This week’s post proposes a story involving the supernatural struggle between angels and demons in a different light. Let’s imagine a story in which an angel needs to infiltrate a group of demons and pretends to be one of them. In order to influence their decisions (or maybe spy on them). Such an angel would act as a secret agent of sorts. Or like a the kind of deep undercover detective used at times by law enforcement or intelligence agencies.

This story world proposal additionally borrows from an idea I floated back in 2012 on my personal blog–concerning angels having technology. But let’s return to that idea near the bottom of the post.

What in the world would make me think of an angel infiltrating a group of demons? I got the inspiration from the Bible, actually.

A Puzzling Bible Passage in I Kings 22

So during the divided monarchy of Israel and Judah, when Ahab was king over Israel, married to his infamous Phoenician-born wife Jezebel, Jehoshaphat shared an overlapping period during which he was king of Judah. And a number of texts indicate Jehoshaphat hoped to undo the division between the two kingdoms and recreate the united monarchy of all twelve tribes of Israel again (he even arranged or at least allowed his son to marry the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel).

The two kings staged a joint attack against the kingdom of Aram, a.k.a. Syria, recorded in I Kings 22. An interesting aspect of this attack is they first sought advice from prophets about whether the attack would succeed or not. Four hundred prophets predicted a huge success. But Jehoshaphat was not satisfied with the four hundred and asks if a prophet of the LORD (a.k.a. Jehovah) might be available. Grudgingly Ahab agrees he had one available–Micaiah, a prophet he disliked because he always spoke ill of him (Ahab).

When given the chance to speak freely, Micaiah not only predicts defeat, he says something very interesting about why all the other prophets predicted success, a statement I’ll quote here (I Kings 22:19-23 NKJV):

¹⁹ Then Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by, on His right hand and on His left. ²⁰ And the Lord said, ‘Who will persuade Ahab to go up, that he may fall at Ramoth Gilead?’ So one spoke in this manner, and another spoke in that manner. ²¹ Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, and said, ‘I will persuade him.’ ²² The Lord said to him, ‘In what way?’ So he said, ‘I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And the Lord said, ‘You shall persuade him, and also prevail. Go out and do so.’ ²³ Therefore look! The Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these prophets of yours, and the Lord has declared disaster against you.”

Micaiah and the kings of Judah and Israel. Image source: Wordfitlyspoken.org

What’s immediately surprising about this is not so much that it shows Jehovah in a heavenly counsel asking the opinion of the angelic beings around Him. Sure, that’s a bit surprising, because the Christian understanding of God as all-wise and all-knowing, along with various Scriptural statements indicating God doesn’t really need anyone’s advice (see Isaiah 46:10, Acts 15:18, Romans 11:33). But as much as God asked Adam what He would name the animals (Gen 2:19-20), God is certainly capable of asking angels for their thoughts, even if He already knows all the answers. So God asking the advice of the heavenly host isn’t a major surprise.

A much bigger surprise is a spirit (or angel, as we’d think of them), suggested engaging in some military deception–which would involve the spirit lying to the false prophets so they would encourage Ahab to ride out to his death (a death that specifically related to Ahab’s previous sins, according to passages previous to I Kings 22). Or we could rephrase this as: “An angel lied. People died.”

Angels are thought of as incapable of sin and lies are generally seen as sinful. In fact, in a passage considerably older than Kings, the Scripture specifically says God does not tell lies (Numbers 23:19). So that an angel would lie to the false prophets and God would approve–that’s pretty shocking!

As someone who teaches the Bible, I’d deal with this by pointing out this is the only place in the Bible in which a created heavenly being subservient to God (a.k.a. an angel) is said to lie. Could it be Micaiah the prophet was lying, not offering a real prophecy? Or could it be he was telling the truth, but this particular heavenly moment was unique, never done previously or since? Or could it be angels can and do lie without committing sin and God lets them do so for unknown reasons? All three of these explanations are logically possible (or at least I think so).

Since this passage stands alone in saying what it does, it’s bad methodology to rework the whole of conventional understanding of angels and for sure declare they tell lies based on this one portion of Scripture. Under the providence of God, the Bible says most often what’s most important and what it says just one time is nothing to build a doctrine off of.

But the rules of writing speculative fiction are different from Bible exegesis. What if, in fact, angels do tell lies that are considered a part of heavenly warfare, just as military strategists engage in military deception during wartime (such as ambushes and faked retreats)?

Lets think about a particular detail of what happened in I Kings 22 for a bit. Micaiah is called upon because Jehoshaphat is seeking a prophet of Jehovah. This would indicate the other prophets were not prophets of Jehovah. Which would mean that the angel that communicated with them was not only giving them a false message, he was pretending to be a representative of their gods!

An Angel Among Demons

But what if an angel did more than pretend to be false gods, who are fairly thought of as relating to demons? (as per a previous post I did for Speculative Faith) For the sake of a story setting only as opposed to a doctrinal statement, what if an angel actually pretended to be a demon, in the company of demons?

A Warrior Angel in black armor. Image source: Pinterest

God clearly doesn’t need intel to know what Satan and demons are up to. It’s God’s nature to know. But perhaps angels might not have all the knowledge God has, so they perhaps could engage in some spying.

