spells and every filthy occult practice. As such, it does not bring glory to God, but serves only to confuse.

Perception is everything. Many reviewers have rightly said this is a dark story. How then can it be Christian?”
–Amazon Reviewer

I responded to this person with an explanation that focused upon the Word of God and what we find written there. The Bible gives a very comprehensive look at human history and the way God has dealt with mankind in various situations. It explores the history of the Jewish people in great detail in the Old Testament and never fails to give us both the good and the bad found in man by his nature. We are even given a great deal of understanding about the evil powers that are set against mankind and their rebellion to God and his purposes. None of it is sugar coated in the Scriptures.

I’m reminded of the fall of man in the garden, the terrible judgment of God upon mankind during the flood that killed at least thousands, if not millions, of people who did not serve God. We find idolatry, sorcery, homosexuality, bestiality, murder, and rebellion to God throughout the pages of scripture. Does that make the Bible full of darkness? Of course not. What it means is that God’s Word gives us a realistic view of evil as well as good. That’s what truth is. It’s not sugar coated for the masses, it lays bare all that we are and teaches us about what we could be.

This is where I think an exciting, morally right story becomes useful. As the authors of Christian speculative fiction, we have the opportunity to cast light on subjects. We don’t have to glorify evil in order to cast light on the subject, but neither should we shy away from making a villain a villain. An editor once told me that she was looking at one of my manuscripts and had to put it down for awhile because she was startled by the ruthless nature of my primary antagonist. She said, Your villain really is evil.

I’m not sure if it was meant to be a compliment or not, but it certainly got me thinking. Is there any reason why the bad guys in our stories shouldn’t be bad guys? Isn’t that the point? In fact, I believe that there should be a pretty fair gap between what we call good and what we call evil in a story. I’m not saying that our protagonists should be virtuous supermen who never tell a lie or have a bad day. After all, a good man or woman in the Bible was hardly perfect.

Consider David who was a man chosen by God to be the king of Israel. He was called a man after God’s own heart, but he wasn’t perfect–not even close. He slept with another man’s wife and fathered a child by her. He devised a plan to trick the man into thinking it was his own child. When that didn’t work, he had the man killed in battle. That’s pretty ruthless, eh? David was far from perfect, and God judged him for it. The child even died as a direct result. Not exactly sunshine and roses, but we do see truth. Man’s wickedness and God’s justice and judgment revealed, followed ultimately by his forgiveness.

The Bible is full of such examples, and they never get sugar coated. As a matter of fact, I refrain from mentioning some of the details of many more gruesome stories in scripture because some of you might blush and the article might not get printed. But a solid understanding of evil and corruption in the human heart also shows us why our Savior’s sacrifice was so necessary, why we need to understand our own guilt and seek God’s forgiveness.

Good Christian novels can do this. As authors we can show people why we need a savior in our plots of corruption and greed and dark things. We don’t have to glorify evil as so many do, but we shouldn’t gloss over the reality that it does exist. And we can show it for what it is without being lewd and crude and foul-mouthed about it either. There is no place for gratuitous sex or vulgarity.

A good speculative story can show the reader how flawed we are, but that there is hope to become something much greater. As well, it can show the benefits and blessings that come with faith in God. We can show the lost coming to faith and the questioning that precedes it, as well as the arguments and excuses that are common to those who refuse to believe. Rarely are such questions ever considered in the light of truth, but Christian writers have that opportunity, and we shouldn’t shy away.

However, while we do have freedom to explore many avenues, we should never find ourselves compromising God’s Word or his person. For example, in the popular novel, The Shack, God is viewed as being completely different in nature than we find him in the pages of scripture. He is viewed as not caring about a person’s sin, or being concerned with judgment–all of which are heretical views. Of course, God is concerned with these things. They are the precise reason why Christ had to come and die for man’s sins.

Likewise, we should never present a view of the world that contradicts God’s Word. Should we fill our pages with characters who believe that evolution is truth and there is no Creator God? That would be directly contradictory to what God’s Word says about the matter. Yet secular novelists do this all of the time. While we might include such characters, we should remember that this is not truth and present it through other characters who understand.

I’m currently working on a new novel series that would seem like a zombie plague has broken out and threatens the world. Are zombies–the living dead–real beings? Could they actually exist? Of course they couldn’t. Dead is dead. Muscles don’t work without blood flow and a heart to pump it and lungs to oxygenate it. So, I can’t do living dead, but I can explore a story about infected individuals who are living and what such a pestilence or plague could do.

Put some characters of faith in those kinds of situations and see what they do. Do they pray? Do they trust God in their circumstances? You wouldn’t believe how many secular readers hate Christian characters who actually pray and believe God is watching over them! And it’s a ripe scenario for lost characters to deal with either coming to faith or the consequences of unbelief. Lots to explore, but we should never compromise the fundamentals of our faith. We are sinners and God wants to save us through faith in the sacrifice his precious Son made on the cross for our sins!