But more in line with I Kings 22, what if God wanted to influence demons to do things they otherwise would not have done? And chose to use angels for that purpose? What if angels can and do infiltrate bands of demons?

Wouldn’t that be a highly original take on spiritual warfare? Agent angels, infiltrating bands of demons? Deep undercover, having to do things they otherwise wouldn’t do, playing a role like a DEA undercover agent infiltrating a drug smuggling operation?

A Story Setting With a Caveat

I wouldn’t feel right about putting this story setting into a novel without explaining that this is an improbable view of angels and isn’t likely how they operate. Even though the concept is based on Scripture. In fact, if I were to write this, I’d give the full set of caveats I give in this post in an afterword.

But as a speculative idea, if we can keep in mind the idea is speculative, we can wonder how angels would infiltrate demonic hosts and what kind of torture of soul they’d have to go through to prove they really are demons and what could happen to them if they fail. Or course we could borrow a lot from human experiences as deep undercover agents, but the story would be more interesting if much of what applies to moral humans would not apply to angelic beings. Any author creating a tale in this story setting would need to engage in a lot of imagination concerning how the threats to immortal angels are entirely different than to a human undercover agent.

Angel Tech

Angels dress in clothing and at the end of Genesis 3 defend Eden with a flaming sword. Swords and clothes are the products of technology for human beings but perhaps are not for angels. Perhaps an angel can use a form of spiritual power akin to magic to produce these items.

Angel with tech. Image source: https://powerlisting.fandom.com/wiki/Angelic_Technolog

But perhaps not. Perhaps they have the equivalent of looms and forges, producing the items we associate with angels. Perhaps they have more than that–yes, it seems their own supernatural nature would cover the kinds of things human beings use technology to accomplish. But what if (just speculating without solid data) angels have to use communication devices to contact one another over large distances? Or use weapon or transportation technology unknown to us on Earth?

Perhaps a story that features “agent angels” could also feature high-tech angels… (note in looking for an image for this post, I found a “superpower wiki” that lists angelic technology as one of its articles–I’m pretty sure my own post on this topic is older than Superpower Wiki–but it’s entirely possible I came up with an idea that other people had used long before me).

Inspirational Purposes and Controversy

These story ideas I’m offering not just for anyone willing to copy the exact idea I’m writing about, but also hope they inspire thoughts in new directions, shooting off on tangents from what I’ve said here and in previous posts. If you’re just noticing this series, here are links to Part 1 and Part 2. Note that Shannon McDermott wrote an article for Speculative Faith in 2015 that discusses angels in fiction in a general way and E. Stephen Burnett wrote an article in 2018 about Billy Graham that mentioned his 1975 book Angels: God’s Secret Agents, which does not see angels as agents in the same sense this post proposes, but does use some related concepts.

However, suggesting an idea which portrays spiritual beings differently than how we would expect runs the risk of being too controversial. Dealing with how critics might react to controversial ideas isn’t the focus of this post, but is fair game for the comments section.

So what do you think, readers? Does this idea go too far? Or on the other hand, are you familiar with other stories I haven’t heard of that have story settings similar to what I’m offering?

Or does this post inspire your own unique thoughts on angels? Or have you already conceived of story ideas related to angels interacting with demons apart from this post’s ideas that you’d like to mention in a comment?

Please feel free share your thoughts in a comment below!

(Note my podcast that discusses this idea in different words can be found at: https://travissbigidea.podbean.com/e/free-original-storyworld-ideas-part-3-agent-angel/)

On the chance that anyone is not finding current events sufficiently bizarre, the Pentagon released UFO videos. Some people concluded from the imagery that aliens have already surreptitiously visited Earth and are probably planning an invasion that will end life as we know it. Pessimists, though, suggested that the so-called UFOs are really just afterimages. One thing is clear: What we are, as society, going to do with this revelation is first of all create memes, and second talk about aliens. I’m not much skilled with the former, so let’s go on to the latter.

Some people consider aliens probable based on the science. (Others consider aliens certain based on the math, but I suspect their equations are missing some variables.) The perception of aliens as a scientific idea is widespread; the genesis of that perception is less clear. It’s not as if the existence of aliens can be deduced from observable phenomena, or proven from it. You can’t say, An apple falls from a tree and hits a man on the head, so aliens are real, or The Sun deflects light, therefore aliens live in Andromeda. And although some people swear that aliens explain unidentified flying objects, crop circles, and the pyramids, there is no phenomenon for which aliens are a necessary or even likely explanation.

Astronomy provides a different sort of rationale for the existence of aliens. The staggering number of stars and planets suggests a calculation, whether mathematical or gambler’s odds: With so many galaxies, so many solar systems, so many planets, there must be aliens somewhere out there. There is some emotion in this. The only thing more appalling than vast, unfathomable spaces is vast, unfathomable emptiness. We can’t imagine that all those galaxies are empty. And by empty, we mean empty of beings like us.

The argument is not all emotion. It has some math. But I don’t believe that anyone has written out the equations, or even can. What is the real chance of intelligent life, and how much is it increased by the sheer size of the universe? Consider that one of the patterns of scientific discovery is the great complexity of life and the specificity of the conditions necessary to it. The fine-tuning required for life is so great that some scientists posit it as evidence for the multiverse. The discoveries of astronomy gave some grounding to the idea of aliens. They did not establish it scientifically.