– – – – –

James Somers is the author of numerous Christian speculative fiction including The Descendants Saga, The Realm Shift Trilogy, and The Serpent Kings Saga. These novels have also recently been released as Audio Books through Audible.com. His latest novel series is The Crisis Sequence which begins with Rage, to be released in the spring of 2014 in both e-book and audio formats.

In addition to writing fiction, James enjoys writing and recording music. He also serves as the Pastor of Ozone Baptist Church in Rockwood, TN, and works as a surgical tech specializing in eye surgery. He resides in Kingston, TN, with his wife and three sons.

For more information about James, visit his web site. Fallen is currently available as an audio book or as a free Kindle e-book.

My favorite stories can be used for evil by cults, killers, sorcerers and manipulators.

So can your favorite stories.

No story is safe. No matter how wholesome, how “evangelical,” how values-based, how conservative, how artistically edgy, how moral-sentimentalized, or how “Biblical.”

Heard someone misuse verses to try to control people? Not even the Bible is safe.

Fantasy

I must spend the most time here.

A chap called Tyler Deaton used the “holy trio” of great fantasy to commit flagrant sin. According to The Rolling Stone¹, Deaton — an active participant in the evangelical charismatic group “International House of Prayer” — was nuts about The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, and especially the Harry Potter series.

Potter? Some would say that was the problem right there, but Narnia by C. S. Lewis is safe.

The group members began comparing themselves to the four Pevensie children in The Chronicles of Narnia, who enter a universe mastered by evil, win renown as soldiers in the army of a resurrected Messiah and finally assume their places as kings and queens of a renewed world.

SpecFaith readers know my stance on all three fantasy series. They are beautiful and truthful. At least two are by faithful Christians; the third is by an author (J.K. Rowling) who is clearly familiar and respectful of Biblical morality and Christ’s hero’s journey.²

But if we believe great fantasy is safe, this should petrificus totalus us.

“In the years I was with him, things were constantly happening that I had to shrug away as being ‘the work of the Holy Spirit,'” says [college friend Boze] Herrington. “Tyler would raise his voice and say, ‘Jesus!’ and the neighbor’s music would immediately stop. He would tell the birds to fly away and they would fly away. He would place curses on my appliances so they wouldn’t work.”

For every real-world equivalent to Harry Potter, who uses magical gifts for good, there is a Voldemort. And Voldemorts crave “real” magic — to manipulate their worlds and others.

Fantasy stories are not safe.

Romance

Good readers can enjoy romance as worship of God. In a story primarily about pre-marital³ love between a man and a woman, a reader can imagine, even subtly, the sacred love of Christ for His Church. Just as in real marriage. As in the committed and sensual love exulted by the Song of Solomon. As in his or (most likely) her own marriage.

Bad readers abuse fictional lovers. We’ve all heard of such cases. One is in my mind right now. They pine for people or situations that don’t exist. They use stories as an escape out of, and not to enjoy, the real world. They grow discontent. They endorse their own lusts.

Romance stories are not safe.

Mystery/suspense

Good readers can indulge in a well-done who-has-done-it. They can appreciate an author’s skill in planting clues, researching crime-scene investigation, delving into the darkness of sinful individuals and organizations. They can grip their pages or theater armrests during heart-pounding scenes. They can anticipate the capture of the guilty and justice being done.

Bad readers abuse the system. They obsess with society’s sins that have been dramatized — often too sanitized or too shallow — for the “safe” benefit of fans. They may become paranoid about serial killers or secret societies. Even craving feelings for their own ends is a “minor” sin.

Mystery and suspense stories are not safe.

Amish/historical

Good readers can appreciate the simple virtues of a bygone or contemporary society. They can explore a mostly-faithful recreation of a strange-seeming religious group from the perspective of a follower or ex-follower. They can let their minds time-travel to what is effectively a fantasy realm — an “elseworld” that’s simply closer to actual history. They can appreciate the research of a truer-to-life story.

Bad readers wish they could join that other existence. As with romance, they compare the “perfect” icons of the caricatured past or Amish to their own families and wistfully grieve the difference. Even “nonfiction” evangelical appeals to recover some lost era when men were men, women were women, and all learned on a farm can become twisted fantasies.

Amish and historical stories are not safe.

Children’s entertainment

Good readers know that evangelical books or discs are only a means to a greater end. Their promised Moral Values are only part of this complete breakfast that must include wise, customized training of children to learn God’s Law, their own sin, and above all, Christ.

Others presume that character instruction by wholesome characters is all that children need from stories to understand God’s love and righteousness.

Evangelical children’s entertainment stories are not safe.

When it comes to social issues, there are few that generate as much heat and controversy as abortion. It seems the more controversial a topic is, the more likely someone who disagrees with your position will feel like you are preaching at them.

Case in point. I wrote a flash fiction one time that ended up having an abortion message. They discovered a gas they had collected were the unformed babies of an alien race. The captain realized they were about to kill the equivalent of embryos for that race. In this world, their history saw abortion in retrospect like we currently do slavery now: an evil culturally permitted but now seen for what it is. I had an overt statement to that reality in that fictional future.

The first place I submitted it to rejected it, in part because, as one editor put it, he felt like he’d been hit over the head with a hammer, and the whole story seemed to be a set up for saying abortion was wrong. I could see their point. I wondered, however, how much of that rejection was because they disagreed with the message, or how much was uncomfortableness in running something that controversial, or they just didn’t like the preachiness of it? Or a combination of the above?

I made the story more subtle by taking out the overt statement, and the next magazine took it. It is still online, titled Life Intruders.

But the experience illustrated how skittish some venues can be on appearing to take sides on an issue.

So I did an internet search on “speculative fiction abortion” and pulled up some examples.

One that popped up was an article on this site, by Rebecca LuElla Miller, in May of last year: Speculative Fiction and Our Culture. She highlights a book by Karen Hancock: The Enclave. In her review of the book, she says:

It is this aspect of speculative fiction—the ability to look at the hard issues, the complex topics—that I think too many people overlook . . .

In Russia, a movie gained blockbuster status with an abortion message, titled Nochnoi Dozor (Night Watch) back around 2003-04. The abortion message was a subplot. It worked in Russia. Not sure if the American version kept that subplot and if so, how well it did here.

In 2005, Jeff J. Koloze wrote an article titled “Twentieth-Century Science Fiction Literature and the Right to Life Issues of Abortion, Infanticide, and Euthanasia” In it, he lists five novels that significantly touch on abortion: H. G. Wells’ When the Sleeper Wakes (1899), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), James Blish’s A Case of Conscience (1958), William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson’s Logan’s Run (1967), and Lois Lowry’s The Giver (1993).

However, he admits, “Abortion as a topic seems to be rarely mentioned in science fiction literature.” These five represent a tiny fraction of all the science fiction written last century, which would seem to support the premise that publishers and author fear aliening readers by appearing to have taken a side on a controversial topic like abortion. Much easier to avoid the issue.

One other example of note I found. Dave Astor, in writing about Margaret Atwood’s legacy at the Huffington Post, makes the following point:

Like Barbara Kingsolver, Atwood is socially conscious without being preachy. This is certainly the case in The Handmaid’s Tale, Oryx and Crake, and 2009’s The Year of the Flood — three dystopian novels that say a lot about things like women’s rights and the despoiling of the environment but do that via the books’ interesting characters and plots.

What do you think?

Why aren’t more novels themed on controversial topics like abortion? Are you likely to read an engaging story promoting a view other than your own on such a topic, or would you promise to never read another of his/her books? Is there not more because authors and publishers are afraid to risk losing readers? Or do readers of speculative fiction tend to not buy such books? Would you like to see more speculative fiction, by a Christian or not, address the subject in an engaging, but not preachy manner?

Pretentiousness, arrogance, haughtiness, elitism–I don’t think any of it belongs among Christian writers and readers. But sadly, literature–or more accurately, people’s feelings about literature–generates attitudes of exclusivity.

Some suggest that sweet romances are inferior, others that literary fiction is superior to all “commercial fiction.” Still others go to the extreme of saying that fiction of any kind is a pack of lies and unworthy of the Christian’s time.

Then there are those who draw lines between types of publishing. There are those who believe traditional publishing is best because having an agent, editor, and pub board choose a particular manuscript means that industry professionals have validated the quality of the story and writing. Others believe independent publishers who are more accepting of different styles or different subject matter are far superior because of the freedom they allow an author. Still some boast that self-publishing is the only way to go because publishers keep a lion’s share of the revenues a book generates and authors aren’t fairly compensated for the writing and promoting they’re responsible for.

Another divide when it comes to books is based on “what’s allowed.” Should stories from Christians always be G-rated, or PG-rated, at best? Or should publishers allow for more “realism”–some cursing and sex scenes. Some readers adamantly hold to the former position and some writers, to the latter.

What about theology? Some believe Christian literature should filter out the distinctives of any denomination so that all Christians will feel at home in a novel. Hence, churches are called [name of town] Community Church, and little, if any, denominational doctrines come to the forefront, even in books intended for Christian readers. Others believe novels offer a good avenue for a look at how doctrines are played out in real life. A third group thinks novels are not the place for theology at all.

There’s another divide which I’ll term writing philosophy. Is the Christian writing Christian fiction, regardless of the audience, no matter whether he is published by a Christian house? Or is Christian fiction a silly term that ought to be done away with, as some people seem to think? Some suggest our Christianity ought to be intentionally infused into our stories while others think an author’s worldview will naturally leak into what she writes.