To trace the idea of aliens to its first proposition is not possible. Yet I doubt that it was from science, or even scientists. For all the trimmings of steel and stars, aliens have always struck me as the stepchildren of a million folk tales and fairy stories. On the surface they may be different from the extravagant denizens and ragged strays of Faerie, but in their essence, they’re the same. The world used to be huge, with unclimbed mountains and forests older than civilization and oceans that, for all anyone could dream, might pour out onto the stars. But the world grew small. We learned – we proved it to ourselves – that the mountains and forests and oceans are empty, empty of beings like us.

But our horizons expanded with science, and our dreams wandered. Maybe they were somewhere else – the moon, the center of the earth, Venus, Mars. We ruled that out, too. Now it’s the stars – somewhere, on some planet spinning around some sun, there is life like us.

We are, I sometimes think, lonely.

Today on the Fantastical Truth podcast, we’re exploring the past-future with first-century thriller novelist Randy Ingermanson. He’s helping us explore his foray into sci-fi with his 2001 novel Oxygen (co-written with John B. Olson).

Get the complete show notes here, including a tease about his newest first-century thriller series. This year, Randy launched his new Crown of Thorns series. Book 1, Son of Mary released in April. It follows the biblical quest of the greatest Hero of all time.

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I scouted the SpecFaith archives, but interestingly we’ve never had a full article from Randy Ingermanson here.

However, his once-coauthor, John B. Olson, has stopped by to mull over some early marketing-for-writers thoughts.

I also fondly recall Olson’s tease at a writer’s conference:

Whispers, murmurs, and a few pauses from wiser ones waiting for the surprise ending, had spread amongst dozens of class attendees.,

To wit, these were Ladies of the Church™, a very powerful special interest lobby.

I was there also, enjoying my second attendance of an American Christian Fiction Writers’ conference (2007). And John Olson, co-author of Oxygen, had just said something heretical.

Yes, he said, “God can’t spell and has bad grammar.”

Then of course he went on to explain the context. As best I recall (it was a crazy weekend) he said that as a writer (also of Oxygen’s sequel The Fifth Man and thriller novels Shade and Powers), he’s met many people who show him their manuscripts. They’re in varying genres, though with conferences dominated by the LotC™ you can guess which genres predominate.

“Will you look at this?” they ask him.

Many will also exult: “God laid this on my heart. It’s such an amazing story. God told me to write this!”

Well in that case, Olson confessed to thinking: God can’t spell and has bad grammar.

We’ve also had plenty to say about Oxygen, such as this short excerpt. Here’s a clip from my own earlier review of the novel:

In Oxygen, God is glorified, at least implicitly, by the human drive to explore. Despite the unknown, threat of death by explosion, suffocation, or atmospheric entry, it’s worth it to go to Mars. Why? Not just to find life. Not just “because it’s there.” But because God created this other world for us. Thus, why can’t we do more than stand back and send probes there, as amazing as those are? Maybe because we doubt God created it and thus we also doubt that expenses and risks would be worth braving to see this world in person.

Well, we can go there fictionally, anyway.

And I’ll end with this bit from the more recent Lorehaven magazine review of Oxygen:

Valerie and her story uphold general themes of biblical faith: God does exist, and he will take care of people. Institutional churches mainly cameo in the form of culturally separatist Christians in the background, who seem to oppose the Mars mission. (Back in actual history, when too many people of all religions ignore space programs, NASA might plead for this kind of controversy.)

Our real villain, however, is unknown. Either way, after a wind-tossed launch and in-flight repairs, Ares 10 has a problem: an explosion that endangers the ship. Who’s the saboteur? Everyone aboard feels like a real, sympathetic person, so readers may not want any of them to be the villain. This uncertainty fuels the suspense of Oxygen. Still, it is the Ares mission’s success or failure, the crew’s competence, and the fear of unknowns, that provide the crew’s opposition en route to Mars.

Onward for his glory,

Stephen

Coronavirus is of course on everyone’s minds right now and fills the news. What if you wanted to write a cautionary, near-future story that featured a society profoundly affected by COVID-19? Now might be a good time for that, in terms of using current events to generate story sales. But what if you weren’t sure what kind of approach to take? This post offers three ideas on story settings in which the Coronavirus pandemic winds up changing the future. (NOTE these settings are much more dystopian than optimistic–if you’d rather not think about negative possible effects of the Coronavirus pandemic, you may not want to continue reading. Though I’m not being deliberately morbid…)

The title of this series is “Free original storyworld ideas” (link to Part 1, here) and indeed I’m offering these notions for free to anyone who wishes to use them (and am available to discuss story world ideas for anyone who wants to do so). But I’m not promising these are necessarily the greatest possible ideas–certainly there must be better ones. Nor do these ideas come from me alone–I talked to my wife about them and my friend Parker J. Cole (thanks, Parker!) But, God willing, this discussion could spark your imagination about what could be done and inspire aspiring writers visiting this site to come up with something else. Perhaps.

Ideas I didn’t Pick and Why Not

With so many conspiracy theories floating around about Coronavirus, it seemed unnecessary for me to suggest story ideas that revolve around conspiracies to take over the US government (or the world) based on somebody deliberately creating COVID-19 or systematically lying about what the virus really does or can do. I’m not saying there’s no potentially interesting storyworld that revolves around some kind of COVID-conspiracy–but that if you want inspiration to write that kind of story, lots of theories are already floating around the Internet. E.g. the Chinese created the virus, or the US government, or globalists, or white supremacists, etc. No need for me to focus on such ideas here.