For speculative fans, the divide can sometimes be between genres: readers ought to read horror; fantasy is better than science fiction; the bolder forms of steampunk or cyberpunk are more artistic; dystopian fantasy is more relevant than epic fantasy.

I think all these topics are worthwhile to discuss. I think it’s helpful for believers to share ideas with others and to listen to how others view fiction. I think it’s important for writers to listen to readers, and for them to share their varied experiences of publishing.

I don’t think there’s a place for snobbery–one way or the other.

I’ll be honest–I have an ulterior motive for bringing this up. Shortly the Clive Staples Award will be open for nominations and once again parameters will be laid out for the books that are eligible for this particular award. Some people believe that parameters equal snobbery. I don’t believe this. I do believe that parameters are appropriate because not all books are trying to accomplish the same thing.

Hence, it would not be appropriate for a picture book to be entered into the Clive Staples Award to compete with full length novels. Does that apply a bias against picture books? Certainly not. But the scope of this award does not include picture books. The same is true for novellas or for mysteries. Those books may be well-written and the top of their category, but this award at this time is limited so that those books don’t fit.

The vision that I personally have for the Clive Staples Award is that one day we will have multiple divisions–a young adult category, for example, and one for science fiction. I’d even like to see a small press category and a self-published category. Perhaps those could have subdivisions based on genre as well.

All that is future, however. The award has made strides, one of the best being the sponsorship of Speculative Faith and Realm Makers which allowed us to give a monetary prize to the winning author. But we’re a long way off from offering the same to multiple winners in various categories. We’re a long way off from having the volunteer help we’d need to support a multi-layered contest.

All that to say, there will undoubtedly be some fan favorites that won’t fit the parameters of the Clive Staples Award. Know that these parameters are not a statement as to the quality or desirability of books that fall outside the parameters. My hope is that no one will wrongly assume that the Clive Staples Award prefers to be exclusive.

In fact, when the award first came into being in 2007 many of the avenues for publishing that exist today, were not available. The award was tailored to the standard of other awards for Christian fiction. If and when we are in a position to expand to the newer, burgeoning forms of publishing, we’ll take the appropriate steps to do so in a way that will enhance the award and honor the winners.

In the meantime, I pray that the Clive Staples Award will not be a lightning rod for snobbery, one side or the other. If it becomes that, then it will be time to put the idea of this particular award for Christian speculative fiction to rest. Because I don’t see a place for snobbery in Christian literature.

You may have read or seen more sci-fi stories than I have.

But save for one crummy little Star Trek: The Next Generation TV moment, I can’t think of any human-spirit-honoring futuristic fiction that denies the value of life.

Even the weird life. Even the monster’s life.

‘To seek out new life …’

In “Doctor Who,” the Doctor saves every life he can. Even monsters. When a monster dies, such as the Minotaur in the series 6 episode “The God Complex,” it’s a tragedy. But sad is happy — or if not happy, challenging — for deep people. “Doctor Who” dares to go deeper, to the point of the Doctor flirting with pacifism rather than destroy even genocidal aliens.

Every iteration of Star Trek showcases honor for life, even if the heroes aren’t sure it’s life.

In “The Quality of Life,” the Enterprise crew learns that several manmade tools have begun exhibiting signs of life according to every classical scientific definition. In that story:

In the observation lounge, Riker issues a direct order to release the transporter lock, but Data stands firm and will not do so, even if it means a court martial. He argues that sacrificing one lifeform for another is not justified, and based on his own experiences, he must believe that, like himself, the exocomps are alive—and therefore have the right to live.¹

Later Data reminds Captain Jean-Luc Picard that Data acted based on his own experience. In a previous TNG story, Picard legally defends Data himself, after another scientist wants to deactivate and analyze the android. “Your honor, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life,” the captain pronounces, and points to his first officer. “Well, there it sits! Waiting.”

Which prompts the judge to ponder aloud the value of presuming life and freedom.

Is Data a machine? Yes. Is he the property of Starfleet? No. We’ve all been dancing around the basic issue: does Data have a soul? I don’t know that he has. I don’t know that I have! But I have got to give him the freedom to explore that question himself.²

This classically humanist philosophy proves that such humanism’s ethics are not so far from Christianity (yet Christianity came first). It also proves that Christianity is not alone in defending the value of confirmed human life, and the presumed value of life that just might be human. Beside Biblical Christians stands honest sci-fi stories throughout ages, stalwart and sure, defending — though they may know it not — the sacred worth of the imago Dei, God’s image in human beings. Life is sacred. It is precious. It must not be destroyed.

‘Our own bodies’?

Previously I alluded to one sci-fi exception — one of the sillier Star Trek: TNG stories. “Up the Long Ladder” sets up a monumentally poor allegory in which a dying extraterrestrial race tries to clone Commander Riker and Dr. Pulaski. Outraged, the two Starfleet officers beam to the lab and spy on their maturing, sleeping clones. After one look, they blast them.