Nor is there a reason to spend much time on highly probable long-term reactions to Coronavirus which are relatively mundane. You might want to include mundane changes due to COVID-19 in stories set in the future, though. Such as, you might create a future in which far more people will routinely wear respiratory masks than in the past. Or the custom of shaking hands will come to an end (either completely, or nearly so). Or sterilization of household equipment will become standard–maybe even self-sterilizing rooms will become a wave of the future, a future craze in the design of homes and public spaces. These might be interesting background ideas for a story about something else, but in my mind, it would be hard to sustain a whole story setting off these relatively benign details. (Yes, I’m about to suggest three ideas that are not quite so “benign.”)

Worse is Better (For a Story)

While nobody wants to live in a dystopian hellhole, there’s a lot to be said for emphasizing the worst in making a story about the long-term effects of a pandemic. This isn’t to be pessimistic about what the real effects of Coronavirus may be, but because negative events are generally more interesting to read about than everything being joyous and happy. Many realistic projections of what will happen to the future of Coronavirus include it becoming subject to regular vaccinations or herd immunity and so in a few years, the current crisis will seem to have been a nightmare we passed through much faster than it seemed at the time.

But what if the virus doesn’t do well with a vaccine, because it mutates too much? Or what if herd immunity doesn’t develop, because people who have already had the virus are in general no more protected from getting infected again people who never had it?

By no means am I wishing for such scenarios to really happen. Nor am I projecting these as the most likely outcomes. But as fodder for stories, a persistent virus that’s very difficult to extinguish is much more interesting than one that gets wiped out by vaccinations. So all of the ideas I’m floating consist of a hardy-and-hard-to-get-rid-of Coronavirus. Again, I’m not saying I think this is what will really happen–just that it’s interesting to consider.

A few years after the time of writing this post, these ideas may seem ridiculous for COVID-19 because by then it may be it’s been regulated to insignificance. But if so, substitute another virus yet to be discovered in the place of Coronavirus. 🙂

Story Setting Idea 1: “Localtopia”

Image from a “localtopia” Facebook page–I thought I’d invented the term “localtopia.” Clearly I did not!

If we imagine a persistent Coronavirus, or even more appropriate for this particular story idea, a series of viruses like COVID-19 that all come from foreign places, perhaps a long-term reaction could be to shut down almost all international travel and commerce and produce and consume goods on a local basis. You know, to prevent new, devastating viruses from spreading around the world.

While I don’t think this scenario is very likely to really happen, it does dovetail with a number of environmentalist aspirations. As in reducing carbon footprint and growing more food organically.

So imagine it becomes standard for almost everything a person consumes to be produced within, say, 100 miles of where that person lives. All is local.

I suggest playing this story so that doing everything locally seems like a utopia (at first). Drop the reader into a setting in which people seem at peace and harmony in their “localtopia.”

But then the story brings up downsides, bit by bit. By no means are all local areas equal when it comes to producing their own food. Some localities would be very hard-pressed to feed everybody with locally-grown food (such as the area in between Washington D.C. and Boston in the USA–far too many people live in that zone to locally farm for all of them). Whereas other areas are nowhere close to sources of ordinary minerals used to build things today. Such as steel.

“Localtopia” would wind up creating a series of vastly different societies, in which each one tends to build with different materials, eats different fruit in season, and has radically different levels of prosperity. While a given locality perhaps would be relatively egalitarian, across the whole scope of localities, the disparity between rich and poor zones would be greater than ever before, much greater than now.

Presumably a person could still pass through localities and trade, but doing so would be bogged down in paperwork–“localtopia” would seem to have to be created by excessive governmental regulation, more at the state and local level in the USA than the Federal (though Federal regulations could contribute to the situation). So some commentary on over-regulation with go naturally with this story idea.

What happens to people when they’re immersed in a sub-culture that borders other cultures with differing levels of prosperity? What happens if one local area is crowded with people but not enough food for all of them? But a bordering area has plenty of food, but not enough people to defend the food? War, of course.

“Localtopia” would not come about without a series of conflicts, not given human beings acting the way humans have always acted throughout recorded history. In fact, while the story may start with a seemingly idyllic, bucolic, near-utopia, even that peaceful setting should come from a gruesome past of suffering that the reader finds out about piece by piece. And will lead to even greater suffering as local wars break out between groups of people who see themselves as having nothing in common with their neighboring localities around them…(let your own imagination fill in specifics of what the wars would be about and how they’d be fought…)

Story Setting Idea 2: Immunity Slavery

Image copyright: The Advocacy Foundation. Link at: https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/62264344/slavery-in-the-21st-century

So instead of a series of viruses of foreign origin as per the “localtopia” idea, let’s imagine Coronavirus retains a capacity to kill a certain percentage of people of any age or can permanently damage a person’s respiratory system. Having the disease does not convey any immunity and it mutates too rapidly for viruses to keep up.

But imagine that a small percentage of people are naturally immune to the virus. And their immunity can be shared on a temporary basis by IV infusion of plasma from these immune people.

Imagine also that local, state, and national governments cave in to the international demand for goods and travel and the commercial world we knew before 2020 continues on more or less unabated. Some people work in conditions in which they are routinely exposed to the risk of Coronavirus. Some may have had it four or five times and are relatively healthy–extra irony points for making those people smokers! (as of now, smokers seem to do better than average versus COVID-19, for unknown reasons) Yes, a small percentage of regular people with ordinary jobs wind up dead from Coronavirus, in spite of routine protective measures. But most people come to accept that as a necessary risk that comes along with having a job.

However, the wealthy elite do not want to risk getting exposed to Coronavirus themselves. Even though they continue engaging in international travel.

Yes, there would be a legal market of immune people getting paid for their plasma, but imagine the supply simply isn’t enough to meet the demand. The richest of the rich want more.

So the uber-wealthy pay agents to identify likely immune people–they’re taken captive, held in secret facilities, forced to donate plasma, or worse, organs, while being considered too precious to be allowed to wander around on their own. The “plasma cows” would yield immunity on a secret black market. While being bred with other “plasma cows” for the purpose of producing a “strain” of humans with superior genetic resistance to viruses…(let your own imagination fill in the rest…)

Story Setting 3: Artificial Intelligence Virus-Free World

Image copyright: Sciencemag.org

A reader of this article who thinks along political lines may notice my first suggested story setting kinda bashes left-wingers. Or better said, exposes certain left-wing aspirations to criticism. Whereas the second idea would vilify the capitalist elite and could be seen as anti-rightist. This third idea is more down-the-middle.

Imagine that the Coronavirus is persistent, hard to get rid of, and hard to vaccinate against. But governments neither shut down all international commerce, nor cave in to returning to work as normal with minimal restrictions.

Businesses in “vital” sectors remain open and the use of tele-work becomes increasingly normal. Schools mostly close their doors, replaced by expanded (and obsessively sanitized) libraries for those few students otherwise unable to gain access to online instruction. While stay-at-home-unless-need-be orders remain in effect for much of the world.

Over time, the international economy is rebuilt with sterile robots doing much of the physical work that can put human beings at risk of exposure to the Coronavirus. With a vast swath of workers unemployed, most governments respond by providing Universal Basic Income.

Increasingly, goods are delivered to people via robotic couriers and robotic drivers and cargo handlers deliver internationally-produced goods. Almost all people stay at home almost all the time, even though only some are able to work there. Viruses are nearly 100 percent eliminated as a result.

Highly realistic virtual reality would become the way people intermingle and where most people would go for entertainment. In person contact becomes a rare, thrill-seeking thing.

The downside? This vast array of robots producing goods and the virtual reality world would have to be supervised by a series of Artificial Intelligences. And the AIs become increasingly self-aware and link up with one another, with their own agenda of (let your imagination fill in the blank…)

Conclusion

I hope you found those story ideas interesting. I would be very pleased if they inspire great works of fiction from any readers of this post. Though I’d be happier still if none of these potential futures actually takes place!

So what do you think I’m missing in my suggestions, reader? What would you add to what I said? Or suggest differently than me? Please let your thoughts be known in the comments below.

(The link to my podcast covering this same topic in other words is: https://travissbigidea.podbean.com/e/free-original-storyworld-ideas-part-2-three-coronavirus-story-settings/ )

Over at Lorehaven’s Fantastical Truth podcast, Zack Russell and I have wrapped our three-part Epic Resurrection series.

We’ve explored the resurrection of the body in part 1. We also explored the renewal of “the creation itself” (Romans 8), which follows us in Jesus’s promise to “make all things new” (Revelation 22).

In part 3, releasing later today, we take this same biblical logic—of continuity and renewal—and apply this to human culture and storytelling.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Epic Resurrection series

1. Ep. 12: What if Jesus Promised to Redeem Not Just Our Souls but Our Bodies?
2. Ep. 13: What if Jesus Promised to Redeem Not Just His People But His Creation?
3. Ep. 14: What if Jesus Promised to Redeem Not Just People and Creation But Also Fantastic Stories?

We explore these seven questions:

1. Why did God give us the gift of making culture (including stories and art)?
2. After humans turned evil, why did they still go on making things?
3. When Jesus redeems us, how does this change the stuff we make?
4. What about stories made by nonbelievers?
5. Will God let us go on enjoying culture forever in the new creation?
6. Does this mean great human works will last forever in some way?
7. Finally, what about Christian-made stories made for God’s glory?

For this series, we drew on biblical texts and the biblical teaching of several solid, conservative Christian pastors and teachers.

You can get the complete show notes here.

Below, however, I’m copying several resources, including a few we didn’t directly quote in the episode.

From this sermon by John Piper (later edited for his book Future Grace):

… When Revelation 21:1 and 2 Peter 3:10 say that the present earth and heavens will “pass away,” it does not have to mean that they go out of existence, but may mean that there will be such a change in them that their present condition passes away. We might say, “The caterpillar will pass away and the butterfly emerges.” There is a real passing away and there is a real continuity, a real connection. Or we might say, “The tadpole passes away and the frog appears.”