Riker (angrily): “We certainly have a right to exercise control over our own bodies.”

Pulaski: “You’ll get no argument from me.”

One would hope that Pulaski, despite not lasting beyond season 2, found her way back to the founding principles on which Starfleet is based: to respect life and not interfere with its natural development, no matter how it got there. Fortunately Riker in later stories became much less of a selfish and homicidal jerk. Confronting his own clone (generated by a freak transporter accident), Riker was not so inclined to phase-blast Thomas Riker in cold blood.

Life vs. death

Here’s why Christians can’t make as a first principle that we are for culture or against culture: “culture” contradicts itself. “Culture” is a schizophrenic mess.

Our stories love and exalt human life, especially children. But in reality people worship false “freedom” even more, the kind that crushes others’ freedom before they even experience it.

Our stories increasingly explore the horrors of dystopian societies in which all-powerful government leaders practice eugenics, worship power, and manipulate or even kill the weak to favor the living. Yet we support leaders who brazenly defend these very evils.

For the weak and unborn, the dystopia isn’t future. It’s already here.

Why do humans do this?

Answers can only start with this: only the spiritually dead could invent such ways to do evil against life. And only One can seek out new life among the dead.

Church kids: do you remember what it was like to suspect that something you did would turn out to be a sin that God hated all along without you knowing it?

I remember. That was before I learned of this good news:

1. If: God is neither an idiot, nor is He cruel. He is in fact fully capable, and He is love.
2. Then: He would capably, lovingly communicate to us exactly what counts as sin

Of course then I was led to consider that this is also bad news. In fact, it’s much worse than having a loophole to plead ignorance of the Law that He reveals in Scripture. Thank God that because of Christ’s life and atoning death and resurrection, it’s His sacrifice for sin that pays my debt and His righteousness that covers me and powers my own righteousness.

Alas that this greatest Story of Scripture is missing in some Christian children’s stories.

At Christ and Pop Culture yesterday, Dr. Alan Noble explores one 1980s evangelical series that is very familiar to former church kids of all decades hence.

Watching McGee and Me as a kid did not turn me into a legalist, but it did help shape my vision of what it meant to love God and seek forgiveness.

As Noble says: this understanding was not that good. The rest of the piece explains why.¹

Suspended injustice

If you’re like me and watched this video series, you especially enjoyed the animated bits featuring McGee, who plays a goofier Jiminy Cricket to regular-kid protagonist Nicholas.

McGee breaks a window unintentionally because some city planner thought it was a good idea to put a baseball diamond across the street from a glass shop. The authorities swoop down with swift and absurdly disproportionate justice to drag a small boy off to prison. Since the story ends so abruptly there’s no trial and no chance for McGee to admit to his lie, so in the world of the parable McGee must spend eternity with the guilt of his crime. The injustice is suspended indefinitely with no hope for redemption.

That’s the animated segment. Noble describes more of the live-action tale in which Nicholas talks with his father about how to undo the consequences of a rumor Nicholas has spread.

The “biblical” lesson is that no matter how trivial a lie might be, once spoken, it begins a web of destruction and evil, consuming innocent people, cutting us off from God, and making an already-crucified Christ cry. Oh, wretched man that Nick is! Who or what will rescue him from this body of death? What can he do?

The only answer given: “What do you think?”

Missing grace?

Some parents are much like Nicholas’s well-meaning father. They think they can simply ask, “What do you think?” and then leave.

Or they might give their children a Christian children’s product that tries to teach morals.

But that results in another big lie: a lie by omission of the Cross.

As terrible as this show was for me as a kid, it did get the consequences of sin right. Sin is unimaginably destructive. We are all blackout drunks who’ve no way of knowing what great tragedy we have caused. We are inescapably weighty in our existence. But that’s only half of the story. Not even half.

Reading this, I wonder two questions.

First, doesn’t this strong-sounding objection — Product X “lies” by omitting the Cross — actually deny the fact that Christian art need not show/tell the whole Gospel every time?

On Facebook that was author Adam Graham’s challenge about Noble’s column, and I understand where he’s coming from! One response:

A rallying cry for Christian storytelling is that you don’t need to include the full John 3:16-Gospel in every representation of sin and its consequences. Not every book of Scripture itself does that. You can have a story/book that is part of the revealed Word of God (such as Ecclesiastes) that might confuse the heck out of us, but still fits into the narrative.

But with this there’s a difference. Creators, know thy audiences. The audience is Christian and evangelical kids, not those outside the Gospel. The audience is, presumably, folks who exist within the covering of Christ’s salvation. In that case, if the story is about sin and consequences, you need to emphasize grace more. But if in fact the audience was nonbelievers, then you need to emphasize sin more!