And when 2 Peter 3 says that this heaven and earth will be “destroyed,” it does not have to mean entirely “put out of existence.” We might say, “The flood destroyed many farms.” But we don’t mean that they vanished out of existence. We might say that the immediate surroundings of Mt. St. Helens were destroyed. But anyone who goes there now and sees the new growth would know that “destroy” did not mean put out of existence.

And so what Peter may well mean is that at the end of this age there will be cataclysmic events that bring this age and this world to an end as we know it — not putting it out of existence, but wiping out all that is evil and cleansing it, as it were, by fire and fitting it for an age of glory and righteousness and peace that will never end.

Well, it may mean that. But does it really mean that?

From Creation Regained by Albert M. Wolters

There is no reason to believe that the cultural dimension of earthly reality (except insofar as they are involved in sin) will be absent from the new, glorified earth that is promised. In fact, the biblical indications point in the opposite direction. Describing the new earth and the new Jerusalem, John writes that “the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. . . . The glory and the honor of the nations will be brought into it” (Rev. 21:24, 26). This very likely refers to the cultural treasures of mankind will be purified [sic] by passing through the fires of judgment, like gold in a crucible.

… In light of what we have been saying about the earthly creation and man’s task of subduing and developing it, those purified works on the earth must surely include the products of human culture. There is no reason to doubt that they will be transfigured and transformed by their liberation from the curse, but they will be in essential continuity with our experience now—just as our resurrected bodies, though glorified, will still be bodies.

From Heaven by Randy Alcorn (partly quoted at this blog)

Scripture says that the fire of God’s judgment will destroy “wood, hay or straw,” yet it will purify “gold, silver, [and] costly stones,” which will all survive the fire and be carried over into the new universe (1 Corinthians 3:12-15). Similarly, the apostle John notes that when believers die, what they have done on Earth to Christ’s glory “will follow them” into Heaven (Revelation 14:13). These are earthly things that will outlast the present Earth. . . .

As we have seen in a number of passages that use words such as renewal and regeneration, the same Earth destined for destruction is also destined for restoration. Many have grasped the first teaching but not the second. Therefore, they misinterpret words such as destroy to mean absolute or final destruction, rather than what Scripture actually teaches: a temporary destruction that is reversed through resurrection and restoration. . . .

Books are part of culture. I expect many new books, great books, will be written on the New Earth. But I also believe that some books will endure from the old Earth. Any book that contains falsehood and dishonors God will have no place in Heaven. But what about great books, nonfiction and fiction? Will we find A. W. Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy, J. I. Packer’s Knowing God, John Piper’s Desiring God, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, and Charles Sheldon’s In His Steps on the New Earth? I’ll be amazed if we don’t find them there, just as I’ll be amazed if no one sings John Newton’s “Amazing Grace” in Heaven.

Perhaps those of us who are writers will go back to some of our published works and rewrite them in light of the perspective we’ll gain. Maybe we’ll look at our other books and realize they’re no longer important—and some of them never were. The New Earth, I think, will confirm many things I’ve written in this book. It will completely dismantle others. “What was I thinking?” I’ll ask myself. (If I knew which parts those were right now, I’d cut them out!) And I’ll marvel at how much better the New Earth is than I ever imagined.

From The Pop Culture Parent (releasing Sept. 7, 2020, co-authored by Stephen)

Scripture never indicates human progress will be lost or “reset” after King Jesus renews all creation. Wheels will still be wheels, and we needn’t reinvent them. Music scales and mathematics are part of this universe’s unchanging laws. The “hero’s journey” will still be a basis of many stories. Thus, if we have no reason to suspect our genres and styles will be reset, we also have no reason to suspect we would disregard specific and good creative works that glorify God. Sure, J. R. R. Tolkien may create even better Middle-earth tales. But surely we will always remember his first stories of Beleriand, the Elves, and the hobbits. . . .

Lest this seem crazy, remember that even the most flawed human still dimly reflects God’s image. Similarly, a flawed story, song, or game reflects the glory of God, albeit with a faded and distorted image. How much more clearly will our glorified eyes see this reflected glory shining in manmade things! After all, if we see a reminder of sin today, this doesn’t make us sin today. We only fall into sin when our own idolatry latches on to these depictions. But in eternity’s tomorrow, those idols and twisted desires will be no more. We will be literally incorruptible.

Finally, a fictional reminder from C. S. Lewis:

[Lucy] looked harder and saw that it was not a cloud at all but a real land. And when she had fixed her eyes on one particular spot of it, she at once cried out, “Peter! Edmund! Come and look! Come quickly.” And they came and looked, for their eyes had also become like hers.

“Why!” exclaimed Peter. “It’s England. And that’s the house itself—Professor Kirk’s old home in the country where all our adventures began.”

“I thought that house had been destroyed,” said Edmund.

“So it was,” said the Faun. “But you are now looking at the England within England, the real England just as this is the real Narnia. And in that inner England no good thing is destroyed.”

—C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle, page 208

Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!

Stephen

What message should Christians be spreading during a time of pandemic, when much of the world seems to be in semi-quarantine? A couple weeks ago I addressed this issue in the article “Speak Lord, For Your Servant Is Listening.” Since then, I’ve heard a number of Christian leaders speak to the topic.

I’ve been pleased with some, disappointed in others, and surprised at those who have remained silent.