I agree with Alan’s contention that this particular episode fell uncomfortably into that middle ground. The story did say, “Your sins aren’t that big a deal, in fact they may be closer to simple accidents, but OH LOOK AT THE PAIN THEY CAUSE.” All the consequences of total depravity (Biblical) but with little emphasis on man’s actual willful sinful nature (American “gospel”) = cognitive dissonance.²

Second: given the chance, would the makers of “McGee and Me!” in retrospect ask similar questions about their own stories? I am certain that occurs to all of us long after the thing is in its eleventh printing or filmed and locked on VHS. Sure, it’s far easier to look back at a story with 20 years’ hindsight than it was to try making the story in the first place.

Christian behavior without Christianity?

But specifically about the “morals over the Gospel” question, at least one Christian children’s storyteller, VeggieTales creator Phil Vischer, has been blessedly direct about how he regrets moralistic emphasis in those stories.

After the bankruptcy [of Big Idea Productions in 2003] I had kind of a forced sabbatical of three or four months of spending time with God and listening to Him. I looked back at the previous 10 years and realized I had spent 10 years trying to convince kids to behave Christianly without actually teaching them Christianity. And that was a pretty serious conviction. You can say, “Hey kids, be more forgiving because the Bible says so,” or “Hey kids, be more kind because the Bible says so!” But that isn’t Christianity, it’s morality.

[…] And that was such a huge shift for me from the American Christian ideal. We’re drinking a cocktail that’s a mix of the Protestant work ethic, the American dream, and the gospel. And we’ve intertwined them so completely that we can’t tell them apart anymore. Our gospel has become a gospel of following your dreams and being good so God will make all your dreams come true. It’s the Oprah god. So I had to peel that apart.³

What evangelical children’s stories have you needed to peel apart? How have you done it?

Last week I quoted from Lovecraft the following:

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

The horror genre focuses on our fears, especially of the unknown, for entertainment value mostly.

Can Horror and Christianity Coexist?

Many people don’t believe that reading or writing horror is compatible with Christianity. To make the case, they will often quote Bible verses like the following:

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2Ti 1:7 KJV)

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. (Mat 10:28 KJV)

For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. (Rom 8:15 KJV)

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. (1Jn 4:18 KJV)

Out of context, these verses would seem to be speaking about fear as a whole. When you read them in context, they are speaking of specific fears. Obvious by the fact that if they weren’t, the Scriptures would be contradictory. One verse says to fear God, the next says such fear should be cast out.

For example, St. Paul’s words to St. Timothy in 2Ti 1:7 are in the context of encouraging the young leader to not fear, but be bold in his leadership. He was given a gift and ministry by God, and he should not fear to use it with authority. Paul is not speaking of fear as a whole, but fearing to fulfill the ministry God gave him.

Mat 10:28 above is in the context of fearing God instead of fearing what man might do or threaten. Fearing in this context relates to who you reverence with obedience. If it comes down to obeying man or God, Jesus is saying, fearing what God can do to you is the greater fear. Talk about the unknown: the second death! As if the first death isn’t scary enough.

Likewise, in Rom 8:15, St. Paul is speaking on the subject of following the flesh instead of the Spirit. The fear is breaking the Law through the flesh and becoming part of the damned. The fear of Judgment Day looms large. Such fear is not necessary when one is an adopted part of God’s family through grace. The verse merely points out that living by the flesh is fearful compared to living by grace.

St. John’s verse refers to what our motivation is to serve God. The Scriptures regularly say we should fear, reverence, God. St. Paul even tells the Philippians to, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” (Phil 2:12b) The word fear is used 400 times in the King James Bible, and the majority of them are exhortations to fear God.

Obedience to God out of love is the better way, St. John says, but who among us has perfect love? He is not saying fear is sinful, just that it is not the best motivation for obedience. Not unless you are suggesting that St. John is contradicting everyone else before him.

These verses do not condemn fear itself. Indeed, there are more verses commanding us to fear God than God telling people to “fear not” upon addressing them. Even Jesus in His parables uses fear to guide people. For example, concluding the parable of the servant that owed a huge debt to his master, Jesus says:

So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses. (Mat 18:35 KJV)

God is not saying we should avoid fear, but face it and use it.

Horror can serve a Christian purpose. For while people read horror for the adrenalin rush, it goes deeper. For fear is a foundational emotion. To paraphrase Lovecraft, fear is the first and oldest emotion we experience.

This is in large part why babies just birthed cry. They are scared. And well they should be. They’ve just been violently ejected from their warm, safe womb, squeezed through a small hole, and into an alien, strange world. You’d be scared and cry too.

Then as we go through life, there are plenty of horrors we will face. Spankings. Nightmares. Being laughed at. Dating. Bullies. Cancer. Heart attacks. Diseases. Marriage. Infidelity. Divorce. Death. The list could go on and on.

How do we process and deal with our fears?

For many of them, it will be by facing those fears and realizing God will help you overcome them with His love and peace.