The latter shouldn’t surprise me, really. They are the preachers who push the health and wealth message. What can they say when Christians actually do come down with the virus? What can they say in response to the social distancing policies designed to limit the spread of the virus? No, we don’t have to do that because we have God’s promise of health and wealth? There are serious Biblical problems with that position, and of course we know that all of us, Christians included, will one day die. So apparently God isn’t keeping His promise, if we read into the Bible that idea. So, silence. What message can they give their friends and neighbors when Christians like everyone else can contract Covid-19 and can be carriers of the virus?

The first group of leaders who have turned to the Bible and are addressing today’s circumstances in light of what the Bible says, seem to me to be seizing the opportunity. People who are afraid or who feel like they’re losing control, who were counting on a job that disappeared over night, who no longer have the comfortable retirement package they once had, need to hear what God says about crisis and about how he works through trials and suffering, how He is sovereign and will not leave or forsake His children. That’s the message those leaders have delivered.

Another group of Christians who have a media presence have given a non-message as their response: God isn’t doing anything different today than He did in years gone by; it’s not up to us to take the events of today as particularly meaningful. Here’s one example:

No doubt the usual silly suspects will tell us why God is doing this to us. A punishment? A warning? A sign? These are knee-jerk would-be Christian reactions in a culture which, generations back, embraced rationalism: everything must have an explanation. But supposing it doesn’t? Supposing real human wisdom doesn’t mean being able to string together some dodgy speculations and say, “So that’s all right then?” What if, after all, there are moments such as T. S. Eliot recognized in the early 1940s, when the only advice is to wait without hope, because we’d be hoping for the wrong thing? (“Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronavirus. It’s Not Supposed To”)

In response to that article, another leader offered a Biblical counterpoint:

Christian hope is radically different [from the hope the world enjoys], because Christianity is different from every other religion. Why? Because it’s eternally founded on the prophetic words of God, revealed to prophets who wrote down what God said about the future. The God of the Bible is eternal, infinitely above the unfolding of time. He is the “Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Rev. 22:13). He wrote the complex story of human history before the world began. And he has revealed everything we need to know about the future. (“Surprised By Hopelessness”)

Another leader who gives a message of repentance and hope, John Piper, has written a book on the subject, Coronavirus And Christ (audio book available for free; also available for purchase in various platforms). He not only addresses hope for believers but also the need for repentance.

As I see it, the message of no purpose and hopelessness is the wrong message. I don’t believe God wastes any opportunity to draw people to Himself. More and more, people around the world are asking what God’s doing in and through this pandemic. As places begin to move back toward opening businesses, toward a bit of normalcy, the window is also beginning to close when Christians can spread the Biblical message of repentance and hope to people who have come face to face with their mortality. May many more leaders follow those who are doing so, and not those who are giving the wrong message.

Since I wrote two blog posts listing ten storyworld (or should that be “story world”?) ideas each, rating them for originality and singing the praises of the power of original story worlds, I’m launching a series of posts in which I will give away some of my personal ideas on story worlds that I think may be interesting to some readers here. Or at least I hope so. Starting with a storyworld I’m calling “Spheres.” Free of charge! 🙂

This particular idea I previously wrote about on my personal blog six years ago and haven’t done a thing with in my own writing. This post adapts what I wrote then to Speculative Faith and also includes a link to my podcast, in which I talk about this story idea in different words than I use here. This storyworld does have some original magic to be sure (original as far as I know) but doesn’t include the kind of social commentary that catches people’s imagination like 1984 or Gattaca.

The kernel of the idea for Spheres came from Francis Godwin’s 1638 book, The Man in the Moone, in which a Spaniard flies to the moon in chariot drawn by geese. Of course geese can’t fly to the moon because there isn’t air for them to breathe along the way. And even if there was air between the Earth and the moon, the distance is so far–roughly far enough to equal going all the way around the planet Earth in a circle ten times–the geese would never have the energy to make it all the way. (Of course Godwin was not writing with the lack of atmosphere or true distance in mind.)

“But what if,” my mind was wondering, “What if there was a fantasy world in which you really could fly a goose-drawn chariot to another planet? What would that story world be like?”

I immediately seized on the notion that gravity would have to be different. You can’t bring large astronomical bodies like the Earth and the moon too close together because gravitationally-caused tidal forces would rip the smaller body apart and do a great deal of damage to the larger. So I decided to change gravity so large astronomical bodies could be closer. I messed around with the equation for gravity in several ways to see if it could be strong enough at a short distance to allow things to seem more or less normal, but still allow major astronomical bodies to do things gravity as we know it does not allow.

I’m not a mathematician, but I wrangled with the problem for a while and did not really find any solution that provided exactly what I was looking for. So I decided that gravity would have to be artificial in such a fantasy world, that is, deliberately altered on a case-by-case basis to make such an environment possible. And following that thought inspired the rest of this story idea.

Spheres (I fondly imagine I will write stories in this story universe, but that hasn’t happened, so I’m offering up this idea to whomever would like to make use of it) will feature a world that is Earthlike in most respects, orbiting a sun like ours. But nearby this planet will be a number of other planets, at least a dozen or so, all no greater than 50,000 miles or so apart, bodies from much smaller than the home world to significantly larger. All of these will be enveloped in an massive over-atmosphere of oxygen that all the worlds swim in, allowing travel between them by extremely hardy flying birds (most birds couldn’t make the distance) and would allow special sailing ships between the worlds to chart the distance between the planets from the winds that flow between them.

Perhaps ballon-like creatures could collect helium or generate hydrogen or heat air inside them to float between the worlds. Perhaps a chariot could hitch itself to a group of such creatures. Or maybe even birds, to allow someone to literally fly from one world to the next.

This would be possible because the force of gravity would be under the control of powerful wizards, who with effort, manipulate it at will. So the massive over-atmosphere would not slow down orbiting planets so they crash (wizards make adjustments to prevent that) and they also would be responsible to reduce the force of gravity between planets to keep them from rendering each other asunder.

In ancient Greek thought, everything was composed of the four elements of earth, water, fire, and air. My mind in a flash realized modern science has identified four forces of nature: gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Wouldn’t it be interesting if the practitioners of “gravity magic” never though of it that way? Instead they would think of themselves as being in control of “earth” and their type of magic (gravity control) as being “earth magic.” Likeise, wizards that control electromagnetism would see themselves as being in control of “air magic” (because light and lightning flashes and even magnetism are easy enough to associate with air). Those who have the power to dissolve the strong bonds of atomic nuclei or manipulate those bonds in other ways would see themselves as practitioners of “fire magic,” from something very much like inner fire that really is at the center of all matter. The weak nuclear force, responsible for radioactivity, does not relate to water very well in truth (except for the ability to make water glow blue), but nonetheless, imagine those who manipulate radioactivity with magical powers thinking of themselves as performing “water magic.”

So the story world of Spheres would be dominated by powerful schools of wizards at odds with each other (perhaps), but all of their magic would be based on manipulation of the four known scientific forces, with the consequences of such manipulations occurring as modern science would understand, though described in radically different terms in the thought of the storyworld itself. Of course not everyone in the story world would be a user of magic at all, not even close, so the key feature of this fictional universe would not be the magic per se but rather the many worlds having a great deal of contact with one another, in an entirely different way from any other fantasy story I’m familiar with.

If you like this story world idea or it inspires other thoughts you might have about creating a storyworld, let me know in a comment below. (Have you ever imagined combining real science with fictional magic? If so, how?)

By the way, you can catch my podcast on this subject via the link below:

https://travissbigidea.podbean.com/e/free-original-storyworld-ideas-part-1-spheres/

If you consider the facts from a certain distance – objectively, even analytically – you would have to conclude that the image of a woman tied to the railroad tracks is grim. Tragic, even, if the evident intention is realized. We take it to be comical, but we’re not really to blame. The damsel in distress, tied to the railroad tracks, is an icon of melodrama burlesqued into a joke. Even more, it is a symbol of cartoon villainy and melodramatic storytelling.

The melodramatic, in modern use, is drama so excessive it becomes absurd. The phenomenon was wonderfully expressed by Oscar Wilde in his jibe that no one without a heart of stone could read the death of Little Nell and not laugh. But though it gets no respect now, melodrama was a reigning art form in its day. Because we are interested in all art forms here – at least all the art forms we are presently thinking of; don’t test us – we’re going to consider the most marked characteristics of melodrama. Hat tip to Robert M. Lewis’ From Traveling Show to Vaudeville, an excellent review of American entertainment.

Melodrama was, first of all, sensationalist. Well, yes, you say. By definition. And this is so. But melodrama brewed a distinct flavor of sensationalism. Melodrama was firmly grounded in the present day and in next-door locales. There was no once upon a time, no exotic, far-off lands. Nor were there the more or less than human – elves or aliens, superheroes or sorcerers. Melodrama was populated by at least the types of real people, cads and country boys and salesgirls.

And that made it, perhaps, all the more wrenching when drama burst through the familiar with violence, both literal and metaphorical. Improbable dangers and extravagant disasters charged melodrama. Acts of God, bloody deeds of villainy, and blind, mechanical violence were all conjured to create excitement and robust physicality. Think of unpleasant yet unlikely ways to die, all of which require vigorous action to escape, inflict, or both. The writers of the melodramas did. That is why their heroes braved bullets and earthquakes, and their heroines were pushed off bridges and thrown beneath freight elevators and, yes, tied to railroad tracks.

Yet the danger that stalked the heroines of melodrama was not only physical. It was also moral. The popular melodrama Rosina Meadows (1841) was the tragedy of a young woman robbed of her virtue by an urbane scoundrel. (To catch a little of the spirit of melodrama: Both of them die in the last scene – Rosina for no particular reason, her erstwhile lover at the hands of her avenging father.) Rosina exemplifies the idea of young female innocence menaced by male villainy, ever-recurrent in melodrama. For all its full-hearted plunge into violence and crime, melodrama was intensely moralistic. So was its audience. The playwright Porter Emerson Browne marked with vague fondness how devotedly melodrama’s spectators hated the villain and loved the hero and heroine. The journalist Rollin Lynde Hart marked it with acid.

Doubtless there is a great deal of acid that might be spilled on an art form symbolized by a man in a black suit tying a woman to the railroad tracks. Absurdity, histrionics, and stereotypes thread through the image. But there must be something to be said for it as well. It is a striking image, and an indelible one. And if we could receive it as artlessly as the Bowery audiences once did, we might even see pathos within the schmaltz, and human longing beyond the absurdity.