What better speculative genre to learn those lesson with than horror? A person can safely face their fear in a fictional context and learn that God can overcome them. If He can help us through those evils, He can give us courage to face our real-life horrors as well.

The fact is, evil is scary. But God is scarier.

To paraphrase Solomon, the beginning of wisdom is to be scared by God.

What other ways can the horror genre teach us the fear of the Lord?

 

Electric wires are encased in a material such as rubber to prevent accidental contact with them. Homes have layers of insulation to keep heat in and cold out, or air conditioning in and scorching temperatures out. Under the right circumstances, insulation is good and necessary.

Might the same principle be true in reading? I dare say most Christians would agree that children ought to be insulated to a degree so lies of the world don’t alter their ideas or expose them to “mature” subject matter before they are ready. But what about adults? Is there a proper insulation adults should maintain as well?

Isolation, on the other hand, is viewed as an aberration unless mandated by a doctor. Agoraphobia is an irrational fear of going outside which causes otherwise healthy people to isolate themselves from others.

And what about isolation as a principle in reading? Should Christians cut themselves off from the influences of the world? Should we seek to read (listen or watch) only stories that agree with a Biblical worldview?

I believe many Christians mix up isolation and insulation in determining a standard for entertainment. Others resist isolation but then neglect insulation in the process.

Here are some contrasting points about the two concepts that might be helpful.

Insulation is put in place to protect people from a known danger or to keep out an undesired element. A recovering alcoholic, for example, stays away from all forms of alcohol. A reader coming from an occult background, then, stays away from all stories about witches and wizardry, magic and demon activity.

Isolation, on the other hand, separates people from the good as well as the dangerous, without discrimination. An illustration would be a person fearing electrical shocks, turning off the electricity in a home. For readers, a person who fears exposure to the world system, stops reading fiction.

Insulation targets something specific. For the reader, this would center on personal weaknesses or proclivities.

Isolation spreads a wide net. There is no targeting. There is nothing more than a categorical rule aimed at everyone.

Insulation has a particular goal–the protection of an individual from a known danger. Consequently a book with explicit sexual content might be targeted as one from which readers should be insulated.

Isolation also aims to protect, but the goal is nebulous because the danger is imagined rather than known. In this vein, any story that suggests or implies sexual activity might fall under a ban.

Some readers may wonder if insulation is ever needed or appropriate in conjunction with books. Today our culture seems to agree that ideas aren’t dangerous, that all we need to guard against is physical harm.

Except, some have begun to talk about “cyber-bullying,” a use of words to belittle and control someone else. Put another way, words do have power to influence how a person thinks.

If this is true on the Internet, why would we think it is less true in fiction?

Well, some may say, because it is fiction!

But the truth is, fiction shows us how other people reason, make choices, handle difficulties, interact with others. We are exposed to their worldview which may call into question our own.

So should we isolate from those? Should we embrace them?

No and no. Other worldviews must be examined in light of the Bible and the errors exposed. We can’t expose errors if we are isolated and ignorant. We can’t expose errors if we embrace them and make them our own. Yet Scripture tells us exposing error is part of the believer’s responsibility:

Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them (Eph. 5:11)

The commission Jesus gave Paul doesn’t seem to me to be all that different from the one the angel gave to the followers of Jesus who witnessed his ascension, and ultimately, to us.

‘I have appeared to you, to appoint you a minister and a witness . . . to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.’ (acts 26:16-18)

How does this commission apply to readers?

1. We can learn in fiction where light is most needed.
2. We can discover through reading what form darkness is taking.
3. We can formulate a response before we confront someone in real life who holds the views of darkness about which we read.

In short, I don’t think isolation is an answer to the darkness of this world, and that approach leaves our culture without a witness. I’d also suggest that it’s wise to use insulation only as necessary.

Not everyone needs the same level of insulation. I live in SoCal where the temperature is slated to reach 80 today. Home insulation is more or less optional here, but we still don’t run electric wires through our houses without the proper material protecting us from shock.

How about you as a reader? Do you have a type of insulation you utilize? Is this something you’ve thought through and determined ahead of time? Do you agree that it’s important to have this kind of protection when it comes to our reading habits?

Ahem. Well, how has everyone been? Any excitement? Anything new? Anything worth talking about?

Speculative Faith Hive Mind: Skip the chit-chat, Nietz. We want answers. News! What do you have to add to the discussion? Amish Vampires in Space is out! Hinterlands is out! What happened, man?

Me: Okay, I’ll start with the easy stuff. Marcher Lord Press has been sold, and the new owner, Steve Laube, has elected not to include Amish Vampires in Space as part of the new company’s catalog.

HM: We know that already! How does that make you feel?

Me: That result wouldn’t have been my first preference, obviously. I worked really hard on AViS, felt it was a quality story (and reviews seem to confirm that feeling), and think it would be an asset to any company deemed “the premier publisher of Christian speculative fiction.”

That said, I certainly wouldn’t want one of my literary children in a place where it wasn’t wanted.

Ten years ago, such a change would’ve resulted in a book being orphaned. Today, though, things are different. It is a straightforward process to create accounts with both POD and eBook providers.

In fact, of any of the Marcher Lord Press authors, I was probably the best person for this sort of thing to happen to. (Aside from maybe Jill Williamson, because she’s sort of the queen of all media.) I already had a CreateSpace and eBook accounts set up from having republished my memoire FoxTales last summer. It was only a matter of revising the AViS eBooks and the print galley to replace references to the old publisher with that of my new imprint.

HM: New imprint?

Me: Yes, I created my own imprint “Freeheads.” The name is based on a term from my DarkTrench books, and the image … well, to me it sort of looks like the guy from another publisher’s image taking flight. But that’s just me. 🙂

As of now, and partially due to Steve’s and Jeff’s help and understanding, there will be no time where AViS is found unavailable to the general public. Both the print book and eBooks are already revised and out. They started showing up on Amazon a week ago.

I’m also now the proud owner of a couple new domain names: Freeheads.Us and AmishVampiresInSpace.com.

HM: So, no hard feelings?

Me: Feelings are a matter of choice, aren’t they?

HM: Still, it seems like you got a raw deal …

Me: There were some things that probably could’ve been handled better. As Jeff mentioned in his video interview, this all happened pretty fast, and every time things are rushed, some things don’t get done as well as they might have been. No one knows that better than a writer.

HM: Is it true that AViS was selling poorly? Or that it wasn’t mainstream enough?

Me: I’m not sure any of my work is CBA mainstream. They’ve never gotten an award recognizing them as such anyway. All of the awards my books have received are from secular organizations. So take that as you will.

Regardless, I never think about where my story fits. I just write what interests me. Thankfully, what interested me usually interested Jeff as well.

As for sales, no, AViS was actually selling well by MLP standards. For instance in Amazon print sales alone, for the last eight weeks of 2013 I sold 60% of the print books I’ve sold there all year, and most of those were AViS.  It wasn’t just a new release bubble either. Mask came out in February and it didn’t have near the impact.

Plus, there’s no denying AViS created buzz. In fact, I just had a pre-interview for a national radio show.

HM: So, the book had good buzz and good sales. So what happened?

Me: Steve hasn’t said much more to me than he has to you. <shrug> A man buys a business he can do with it as he sees fit, though.

HM: Speculate then. Why do you think he made the decision not to carry AViS?

Me: LOL. There it is, isn’t it?

I’m in a strange situation, because Marcher Lord Press still has the rights to my other books. I will say this, I argued strongly for the merits of AViS, as did others. The answer remained a resounding “no,” though. It finally reached the point where I felt like Moses arguing with Pharaoh, but in reverse: “Let my people STAY!”

That’s when I realized that this might be a God thing. That I should just back off and buckle down for self-publishing the book and let the blessings fall where they may.

Plus, beyond my own feelings and self-interest, I thought this sale could be in the best interest of everyone else involved—especially my friends the other MLP authors. Unlike many of the rest, I’ve been traditionally published before and seen my book in a bookstore. There’s a special feeling to that. I wouldn’t want to deny the rest of them that thrill over my little book.

HM: It was the Amish factor, wasn’t it?

Me: Again, I can’t know for sure. I did have one author friend share how he/she was verbally assaulted because of AViS. Like, this other person was mad at my friend for the existence of my book. Crazy.

Frankly, I think the whole backlash against AViS illustrates how superficial even Christian readers are. That book is no more or less a straight sci-fi tale than anything else I’ve ever written. I’m quite proud of it, and my conscience is clear on what I’ve written.

Yet, it has been summarily judged by a vocal group of Amish defenders based, not on its content, but on perception. Based on its cover and title.

That’s my one regret. That AViS has been attacked for all the wrong reasons, by people who have no idea what’s in it. Apparently there are some sacred cows that you just can’t challenge—and they have nothing to do with the gospel. Just perception.

At some point I may write another article that touches on all I’ve learned about the status quo as part of my research for this book. I have some fascinating stories.

HM: Yes, we bet you do. So, what’s next for Kerry Nietz? Any more stories? Is Marcher Lord Press a possibility?

Me: Good question. In some ways, I’m just like you: willing to wait and see. Steve and I have discussed future publication at Marcher Lord. He said my ideas are always welcome, and that he has no intent to turn MLP into a “friendly unicorns only” publishing house.

That said, I would hate to spend another year of my life on something only to find I’ve crossed another imaginary line. Milked another sacred cow. 🙂 So I’m going to have to think hard about what comes next.

There were a few unanswered subtexts at the end of AViS, though, and from a reader’s perspective, I really want to know how those resolve. Obviously, I’d have to go completely on my own on that one.

That isn’t a bad thing to do while you’re waiting, though, is it?